"Abrupt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the other hand, very little liberty; human multiplicity when near its end will fuse itself into a Unity of Will. Do we not see the beginnings already? Thus, without abrupt mutations, will be effected the reintegration of the complex in the one, of old ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... old Sheikh's graceful and flattering speeches of welcome had all to be passed through Abdul, and probably delivered them in a more gracious form than Margaret was capable of expressing them. Abdul was quite accustomed to the abrupt and mannerless ways of the foreigners and to their crude speech; he knew that it meant no offence nor indicated any lack of ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... reckless of life. He saw himself almost encompassed; he heard the bullets whistling about him, and perceived at a glance that the chances of his escape were a thousand to one against him. With a rapid sweep of his eye he marked the locality. It also was all against him. There was a shoreless lake, abrupt and deep to the very edge, except a slip at the opposite side, lying at his feet. It was oblong, but at each end of it there was nothing like a pass for at least two or three miles. If he could swim across this ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... with stern regard Upon the gentle minstrel bard, And said in tones abrupt, austere— "Why, Bracy? dost thou loiter here? "I bade thee hence!" The bard obey'd, And turning from his own sweet maid, The aged knight, Sir Leoline Led forth ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... finding himself dragged away in so abrupt a manner by this Englishman, had sought in his subtle mind for some means of escaping from his fetters; but no one having rendered him any assistance in this respect, he was absolutely obliged, therefore, to submit to the burden of his own ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... governor-general and commander-in-chief of Canada. He and his wife were popular both in the West Indies and in Canada; and he undoubtedly deserved well of the Empire for having conciliated the French Canadians, who had been irritated by his predecessor, the abrupt and masterful Craig. The very important Army Bill Act was greatly due to his diplomatic handling of the French Canadians, who found him so congenial that they stood by him to the end. His native tongue was French. ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... animals themselves are lifelike, each with the gait and action and flexion of the limbs peculiar to its species. The slow and measured tread of the ox; the short step, the meditative ear, the ironical mouth of the ass; the abrupt little trot of the goat, the spring of the hunting greyhound, are all rendered with invariable success of outline and expression. Turning from domestic animals to wild beasts, the perfection of treatment is the same. The calm strength of the lion in repose, ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... pack, Miki travelled steadily in the direction of the plain. It took him half an hour to reach the edge of it. After that he came to a wide and stony out-cropping of the earth over which he nosed the spoor to a low and abrupt descent into the ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... centuries, and at that day numbered about one hundred thousand inhabitants. Its walls, six miles in circumference, were already two hundred years old. Unlike most Netherland cities, lying usually upon extensive plains, it was built along the sides of an abrupt promontory. A wide expanse of living verdure—cultivated gardens, shady groves, fertile cornfields—flowed round it like a sea. The foot of the town was washed by the little river Senne, while the irregular but picturesque streets ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... hanging about the streets, and it jarred on her to see the rows of well-dressed loungers in the hotels lolling in wooden chairs close against the great windows, a foot or two from the street. It gave her a hint of western characteristics; the people were abrupt, good-naturedly so, perhaps, ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... that a Dictionary of the English Language would be a work that would be well received by the publick[529]; that Johnson seemed at first to catch at the proposition, but, after a pause, said, in his abrupt decisive manner, 'I believe I shall not undertake it.' That he, however, had bestowed much thought upon the subject, before he published his Plan, is evident from the enlarged, clear, and accurate views which it exhibits; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... conversation came to an abrupt close; the bugle summoning us to supper, and Mick being extremely particular, I found, never to be late at meal-times if he could ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... approach; of a deepening of the atmosphere of his reverence, which yet as it deepened grew more diaphanous. And when now the episode of angelic visitation was over, with his usual wisdom he understood the wrench her abrupt departure must have given his whole being, and allowed him plenty of time to recover himself from it. Once he came upon him weeping: not with faintest overshadowing did he rebuke him, not with farthest hint suggest weakness in his tears. He went ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... obtain access to Cleo, but who had furtively been warned by the traitorous stage manager "to look sharp after their money." The camaraderie that had hitherto subsisted between that gentleman and Cleo had come to an abrupt end, she cutting him short impatiently in the course of some discussion and bidding him not to argue. In further token of his annoyance he had worded a notice she had told him to ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... some time in finding his place in the open book, and then went on. Again he misunderstood her, for though he could not remember saying anything he regretted, he fancied she had brought the conversation to a somewhat abrupt close. He read on, feeling very uncomfortable, and longing for one of those explanations that are impossible between acquaintances and emotional between lovers. He felt also that if he ever spoke ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... over the top of the last pitch. Next moment he struck the logs at the bottom with a jar that left him breathless, and he lay still to recover. His coat was white; indeed, the snow had forced its way inside his clothes, but he must be careful about his background and avoid abrupt movements. ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... not at all satisfied with this abrupt close of the conversation, but too unready to prolong it. He went on his own way slowly, looking back often, till he saw the door open, after which he seemed better satisfied, and ambled out ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... with which it all went and he grew calm, coinciding as it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming and pattering outside—I think this was almost the strangest part of the whole business perhaps. For he had just opened his eyes and turned his tired face up to me so that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through the doorway, ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... abrupt end to the remarks of his refractory seaman by starting up suddenly in fierce anger and seizing the tiller, apparently with the intent to fell him. He checked himself, however, as suddenly, and, breaking into a ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... naked hands made out eleven o'clock. The men about him quickened. The legs that had lifted through a dozen strenuous hours lifted in a still swifter pace that was half a run and mostly a running jog. Through a dark spruce-flat they burst upon an abrupt glare of light from many fires and upon an abrupt increase of sound. The great camp lay ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... dirty trucks stopped with an abrupt jerk and noisy jarring of impact. Then it came! Grumbles ceased as if by common consent. There was something indefinable but pregnant, and in tense silence ears were strained intently. Was it only the rumble of a distant cart on hard cobbles or...? Faintly over the damp air came a long, insistent ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... and Junior School the furniture and apparatus can be to a great extent very much the same, their difference lying chiefly in degree. It is a pity to bring the age of toys to an abrupt conclusion; in real life the older children still borrow the toys of the younger ones while there are some definitely their own: such are, jigsaw and other puzzles, dominoes, articles for dramatic representation, playing cards, toys for ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... on heroes in a style resembling either early architecture or utter dilapidation, so loose and rough it seemed. A wind-in-the-orchard style that tumbled down here and there an appreciable fruit with uncouth bluster, sentences without commencements running to abrupt endings and smoke, like waves against a sea-wall, learned dictionary words giving a hand to street slang, and accents falling on them haphazard, like slant rays from driving clouds; all the pages in a breeze, the whole book producing ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... from a mountain summit to a plain; especially when they are connected with one another by a good system of streams; since here the opposite peculiarities of the populations of the highlands and coast-lands(227) tend to produce a nationality both one and varied. Where the transitions are too abrupt, as for instance, in New Holland, they easily impede inter-communication; and, still more, where the several parts of the country are of very great extent; as, for example, the desert of North Africa, the plateau of South Africa or that of Central Asia. Europe ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... secret." I had scarcely sent in my acceptance of the appointment, when I found a letter on my table from my old Israelite friend, Mordecai, congratulating me on "my decision." It was in his usual abrupt style:— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... had to interfere at this point, for the old man was in the very act of carrying out his threat to punish Rogers bodily, on the bare possibility that he would not pray as he was told to do. And so that extemporized class-meeting came to an abrupt end. ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... sister, you will easily pardon an abrupt conclusion. I believe, by this time, you are ready to fear I would never conclude ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... demand it of her. I haven't been in Philadelphia since I was seven—and that's ages ago. I have no mother, and father is off in South America on business. So, you see, little sister has to tag after big sister. Oh!" She interrupted the recital with an abrupt change of manner. "I'm so sorry you've finished your coffee. Now you'll have ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the 26th Currt was soe short and soe abrupt that I fear you can peck butt little satisfaction out ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... kindly words, vain his confidential reception of the young Englishman, to remove from Arthur's heart the wild torrent of passion called forth by Garcia's allusion to Marie's intense love for her husband. To any one but Morales, his abrupt and unconnected replies, his strange and uncourteous manners, must have excited irritation; but Don Ferdinand only saw that the young man was disturbed and pained, and for this very reason exerted his utmost kindliness of ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... imbued with romantic perversity, would have made himself cut so poor a figure as Borrow here does without cause. The gipsies reappear to save the situation, and a kind of minor Belle Berners drama is played out with Ursula, Jasper's sister. Then the story takes another of its abrupt turns. Jasper, half in generosity it would appear, half in waywardness, insists on Borrow purchasing a thorough-bred horse which is for sale, advances the money, and despatches him across England to Horncastle Fair to sell it. The usual Le Sagelike adventures ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Paris were brought, at length, for the time being, to a somewhat abrupt termination, by an invitation which he received suddenly at breakfast one morning, from his uncle George, to set off with him the next day for Switzerland. Rollo was very eager to accept this invitation from the moment that it was offered him. It is true that he was not at ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... inquiringly on her mother's abrupt entrance, and noted with surprise the flush on her cheek and the angry light in ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... An abrupt knock at the door startled her out of his arms; and the curtain was pushed aside by Desmond:—a strangely transfigured Desmond, with ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... first ridge when a sharp report broke the night-stillness and brought him to an abrupt standstill. It was followed by another, then three, four—a number of shots in succession. It was not loud enough for a 30-30. It was the six-shooter! "For close work!" she had told ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... menace is the wolves, but since we demonstrated that these animals cannot travel faster than about thirty miles an hour, the antelope are perfectly safe unless they happen to be caught off their guard. To prevent just this, the gazelles usually keep well out on the open plains and avoid rocks or abrupt hills which would furnish cover for a wolf. Of course, they often go into the rolling ground, but it is usually where the slopes are gradual and where they have sufficient space in which ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... obstinate, ignorant women can look. When they put on this cast of features, you might as well attempt to soften or convince a brick wall. Margaret Van Eyck tried, but all in vain. So then, not being herself used to be thwarted, she got provoked, and at last went out hastily with an abrupt and mutilated curtsey, which Catherine, returned with an air rather of defiance than obeisance. Outside the door Margaret Van Eyck found Reicht conversing with a pale girl on crutches. Margaret Van Eyck ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... had to get rid of him, and the Canon got him made night-watchman at the Institute. However, as I say, I called him Mr. Reasons, and that's what I call Alexander Quisante. Poor girl!" The last words referred, by a somewhat abrupt transition, to Quisante's wife. ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... abrupt directness, a lack of explanatory detail, are more general characteristics, though in greatly varying degrees. As some critic has well said, the Anglo-Saxon poet seems to presuppose a knowledge of his subject-matter by those he addresses. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... fresh burst of grief from the affectionate and sorrowful girl. And she may be pardoned when I state, that, perhaps, the bitterest tears which were shed were those when she threw herself on that sofa where she had remained after the abrupt departure of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... gradually underwent a complete and most painful change; he became silent and abstracted, his manner to me was abrupt and often harsh, some grievous anxiety seemed ever present to his mind; and under its influence his spirits sunk and his ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... to the Viking's castle," said the stork; "there my young ones and their mother await me. How they will stare! The mother does not speak much; but, though she is rather abrupt, she means well. I will presently make a little noise, that she may ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... owe you an apology for the abrupt manner in which I addressed you last evening, and the inconvenience to which you were subjected by some of my household. If you will honor us with your presence to-day at four o'clock, I will be most happy ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... seemed very lonely to me after my mother-in-law's abrupt departure. I had not dreamed that I could possibly miss the older woman's companionship, especially after her hateful behavior concerning my ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... them could be led, and some had to be driven like Paddy's pig who thought he was going the other way. Some of them had wives who could talk to them, and some—hadn't," said Mrs. Baker, with a queer intonation in her abrupt ending. ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... the liner moving, so abrupt her swoop to the right, that she leaned far over and showed them the red of her huge bilge. Her high speed enabled her to make an especially quick turn. As they gaped, her two stacks swung almost into line. Her ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the peak that he had seen through his glass the day before. There was little or no vegetation upon that high, wind-swept point. The side toward the distant peak from which the artist had seen the signals, was an abrupt cliff—hundreds of feet of sheer, granite rock. From the rim of this precipice, the peak sloped gradually down and back to the edge of the pines that grew about its base. The ground in the open space ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... retorted John Pendleton, dryly. Then, with one of the curiously abrupt changes of manner peculiar to him, he said, very low: "You have your mother's eyes and smile, Pollyanna; ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... going back had never occurred to her, and shocked her into abrupt refusal. It would be an impossible adaptation to outgrown conditions. She could not conjure up the idea of herself refitted into the broken frame of her girlhood. She told them she would go on, there was nothing now to go back for. Their only course was to keep to the original plan, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... reference has just been made, Mrs Willders, while seated quietly at her own fireside (although there was no fire there, the month being June), was interrupted in her not unusual, though innocent, occupation of darning socks by the abrupt entrance of her son Frank, who flung his cap on the table, kissed his mother on the forehead, and then flung himself on the sofa, which piece of furniture, being old and decrepit, groaned under ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... Hiram first came to Burnsville he sought to be admitted as a member of Mr. Burns's family, but was met with a cold and abrupt refusal. Now, Mr. Burns not only desired Hiram to come at once to his house, but put his wishes in so decided a form that Hiram could not object. It was in vain, that Sarah interposed. She begged her father ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... however, had to struggle with a great accumulation of obstructions, both of the subjective, as the metaphysicians say, and of the objective, order; and indeed it is no small part of the purpose of this little history to set forth her struggle. What seemed paramount in this abrupt enlargement of Mr. Wentworth's sympathies and those of his daughters was an extension of the field of possible mistakes; and the doctrine, as it may almost be called, of the oppressive gravity of mistakes was one of the most cherished traditions of ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... must he be studious of public welfare and responsive to public opinion. Thus manufacturing, transportation, or banking, when conducted on a large scale, touch life at so many points, that he who seeks to gain power or wealth by means of them will gradually and without any abrupt change of motive approximate the method of disinterested service. So every station in life, from that of the ruler to that of the shopkeeper, has its own characteristic form of the one problem of meeting, adjusting and fulfilling interests. The desire to be successful ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... terror struck at the heart of her content. An abrupt horrible certainty froze her—the certainty that she was not alone. There was some living thing besides herself in the forest, quite near her—something other than the deer and the squirrels and the quiet dainty woodland people. She felt it in every fibre ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not, I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine, I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it, I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me, In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me, In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me, I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution, I too had receiv'd identity by my body, That ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... to address a single word to him. In the heat of her passion and resentment, she was nearly exposing all she knew of his infamies to the King, when the coolheaded Princesse Elizabeth opposed her, from the seeming imprudence of such an abrupt discovery; alleging that it might cause an open rupture between the two Courts, as it had already been the source of a reserve and coolness, which had not yet been explained. The Queen was determined never more to commit herself by seeing the Cardinal. She accordingly ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... motionless under the spell that his remarkable personality had cast over me, nor did even his abrupt manner appear at all strange, such perfect harmony of word and action existed in this Martian genius. Indeed, it seemed a fitting conclusion to all that had gone before. Speaking rapidly, as though realizing the loss ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... to time the chief of the band, abrupt and alert, and making sudden turns about the vessel, came to him and whispered in his ear. The old man answered by a nod. It might have been the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... personal appearance was now worse than ever, and the sacrilegious use of Father Pandoza's vestments, coupled with the ghastly scalp that hung from his bridle, so turned opinion against him that he was soon captured, dismounted, and his parade brought to an abrupt close, and I doubt whether he ever after quite reinstated himself in the good graces ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... when he did speak. "I had not intended to be so abrupt as I fear you will think me in that which I am about to say; but I believe you will ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... make such an exhibition of yourself. But you know I couldn't really believe you would do such an inexcusable thing. What will those people think of us? But how did you say it?—I mean the manner of it. I hope you were not abrupt." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from the northern aisle Rapid and shrill to its abrupt harsh close; And none gave answer for a certain while, 45 For words must shrink from these most wordless woes; At last the pulpit speaker simply said, With humid eyes and thoughtful ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... or four days and the little surface thaw, came to an abrupt end in a cold rain that turned to sleet as it fell. Nobody felt like going far afield just then, even after game, but they had set the snare that Nicholas told the Boy about on that first encounter ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... later. The hours passed. Trina kept at her post. The noise of approaching footfalls grew less and less frequent. Little by little Polk Street dropped back into solitude. Eleven o'clock struck from the power-house clock; lights were extinguished; at one o'clock the cable stopped, leaving an abrupt and numbing silence in the air. All at once it seemed very still. The only noises were the occasional footfalls of a policeman and the persistent calling of ducks and geese in the closed market across the ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... was to move aside to let him pass out. It was as though Garstaing's expression of sympathy had at last found a weakness in his armour of reserve. His movement had been abrupt—startlingly abrupt. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... slate heaps, lined the side of a deep excavation, and came to an abrupt end where some boards, placed crosswise, barred ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... the match-making Dickson came to an abrupt end. He had been riding negligently, his head bent against the wind, and his eyes vaguely fixed on the wet hill-gravel of the road. Of his immediate environs he was pretty well unconscious. Suddenly he was aware of figures on each side of him who advanced menacingly. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... Merillia again exchanged a glance which was not unobserved by Lady Enid. Then Sir Tiglath, with an abrupt and portentous ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... this same system has been applied for bringing to an abrupt standstill runaway horses, harnessed to vehicles; but knowing the effect of a sudden stoppage under such circumstances, we believe that the remedy would prove worse than the disease, since the coachman and vehicle, in obedience to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... at the foot of abrupt cotes, just where the broad and tranquil river shudders with mysterious deep heavings and meets its dolphin-hued death in the all-devouring sea. Away off in the shimmering distance is the second seaport city ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... under the power of Rome, were panting for freedom; Germany first reforming her religion, and then throwing off her subjection; England first throwing off her subjection, and then compelled to reform herself. The old systems of thought were at an end. The change, like all social ones, was not abrupt, but it was decisive and final. It was the earthquake which shattered for ever the crust of error ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... was for leaving, but being under obligation to the legless man was at pains not to be abrupt. He lingered then a little, ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... brought to an abrupt close, for the train was approaching Glanafon Ferry, and her comrades, busily collecting their various handbags, would lend no ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... a word, my boy. We want your verses, we want your verses. That's right, isn't it? Good verses, good money! Now no more of that," and the good man, in alarm lest he should be thanked further, made an abrupt ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... an abrupt movement and she noticed with surprise and some indignation the relief in his expression. Though the men had not been on very cordial ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... of all these distresses by an abrupt abandonment of smoking and alcohol. Alcoholic relaxation, a necessary mitigation of the unreality of peacetime politics, becomes a grave danger in war, and it was with an understandable desire to forward the interests of his realm that the King decided to set his statesmen an example—which ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... said to her or to his mother that he might join the army, gathering so fast from every Northern city and hamlet; only Sam knew this, and so the mother longing for her daughter was pleased rather than surprised at his abrupt departure, bidding him Godspeed, and lading him with messages of love for Adah and the little boy. Alice, too, tried to smile as she said good-by, but it died upon her lips and a tear trembled on her cheek, when Hugh dropped the little hand he never expected to hold ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... his arms about my neck and bent my head close to his, saying, in his abrupt voice of command, "Barbara must not stay indoors tomorrow and be sad ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... allowance,' said she, 'to be made for him, that lost his son and heir—that would have been heir to all, and a fine youth that he doted upon. But,' continued the old woman, in whose mind the transitions from GREAT to little, from serious to trivial, were ludicrously abrupt, 'that was no reason why the old gentleman should scold me last time he was here, as he did, for as long as ever he could stand over me, only because I killed a mouse who was eating my cheese; and, before night, he beat a boy for stealing ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... had become the common precious property of all the Five Towns. When the aged rector had restored his flock to a sense of decency Mr. Emanuel Prockter had vanished. In that laughter his career as a singer reached an abrupt and final conclusion. The concert also came to an end. And the collection, by which the divine always terminated these proceedings, was the largest in ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... uncurled by the evening damps, and falling over her shoulders and breast, as the wet streamers droop from the mast when the storm has passed away, and left the vessel stranded on the beach. The Dwarf first broke the silence with the sudden, abrupt, and alarming question,—"Woman, what evil fate has ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... tall ship whose lofty prore Shall never stem the billows more Deserted by her gallant band, Amid the breakers lies astrand— Soon his couch lay Rhoderick Dhu, And oft his fevered limbs he threw In toss abrupt, as when her sides Lie rocking in the advancing tides, That shake her frame with ceaseless beat, Yet can not heave her from her seat;— O, how unlike her course on sea! Or his free step on hill and lea!—Lady of ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... the subject that has the smallest pretensions to system, and that is fanciful, involved, irregular, abrupt, and obscure, is PURCHAS HIS PILGRIMS. Even admitting the plan of that work to be in itself excellent; although it may be a General History, so far as it extends, it certainly is in no respect a Complete Collection of Voyages and Travels. In a very large ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... and guiding his every action and emotion; of the unpractical father—a dreamer and an enthusiast, the worst possible example he could have; of the false standards and class distinctions which had warped his early life and which were still dominating him. With an abrupt gesture of impatience she stood still in the path and looked down upon the ground. An ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... are mounted may be seen from an inspection of Figs. 3 to 5. This new arrangement of spiral springs for the purpose is designed to hold the pistons on the table firmly, and at the same time to prevent the shock that their upper ends might undergo in case of an abrupt turn of the winch. Moreover, the forged iron plate, H, is not exposed to breakage as it is in other machines, where it is of cast iron. The bobbins already mentioned revolve upon strong iron rods, and the moving forward of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... in a twenty-foot wall of rocks, massed so as to form huge irregular steps, that led to an abrupt bit of level, whereon the fighting appeared to be taking place. Sounds came to him now that lashed him to a frenzy; the clash of knives and sabres, the thud of many feet; the fierce shouts without which it is impossible for primitive man to ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... next letter respecting Ireland are of infinite value in enabling us to estimate correctly the events that afterwards took place in that country under Lord Fitzwilliam's government, and the circumstances which led to its abrupt termination. Two important facts are authenticated in this communication: the first, that Lord Fitzwilliam, before he assumed the government, and even before his appointment to it was advanced so far as the removal of his predecessor, had not only determined upon the ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... all this sameness rose a hill in that abrupt manner which strikes a peculiar character into this southern landscape, and upon the hill were jutting rocks and a broken mass of strangely-jumbled masonry-roofs rising out of roofs, gables crushing gables, feudal towers, great ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... when, on the morning after her visit to Mrs. Jasher, the Professor announced in his usual abrupt way that he intended to go to London, but would leave Cockatoo in charge of his precious collection. She was somewhat disturbed, however, as, wishing to forward the widow's matrimonial aims, she had invited her to dinner for the ensuing night. This ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... half, when, suddenly, I heard a faint noise, away up the corridor. I was immediately conscious of a queer prickling sensation about the back of my head, and my hands began to sweat a little. The following instant, the whole end of the passage flicked into sight in the abrupt glare of the flashlight. There came the succeeding darkness, and I peered nervously up the corridor, listening tensely, and trying to find what lay beyond the faint glow of my dark-lamp, which now seemed ridiculously ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... it that the man in the stern had an interest in one of them. An abrupt exclamation that he uttered at this moment seemed, to the man rowing stroke, who heard more than his mate, to apply to the thicker and taller man of the two. This one, who seemed to treat his pal as an inferior or subordinate, met his gaze, not flinching. His companion seemed less ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... arranging everything so entirely according to his own fancy, that he is a complete sovereign in his own small way—the tyrant of Tampico. He has in his weather-beaten face such a mixture of bluffness and slyness, with his gigantic person, and abrupt, half-savage manners, that, altogether, I conceive him to be a character who might have been worthy the attention of Walter Scott, had he chanced to encounter him. Old and repulsive as he is, he has lately married a pretty young girl—a subject on which he does not brook raillery. One amiable trait ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... abrupt and perilous rocks, The Man had fallen, that place of fear! At length upon the Shepherd's mind It breaks, and all is clear: He instantly recall'd the Name, And who he was, and whence he came; Remember'd, too, the very day On which the ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... in an exclamatory, abrupt, rhapsodical prose, resembling somewhat the English of Isaiah and others of the books of the prophets. The manners described were heroic, the state of society primitive. The properties were few and simple; the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... from Spanish rule in 1825. Its subsequent history has been marked by a seemingly endless series of coups, counter-coups, and abrupt changes in leaders and policies. Comparatively democratic civilian rule was established in the 1980s, but the leaders have faced difficult problems of deep-seated poverty, social unrest, strikes, and drug dealing. Current issues include encouraging and negotiating ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... change on sight of me. I do not think this change was caused by any personal dislike for me. I believe he would have done the same had any stranger appeared before him in riding boots. The trouble was, probably, that he had expected to be ridden by one of the young ladies, and was shocked by the abrupt discovery that a total stranger was to ride him. This is merely my surmise. I do not claim deep understanding of the mental workings of any horse, for there is no logic about them or their performances. They are like crafty lunatics, reasoning, if they reason at all, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... of Inner Wessex is as varied as the materials that go to make it up, from the bare rolling chalk downs of Salisbury Plain to the abrupt and imposing hills around the Vale of Blackmore. To most who travel in search of the picturesque and the beautiful, the Dorset coast and the country immediately in the rear, will make the greatest appeal. ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... those pictures and made that inquiry. One other word. She is just recovering from a case of fever, induced by wrong conditions of life before I met her. She is not so strong as she appears. Understand you are not to be abrupt. Go very gently! Her feelings and health must be guarded ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... to some to believe that man has two souls; other two distinct powers that always accompany and incline us, the one towards good and the other towards ill, according to their own nature and propension; so abrupt a variety not being imaginable to flow from one and ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... prize. Haste then—pursue him—reach the royal Chief— 520 And how to pass him in yon narrow way Shall be my care, and not my care in vain. He ended; they, awhile, awed by his voice, With more exertion ran, and Nestor's son Now saw the hollow strait mark'd by his sire. 525 It was a chasm abrupt, where winter-floods, Wearing the soil, had gullied deep the way. Thither Atrides, anxious to avoid A clash of chariots drove, and thither drove Also, but somewhat devious from his track, 530 Antilochus. Then Menelaus fear'd, And with ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... this sad business had been disposed of, Anthony Walaeus returned. The Advocate apologized to the preacher for his somewhat abrupt greeting on his first appearance. He was much occupied and did not know him, he said, although he had often heard of him. He begged him, as well as the provost-marshal, to join him at supper, which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of their domestic wars they appeared as divided clans or abrupt insurgents; they were exposed to the treachery of a more instructed, of an unscrupulous and a compact enemy; they had neither discipline, nor generalship, nor arms; their victories were those of a mob; their defeats were followed ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... emergency we could traverse every apartment without access to the known doors. Trap-doors on a similar construction, communicated with the cellar:—the table, which you saw us sitting around, stood on one of those, which, on your abrupt appearance, as soon as the candles were extinguished, was with its contents, precipitated below, and we made our escape by those secret doors, judging, that although you had seen us, if we could get off, you would be unable to find out any thing which might ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... These people at home here must notice nothing for—for three months, when I shall be—" But he caught an expression now in her face, and something in the abrupt way in which she drew her hand from him, that made him keep back what he had originally intended to say, and he corrected ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... its own different road ever since. Wilhelm was zealously Protestant in those days; as his people are, and as he still is, at the period we treat of. But he went into Papistry, not long after; and made other sudden turns and misventures: to all appearance, rather an abrupt, blustery, uncertain Herr. It is to him that Albert Friedrich, the young Duke of Preussen, guided by his Council, now (Year 1572) sends an Embassy, demanding his eldest ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... opportunity. This was a likeable old sea-dog, and he determined not to impose upon him another moment. Some men, for the sake of the adventure, would have left the truth to be found out later, to the disillusion of all concerned. The abrupt manner in which Miss Killigrew had ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... was originally delivered and the present year there runs a great and broad stream of blood, shed from the veins of Northern and Southern men alike; the whole political and moral constitution of the country has practically suffered an abrupt change; new problems engage the attention of thoughtful statesmen; much is forgotten which was once considered of the first importance; but the 7th of March Speech, battered as it is by innumerable attacks, is still remembered at least as one which called forth more power than it embodied ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... through the maze, bade her forward with her prattle, but in vain; for at this abrupt period she broke off, and with her eyes full of tears, and her face covered with a vermilion dye, she sate down and sighed. Whereupon Aliena and Ganymede, seeing the shepherdess in such a strange plight, left Phoebe with her Montanus, wishing her ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... not set off till near eight o'clock, and after the sun rises, the warmth rapidly increases. We made but a short journey to-day, of two leagues and a half, for the roads were rugged and precipitous, and intersected by several abrupt and broken streams, so that we were obliged to be extremely cautious in our progress, and chary of the services of our mules. We passed some very large ant-hills to-day, from eight to twelve feet in height; the summits ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... he was lazy, irregular in his attendance at college, and not particularly grateful to his benefactors. By his own acts he fell out of favour, the subscriptions that had been collected were returned to the donors, and his career would have come to an abrupt conclusion, if it had not been that Owenson made interest for him with Lady Moira, a distinguished patron of literature, who placed him in the charge of Dr. Boyd, the translator of Dante. Dermody must have had his good points, for he was a favourite with Mrs. Owenson, and the dear ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... ever a nuisance, for ever a calamity,' and then gravely declares (mark the climax!) 'and yet THEY, [these ignorant, helpless, miserable creatures!] AND THEY ONLY, are qualified for colonizing Africa'!! 'Why then,' he asks, 'in the name of God,'—(the abrupt appeal, in this connexion, seems almost profane,)—'should we ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... or two to starboard, and seeming within a stone's throw, is the land we have come so far to seek. A wall of rock, the northern cliff of New Zealand rises abrupt and imposing from the sea, broken here and there into groups of pillared, pinnacled islets, nobly irregular in outline, piled and scarred, indented and projected, uplifted and magnificent. On the ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... the half-open door,—he could see Miss Dandridge at the harpsichord. The room seemed very light. For a moment he ceased to be the master-builder and sank to the estate of the apprentice, awkward and eaten with self-distrust; the next, with a characteristic abrupt motion of head and hand, he recovered himself, waved Joab aside, and boldly crossed ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... turned away; she wandered about the room and went and stood at one of the windows. Bernard found the movement abrupt and not particularly gracious; but the young man was not easy to snub. He followed her, and they stood at the second window—the long window that opened upon the balcony. Miss Evers and Captain Lovelock were leaning on the ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... what he had to offer in the splendour of the great avenues tapering upward to the sunset glories of the Arch—that all he had meant to say when he finally spoke compressed itself at last into an abrupt ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... for the time being, acknowledging almost complete defeat. There was only a single consoling thought. At least, he had talked with her intimately concerning his affairs. With an abrupt change of manner, she stood up listlessly, and spoke in such a fashion as might become an old-fashioned wife, although ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... dared—putting the absent dots on several i's—he saw new questions swarm. They had been till now in a bunch, entangled and confused; and they fell apart, each showing for itself. The first he put to her was at any rate abrupt. "Have you heard of ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James |
