"Harshness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... statute book of Ireland was filled with enactments which furnish to the Roman Catholics but too good a ground for recriminating on us when we talk of the barbarities of Bonner and Gardiner; and the harshness of those odious laws was aggravated by a more odious administration. For, bad as the legislators were, the magistrates were worse still. In those evil times originated that most unhappy hostility between landlord and tenant, which is one of the peculiar curses of Ireland. Oppression ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... supposes mutual advantages between the contracting parties. The citizen cannot be bound to his country, to his associates, but by the bonds of happiness. Are these bonds cut asunder? He is restored to liberty. Society, or those who represent it, do they use him with harshness, do they treat him with injustice, do they render his existence painful? Does disgrace hold him out to the finger of scorn; does indigence menace him in an obdurate world? Perfidious friends, do they forsake him in adversity? An unfaithful wife, does she ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... little excursion into the history seems to have given us, under the heading "Dewsbury," a rather grim text, from which, nevertheless, we may perhaps extract some final consolation. Let me say at the outset that for the grimness, for the harshness, Dewsbury is not at all to blame. I fancy that if, in the years from 1836 to 1838, the Bronte girls had been visitors to Kubla Khan, and had been fed on honey by his myrmidons at Xanadu, that pleasure-dome would yet have been "poisoned" to them. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... and naturally developed by constant and gentle practice. The muscles will gain strength thus, and the result will be a full round tone, capable of every inflection and free from everything like harshness. ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... ears are open to the complaints of all: no man's want of means or want of friends excludes him, I don't say from access to you in public and on the tribunal, but even from your house and chamber: in a word, throughout your government there is no harshness or cruelty—everywhere clemency, mildness, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... timber, refused to believe their account of themselves, especially as Oliver, being a petty officer, could produce no commission or warrant in support of his statement, and imprisoned them all, without, however, treating them with harshness. On the first opportunity he sent them to Samarang, where Edwards had them released. The plucky little schooner was sold, to begin another career of usefulness as set forth in the footnote to p. 33, and her purchase money was divided among the ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... Ridolfo who put his wife to death, and his father was Marquis of Castiglione delle Stivere. He was born in 1568, and, being the first son, was heir to the marquisate; but from his earliest years he had a call to the Church. His family did everything possible to dissuade him—his father with harshness, and his uncle, Duke William of Mantua, with tenderness—from his vocation. The latter even sent a "bishop of rare eloquence" to labor with the boy at Castiglione; but everything was done in vain. In due time Luigi joined the Company of Jesus, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... as we enter the forest darkness they suddenly become quiet, as if the sternness of the bush oppressed their souls. We talk but little, and only in undertones. These woods have none of the happy, sensuous luxuriance which fancy lends to every tropical forest; there is a harshness, a selfish struggle for the first place among the different plants, a deadly battling for air and light. Giant trees with spreading crowns suppress everything around, kill every rival and leave only small and insignificant shrubs ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... soft dreamy ecstasy, such as comes to the weary sleeping in the summer breeze out in the open air. Now and then I seemed to hear the wild softened harshness of the gull's cry, then all was still again, and I was floating on and on, wishing nothing, wanting nothing, only to go on, when all at once a huge roc-like bird seemed to sweep over between me and the sunshine, ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... not exhortation, but there was no harshness in her voice. 'Go at once to Mr Carter. Tell him you have made a ludicrous mistake—in a fit of low spirits; anything you like to say. Tell him you of course couldn't dream of becoming his clerk. To-night; at once! You understand me, Edwin? Go now, ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... former head, there may be found, perhaps, little to find fault with on the score of mere manner and outward demeanour. To use servants with harshness, or to be wanting in that species of consideration for them which consists in a certain mildness and amenity of manner, would ruffle and deform that smooth surface of things which it is agreeable to the taste of people in high life to see around ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... In defence of Bruneau's work it may be urged that his dreary and featureless orchestration, so wholly lacking in colour and relief, may convey to some minds the cool grey atmosphere of the quiet old Cathedral town, and that much of the harshness and discordance of his score is, at all events, in keeping with the iron tyranny of the Bishop. 'Le Reve' at any rate was not a work to be passed over in silence: it was intended to create discussion, and ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... receiving a patient, should be to win his or her confidence, however insensible the patient may be to kindly advances. Patients generally enter the wards with the thorough conviction that evil is intended them, and the first show of harshness or force, however slight, will confirm that impression, while kind assurances, and manifestations of sympathy, quickly disarm them of their false impressions, and the first great step in the way of cure is begun. The ...
— Rules and Regulations of the Insane Asylum of California - Prescribed by the Resident Physician, August 1, 1861 • Stockton State Hospital
... returned to his native land. For the last three or four months they have been staying with me in my house in this city. I must here inform your Majesty, though I say it with sorrow and regret, that my nephew, who is a man of violent passions, ever treated his young wife with scandalous severity and harshness. Often, but in vain, I have remonstrated with him as to his conduct. At length, this evening, when going into my garden, I found my niece lying there lifeless. Everywhere I sought my nephew, but could not find him. I was convinced that he had in ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... breath Mackenzie was down, Carlson's hand at his throat. Mackenzie could see Swan's face as he bent over him, the lantern light on it fairly. There was no light of exultation in it as his great hand closed slowly upon Mackenzie's throat, no change from its stony harshness save for the dark gash and the flood of blood that ran down his jaw ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... Impressed by their fine clothes, the English working-classes were none the less barbarians to him, uncivilized: just as he was to them an uncivilized animal. Uncouth, they seemed to him, all raw angles and harshness, like their own weather. Not that he thought about them. But he felt it in his flesh, the harshness and discomfort of them. And Alvina was one of them. As she stood there by the grave, pale and pinched and reserved looking, she was of a piece with ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... demonstrative in their affection at any time, least of all in the presence of guests or strangers. Only to the aged, who have journeyed far, and are in a manner exempt from ordinary rules, are permitted some playful familiarities with children and grandchildren, some plain speaking, even to harshness and objurgation, from which the others must rigidly refrain. In short, the old men and women are privileged to say what they please and how they please, without contradiction, while the hardships and bodily infirmities that of necessity fall to their lot are softened so far as may be by universal ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... the river of time that flows between, walk the brave men and the beautiful women of our ancestry, grouped in twilight upon the shore. Distance smooths away defects, and, with gentle darkness, rounds every form into grace. It steals the harshness from their speech, and every word becomes a song. Far across the gulf that ever widens, they look upon us with eyes whose glance is tender, and which light us to success. We acknowledge our inheritance; we accept our birthright; we own that their careers ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... deliver it from the Romans, whose oppression had become intolerable. Quintilius Varus, a rapacious man, was then the Roman governor in Germany. He had held office in Syria, where he had ruled with great harshness; and fancying that he might act in the same way toward the fierce tribes of the North, he roused among them a bitter ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... how vexed I was, so very few minutes after my note left last night; how angry with the unnecessary harshness into which some of the phrases might be construed—you would forgive me, indeed. But, when all is confessed and forgiven, the fact remains—that it would be the one trial I know I should not be able to bear; the repetition ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... such earnest truth in her tone that the sense and realization of my own harshness smote me. In the presence of such love as this even a lover's selfishness must become abashed. I could not express myself in words, so simply raised her slim hand in mine and kissed it. As it lay warm ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... was growing more distressed every day over American affairs. She found harshness in Chicago. She did not find sympathy with the ideas with which she had grown up. Her failure to make close friends interfered with her social delights. Mrs. Douglas had perhaps been her greatest intimate. With her death she had seemed to lose interest in other cordial associations. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... stone, built on a hillside, are overtopped by the round tower of a small mediaeval fortress which has been patched up and put to some modern use. I thought the people very ill-favoured by nature here, but perhaps they are not more so than others in the district. The harshness of nature is strongly reflected in all faces. Having passed a man on the bank of the stream washing his linen—presumably his own—with bare arms, sinewy and hairy like a gorilla's, I was again in the open country; but instead of following donkey-paths ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Shakespeare is most limpid in its fullness, the style most pure, the thought most transparent through the close and luminous raiment of perfect expression. The conceits and crudities of the first stage are outgrown and cast aside; the harshness and obscurity which at times may strike us as among the notes of his third manner have as yet no place in the flawless work of this second stage. That which has to be said is not yet too great for perfection of utterance; passion has not yet grappled with thought in so close and fierce ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... patriotic sentiment of this country. But popular Imperialism in England has very little to do with the sort of Caesarean Imperialism I wish to sketch. I differ from the Colonial idealism of Rhodes' and Kipling; but I do not think, as some of its opponents do, that it is an insolent creation of English harshness and rapacity. Imperialism, I think, is a fiction created, not by English hardness, but by English softness; nay, in a ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... and the strangest, the dreariest circumstance about them was exactly that this vacuity, this dreariness, this total want of all that can make the life of a boy and of a young man pleasant to our fancy or attractive to our sympathy, did not in the least depend upon any harshness or stinginess of fate. Indeed, perhaps, no man had ever prepared for him an easier existence; no man had ever less misfortune sent to him by Providence, or less unkindness shown towards him by mankind, than this constantly struggling, this pessimistic and misanthropic ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... may rage elsewhere and whatever darkness may enshroud, it ever keeps its place as the center of a circle of calm and light. It is Venus of Milo come to life, silently distilling the beauty and splendor of living. In its presence harshness becomes gentleness, hysteria becomes equanimity, and sound becomes silence. From its presence vaunting and vainglory and arrogance hasten away to be with their own kind. By its power, as of a miracle, it changes the dross into fine gold, the grotesque ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... whose face has a light as of the sun,—to her who had dreamed her way into vague perceptions of her own sex's maidenhood and maternity by help of those great pictures which had been before her sight from infancy, there was some taint, some artifice, some want, some harshness in these jewelled women; she could not have reasoned about it, but she felt it, as she felt that the grand dahlias missed a flower's divinity, ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... this sweet possession and command. How much like an overgrown boy he had become, since she had wakened to find herself in his power that morning in the hills! The harshness and inflexibility had left his atmosphere entirely. She was only afraid of him now because he had refused to be dismissed. But she drew ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... it was terrible to grow old! Not since the death of her husband, Don Carlos, had she endured so bitter a pang. The fact that she had never had any children accounted perhaps for a certain harshness in her nature. ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... full of timid care for his wife, not only because he deprecated any harshness of judgment from her, but because he felt a deep distress at the sight of her suffering. She had sent her daughters away to board at a school on the coast, that this crisis might be hidden from them as far as possible. Set free by their absence ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... avoidance of a fault very common with those who speak much in large rooms,—the mistaken effort at loudness. This results in tightening and straining the throat, finally producing nasal head-tones or a voice of metallic harshness. And it is entirely unnecessary. There is no need to speak loudly. The ordinary schoolroom needs no vocal effort. A hall seating three or four hundred persons demands no effort whatever beyond a certain clearness and definiteness of speech. A hall seating from five ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... brothers had been unfailing in their devotion to their poor suffering mother. Night and day they never tired, watching by her bedside for hours, and seeming scarcely to sleep. Of course they were much together, but no words of harshness ever passed their lips. When out of Mrs. Blount's presence, they spoke to each other as little as possible; in her presence, there was a studied civility that might have deceived any one but a mother. Even ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... intervals, and frequent stops, and pauses. What can be more opposite? and yet both have their proper excellence. Some also confine their attention to the smoothness and equability of their periods, and aim at a style which is perfectly neat and clear: while others affect a harshness, and severity of diction, and to give a gloomy cast to their language:—and as we have already observed that some endeavour to be nervous and majestic, others neat and simple, and some to be smooth ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... years, shall be free when they arrive at the age of twenty-one years."[91] Despite the anti-slavery principle here involved, Mr. Wade was convinced that some provision was necessary to facilitate the running of the bill in the Senate and in the House. He thought, too, that the harshness and abruptness of the bill would be thereby smoothed down, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... heart in tears; and she clung to her mother with a force that made it a difficult task for her father to remove her. He could not do it at first; and Ellen seemed not to hear any thing that was said to her. He was very unwilling to use harshness; and after a little, though she had paid no attention to his entreaties or commands, yet, sensible of the necessity of the case, she gradually relaxed her hold and suffered him to draw her away from her mother's arms. He carried her down stairs, and put her on the front seat ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... money, besides other exaggerations (from which I think that he did not ill judge me), and changed the course that he had pursued by means of insults and injuries. [As an instance of the latter], after talking to me with his usual harshness while in his house—that which your Majesty assigns and gives to the president [of the Audiencia] by an order that you have given to the effect that there be houses for the president and auditors—one of the houses of one of the auditors ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... beyond the body. A person expresses his mourning by his black clothes and his joy by gay attire, or he may make the piano or violin ring forth in happiness or moan in sadness. Even his whole room or house may be penetrated by his spirit of welcoming cordiality or his emotional setting of forbidding harshness. The feeling of the soul emanates into the surroundings and the impression which we get of our neighbor's emotional attitude may be derived from this external frame of the personality as much as from ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... Brownlow, after a short pause, 'I went, when all was over, to the scene of his—I will use the term the world would freely use, for worldly harshness or favour are now alike to him—of his guilty love, resolved that if my fears were realised that erring child should find one heart and home to shelter and compassionate her. The family had left that part a week before; they had called in such trifling debts ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... unprecedented severity of the winter the spring came early, as if nature had repented her harshness and had set herself to make amends. The sparkle came back to Celia's eyes and the lilt to her voice. The children who had been models of deportment while the cold lasted, developed a frisky unruliness, resulting in Malcolm's playing truant and Algie's coming home with ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... health; and these two corporations, so interesting in their hygienic functions, so remarkable for their domestic morals, fall victims to the vermin of poverty. Alas, of this discrepancy between the services rendered and the harshness of life there are many other examples outside the world ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... his temples was too freely powdered with silver, the lines between his brows, and about his well-formed mouth and jaw, were too deeply indented for a man of five-and-thirty. The whole rugged face of him was only saved from harshness by a humorous kindliness in the keen blue eyes, that had measured distance and faced death with an equal deliberation; and by a forehead whose breadth made the whole face vivid with intellect and power. He looked ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... seldom mentioned her bereavement, unless in such allusion to Frado. She donned her weeds from custom; kept close her crape veil for so many Sabbaths, and abated nothing of her characteristic harshness. ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... those placid and humane people to be sensible that servitude, hopeless, endless servitude, could exist with so little servility and fear on the one side, and so little harshness or even sternness of authority on the other. In Europe, the footing on which service is placed in consequence of the corruptions of society, hardens the heart, destroys confidence, and embitters life. The deceit ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... to tune their own dull rhymes, and know What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow; And praise the easy vigor of a line, Where Denham's strength and Waller's{16} sweetness join. True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense: Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers{17} flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... bed—and these street beggars are so little to be relied upon," observed the Mayor, evidently wishing to offer some excuse for his former harshness, without doing so directly; "but this seems a case of ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... composure to the stake; but she could neither have joined in a game at cards, nor have entered into a romp with little children. All this was plainly to be seen in the stern repose of her countenance and the stiff harshness of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... which the government must approve, he alone makes appointments and without any person's concurrence. Thus, in the way of favors, his clerical body has nothing to expect from anybody but himself.—And, on the other hand, they no longer enjoy any protection against his harshness; the hand which punishes is still less restrained than that which rewards; like the cathedral chapter, the ecclesiastical tribunal has lost its consistency and independence, its efficiency; nothing remains of the ancient bishop's ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... How long this harshness, this unlove, shall bide? * Suffice thee not tear floods thou hast espied? Thou cost prolong our parting purposely * And if wouldst ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Lady Desmond had uttered no one word of condolence—not a syllable of commiseration for all the sufferings that had come upon Herbert and his family; and he was beginning to hate her for her harshness. The tenor of her countenance had become hard, and she received all his words as a judge might have taken them, merely wanting evidence before he pronounced his verdict. The evidence she was beginning to think sufficient, and there ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... back its impurities to the polluted strand. Still the clear fountain retained a portion of its charmed influence, but it reflected only the somber gloom that fell from the impending heavens. That humid and congenial atmosphere which commonly adorned the view, veiling its harshness, and softening its asperities, had disappeared, the northern air poured across the waste of water so harsh and unmingled, that nothing was left to be conjectured by the eye, or ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... complexion, with thick lips and an aquiline nose—only the flashing grey eyes set under overhanging brows redeemed his face from harshness. Mirandola, on the other hand, was gifted with remarkable personal beauty. Long fair curls hung to his shoulders and surrounded a face that was both gentle and gracious. He had an extraordinary knowledge of ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... not known if the stories of the ill-treatment that was then visited on the helpless little Elizabeth are true or not, but many writers have told us that Sophia was determined by harshness and unkindness to force Elizabeth to enter a convent so that her son would be free to marry elsewhere. At all events, Ludwig heard of the plans to break off his engagement, and angrily refused to listen to them, declaring that he loved Elizabeth dearly and would marry her in spite ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... by his wife, well served by his two servants, cajoled by his daughter, called himself the happiest man in Arcis, and really was so. The feeling of Severine for this nullity of a man never went beyond the protecting pity of a mother for her child. She disguised the harshness of the words she was frequently obliged to say to him by a joking manner. No household was ever more tranquil; and the aversion Phileas felt for society, where he went to sleep, and where he could not play cards (being incapable of learning ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... Great as her sufferings would be at parting with him, she would, by God's help, endure them for the boy's sake. She knew that those to whom he was going would do all in their power to make him happy. She described his disposition, such as she fancied it; quick and impatient of control or harshness, easily to be moved by love and kindness. In a postscript, she stipulated that she should have a written agreement that she should see the child as often as she wished; she could not part with him ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... bristling up in her daughter's defence, the assailant being that daughter. "You unkind or unfeeling when there was any call for kindness—whoever heard of such a thing? I should as soon suspect Dora of harshness or levity in the same circumstances. Don't you remember my bad eyes last winter, when I had to get that tincture dropped into them so often that your father could not always be at home to do it? You dropped the tincture ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... Jesuits, and joined their order. He was sent on a mission to England; and (no doubt conscientiously) violating the law there, was after some years of hiding and suspicion betrayed, arrested, treated with great harshness in prison, and at last, as has been said, executed. No specific acts of treason were even charged against him; and he earnestly denied any designs whatever against the Queen and kingdom, nor can it be doubted that he merely paid the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... persecution to which John Vincent Harden, the well-known tobacco millionaire, had been subjected. My friend, who loved above all things precision and concentration of thought, resented anything which distracted his attention from the matter in hand. And yet without a harshness which was foreign to his nature it was impossible to refuse to listen to the story of the young and beautiful woman, tall, graceful, and queenly, who presented herself at Baker Street late in the evening and implored ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... carried conviction, "She will take no poison. She will hate us for an hour; then she will have a good cry: to-morrow she will come to our terms; and this day next year she will be very much obliged to us for doing what all women like, forcing her to her good with a little harshness." ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... in sudden anger at his strange harshness, for the wife who has never heard an unkind word resents with passionate protest the sting of the first when it falls. Now genuine indignation inflamed Phoebe, and ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... cosmetic for women is constant gentleness and sympathy for the noblest interests of her fellow-creatures. This preserves and gives to her features an indelibly gay, fresh, and agreeable expression. If women would but realize that harshness makes them ugly, it would prove the best ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... South Germany, to collect materials for his work on the "History of Cavalry and on the Training of Horses," although he set out with the golden rule laid down by the great Greek horseman, Xenophon, more than a thousand years ago—"HORSES ARE TAUGHT, NOT BY HARSHNESS, BUT BY GENTLENESS," only refers incidentally to a plan for throwing a horse down, in an extract from Baucher's great work, which will presently be quoted, but attaches no importance to it, and was evidently totally ignorant of the foundation of the ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... at this disloyalty in himself and harshness to his darling, yet disposed to persevere in it, a horribly cruel thought crossed his mind. He would not call for her, as he had promised, at the end of a quarter of an hour! Yes, it would be a punishment she well deserved. Although the best part of the afternoon ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... false. To the persons and the things they had before loved, they evince repugnance and loathing. Sometimes this change is so marked and irrational that their kindred ascribe it to madness,—not the madness which affects them in the ordinary business of life, but that which turns into harshness and discord the moral harmony that results from natures whole and complete. But there are dervishes who hold that in that illness, which had for its time the likeness of death, the soul itself has passed away, and an evil genius has fixed itself into the body and the brain, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... animated, his fictions justly imagined, and his allegories artfully pursued; that his diction is elevated, though sometimes forced, and his numbers sonorous and majestick, though frequently sluggish and encumbered. Of his style, the general fault is harshness, and its general excellence is dignity: of his sentiments, the prevailing beauty is simplicity, and uniformity the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... actions that followed, after she had been exhausted by her first successful efforts at self-control—the withdrawal to the window to conceal her face; the clutch at the curtain when she felt herself sinking; the harshness of manner under which she concealed her emotions when she ventured to speak to him; the reiterated inconsistencies and vacillations of conduct that followed, all alike due to the protest of Nature, desperately resisted to the last—and say if I did her injustice when I believed her to be ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... Strange—who, tall and stalwart in his greasy overalls, held his head high in conscious pride in his position in the shed—as Capital might look at Labor. It seemed a long time before Mr Jarrott spoke—the natural harshness of his voice softened by ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... been unable to prevent this fit of blind anger, such as sometimes took possession of the child, and with some harshness exclaimed: "Jeanne, take ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... in which, according to Boswell's report, Johnson monopolized the greater part of the conversation; not always treating the dissenting clergymen with the greatest courtesy, and even once wounding the feelings of the mild and amiable Bennet Langton by his harshness. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... be called upon to do it. It was no easy task to please a person so fretful and impatient in spirit as Mrs. Lee, yet Tidy, by her promptness and docility, succeeded admirably. Still, with all her well-doing she was not able entirely to avoid her harshness ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... Mrs. Mumpson. "If we save his house he will relent. Gratitude will overwhelm him. So far from turning us away, he will sue, he will plead for forgiveness for his former harshness; his home saved will be our home won. Just put our things in the trunk first. Perhaps the house can't be saved, and you know we must save OUR things. Help me, quick! There, there; now, now"—both were sneezing and choking in a half-strangled manner. "Now ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... pronounced the ideal of perfection, for it extracted the essence of beauty. Strange as the expression "unctuous sonorousness" may sound, it describes felicitously a quality of a style of playing from which roughness, harshness, turbulence, and impetuosity were altogether absent. Thalberg has been accused of want of animation, passion, in short, of soul; but as Ambros remarked ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Distance mellowed the harshness of the voices and the words sounded like a message from heaven. Their distress was that neither Allan's voice nor my own was distinguishable. Glad they were when we emerged from the trees and joined them ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... altogether free from blame in the matter of infanticide), Warrigal raised her nose in friendly fashion to the Wolfhound and permitted him to lick her, which he did in the most affectionate manner, and with no further thought of her previous harshness. Then she gave a little whine and glanced round the walls of the den. Finn barked quietly, bidding his mate rest assured that all would be well, and ten minutes later he was descending upon a rabbit-earth that he knew of, a moving shadow of death among young bunnies ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... condescended to enquire into particulars, or to use that unquestionable information which is actually in existence. We therefore propose to supply this omission, and to state the case of the landlord and tenant question as it really is; and, although many acts of oppression and harshness may have been perpetrated by individuals, we trust we shall be able to show, from authentic documents, that nothing can be more unjust than the exaggerated charges brought against the present Irish landlords as regards the exorbitance of their rents, and nothing more fallacious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... fearless and independent nature and her queenly bearing. She dreams of a distinguished professional career; but the course of her life is changed suddenly by pity for her timid little brother Adrian, the victim of his guardian-uncle's harshness. The story describes the daring means adopted by Augusta for ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... stared at her blankly, like a man who puzzles over something in a strange language. When he spoke, at last, his voice came with a forced harshness, from which the girl shrank back, ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... Ratcliffe," he said, with a sort of haste that verged on harshness. "My name is pretty well known to the police, and I can see well enough that you belong to them. But if there is any doubt about my position, I have a card," and he began to pull a blue card ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... cheating the world and sorning the alms of the poor; away with you!' and whips the door to, leaving us till nightfall, cold and famished, in the snow and rain; if with patience we bear this injury and harshness and rejection, nowise ruined in our mind and making no murmur of complaint, but considering within ourselves, humbly and in charity, that the porter knows well who we are, and that God sets him up to speak against us—O Brother Leo, write down ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... could finish, all could guess from the harshness of his voice what he was about to say. The group of women yielded before la Soberana's thrusts even as the waves of the sea under the belly of a whale. She stuck out her big hands and her threatening nails, ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... speak plainly to his mother, and he pursued it. And though the faults of parents are to be tenderly treated by their children, yet in the case of great crimes the son may have leave to speak even to his own mother with some harshness, so as that harshness is meant for her good and to turn her from her wicked ways, and not done for the purpose of upbraiding. And now this virtuous prince did in moving terms represent to the queen the heinousness of her offense ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... his body, feet and arms emerging from bandages, making him like to some hideous insect with its carapace, his face wrapped in a towel, the effects of leprosy were hideously patent.—"What do you here? There is naught to be had. Pray depart at once." The answer was in tones the very harshness of which seemed to cause pain to the utterer—"The request is to Iemon Dono. Condescend to notify him." With fearful glance O'Hana shrank within, Iemon noted her nervous quivering. Promptly he was on his feet—"A beggar has frightened ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... you, with great truth, that you provoked her to this harshness; and it was a great condescension in her (and not taken notice of by you as it deserved) to say that she was ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... was? Let it lie there like a mourning wreath, a purchased tribute, we will say," the father added, with a smile of sad irony; "but only a rude hand would rob him of his funereal honors. There seems to be an unnecessary harshness in this effort to right yourself at the cost of the unresisting dead. Since you did not deny him living, must you repudiate him now? Fling away even his memory, that casts so thin a shade upon your ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... had for years regarded as my enemy, I was bound to acknowledge that he had acted an honorable part towards me. I was well aware that no real contradiction existed between these high-minded actions and the harshness with which he had imprisoned me at school, and, so to speak, relegated me to exile. Provided that I renounced all attempts to form a third between him and his wife, he would have no relations with me but those of perfect courtesy; but I must not be in my mother's ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... regular in his irregularities. Promptly, the case again convened, he gave judgment. There was none of the customary roughness in his manner. Even the official harshness was smoothed down. He dilated on the importance of the case, the necessity of making an example of this evident depravity of manners and morals affecting Edo town—"As for the girl Some, it is matter ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... a message, you would say. It is not the harshness of the language, but the certainty of the fact, that has destroyed my friend's happiness. If such were to be the case—if it were absolutely necessary that the engagement between you and Lord Ballindine should be broken off, the more decided the manner in which ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... was not a little astonished at the spirit which Emily displayed upon this occasion. He had calculated too securely upon the general mildness and suavity of her disposition. He now endeavoured to qualify the harshness of his former sentiments. ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... shut the door behind him, and Sebastian was left to ponder sadly upon his elder brother's harshness in refusing to accede to his simple request. The disappointment was very keen, for little Sebastian had been longing to get possession of that precious volume. For several days past he had spent ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... power. I do not mean to say that we must not play with all the force we have at times; we even have to pound and bang occasionally to produce the needed effects. This only proves again that a tone may be beautiful, though in itself harsh, if this harshness comes in the right time ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... knighted. He took part in all the leading state trials which agitated England during the latter years of Elizabeth's reign. Though a great lawyer and thoroughly impartial in civil cases, he became notorious by his excessive severity and harshness when presiding over the trials of catholics and nonconformists; more markedly so in those of Sir John Perrot, Sir Walter Raleigh, and John Udall the puritan minister. Anderson was also one of the commissioners appointed to try Mary queen of Scots ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... which was lying at anchor about half a mile above. He had been impressed two years before; and being treated with cruelty and harshness, had been eagerly watching an opportunity to escape from his inhuman bondage. At length he formed a plan with one of his messmates, to slip overboard quietly the first dark night, and relying on skill in swimming, attempt to reach some vessel at ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... a liar, even as harshness and injustice create deceit and underhandedness. Love a child and trust it, and if it does wrong, punish it neither cruelly nor unfairly, and it will never tell falsehoods. Titia will not—she shall not, as long as I am alive to ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... as the electric reefs that drew the nails from the ships of Sindbad. Among familiar scenes and well-known shapes, it is all the delight the poets sing—so tranquillizing, inspiring, fecund, that in comparison the thought of day brings up garish hues, flaunting figures—the hardness, harshness and unlovely in life. But night in the goblin-land, where Dick found himself suddenly deserted, with fantastic forms swaying in the lazy wind, would have had terrors for the most constant mind; terrors such as filled the soul of MacBeth, when Birnam wood came marching ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... And the boy? Well, he probably said nothing, but went away and did not understand, and kept the matter to himself, for they are very dumb, these people, very long-suffering, very charitable. You may be sure that he never railed at the law, or condemned his old master for harshness. ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... house that remonstrance which has become so memorable, and which was soon afterwards attended with such important consequences. It was not addressed to the king; but was openly declared to be an appeal to the people. The harshness of the matter was equalled by the severity of the language. It consists of many gross falsehoods, intermingled with some evident truths: malignant insinuations are joined to open invectives; loud complaints of the past, accompanied with jealous prognostications of the future. Whatever unfortunate, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... for some minutes in winks, whose import was perfectly incomprehensible. Finally, he declared that for forty sous he would tear off the corners of the poster which he had already affixed to the door below stairs. Rosanette found herself referred to by name in it—a piece of exceptional harshness which showed ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... the lieutenant, as he caught the flashing eyes of the two middies and the fidgety movements of his men, "I am loth to treat an American with harshness, but take this as a warning; if you insult your master and me again I'll have you ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... the manufacture of a worldling. But what promoted the anxiety? Was it natural affection—a father's love? If it was, never before or since has that world-wide and homely emotion been so concealed. There is a detestable, a forbidding, an all-pervading harshness of tone throughout this correspondence that seems to banish affection, to murder love. Read Letter CLXXVIII., and judge for yourselves. I ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... he was singularly free from harshness in his judgments. There were times when he would have been justified in outbursts of bitterness against those who attacked him in ways so foul and maligned him in ways so vile; but I never heard any bitter reply from him. In his politics there was never a drop of bitterness. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... been said of the hardness of Napoleon's heart, and the harshness of his language, that whatever is at variance with the received opinion must appear fabulous. Yet it is a truth, and they who have been about the Emperor's person will vouch for it, that he was far ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... and repaid this tribute of courtesy, by a condescension still more refined, and by attentions yet more delicate than their own. The harshness of power was so ingeniously veiled, every shade of approbation was so nicely marked, and every gradation of favor so finely discriminated, that the tact of good society—that acquired sense, which reveals to us the impression we make ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... happy faces of his well-fed and well-housed slaves, should look distrustfully at emancipation, and strive to justify to his conscience opposition to any plan, however gradual, which leads thereto. Nevertheless, however satisfied in his mind that the slaves are kindly treated, and that harshness even is never used, he cannot contemplate the institution from a sufficient distance to be beyond its influences, without feeling that emancipation is the goal towards which his thoughts should ever bend, and that in proportion as the steps towards it must be gradual, so should they ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... say, he never was known to speak one disparaging word of Abby, Ben's second wife. Her harshness and neglect were matters of common discussion in the neighborhood, but the old man, who had been so bitter and unjust toward his own wife and Edith, seemed to feel a curious respect for this Amazon who had subjugated him. Or, perhaps, he remembered how eager he had been for the ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... which he had been cast. A small, barren island, bleak and inhospitable, and strangely metallic, met his gaze. The rays of the sun beating down upon it were thrown back with an uncomfortable intensity; the substance of the island was a lustrous, copperlike metal. No soil softened the harshness of the surface; indescribably rugged and pitted was the two hundred-foot expanse. It reminded Parkinson of a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... live amidst perpetual wrangling, and scolding, and mutual reproaches? The roughness and harshness of these emotions disturb and displease us: we suffer by contagion and sympathy; nor can we remain indifferent spectators, even though certain that no pernicious consequences would ever follow ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... for support, and he had taken the opportunity of a walk with Mr Sawbridge, to offer to take Jack in his watch. Whether it was that Mr Sawbridge saw through the design of Mr Asper, or whether he imagined that our hero would be better pleased with him than with the master, considering his harshness of deportment; or with himself, who could not, as first lieutenant, overlook any remission of duty, the offer was accepted, and Jack Easy was ordered, as he now entered upon his duties, to keep watch under ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... that Marshal Bazaine entered an earnest protest against the measure, the harshness of which he regarded as impolitic; that he urged its inexpediency, and personally objected to it as likely to weaken the authority of the military courts; that he, moreover, observed that it opened an avenue to private revenge, ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... some of the old men still living in 1750 could distinctly remember. In Virginia the misgovernment of the royal governor Sir William Berkeley had led in 1675 to the famous rebellion headed by Nathaniel Bacon, and this rebellion had been suppressed with much harshness. Many leading citizens had been sent to the gallows and their estates had been confiscated. In Massachusetts, though there were no such scenes of cruelty to remember, the grievance was much more ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... from sheltered spots looking south, one will find many green edges, young grass, and some few tougher leaves. Now, too, in still days, the crow swings heavily through the air, cawing with a pleasing harshness. For dieting has performed its work. Your appetite is eager. A little now pleases you more than abundance did in August. Every tiny leaf is to you ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... reedy shore That fated remnant pour, Had Fear and Death beside; And other spectres yet Of darker vision flit,— Old unforgotten wrongs, the harshness and the pride Of that imperial race which sway'd the ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... clearest. Is there the man alive who thinks that Abraham Lincoln was shot just for himself; that it was that one man for whom the plot was laid? The gentlest, kindest, most indulgent man that ever ruled a State! The man who knew not how to speak a word of harshness or how to make a foe! Was it he for whom the murderer lurked with a mere private hate? It was not he, but what he stood for. It was Law and Liberty, it was Government and Freedom, against which the hate gathered and the treacherous shot was fired. ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... impulse which dictates them is evidently based upon a desire to be satisfied with ourselves. The same thing might be said of his benevolence, had it been only the result of habit: but if it had been this, if it had been intermittent, and of that kind which does not exclude occasional harshness and even cruelty, I would not venture to present it to the reader as a proof ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... and rain, or if a fruit-house or cellar is handy they may at once be placed therein; the object should be to keep them as cool and at as even a temperature as possible. In all the operations of handling apples from picking to market, remember that carelessness and harshness always bruise the fruit, and that every bruise detracts much from its keeping and market value; and remember another thing, that "Honesty is the best policy."—J.S. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... his family, Honor thy betters; ever be respectful To those above thee; and, should others share Thy husband's love, ne'er yield thyself a prey To jealousy; but ever be a friend, A loving friend, to those who rival thee In his affections. Should thy wedded lord Treat thee with harshness, thou must never be Harsh in return, but patient and submissive. Be to thy menials courteous, and to all Placed under thee, considerate and kind: Be never self-indulgent, but avoid Excess in pleasure; and, when fortune smiles, Be not puffed ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... come to dinner yesterday (a grand full-dress dinner given in my honour), and some say it was because of my being a heretic. I take it I was in error yesterday in speaking of the Spanish system of compelling conformity of belief as necessarily beginning in harshness. I fancy the monks have won over the simple Indians here to a great extent by gentle methods. They protect them, and manage their affairs, and know all their secrets through the confessional, and amuse them with no end of feast-days, and gewgaws, and ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... stormed. A latent hardness revealed itself at the prospect of such a visitation. And along with this hardness came another singular revelation of the nature of the man. For there was consternation in his voice, as he continued in vehement expostulation against the idea. If there was harshness in his attitude there was, too, a fugitive suggestion of tenderness alarmed over the prospect of undergoing such ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... writers countered these attacks by comparing the treatment of the slaves in America with the condition of British paupers and East Indians. Charges of negro kidnapping were contrasted with child-stealing in England; our gouging the eyes in fisticuffs with their prize-fighting; the harshness of our slave code with their criminal laws; and the condition of our free clergy with the circumscribed established clergymen. A dispute arose between writers of the two countries over the responsibility of England for American slavery by having ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... passion of devotedness which almost made up the sum of this man's character—a character which, to the Molly of wayward days, to the hot-pulsed, eager, impatient "Murthering Moll," had been utterly incomprehensible and uncongenial. And to the Molly crushed in the direst battle of life, whom one more harshness of fate, even the slightest, would have straightaway hurled back into the grave that had barely been baulked of its prey, it gave the very food and breath ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... disposal of them. In the hour of sickness, and the tedium of waiting for spring, men from the same region will best console and relieve each other. The maintenance of our cause rests on the sentiments of the people. Letters from the camp, complaining of inequality and harshness in the treatment of the men, have already dulled the enthusiasm which filled our ranks with men who by birth, fortune, education, and social position were the equals of any officer in the land. The spirit of our military law is manifested in the ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... the room and presently returned, leaning on her husband's arm. They sat down beside the bed and Jeanne began to talk. She told them all, quietly, in a weak voice, but clearly; all about Julien's peculiar character, his harshness, his avarice, and, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... war, and had he resigned his post, advising the Estates to disband the Waardgelders and yield to superior force, a catastrophe might have been averted. There is no reason to believe that in such circumstances Maurice would have countenanced any extreme harshness in dealing with the Advocate. But Oldenbarneveldt, long accustomed to the exercise of power, was determined not to yield one jot of the claim of the sovereign province of Holland to supremacy within its own borders in matters of religion. The die was ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... disorder, aided by so many powerful auxiliaries, resisted the power of medicine. And it is worth while to remark, that these grievous sufferings were not owing either to want of care on the part of the owners, or to any negligence or harshness of the captain; for Mr. Wilson declared, that his ship was as well fitted out, and the crew and slaves as well treated, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... Cornwallis and Hopson. Fanaticism and Violence of Le Loutre. Capture of the "St. Francois." The English at Beaubassin. Le Loutre drives out the Inhabitants. Murder of Howe. Beausejour. Insolence of Le Loutre. His Harshness to the Acadians. The Boundary Commission. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... degree; in the second degree so many were guilty, that all could not be punished, and to make exceptions would be unjust and invidious. The emperor recommended a general pardon, from which the principal offenders only should be excluded, and Mary herself was as little inclined to harshness. Her present desire was to forget all that had passed, and take possession of her power for the objects nearest to her heart. Her chief embarrassment for the moment was from the overloyalty of her subjects. The old-fashioned lords and country gentlemen who had attended ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... That is the origin and beginning, if I do not deceive myself, of all the many troubles and misfortunes that were and are suffered by the inhabitants of those islands, since the year 1637, when the trade began to dwindle because of the harshness at Acapulco in the visitation of Licentiate Don Pedro de Quiroga y Moya—troubles predicted, without doubt, by the ashes that rained down throughout those islands in the year 1633, which was followed by a general famine. In the year 1636, no ships came from those islands. In the year 38, the 'Concepcion' ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... it did appear to some of us that the measures of the popular tribunal at that period savored a little of harshness and of the summum jus. The public mouth was early in the season fleshed upon the 'Vindictive Man,' and some pieces of that nature, and it retained through the remainder of it a relish of blood. As Dr. Johnson would have said: Sir, there was a habit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... never lost, was, after Ophelia's apparent rejection of him, mingled with suspicion and resentment, and that his treatment of her was due in part to this cause. And I find it impossible to resist this conclusion. But the question how much of his harshness is meant to be real, and how much assumed, seems to me impossible in some places to answer. For example, his behaviour at the play-scene seems to me to show an intention to hurt and insult; but in the Nunnery-scene (which cannot be discussed briefly) he is evidently acting a part and ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... was soon banished. The flag of France flew out from the stranger's peak. Edda looked round for her father, trembling with fear. He had fallen, and lay on the deck unable to rise. She rushed towards him, all his unkindness, his harshness and injustice forgotten. She attempted to lift him up; but her strength was unequal to the task. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... a voice from which all trace of harshness had disappeared, "you have come to give me over to the authorities on account of ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... so equable, so gentle! There was never a trace of harshness in his treatment of us. Indeed, it was only in his unfailing rectitude that he surpassed us, for, our senior although he was, he could barely keep up in our classes. Harry was the quickest of the three, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... towards one who thought harshness so much more natural than kindness, and who received the one so submissively, the other so gratefully; but the conversation was interrupted by Harold's exclaiming that my Lady in her carriage was stopping at the gate, and Mother was ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this moment, whatever evil befell the Protestants was set down, and not without reason, to their account. Of all the Roman Catholic nobles, these two had treated their Protestant vassals with the greatest harshness. They were accused of hunting them with dogs to the mass, and of endeavouring to drive them to popery by a denial of the rites of baptism, marriage, and burial. Against two characters so unpopular the public indignation ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... he said—and his calm, drawling tone formed a contrast to her own lack of control which she could not fail to appreciate—"don't you think that you judge me with exaggerated harshness? Do you think the life of any one of these men who have surrounded you to-night, and upon whom you certainly did not frown, would bear inspection? It would almost appear as if I had personally incurred your displeasure, you are so very ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... miserable airing, in which I was treated with as much fierce harshness as if I was being conveyed to some place of confinement for the punishment Of some ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... harshness of the life which claimed him Steve's whole nature was imbued with a saneness of sympathy, a deep kindliness of spirit that left him master of himself under every emotion. The great governing factor in his life was a strength of honest purpose. A purpose, in its turn, prompted by his sense of ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... are times when this restraint is really unbearable. It is possible to put up with reserve when the reserved being is by one's side, for the eyes may reveal what the lips do not. But when she is absent, what was piquancy becomes harshness, tender railleries become cruel sarcasm, and tacit understandings misunderstandings. However that may be, you shall never be able to reproach me for touchiness. I still esteem you as a friend; I admire you and love you as a woman. This I shall always do, however ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... and either finding them other farms, or giving them money to enable them to enter into other pursuits: such, sir, have been my transactions with the small number who have left my land, none of whom, I dare say, every charged me with harshness or injustice. As you have thought proper to turn public accuser, I beg to refer you to Mr Charles Seegrue, the only gentleman in Cork with whom I have had any transactions regarding tenants, and he will inform you on the determination of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... uncommon with him to spend whole winter nights on a neighboring "broad," in pursuit of the mere-fowl that haunted it, in water or ice or swamp. He treated his body as an enemy, and strove to subdue it—though not for the good reasons of the Apostle—by every sort of harshness and imprudence; or rather he behaved toward it as a wayward father toward his child—at one time with cruel severity, at another with the utmost luxury and indulgence. No rich man, probably, ever gave his heir so many chances of inheritance, or excited in him so many false hopes, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... bear great and heavy burdens; also their stones in which their seed may increase and abide, and in their privy members, to let out the seed with ease. Further all the body is made bigger and dilated, as the alteration and change of every part doth testify, and the harshness of the voice and hoarseness; for the rough artery, the wind pipe, being made wide in the beginning, and the exterior and outward part being unequal to the throat, the air going out the rough, unequal and uneven ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... of Mohammed who succeeded Abu Bakr in the Caliphate (A.H. 13-23634-644). The Sunnis know him as Al-Adil the Just, and the Shiahs detest him for his usurpation, his austerity and harshness. It is said that he laughed once and wept once. The laugh was caused by recollecting how he ate his dough-gods (the idols of the Hanifah tribe) in The Ignorance. The tears were drawn by remembering how he buried alive his baby daughter who, while the grave ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... in on old Lemon," as Andy afterwards declared, and they did not mince matters in telling of the many trials and tribulations which Asa Lemm had caused them. It is barely possible that some of the complaints were overdrawn, yet there was such a unanimity of opinion concerning Professor Lemm's harshness that Colonel Colby ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... sighed. The hearts of men, I know, contain no love more sweet and valuable than that which animated his desire. He mused for an interval. "Do you know the portion of the wicked?" he asked, in loving-kindness, without harshness whatsoever. ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... eyebrows, his hooked nose, his eyes like those of a bird of prey, his big moustaches, his chin almost divided into two parts by a mark which looked very much like a sabre-cut, would have made his face that of a brigand, had not the harshness of his features been tempered by the assumed amenity and the servile smile of a speculator who has many dealings with the public. He was dressed in very cleanly fashion in a cinnamon-coloured jacket embroidered with silk of the same colour, gaiters of the same stuff, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... of animal spirits reduced them to the lowest state of exhaustion; at times I felt—and, I suppose seemed—depressed. To my astonishment, I was taken to task on the subject by Mrs. Sidgwick, with a sternness of manner and a harshness of language scarcely credible. Like a fool, I cried most bitterly. I could not help it; my spirits quite failed me at first. I thought I had done my best, strained every nerve to please her; and to be treated ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... is early on Sunday morning, and Caen is en fete. We have reason to know it by the clamour of church bells which attends the sun's rising. There is terrible energy, not to say harshness, in thus ushering in the day. On a mountain side, or in some remote village, the distant sound of bells is musical enough, but here it is dinned into our ears to distraction; and there seems no method in the madness of these sturdy Catholics, for they make the tower of ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... revolution. It was supplied with practical aims by the misery of the poor, the injustice done to the lower classes, which alone paid the heaviest of the taxes, the privileges of the nobles and clergy, the harshness of the laws, and arbitrary methods of government. England, as we have seen, shared in the reforming movement. Here, however, it had no such violent results as in France. No sharp lines divided class from class; the laws were the same for all, there ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... earliest verse there is a certain harshness, which seems to come from a too urgent desire to be at once concise and explicit. Modern Love, published in 1862, remains Meredith's masterpiece in poetry, and it will always remain, beside certain things of Donne and of Browning, an astonishing feat in the ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... should have so much cause to complain of the unfriendly disposition of a Government from which, if it represents truly the instincts of Englishmen, it had the right to expect at least sympathy and kindness in the place of rigour and harshness. ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... were condemned to death, a sentence which was afterwards commuted to the payment of an enormous fine. The other prisoners were condemned to two years' imprisonment, with a fine of 2,000l. each. The imprisonment was of the most arduous and trying sort, and was embittered by the harshness of the gaoler, Du Plessis. One of the unfortunate men cut his throat, and several fell seriously ill, the diet and the sanitary conditions being equally unhealthy. At last, at the end of May, all the prisoners but six were released. Four of the six soon ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the voice of the Bishop of Therouenne in Malcolm's ear, just as the Duke had begun to rise to take leave; and he pointed out a knight of some thirty years, glittering with gay devices from head to foot, and showing a bold proud visage, exaggerating the harshness of the Burgundian lineaments. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... longer bade their followers to become Christians. On the contrary, they ordered them to renounce the new faith, under threat of punishment. Their harshness resulted in rebellion, so new a thing among the peasantry of Japan that the authorities felt sure that they had been secretly instigated to it by the missionaries. The wrath of the shogun aroused, he ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... "all went to confusion. Potts lorded it with a higher hand than ever, and my father was more than ever infatuated, and seemed to feel that it was necessary to justify his harshness toward you by publicly exhibiting a greater confidence in Potts. Like a thoroughly vulgar and base nature, this man could not be content with having the power, but loved to exhibit that power to us. Life to me for years became one long death; a hundred ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille |
