"Sternness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought that he saw his way out of the wood. "Wherever I go, Miss Dawkins, I am always the paymaster myself," and this he contrived to say with some sternness, palpitating though he still was; and the sternness which was deficient in his voice he endeavoured to ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... And the young farmer said, with the sternness of his square face greatly relaxing, "You may shut the door, sir. We will all listen when spoken to in that style. But we don't want to be driven like cattle." Then, yielding farther to the influence of Hemstead's courtesy, he stepped forward ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... Rowley out, and locked the door behind him. Then he sat down in an armchair on one side of the fire, and looked at me with uncompromising sternness. ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... arms, and expanded chest, betokened the strength which he often displayed, it was strength of a clumsy and ungraceful character. His language and gestures were those of one seldom used to converse with equals, more seldom still with superiors; short, abrupt, and decisive, almost to the verge of sternness. In the judgment of those who were habitually acquainted with the Constable, there was both dignity and kindness in his keen eye and expanded brow; but such as saw him for the first time judged less favourably, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... which to the young seems always to betoken the futility of, and to warn against the folly of, struggle against what must be; yet they were kind eyes, and humourous, with many of the small lines of laughter at their corners. Reading the eyes and mouth together one perceived gentleness and sternness to be well matched, working to any given end in amiable and effective compromise. "Uncle Peter" he had long been called by the public that knew him, and his own grandchildren had come to call him by the same term, finding him too young to meet their ideal of a grandfather. Billy Brue, riding ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... which, having drank, he uniformly passed the bottle, and relapsed into his former taciturnity. It was impossible, during this visit, for any of us to make out his real character; there was such a reserve and sternness in his behaviour, with occasional sallies, though very transient, of a superior mind. Being placed by him, I endeavoured to rouse his attention by showing him all the civilities in my power; but I drew out little more than 'Yes' and 'No.' If you, Fanny, had been ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... as he staggered, and caught at a backstay to save himself from falling. He sat down on the house and tried to keep back a sob. Madge stooped, and looked anxiously into his face. She had known him for two years as a man of unusual sternness and self-control; obstinate, reserved, willful, and moody, yet one that gave always the impression of unflinching courage and resolution. It was inexplicable now to see him crying like a woman, his square shoulders bent and heaving, his sinewy hands ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... without absolute breach of friendly relations. Nor could he bring himself to approach Clara. It was often in his mind to write to her; had he obeyed the voice of his desire he would have penned such letters as only the self-abasement of a passionate lover can dictate. But herein, too, the strain of sternness that marked his character made its influence felt. He said to himself that the only hope of Clara's respecting him lay in his preservation of the attitude he had adopted, and as the months went on ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... so justly merit. Were an officious stranger to try to convince an artist that one color would answer all his purposes as well as a greater number, would the suggestion of the untutored interloper cause the artist to waver in the sternness of his faith? And shall the subject of this sketch revolutionize his mode of stove-blacking at the promptings ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... other toys are here—mysterious to the uninitiated European, but to the Japanese child full of delightful religious meaning. In these faiths of the Far East there is little of sternness or grimness—the Kami are but the spirits of the fathers of the people; the Buddhas and the Bosatsu were men. Happily the missionaries have not succeeded as yet in teaching the Japanese to make religion ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... giving of raps with the closed fist than in the making of maps with inky fingers—a bootless toil, as it always hath seemed to me. Next to her sat SALLY, the little milkmaid, casting coy glances at mother, who would have none of them, but with undue sternness, as I thought then, and still think, tossed them back to the shame-faced SALLY. Lower down sat JOHN TOOKER, "GIRT JAN DOUBLEFACE" he was ever called, not without a sly hint of increasing obesity, for JOHN, though a mighty man of thews ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... gave them no trouble; the man was getting hard and was generally cheerful; and when he had an occasional fit of moroseness, as he fought with the longing that tormented him, they left him alone. Still, at times they were daunted by the rugged sternness of the region they were steadily pushing through, and the thought of the long return journey ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... this son, Alexander II, brought a change at once: we all felt it. While he had the big Romanoff frame and beauty and dignity, he had less of the majesty and none of the implacable sternness of his father. At the reception of the diplomatic corps on his accession he showed this abundantly; for, despite the strong declarations in his speech, his tears betrayed him. Reforms began at once—halting, indeed, but all tending ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... be gathered that a good deal of the Puritan sternness of character and distrust of royalty lingered in the mind of James Harmer, although in this case he was not destined to ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... should protect his ministers from disunion and destructions. If the king becomes mild, the people disregard him. If he becomes stern, the people feel it as an affliction. The rule is that he should be stern when the occasion requires sternness, and mild when the occasion requires mildness. By mildness should the mild be cut. By mildness one may destroy that which is fierce. There is nothing that mildness cannot effect. For this reason, mildness is said to be sharper than fierceness. That king who becomes mild when the occasion ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... and with no great show of fear or embarrassment. They had gotten off so many times before that they were perfectly confident of their power in this case to cajole the judge. But to their surprise he was all sternness and severity. ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... courtly inclination of his head the great man paid no attention to the greetings that were offered him by the nurses and doctors. Walking down the center of the room he had eyes only for the wounded men who lined the two walls. Then his sternness relaxed and his smile became a curious ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... admiration. The old woman looked sternly at her for a moment. Then she relented, and her hand stole among the girl's clustering curls. The little burst of temper gave way to a semi-humorous look of feigned sternness. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... was sternness itself so far as the great race was concerned. Not one of the juvenile Danbys dared to allude to it in his august presence. Only on one occasion did he unbend, and that was when little Fandy ventured to observe that he ought to have heard what ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... up with the bodies and heads of countrymen, who, though no members of the council, felt no scruple in intruding themselves upon deliberations in which they were so deeply interested. By expostulation, by threats, and even by some degree of violence, Burley, the sternness of whose character maintained a sort of superiority over these disorderly forces, compelled the intruders to retire, and, introducing Morton into the cottage, secured the door behind them against impertinent curiosity. At a ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... he had not made much essential progress. The world had been too pleasant to him to allow of his giving many of his hours to work. His father was one of the best men in the world, revered on the bench, and loved by all men; but he had not sufficient parental sternness to admit of his driving his son well into harness. He himself had begun the world with little or nothing, and had therefore succeeded; but his son was already possessed of almost everything that he could want, and therefore his success seemed doubtful. His chambers were luxuriously furnished, ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... inhumanity. The intolerableness of this moral condition poisons the beauty which continues to be felt. If this beauty did not exist, and was not still desired, the tragedy would disappear and Jehovah would be deprived of the worth of his victim. The sternness of moral forces lies precisely in this, that the sacrifices morality imposes upon us are real, that the things it renders ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... difficult to prove that, Mr. Burnit," said Sharpe, with a sternness which could not quite conceal ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... With abnormal fluency and force, the little preacher went on with the increasing sympathy of his audience, who were feeling the effects of a generous reaction in his favor. Uncle Ben, touched a little with honest obstinacy as he was, gradually relaxed in the sternness of his looks, straightening up by degrees until he sat upright facing the speaker in a sort of half-reluctant, pleased wonder. Just at the close of a specially vigorous burst of declamation, the old man exclaimed, in ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... same stories, or the naturalist in the latter. Humor, Cooper certainly had; but it is the humor that gleams in fitful flashes from the men of earnest purposes and serious lives, and gives a momentary relief to the sternness and melancholy of their natures. The power of producing an entire (p. 240) humorous creation he had not at all, and almost the only thing that mars the perfectness of "The Pathfinder" is the occasional effort to make one out of Muir, the character designed to play the part of a villain. But the ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... William's government had appeared on this occasion, that he became in his turn disgusted with his subjects, and began to change his maxims of rule to a rigor which was more conformable to his advanced age and the sternness of his natural temper. He resolved, since he could not gain the affections of his subjects, to find such matter for their hatred as might weaken them, and fortify his own authority against the enterprises which that hatred might occasion. He revived the tribute of Danegelt, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a young girl who seeks her destiny. She also has her "wooing moods," during which, on small provocation, she "hastily pens a few lines"—of verse such as no young lady's diary should be without. She has, moreover, her intervals of sternness, when she boxes ears; now in case of her father, unfilially, and anon in more righteous conflict with her step-mother's wicked lover. But her demonstrations do not usually take the brief form of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Coligny or a la Peter the Great, which are at the base of his character; and he goes on to give an attractive, though rather picturesque account of his career and past misfortunes, which is evidently intended to counteract any misgivings Madame Hanska may feel at his sternness as depicted in ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... beaus with envy. His movements, however, had all the decision of a man of action and of force. But his eye it was took possession of me—an unfathomable, dark eye, which bore more toward melancholy than sternness, and yet had something of both. He wore a clean, ruffled shirt, an exceeding neat coat and breeches of blue broadcloth, with plate burnished buttons, and white cotton stockings. Truly, this was a person to make one look twice, and think oftener. Then, as I went to pledge him, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... their production, nature is unaided by culture. But during the campaign, which these pages describe, the hot sun of the summer had burnt up all the flowers, and only a few splendid butterflies, whose wings of blue and green change colour in the light, like shot silk, contrasted with the sternness of ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... coming back at all—that he wasn't a good young man, and had run away without paying mother her rent. This made the situation worse than ever, as Jimmie protested violently against this shattering of his ideal, and his mother had to assume a good deal of sternness to cover up her own tenderness of feeling. But she, too—though she considered the flight of the two perfectly usual—was conscious of a very slight sense of disappointment herself that it should have been this particular young ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... remain flee to the hills. The Spaniards in Manila, in fear of an attack by the Chinese, are ready to slay them all; and a repetition of the horrors of the Chinese insurrection in 1639 is averted only by the prudence and good sense of Governor Manrique de Lara, who, with mingled sternness and humanity, calms the fear of the Chinese and the anger of the Spaniards. Granting protection to all who return to Manila by a certain day, he allows a specified number to remain there for the aid and service of the Spaniards, and obliges ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... sleep-walker in her unhurried motion, in her extended hand, in the sightless effect of her grey eyes luminous in the half-light. He had never seen such an expression in her face before. It had dreaminess in it, intense attention, and something like sternness. Arrested in the doorway by Heyst's extended arm, she seemed to wake up, flushed faintly—and this flush, passing off, carried away with it the strange transfiguring mood. With a courageous gesture she pushed back ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... ready to believe that he was guilty, resenting it upon Constance, had now to stand and learn that the guilt lay in his family, not in theirs. No wonder that he stood silent, grave, his lips drawn in to sternness. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... same angry monosyllable, which I had received from my mother before; and then arose, and walked about the room. I arose too, with intent to throw myself at his feet; but was too much overawed by his sternness, even to make such an expression of my duty to him as my heart ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... mountains were most wildly figured. The embers of a fire smouldered and smoked upon the hearth, to which a chair had been drawn close. And yet the aspect of the chamber was ascetic to the degree of sternness; the chair was uncushioned; the floor and walls were naked; and beyond the books which lay here and there in some confusion, there was no instrument of either work or pleasure. The sight of books ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was still alive when this letter was published in Darwin's Life, the authorship of the review was not actually mentioned; but it is necessary to mention it, as it justifies the sternness with which Huxley exposed Owen on an occasion shortly to be described. The review in the Quarterly was written by Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, in July, 1860, and almost at once the authorship of it became known to Darwin's friends. In connection ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... to the floor, raised her eyes appealingly to the man's face; but she found in it no answering sympathy. In the short interval it had changed from geniality to a sternness almost incredible of belief. It ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... His sternness offended Burrell, for the soldier was not the kind to discuss his affairs in this way, therefore he ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... sudden panic. She needed to search out a certain faded picture. It was almost with a sob that she noted the thin shoulders, the unformed jaw, the eye betokening pride rather than vigour, the brow indicative of petulance as much as sternness. Mary Ellen laid the picture to her cheek, saying again and again that she loved it still. Poor girl, she did not yet know that this was but the maternal love of a woman's heart, pitying, tender and remembering, to be sure, but not that love over which ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... which had been formed on the death of Ethelwolf between his youthful widow and her aged husband's son did not long continue. The people of England were very much shocked at such a marriage, and a great prelate, the Bishop of Winchester, remonstrated against it with such sternness and authority, that Ethelbald not only soon put his wife away, but submitted to a severe penance which the bishop imposed upon him in retribution for his sin. Judith, thus forsaken, soon afterward sold the lands and estates which her two husbands ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... marvel of urban stability in an unstable country, a hand fell lightly on his shoulder. He looked up and recognized the old lieutenant. His face had put off its expression of sternness, and he ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... to him, and Hortensius Martius appeared just then so like a naughty child, that the look of harshness died out of the praefect's eyes, and a smile almost of amusement, certainly of indulgence, lit up for a moment the habitual sternness ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... book-nonsense,—which they can't stand, and won't stand, and there's an end of it. There is something exceedingly winning, to us, in that sturdy sense, that thirst for mathematical precision, that impatience of theory, that positive and self-reliant—we don't mind saying, somewhat dogmatical—air, that sternness of feature, thinness of lip, and coldness of eye, which belong to the best examples. We respect even the humbler ones; for they at least hate sentiment, they do not comprehend or approve of humor, and they never relish wit. What does a taste for these qualities indicate, but an idle and frivolous ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... the embassy, sitting in the curule chair, and returned a kind answer to the messengers; Marius stood by him and said nothing, but gave sufficient testimony by the gloominess of his countenance, and the sternness of his looks, that he would in a short time fill the city with blood. As soon as the council arose, they went toward the city, where Cinna entered with his guards, but Marius stayed at the gates, and, dissembling his rage, professed that he was then an exile and banished ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... wearied frame and tired mind what refreshment there is in the neighborhood of this lake! The air is singularly searching and strengthening. The noble pines, not obstructed by underbrush, enrich the slightest breeze with aroma and music. Grand peaks rise around, on which the eye can admire the sternness of everlasting crags and the equal permanence of delicate and feathery snow. Then there is the sense of seclusion from the haunts and cares of men, of being upheld on the immense billow of the Sierra, at an elevation near the line of perpetual snow, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... for me to speak. When he looked up again, the whole expression of his face had changed. His features were firm and set, and he changed the air of half levity with which he had spoken before for one of sternness and almost ferocity. ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the patient, nurse?' braced my faltering nerves in a moment, and enabled me to answer him without embarrassment. He had his grave professional air, and looked hard and impenetrable. I had reason afterwards to think that this sternness of manner was assumed for my benefit, for once, when I was preparing some lint for him, I looked up inadvertently and saw that he was watching me with an expression that was at ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... face was dark with anger; but she turned and caught Walter's eyes, and the sternness of his face, and she softened at once, and said: "But thou! this hath little to do with thee; and now to thee I speak: Now cometh even and night. Go thou to thy chamber, and there shalt thou find raiment worthy of ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... the elements as a very ill omen, when Mobarec, who knew better than he what to judge, began to smile, and said, "Take courage, my prince, all goes well." In short, that very moment, the sultan of the genii appeared in the shape of a very handsome man, yet there was something of a sternness in ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... him quickly, for with the last words his grandfather's tone had changed from mere suavity to a sudden suggestion of sternness. Instinctively he straightened in his chair, and his glance at the other two young men showed that they had quite as involuntarily straightened in theirs. As the head of the firm, Hugh Benson, after a moment's pause, answered, in a quietly ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... you, Scribes and Pharisees." She seemed to hate everything that looked like spiritual pride, or idolatry, or worldliness. Hence her sternness and courage in watching for sin in herself or others was marked. The language of Jesus ever sounded in her ears: "Take heed to yourselves, lest haply your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... dear, you see I didn't want to make a disturbance while the body of that poor girl lay unburied in the house; but now I ask you right up and down who is the wretch as wronged Nora?" demanded the man with a look of sternness Hannah had never seen on ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... eyes looked straight into hers, and the voice had that little tone of sternness in it which she had noted ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... in surprise, and with a dash of sternness, but the expression passed into one of sadness mingled with suffering. He pointed to a chair and said curtly, "Sit down," as he replaced his forehead on his hand, and ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... last the messenger returned from the Outlaw's camp, he brought with him a wailing woman and grim tidings that he feared to deliver. Thrice his lordship demanded his account, the last time with such sternness that ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... and she said, she would go directly and build a chapel with five windows in it; four for the four cardinal virtues, and one for humility, in the middle, bigger than the rest. And Neith very nearly laughed quite out, I thought; certainly her beautiful lips lost all their sternness for an instant; then she said, "Well, love, build it, but do not put so many colors into your windows as you usually do; else no one will be able to see to read, inside: and when it is built, let a poor village priest consecrate it, and not an archbishop." St. Barbara ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... only object of his public action: and with this patriotic loyalty there mingled something of a personal feeling, more akin to romance in its paternal tenderness than seemed consistent with the granite-hewn strength and sternness of his general character. A thorough soldier, with a soldier's contempt for fine-spun diplomacy, he had been led into many a blunder when acting as a chief of party and of State; but his absolute single-minded honesty had more than redeemed such errors; "integrity and uprightness had preserved him," ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... coaxed and reasoned with her; then finding that this did not avail, he changed the mode of treatment, and, placing a chair by his own, said to her commandingly, "Edith, sit here!" and she sat there, for there was that in Arthur's sternness which always ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... brother, who was now playing the same part toward Gildo that Gildo had played toward his brother Firmus. The undisciplined nomadic army of the rebel was scattered without labor at Ardalio, and Africa was delivered from the Moor's reign of ruin and terror, to which Roman rule, with all its fiscal sternness, was peace ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... uncertain will-power he hesitated a long time. He tried kindness and sternness and promises and threats. The Hollanders remained obstinate, and continued to sing psalms and listen to the sermons of their Lutheran and Calvinist preachers. Philip in his despair sent his "man of iron," the Duke of Alba, to bring ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... and pray for him. Even when he heard within the year that she was about to make a brilliant marriage with a titled Frenchman whom she had met at Newport, he persisted in thinking of her as the victim, not of her own inconstancy, but of parental sternness. He sometimes saw her pretty face quite distinctly before his eyes, as he looked out across the swiftly spinning wheel, into the smoke-hung barroom,—the pretty face with the tearful eyes and the quivering lip of shallow ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... arm's length to look at her. Then, for the first time, she remembered all. Trembling—blushing scarlet, over face and neck—she perceived her husband's eyes rest on her glittering dress. He regarded her fixedly, from head to foot. She felt his expression change from joy to uneasy wonder, from love to sternness, and then he wore a strange, cold look, such a one as she had never beheld in ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... only seeing Mr. Ridley in considerable excitement from drink, but hearing it remarked upon by one or two persons who were familiar with his life at Washington, the truth dawned upon his mind, and he said abruptly, with considerable sternness of manner ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... said Martin, in a tone of solemn sternness, "it is fitting that I should tell thee all. I have renounced the evil doctrines of thy brother-in-law, and his brethren in false prophecy. It was a hard struggle, Mary; the spirit was indeed willing, but the flesh was weak, exceeding weak, for I thought of thee, Mary, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... force or power, as though they were things of wool-dicing was common in the camp, sleep lasted all night, or if they kept watch it was over the winecup. By what regulations to restrain such soldiers as these, and to turn them to honesty and industry, did you not learn from Hannibal's sternness, the discipline of Africanus, the acts of ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... Miss Edgeworth was in doubt whether it would be becoming under the circumstances to laugh or to cry, so she made no speech in reply. She said afterwards to Mrs. Martin, "Mr. Philip must have been a most severe master; I can see sternness on his brow." Moreover, she was secretly aware that she did not deserve his compliments, and that her learning was limited, especially in arithmetic; she had often to blame the figures for not adding up correctly. For this reason she had a horror of examinations, and every time ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... disease of which he died in the midst of his people, who were well nigh inconsolable for their loss. The obituary letter announcing his death to the other Jesuit missionaries contains a glowing eulogy of the man and his work. His disposition had nothing of sternness, yet he was equally beloved and revered by his flock; to untiring zeal he joined exemplary modesty, sweetness of disposition, never failing charity and an evenness of temper which made him superior to all annoyances; busy as he was he had the art of economising the moments, and he gave ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... what you have to say," she remarked, with some sternness, to Verena, who only raised her eyes to her, silently now, with the same sweetness, and then rested them on her father. This gentleman seemed to respond to an irresistible appeal; he looked round at the company with all his teeth, and said that these flattering allusions ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... been unremitting to prevent the war which daily seems more inevitable, declared that the situation may yet be saved unless some overt act occurs." At the same time the device showed a three-dimensional picture of the planetary president, impressive, dominating, stern with a sternness that could ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... breast as really generous and humane as that of Jack Tier's, such a feeling was not likely to endure in the midst of a scene like that she was now called to witness. The muscles of her countenance twitched, the hard-looking, tanned face began to lose its sternness, and every way she appeared like one ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Shortly after the capture of the city, General Scott held a levee, and amongst others presented to him was Lieutenant Jackson. When he heard the name, the general drew himself up to his full height, and, placing his hands behind him, said with affected sternness, "I don't know that I shall shake hands with Mr. Jackson." Jackson, blushing like a girl, was overwhelmed with confusion. General Scott, seeing that he had called the attention of every one in the room, said, "If you can forgive yourself for the way in which you slaughtered those poor Mexicans ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... utmost sternness. "Don't talk about dying. I won't allow it." And then she suddenly put down her head beside Phebe's, and ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... not to tell her lover; this so-called pride, for which she has been censured, is clearly only a very wise precaution to protect her from herself. Being aware that, unfortunately, her own temperament is inflammable, she dreads the least spark, and keeps out of reach so far as she can. Her sternness is due not to pride but to humility. She assumes a control over Emile because she doubts her control of herself; she turns the one against the other. If she had more confidence in herself she would be much less haughty. With this exception is there anywhere on earth a gentler, sweeter girl? ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... people the Armenians cannot boast of as vast a literature as the Persians, their one-time conquerors, but that which remains of purely Armenian prose, folk-lore, and poetry tells us of a poetic race, gifted with imaginative fire, sternness of will, and persistency of adherence to old ideas, a race that in proportion to their limited production in letters can challenge comparison with ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... nothing but promise, and not another sentence could she obtain from her brother, indeed his face looked so formidable in its sternness, that she would have been a bold maiden ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mother bore as if it were part of the natural trials of disease. It took but a few months of complete non-restraint to make of a shrewd, bright, half-educated, spoiled boy a little brute, as to whose sanity there seemed to be some doubt. He was easily made well, and has lived to thank the sternness which won back the health of mind and body his parents had so foolishly helped to ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... a swift transformation in the Irishman. His abstraction vanished; the sternness fled; his eyes sparkled. He leaned caressingly toward Yolara; whispered. Her blue eyes flashed triumphantly; her chiming laughter rang. She raised her own glass—but within it was not that clear drink that filled Larry's! And again he drained his own; and, lifting it, full once more, caught ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... indissoluble associations of awe and beauty. The mitigating hour softens the austerity of a mountain landscape magnificent in outline, however harsh and severe in detail; and, while it retains all its sublimity, removes much of the savage sternness of the strange and unrivalled scene. A fortified city, almost surrounded by ravines, and rising in the centre of chains of far-spreading hills, occasionally offering, through their rocky glens, the gleams of a distant and ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... living man that could remove it. She implored him, by every human motive, to say but one word, to save the life of her son and prevent her own misery. But the tyrant was immoveable, and the young man expired a victim of his sternness. ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... "Ah, with you such as you were in those days, we should have been ruined if I had not been able to think and decide for both of us. Good God! what would have become of us by now? You would have had far more to suffer from my sternness and pride; for you would have offended me from the very first day of our union, and I should have had to punish you by running away or killing myself, or killing you—for we are given to killing in our family; ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... very grave, as he did not look even when Kuzmitchov gave him a scolding or threatened him with a stick; listening intently, he dropped quietly on one knee and an expression of sternness and alarm came into his face, such as one sees in people who hear heretical talk. He fixed his eyes on one spot, raised his hand curved into a hollow, and suddenly fell on his stomach on the ground and slapped the hollow of his hand ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... position which belongs to Order. These organs were but little developed in Gall, whose great success was due to his philosophic originality and independence. He was not a close observer, and there was a sternness in his nature which prevented him from accepting readily the suggestions of Spurzheim, who with less boldness of character and greater accuracy of perception, was better fitted for minute observation and anatomical analysis. His own cranium has been preserved, in which I found these perceptive ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... young and beautiful queen of Poland, had been planned and accomplished, were now dead; but a few of them were still living, and at these, all looked with the greatest respect. The young knight could not admire enough the magnificent figure of Jasko of Tenczyn, castellan of Krakow, in which sternness was united with dignity and honesty; he admired the wise countenances of the counsellors and the powerful faces of the knights whose hair was cut evenly on their foreheads, and fell in long curls on their ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and well-fitting ones at that, the Candy Man was a presentable young fellow. If his face seemed at first glance a trifle stern, this sternness was offset by the light in his eyes; a steady, purposeful glow, through which played at the smallest ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... waited our coming. His eye glanced quickly from the features of O'Shaughnessy to those of Baker; but seeming rapidly reassured as he walked forward, his face at once recovered its usual severity and its cold, impassive look of sternness. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... to that kind of success—an utterly relentless determination to succeed, if necessary without hesitation at the means employed, and without considering in the least the cost to others. His inflexible will greatly impressed his own time. The men who came in contact with him were afraid of him. His sternness and mercilessness in the enforcement of law, in the punishment of crime, and in the protection of what he thought to be his rights, were never relaxed. His laws were thought to be harsh, his money-getting oppressive, and his forest regulations cruel and unjust. And yet ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... soldier. He was in New Orleans in 1862 when an epidemic broke out, and devoted himself to the care of the victims. Having been accused of refusing to bury a Federal he was escorted by a file of soldiers into the presence of General Butler, who accosted him with great sternness: ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... a natural sternness, which forbid all familiarity to all men. Even Colonel Hamilton, who was naturally facetious, never ventured, during his long service, the slightest intimacy. Hamilton, whom he esteemed above all men, and to whom he gave his entire confidence, always observed ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... deep; and slowest when most impassioned. He seemed to have come of some gigantic antediluvian breed: there was something of the Titan slumbering about him. He would have been a stern man, but for an unusual amount of reverence that seemed to overflood the sternness, and change it into strong love. No one had ever seen him thoroughly angry; his simple displeasure with any of the labourers, the quality of whose work was deficient, would go further than the ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... harsh way, and with broad insinuations against one of the Bank Directors, in relation to some transaction. Before he had well finished his invective Mr. Charless rose to his feet, his eye kindling, every feature of his faced marked by sternness, and replied, "Sir, the gentleman of whom you speak is my personal friend. The charge you bring against him is not true; the facts were these (mentioning them concisely but clearly), and now, sir, you must retract ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... Shepstone, whom I had known off and on for years in the way that a hunter knows a prominent Government official, it always recurs to my mind, embodying as it does his caution and appreciation of danger derived from long experience of the country, and the sternness he sometimes affected which could never conceal his love towards his friends. Oh! there was greatness in this man, although they did call him an "African Talleyrand." If it had not been so would every native from the Cape to the Zambesi have ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... sternness, "you cannot believe that I would oppose you in any possible thing. Your pleasure has been a law to me. I may have differed with you, but I have never ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... to his boys as he was stern when sternness was needed. Hoover came down with typhoid in his Junior year, just at a time when his finances could not afford such an expensive luxury. So Dr. Branner sent him to a hospital and saw that he was cared for by the best of physicians and ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... Worcester himself. His character also would have gone far to support any assertion he might have chosen to make as to the purity of his strain. A notable immobility of nature—his friends called it firmness, his enemies obstinacy; a seeming disregard of what others might think of him; a certain sternness of manner—an unreadiness, as it were, to open his door to the people about him; a searching regard with which he was wont to peruse the face of anyone holding talk with him, when he seemed always to give heed to the looks rather than the words ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... disrespect &c 929; procacity^, impudence: barbarism, barbarity; misbehavior, brutality, blackguardism^, conduct unbecoming a gentleman, grossierete, brusquerie^; vulgarity, &c 851. churlishness &c adj.; spinosity^, perversity; moroseness &c (sullenness) 901.1. sternness &c adj.; austerity; moodishness^, captiousness &c 901; cynicism; tartness &c adj.; acrimony, acerbity, virulence, asperity. scowl, black looks, frown; short answer, rebuff; hard words, contumely; unparliamentary language, personality. bear, bruin, brute, blackguard, beast; unlicked cub^; frump, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... dissipations there seemed little opportunity left for the still, small voice to make itself heard, there were times when his better self shook off slumber and rose before him like a ghost that, for all his efforts, would not be laid—a ghost like him in all regards save for the sternness of its look and of the voice which accused him in whispers to which all others ears were deaf, but ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... we can but resign ourselves to the awful Will of God, who sets us here, we know not why, and hurries us hence, we know not whither. Yet the very sternness and inexorability of that dread purpose has something that sustains and invigorates. We look back upon our life, and feel that it has all followed a plan and a design, and that the worst evils we have had to bear have been our faithless terrors about what should be; and then ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "cold and a backslider," and an eye disease nearly blinded him. "The Lord cured my blindness, physical and spiritual, and I promist him then that I would serve him the rest of my life," and he did it with the virility and sternness of an ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... smile for a moment threatened to drive the sternness away from Templeton's lips. But it was gone in a quick tightening of the mouth, and he ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... all the Gauls are of a lofty stature, fair, and of ruddy complexion; terrible from the sternness of their eyes, very quarrelsome, and of great pride and insolence. A whole troop of foreigners would not be able to withstand a single Gaul if he called his wife to his assistance, who is usually very strong, and ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... part of the citizens subsided, and the detective returned to Chicago to other mysteries, demanding his attention. Adam Goodrich refused to talk of the matter, and gave no sign of his sorrow, save an added sternness in his manner. But the mother's health was broken; while Frank, declaring that he could not stand the disgrace, went for a long visit to a friend in a neighboring city. Finally Dick himself was forced to give up the search; but though ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... Racedown and Alfoxden formed a large part, was the healing time of his spirit. And in that healing time she was the chief human minister. Somewhere in the 'Prelude' he tells that in early youth there was a too great sternness of spirit about him, a high but too severe moral ideal by which he judged men and things, insensible to gentler and humbler influences. He compares his soul to a high, bare craig, without any crannies in which flowers may lurk, untouched by the mellowing influences ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... position of being allowed to write for (and be printed in) the "Atlantic Monthly," without much previous polish, through the companionship of the fairer sex. Why was it made a crime worthy of Draconian sternness to address our she-comrades in the pleasant paths of learning? Why did we behold the severe Magister Morum himself, in utter forgetfulness of his own rule, mingle in the mazy dance on an evening occasion, at which we were allowed to sit up? Did the girls of a larger growth lose their dangerous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... kindly Dr. Morini drew me away, and by dint of friendly persuasion, in which there was also a good deal of firm determination, led me into the hall, where he made me swallow a glass of wine. As I could not control my sobs, he spoke with some sternness: ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... green; not a trace of vegetation appears, and Nature herself seems to have destined the spot for a gloomy and infrangible prison. From these heights, on the contrary, the picturesque and smiling landscape of the interior forms the most striking contrast to its external sternness, and suggests the idea of a gifted mind, compelled by painful experience to shroud its charms under a forbidding veil ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... the air past Obed's head, yet he still came on. The vision of that awful face rushing down upon him thus through the smoke-clouds, with vengeance gleaming from the eyes, and the resolute mouth close shut in implacable sternness, was sufficient to show Gualtier that his career was nearly run. He had a sudden feeling that all was lost. With a wild leap he bounded over the ditch by the roadside, and tore over the fields with the frantic speed of one ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Boccanera's face had clouded over, and it was with increased sternness of manner that he again waited. He was aware that the priest had become Sanguinetti's "client" since the latter had been in the habit of spending weeks together at his suburban see of Frascati. Walking in ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... viewed the conduct of Captain Longmore as cowardly submission, it would be unjust to conclude that it imparted a single shade of inflexibility to his principles or purpose. On the contrary, they assumed their attributes of most rigid sternness as his fortunes became clouded by a deeper gloom. He was averse to everything which bore the stamp of desperation, or could possibly ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... soon found that the constant demand on my stock 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.——, 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 ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... near the mill again, but would shudder and lift up his hands and his eyes when the miller's name was mentioned. It was not that Brattle used rough language, or became violently angry when accosted; but there was a sullen sternness about the man, and a capability of asserting his own mastery and personal authority, which reduced those who attacked him to the condition of vanquished combatants, and repulsed them, so that they would retreat as beaten dogs. Mr. Fenwick, indeed, had always been well received at the mill. The ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... of the carriage broken!' cried Elfride. She was disappointed: Stephen doubly so. The vicar showed more warmth of temper than the accident seemed to demand, much to Stephen's uneasiness and rather to his surprise. He had not supposed so much latent sternness could co-exist with ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Verhovensky ought to have appreciated their heroism and have rewarded it by telling them some really important bits of news at least. But Verhovensky was not at all inclined to satisfy their legitimate curiosity, and told them nothing but what was necessary; he treated them in general with great sternness and even rather casually. This was positively irritating, and Comrade Shigalov was already egging the others on to insist on his "explaining himself," though, of course, not at Virginsky's, where so many ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... from the debate, and give him the opportunity of saying he had put me to flight. He was mistaken. I kept my ground. And I kept my temper. And I kept my gravity. I rebuked him at times with becoming sternness, and then went on with my task. It is probable that I spoke more strongly against the Bible, and that I said harder things against the church and the ministry, than I should have done, if he had conducted himself with any regard to truth and decency; ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... colonnade, of cupola and facade and pediment, of spire and vault, the architect translates emotion, vague perhaps but deep, mute but unmistakable. When we say that a building is sublime or graceful, frivolous or stern, we mean that sublimity or grace, frivolity or sternness, is inherent in it. The emotions connected with these qualities are inspired in us when we contemplate it, and are presented to us by its form. Whether the architect deliberately aimed at the sublime or graceful—whether the dignified ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... instead of the old one whom we leave. He is tall, but not so strong; and, like the old man, he wears his brown hair cut short at the back and brushed into a "corkscrew-curl" above his high white forehead. The sternness of the old man does not yet appear in his face, and the scar of mental pain endured has not yet been stamped upon his good-humored expression. Yet he is far from showing the light-hearted carelessness usually belonging to his age and the easy-going manners that are so frequently habitual ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... of poems by a deaf-blind lady, Madame Bertha Galeron. Her poetry has versatility of thought. Now it is tender and sweet, now full of tragic passion and the sternness of destiny. Victor Hugo called her "La Grande Voyante." She has written several plays, two of which have been acted in Paris. The French ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... implicated in causing the difficulties existing under the apprenticeship. They are incessantly exposed to multiplied and powerful temptations. The persecution which they are sure to incur by a faithful discharge of their duties, has already been noticed. It would require men of unusual sternness of principle to face so fierce an array. Instead of being independent of the planters, their situation is in every respect totally the reverse. Instead of having a central office or station-house to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... tears to her eyes was the vision of continued wedlock, until death intervened, with a husband who could not understand. Could she bear this? Must she endure it? There was but one answer: She must. At the thought she bit her lip with the intensity and sternness of a martyr. She would be faithful to her marriage vows, but she would not let Lewis's low aims interfere with the free ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... north or south, will have gently rounded backs, clothed in pastures nearly to the crest, with garments of purple heather lying under the sky upon their ridges. Yet for all this roundness of outline there will be, towards the Atlantic end of either army, a growing sternness of aspect, a more sombre ruggedness in the outline of the hills, with cliffs and steep ravines setting their brows frowning ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... any to be spied out, Dolly," Faith answered, with some sternness, and a keen look at her sister, whose eyes fell beneath her gaze. "You will be sorry, when you think of what you said to me, who have done nothing whatever to offend you. But that is a trifle compared ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... the others, his richer vesture and arms, but, above all, the gold collar about his neck and the gold bracelets upon his arms, marked the chief. Standing by the rheda, he met Marcia's look of proud defiance, for a moment; then his eyes shifted and seemed to wander; but, cloaking with martial sternness the embarrassment of the barbarian, ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... in times of old trod the spring-dance so gayly in the well-lighted halls of the Blakstad mansion. And, indeed, she was sadly changed! Her features had become sharper, and the firm lines about her mouth expressed severity, almost sternness. Her clear blue eyes seemed to have grown larger, and their glance betrayed secret, ever-watchful care. Only her yellow hair had resisted the force of time and sorrow; for it still fell in rich and wavy folds over a smooth ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... in themselves, they seemed doubly so in that lonely room; and Henry was glad to lock the door and return to the comparatively living world downstairs. But from that moment old Mr. Lingard was transfigured in his eyes. Beneath all the sternness of his exterior, the grimness of the business interests which seemed to absorb him, Henry had discovered the blessed human spring. And he came too to wear a certain pathos and sanctity in Henry's eyes, as he remembered how old a man he was, and that secretly all this time, while he seemed ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... truly beautiful in face and person, twenty-two years of age, full and finely formed, and dressed always with the most studied neatness. She was, in truth, a seductive creature. She made an instantaneous impression on my senses. There was, however, somewhat of a sternness of expression, and a dignity of carriage, which caused at once to fear and respect her. Of course, at first, all went smoothly enough, and seeing that mamma treated me precisely as she did my sisters, I came to be regarded as quite a child by Miss Evelyn. She found ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... turned to Italy, which gave Marius time to discipline the bodies of his men and to confirm their courage; and what was most of all, it gave the soldiers an opportunity of knowing what kind of a man their general was. For the first impression created by his sternness and by his inexorable severity in punishing, was changed into an opinion of the justice and utility of his discipline when they had been trained to avoid all cause of offence and all breach of order; and the violence of his temper, the harshness of his voice, and ferocious expression of his ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... side of the table. Dr. Warner had leaned his large body quite across the little figure of Moses Gould and was talking in excited whispers to Dr. Pym. That expert nodded a great many times and finally started to his feet with a sincere expression of sternness. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... subject; but it was soon found that Fanny Jane had none of the chivalrous reverence which had rendered the wild Noddy Newman tolerably tractable, and her failure was as complete and ignominious as that of her sister. Mr. Grant was finally appealed to; and the sternness and severity to which he was compelled to resort were, for a time, effectual. But even these measures began to be impotent, and the broker realized that the uncle and aunt had understood the case better ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... pitilessness, severity, brutality, hard-heartedness, inhumanity, rigor, sternness, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the other side, and can look back on the path over which we have been led, it will appear that we have found our best blessings where we thought the way was most dreary and desolate. We shall see then that what seemed sternness and severity in Christ was really truest and ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... be allowed that, in this portrait, some of the darker features and harsher lineaments of Byron himself are very evident, but with a more fixed sternness than belonged to him; for it was only by fits that he could put on such severity. Conrad is, however, a higher creation than any which he had previously described. Instead of the listlessness of Childe Harold, he is active ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... Tombs. The proper name of the building is "The Halls of Justice," but it is now by common consent spoken of simply as the Tombs. It occupies an entire square, and is bounded by Centre, Elm, Franklin, and Leonard streets. The main entrance is on Centre street, through a vast and gloomy corridor, the sternness of which is enough to strike terror to the soul of a criminal. Within the walls which face the street, is a large quadrangle. In this there are three prisons, several stories high. One of these is for men, the other for boys, and the third ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... for his head was of the statesman-class, and his demeanor that of one who had exercised influence over large numbers of men. He sometimes endeavored to set on foot a familiar relation with this old man, but there was even a sternness in the manner in which he repelled these advances, that gave little encouragement for their renewal. Nor did it seem that his companions of the Hospital were more in his confidence than Middleton himself. They ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... averse to control, and are unable to discern between sternness of manner, and a cold unfeeling hardness of heart; and construe into insults and injuries the necessary restraint imposed upon their actions for their good. Yours, I admit, was a painful situation, which you rendered ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... a manner which was "a little equivocal," wore a broad hat and a thick moustache, which, joined with the sternness of his pale cheek and the piercingness of his eye, must indeed have suggested something extremely eerie to a well-shaven, three-corner hat, respectable man of the eighteenth century; so that we are not at all surprised to hear that ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... better not to go," Maria replied. Her tone was at once stern and pitiful. Evelyn noticed only her sternness. She began to ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... how, after getting him into that scrape through her infernal extravagance, she dared to show her face before him? This address speedily frightened the poor thing out of her fainting fit—there is nothing so good for female hysterics as a little conjugal sternness, nay, brutality, as many husbands can aver who are in the ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is, in their eyes, no real mother of mankind, bringing them up with kindness, and if need be, with sternness, in the way they should go, and instructing them in all things needful for their welfare; but a sort of fairy godmother, ready to furnish her pets with shoes of swiftness, swords of sharpness, and omnipotent Aladdin's lamps, so that they may have ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... the good Brother went to take leave of his fair Penitent, and upbraided her with more than usual sternness for living a dissolute life. He exhorted her urgently to repent and pressed her to wear a hair-shirt next her skin,—an incomparable remedy against naughty cravings and a sovran medicine for natures over prone to the ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... be always obeyed. Our soldiers look well, most of them being newly uniformed, and behave like gentlemen. Courtesy will conquer all that bayonets have not won. The burnt district is still hideously yawning in the heart of the town, a monument to the sternness of those bold revolutionists who are being hunted to their last quarry. Despotism, under the plea of necessity, has met with its end here as it must everywhere. We shall have no more experiments for liberty out of the Union, if the new Union will grant all that it gave before. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... be alive at this moment if it were not for your treatment. Oh, Grace!" She began to cough again; the paroxysm increased in vehemence. She caught her handkerchief from her lips; it was spotted with blood. She sprang to her feet, and regarded it with impersonal sternness. "Now," she said, "I am sick, and I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... without some degree of awe, when she considered that she was entirely in his power; but forbore even to hint her fears, or her observations, to Madame Montoni, who discerned nothing in her husband, at these times, but his usual sternness. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe |
