"Bluntness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nose dive outa there," Johnny told her with terrific bluntness. "I'm in a hurry. I want to make Tucson ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... said Wilson, with irritated bluntness, "if you knew the entire scheme instead of only ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the army, and does not wish to tamper with the service or play any tricks with it. It is curious to see the working and counterworking of his real opinions and principles with his false position, and the mixture of bluntness, facility and shrewdness, discretion, levity and seriousness, which, colouring his mind and character by turns, make up the strange compound of his ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... Terry, with a brutal bluntness unworthy of a Celt. He can be very irritating sometimes; but at this moment he was looking so extremely handsome and devil-may-care, that my desire to punch his head dissolved as I glared at him. Could any ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... was too able a man not to find it. In the five years that he had spent in the celebrated University of Lugenmaulberg, the medical theory had changed twenty-five times, and, thanks to this solid education, the doctor had a firmness of principle which nothing could shake. He had the frankness and bluntness of a soldier, it was said; he swore at times, even with ladies, a rudeness which left him at liberty always to be of the same mind with the stronger, and to demand a fee for having no opinion. The queen had fallen into ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... Dolores lacked diplomacy; her bluntness was often trying. Alaire turned upon her with a sharp exclamation, conscious meanwhile that the woman's tone, even more than her words, had enlightened Longorio to some extent. His lifted brows were eloquent of surprise and curiosity, ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... copiousness and easy vivacity of his talk, a certain purpose was never lost sight of in his remarks and illustrations."—Friedrich Carl Meyer.] who was at this time a man of fifty, was no ordinary character. He was sagacious, warm-hearted, honest, straightforward to bluntness, painstaking, just, benevolent to a remarkable degree; the friend of princes, without forfeiting his independence, he won and kept their perfect confidence to the end. He loved them heartily in return, without seeking ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... Slow to resolve, but in performance quick; So true, that he was awkward at a trick. For little souls on little shifts rely, And coward arts of mean expedients try; The noble mind will dare do anything but lie. False friends, his deadliest foes, could find no way But shows of honest bluntness, to betray: That unsuspected plainness he believed; He looked into himself, and was deceived. 930 Some lucky planet sure attends his birth, Or Heaven would make a miracle on earth; For prosperous honesty is seldom seen To bear so dead a weight, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... constitutional timidity seemed to be filled to the brim by the loudness of Allan's voice and the bluntness of Allan's request. He ran over in the same feeble flow of words with which he had deluged Midwinter on the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... could not see her expression, but he had always been confident of his ability to talk himself out of trouble, so he rambled on in pretence of camaraderie, currying favour, as he believed, ingratiating himself with the coarse bluntness that served him among some men, even among ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... gesture, and the Gainer took a step forward. The light that fell back from his hooded face played curiously about his jewelled hand; as it rose from the gilded hilt, it could be seen that to remedy the bluntness of the thick fingers the nails had been allowed to grow very long, which gave it now, in its half-curve, the look of a claw, upon which the red ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... being planned. On the eve of his departure he had sent the following brilliant document to the Emperor-elect as a reply to an attempt to entrap him to Peking, a document the meaning of which was clear to every educated man. Its exquisite irony mixed with its bluntness told all that was necessary to tell—and forecasted the inevitable ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... a statesman; you have been a conspirator; you are a great nobleman, consequently you must know men; you reason, pardon my bluntness, as if you did not know them at all, or rather, your generous desires in my ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the question entirely. The bluntness of it took her by surprise. Frank speech was not a characteristic of ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... on his chair, but at last, with his characteristic bluntness said, "Hanged if I know! They say that them that gits down doesn't very often git up again. Yet I know they ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... morning spoken out with a pitiless bluntness, which had made Philip unusually thoughtful. The very words the Queen had used haunted him—'tale-bearers, who had neither clean ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... To his courage, his energy and perseverance, his military contemporaries have borne unanimous testimony. They seem entirely to have comprehended a character which the unfortunate Charles Edward could never appreciate. They felt the justness of his ascendancy, and discriminated between the bluntness of an ardent and honest mind, careless of ordinary forms, and the arrogance of an inferior capacity. As a soldier, indeed, the qualities of Lord George Murray rose to greatness: so enduring, and so fearless, so careless of danger to himself, yet so solicitous for others. As a general, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... we might marry, you and I," he said, and cursed himself for the blundering bluntness of ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... "I admire your bluntness," remarked the former chairman across the table, "although I can't say as much for your philosophy. It is our duty to keep everybody contented; we cannot do any public weeding-out until the others are satisfied that the malcontents are ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... though his mother groans over his manners. Polish him up a bit, I beg of you, for it is high time he mended his odd ways and did justice to the fine gifts he hides behind them," said Uncle Mac, scandalized at the bluntness of his son. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... privileged to observe him, he is as easy to understand as the multiplication table, as little devious and, alas! as lacking in suavity. Yet, let us be fair to George. Mere innocence of guile, of verbal trickery, had not alone sufficed for his passionate bluntness in the present crisis. At a later stage in his career as a husband he might have been equally blunt; yet never again, perhaps, would he have been so emotional in his opposition to woman polluting herself with the ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... scenes, Ruth could remember nothing in his manner but a sort of invigorating, friendly bluntness, totally at variance with the peculiarities of the "lady's man" that Louis had insinuated he was accounted. She resolved to scrutinize him more narrowly ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... for a moment. Unequivocal as the confession was, Miss Rebecca, reluctant to believe her ears, asked with characteristic bluntness: ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... do!" acknowledged the Senior Surgeon with equal bluntness. "But my little kiddie here loves you!" he hastened somewhat nervously to affirm. "Oh, I'm almost sure that my little kiddie here—loves you! She needs you anyway! Let it go at that! Call it that we ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... days my strength was restored. The cut I had received was not deep—thanks to my forage-cap and the bluntness of ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... a frown at her sister, and detached her eyes from her with an effort. "What did you say?" she demanded, with an absent bluntness. "Oh yes. Yes! We went once. Father took a box ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... bring me the weekly bills?" he said, with masculine bluntness, after he had been at Chiswick for ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... something different in the future, that it attracts us more than many forms of beauty. They have something of the merit of a rough sketch by a master, in which we pardon what is wanting or excessive for the sake of the very bluntness and directness of the thing. It gives us pleasure to see the beginning of gracious impulses and the springs of harmonious movement laid bare ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... answer this question with a bluntness that will end all honest misunderstanding ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... 'interviewer' open to you. I can scarcely imagine such work to be congenial to a lady's feelings, as, in the case of really distinguished personages, she must assuredly meet with many a rebuff! I hope I have not offended you by my bluntness, ... "— here he trailed off into inaudible polite murmurs, while the "Tiger-Lily" marched steadily ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... say anything by way of reply, two of them remarked sneeringly: "With all this doltish bluntness of his will he after all absorb himself in abstraction?" While Hsiang-yuen also clapped her hands and laughed, "Cousin Pao ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... look. The straight, rather salient nose had a perceptible cleft at the tip, which, I was told, was a sign of good lineage; muddy-mettled rascals lacked it; so that I was much distressed by the smooth, plebeian bluntness, at that time, of my own little snub. The mouth, then unshaded by a mustache, had a slight upward turn at the corners, indicative of vitality and good-humor; the chin rounded out sharply convex from the lip. The round, strong column of the neck well supported the head; my mother ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... somewhat irate, because the spectacle of the Weihaiwei regiment, six hundred yellow men under twelve white Englishmen, chasing malcontents in Shantung, is derogatory to Teutonic aspirations. Germany has earmarked Shantung, and it is just like English bluntness to remind the would-be dominant Power that there is a British sphere and a British colony in the Chinese province, as well as a German sphere and a German colony. But the German Minister, a beau garcon ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... discovered, may easily enough be confounded with the utter repudiation of it. Both forms of mind will discuss the same questions; both will discuss them freely, with a certain plainness and daring, which may range through all grades, from the bluntness of Socrates down to reckless immodesty and profaneness. The world will hardly distinguish between the two; it did not in Socrates' case, mistaking his reverent irreverence for Atheism, and martyred him accordingly, as it has since martyred Luther's memory. Probably, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... he confidently told himself, with that bluntness of thought which comes to us all at times. "See how she flared up because I danced with Helen. Maybe if ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... of her mother's bluntness of speech, explained that the creation in question had been Isabel's choice, and Rose smiled as one ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... is chilling and repulsive, the opposite habit of assenting to, and sympathizing with, every statement made, or emotion expressed, is almost equally disagreeable. It is unmanly, and is felt to be dishonest. "It may seem difficult," says Richard Sharp, "to steer always between bluntness and plain dealing, between merited praises and lavishing indiscriminate flattery; but it is very easy—good humor, kindheartedness, and perfect simplicity, being all that are requisite to do what is right ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... texture of her robes, and the musical tinkle of her voice. But Leonidas had no confidant, and what healthy boy ever trusted his sister in such matter! "YOU saw what she was like," he said, with evasive bluntness. ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... his cropped hair, her guest was a most attractive creature. Not that he could boast much in the way of regular good looks: the mouth was large, the nose of no particular outline, and in general the cutting of the face, though strong and characteristic, had a bluntness and naivete like a vigorous unfinished sketch. This bluntness of line, however, was balanced by a great delicacy of tint—the pink and white complexion of a girl, indeed—enhanced by the bright reddish hair, and quick ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... convey profound and condensed thought in a style that is at once clear and rich. His moral character was singularly mixed and complex, and bears no comparison with his intellect. It exhibits a singular coldness and lack of enthusiasm, and indeed a bluntness of moral perception and an absence of attractiveness rarely combined with such extraordinary mental endowments. All that was possible to be done in defence of his character and public conduct has been done by his accomplished biographer and editor, Mr. Spedding (q.v.). ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Bland to Esterhaz to endeavour to persuade Haydn to alter his mind. Bland was shown into a room adjoining that in which Haydn happened to be shaving, and whilst seated there he overheard the composer growling to himself over the bluntness of his razors. At length Bland caught the exclamation, 'Ach! I would give my best quartet for a good razor!' and without more ado, he rushed off to his lodgings and returned in a few minutes with a pair of razors, which he presented to Haydn. The Capellmeister accepted the gift ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... the Major, "must pardon my bluntness. I am unable to hide what I know. For some time back I have suspected Major Hammersmith, but Mr. Godall is unmistakable. To seek two men in London unacquainted with Prince Florizel of Bohemia was to ask too ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... didn't tell any one of his marriage." The bluntness of the speech was relieved by the confidential manner in which Miss Hitchcock leaned forward to the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... forgive me what may seem to you a piece of rudeness, I declare that the poor man is ashamed of such things with the sensitiveness of a young girl. YOU, for instance, would not care (pray pardon my bluntness) to unrobe yourself before the public eye; and in the same way, the poor man does not like to be pried at or questioned concerning his family relations, and so forth. A man of honour and self-respect such as I am finds it painful and grievous to have to consort with men ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to Brisbane for the substitute to be sent on the following day, and would be ready to start in twenty-four hours. After visiting Wandenong he would go to Brisbane for some scientific necessaries—and so on through smooth parentheses of talk. Under all the bluntness of the Bush young Osgood had a refinement which now found expression in an attempt to make himself agreeable—not a difficult task, since, thanks to his father's tastes and a year or two at college, he had a smattering of physical science. He soon won his way to the old man's heart, and to his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in character like other folk; but there is one trait they have in common; they are mightily inclined to be affable to men of very low estate. These do not vie with them in anything whatever, so jealousy cannot creep in; and they amuse them by their bluntness and novelty, and refresh the poor things with a touch of nature—a rarity in courts. So Philip the Good reined in his horse and gave Martin almost a tete-a-tete, and Martin reminded him of a certain battlefield where he had received an arrow intended for his sovereign. The duke ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the characteristic falsehood and deceit so generally experienced in the French. He could not be prevailed on, by his friends at Naples, to visit Admiral Blanquet, who had his nose shot off, and was otherwise dreadfully wounded in the face. On this occasion, he seems to have adopted all the rough bluntness of a British tar. He had beaten him, he said, and would not insult him. "Seeing me," added the hero, "will only put him in mind of his misfortune. I have an antipathy to Frenchmen; which is so powerful, that I must, I think, have received it from ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... so pleasant to feel, but, in return, the legend is so visible, that, at the first look, you can see whose image and superscription they bear." This is a delicate way of setting forth the superior honesty and bluntness and the inferior smoothness and assimilating instinct of the Anglo-Saxon,—a vital difference, which no alliance or intercourse with his Gallic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in you, even if I don't care a fig for your music," Phebe answered, with a bluntness that should have been death ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... feature about the sperm whale is the bluntness of its clumsy head, which looks somewhat like a big log with the end sawn square off, and this head is about one-third ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... at his bluntness. "I heard something about it, sir. Perhaps Mr. Lawrence was a little wild. It sometimes happens ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... was taken back as much by the bluntness of the remarks as if they had been doused with cold water. Indignation was everywhere visible on the countenances of the people. But Mr. Washington appeared unruffled. On the contrary, his heavy jaw was hard set and his eyes danced in a merry measure. It was a time to keep one's ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... embarrassed the beholder. All men had liked him, and spoken well of him throughout his long and hard-worked career. Thorpe was very fond of him indeed, and put a respectful cordiality into his grasp of the proffered hand. Then he looked, with a certain thinly-veiled bluntness of enquiry, past the Marquis ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... almost happy, but their occupation humiliated them since they had begun to set a higher value on themselves, and their disgust increased while they were mutually glorifying and spoiling each other. Pecuchet contracted Bouvard's bluntness, and Bouvard assumed a little ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... philosophy, a defiant humor, an enforced medium temperature of soul. The Englishman is no more given to extremes than is his climate; against its damp and perpetual changes he has become coated with a sort of bluntness. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... ground on which to stand, she was building up an ideal of her sister—and these women jarred on that. They came to her direct from a world, her sister's world, which she now vaguely felt to be cheap, shallow, disillusioning. And she needed her illusions. By nature frank to bluntness, she was not good at hiding dislikes; and her uneasy visitors soon realized with relief that they were not ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... subjected to strain, he was not one to be lightly dealt with by man or woman. He was gentle, soft, if you please, childlike with those he loved, but there was dangerous mettle in him not to be tampered with by trickery or guile. Christopher had shown me with his uncompromising bluntness what I had merely suspected; the girl loved danger and saw it in Jerry's eyes, fascinated by the imminence of peril that lurked in his innocence. A strange passion, calculating, cold, abnormal. And Jerry loved this girl—adored her, ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... men, and inclined on all occasions to take the advice of designing knaves who flattered and paid deference to him, rather than that of the Scottish nobles who were risking their lives for his cause, but who at times gave their advice with a bluntness and warmth which were displeasing to him. It was this weakness which brought an enterprise, which at one time had the fairest prospect of success, to ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... man would have offended me. This man blushed like a boy, and looked at the pavement instead of looking at me. By this time I had made up my mind about him. He was not only a gentleman beyond all doubt, but a shy gentleman as well. His bluntness and his odd remarks were, as I thought, partly efforts to disguise his shyness, and partly refuges in which he tried to forget his own sense of it. I answered his audacious proposal amiably and pleasantly. "You would only ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... affection. That could not be allowed to pass; the error must be rectified. And yet! . . . And yet this very error must be cleared up before she could make her full wish apparent. She seemed to find herself compelled by inexorable circumstances into an unlooked-for bluntness. In any case she must face the situation. Her pluck did not fail her; it was with a very noble and graceful simplicity that she turned to ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... motion. The ideal of the face is often solemn—seldom beautiful; occasionally ludicrous failures occur: in the smallest designs the face is very often a dead letter, or worse: and in all, Giotto's handling is generally to be distinguished from that of any of his followers by its bluntness. In the school work we find sweeter types of feature, greater finish, stricter care, more delicate outline, fewer errors, but on the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... sung it," returned Tom with unexpected bluntness. "I went through such a long, dreary winter before my Golden Summer came. Now I wish it to stay with me forever. I'd like our lives from this moment on always to be one long, continued Golden Summer like the last two weeks. I can't ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... the surgeons, two of them departed aboard the tug, the third remaining to care for the patient. Hank, despite all his bluntness of manner, was proving himself valuable in the sick-room, while Joe spent most of his time in the wireless room of the bungalow, waiting to receive or send any word. So, as evening came, Tom Halstead bestirred himself with the ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... spoke in that tone of disdainful bluntness which she almost always used when speaking to the Irishman, Felicia was at work on the bust of the Nabob which she had just commenced, posing her model, laying down and taking up the boasting-tool, quickly wiping her fingers with the little sponge, while the light and peace of ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... said Achilles; "that you came to take the parting orders of him who now acts the sovereign. Surely, had I seen you there, with that steadfast, open, seemingly honest countenance, cheating the wily Greek by very dint of bluntness, I had not forborne laughing at the contrast between that and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... attempt at eloquence or self-assertion in Allingford's remarks; brief they were almost to bluntness, but well suited to the audience to whom they were addressed. It was the old, well-tried captain of Ronleigh who spoke, and the boys of Ronleigh who listened, and the manner in which the words were given and received might have reminded one of a speech of ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... and the sudden quiver of the under lip, when allusion was made to the eight of whom the family had once consisted: and Phoebe's deduction was, not that Jane Talbot bore no burden, but that she kept it out of sight. Perhaps that very characteristic bluntness of her manner denoted a tight curb kept upon ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... Mizora people. They detected odors so refined that I was not aware of them. I have often seen a chemist take a bottle of perfumery and name its ingredients from the sense of smell only. No one appeared surprised at the bluntness of my senses. When I spoke of this ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... some fellow Who, having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affect A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb Quite from his nature: he cannot flatter, he,— An honest mind and plain,—he must speak truth! An they will take it, so; if not, he's plain. These kind of ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... have disturbed you, Mrs. Merrydew," he said, with a gentle bluntness, "if I hadn't wanted to ask your advice before I saw Reddy. I'm keeping out of his way until I could see you. I left Nelly and her mother in 'Frisco. There's been some queer goings-on on the steamer coming home; ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... he read and re-read this brief epistle, "she does not despise my love, but she recognizes its hopelessness." With the usual bluntness of masculine perception he failed to see that it was impossible for her to ignore what he himself was accustomed to dwell upon at such dreary length. If he was profoundly convinced that there was no hope, she could scarcely condescend to suggest that there might be a glimmer. So the young man continued ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... resignedly and as a matter of course. Naturally slow in capacity, he had the bluntness of sensibility and phlegmatic patience of disposition which frequently distinguish men with sluggishly-working mental powers. He thanked the gentleman's steward with his usual quiet civility for granting him an interview, and took his departure with no appearance of unusual depression ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... chiefly with regard to two points. First, the awkwardness of the handle, which causes the glaziers here to use the tool bound round with wadding, or enclosed in a bit of india-rubber pipe; and, secondly, the bluntness of the "jaws" which hold the wheel, and which must be ground down (and are in universal practice ground down), before the ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... something forlorn in the man's attitude, and Cavanagh's heart softened. "Turn your horse into the corral and come to supper," he commanded, with Western bluntness; "we'll talk ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... the way her uncle acted while he listened—and afterward. He talked a good deal about Gale and the way she was treating her cousin. When Nan declared she never would have anything to do with him, her uncle told her with disconcerting bluntness to get all that out of her head, for she was going to marry him. When she protested she never would, Duke told her, with many harsh oaths, that she should never marry de Spain even if he had to kill him or get ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... do service where it owes an obligation! In the disguise of a serving-man, all his greatness and pomp laid aside, this good earl proffered his services to the king, who not knowing him to be Kent in that disguise, but pleased with a certain plainness, or rather bluntness in his answers which the earl put on (so different from that smooth oily flattery which he had so much reason to be sick of, having found the effects not answerable in his daughter), a bargain was quickly struck, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Sue's tone that her new and transcendental views lurked in her words; but all except their obvious meaning was, naturally, missed by Arabella. The latter, after evincing that she was struck by Sue's avowal, recovered herself, and went on to talk with placid bluntness about "her" boy, for whom, though in his lifetime she had shown no care at all, she now exhibited a ceremonial mournfulness that was apparently sustaining to the conscience. She alluded to the past, and in making some ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... of the host during the course of the story had not quite prepared him against the bluntness of this announcement, and his surprise vented itself in a sudden start. But immediately recovering his poise, he spoke ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... towards the road. They went to court about it, and he was called to account by the usual process of law. The plain, gruff old farmer, who seems all along to have been a man of strong sense and decided character, filed an answer, which is unsurpassed for bluntness of expression. It has no language of ceremony, but goes to the point at once. It has a general interest as showing, to how late a period the inhabitants of this neighborhood were exposed to Indian attacks, and what means of defence were resorted to by the Village worshippers. The document manifests ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... of these, is upon the whole very innocent: the longing for the enjoyment of domestic joys, so often interrupted by the absence of the husbands, is to be the means of putting an end to the calamitous war by which Greece had so long been torn in pieces. In particular, the honest bluntness of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... consulting his watch with Neale's bluntness in such matters. "Train's due in a minute or two," he said. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Constantine's dethronement was decreed, not because it was lawful, but because France required it, and England, for good reasons, could not let France bring it about alone: what Russia thought of the transaction, she soon let the whole world know with disconcerting bluntness. Petrograd not only withdrew her troops from the performance, but made short work of the "guarantee" and "protection" quibbles by roundly declaring that "the choice of the form of government in Greece, as well as its administrative organization, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... were in dreamland, Miss Barrett was keenly susceptible to the strong humanity of Browning's song, nor less keenly attracted by his strenuous and fearless outlook, his poetic practicality, and even by his bluntness of insight in certain matters. It was no slight thing to her that she could, in Mr. Lowell's words, say of herself and ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... however, there can be no doubt that personal odor tends to play a not inconsiderable part in sexual attractions and sexual repulsions. As a sexual excitant, indeed, it comes far behind the stimuli received through the sense of sight. The comparative bluntness of the sense of smell in man makes it difficult for olfactory influence to be felt, as a rule, until the preliminaries of courtship are already over; so that it is impossible for smell ever to possess the same significance in sexual attraction in man ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... company of de Spain's early associates for the event. It included Whispering Smith, whose visit to Sleepy Cat on this occasion was the first in years; George McCloud, who had come all the way from Omaha to join his early comrades in arms; Wickwire, who had lost none of his taciturn bluntness—and so many train-despatchers that the service on the division was crippled ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... nothing, but it occurred to the mountaineer, just as he was counting money from a stuffed purse, that it would perhaps be wiser to wait and consult Lescott in matters of sartorial selection. So, with incisive bluntness, he countermanded his order—and made an enemy. The shopkeeper, standing at the door of his basement establishment, combed his beard with his fingers, and thought regretfully of the fat wallet; and, a minute after, when two policemen came by, walking together, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... I have no inclination that way. I am willing to be friends with everybody, and nothing more with anybody." The sentences came with the cruel detachment of bullets; but, "Not again, not twice," was his uppermost thought. Any bluntness, any ruggedness, rather than another month like that of ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... said Bess, but the words were not ungently spoken, notwithstanding their bluntness. "Dunnot let us mak' it worse than it need be. Seth, lad, ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in time to hear his father's blundering, and, in his jovial humour, in his delight over the new conception of his father that he had acquired after the toast, he said, with a cheery bluntness: ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... Doa[u]b, who accordingly came out to welcome us to his territory; he embraced us in the Uzbeg fashion, telling us in eastern phraseology "to consider his dominion as our own, and that we might command all he possessed." After many compliments of this nature, he inquired with some bluntness whither we were bound and what our object was? We answered him, that we were proceeding to Koollum, and were anxious to get as much information as he would be good enough to afford us concerning so beautiful a portion of the globe, and we wished to survey its particular ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... in cigarette stains; his velvet jacket and his crimson sash; the many-flounced skirt and lace manta of his women, and their caressing intonations—the one musical utterance of the whole hard-voiced city. I suppose I had a boy's digestion and bluntness of taste in those days, for the combined odor of tobacco, burned paper, and garlic, which marked that melodious breath, did ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... about her. She'd come out all right if left alone. It was Mrs. Cranston and Miss Loomis to whom he delivered himself of the last mentioned. He liked them both, which was more than he did most people, for this AEsculapian countryman of Carlyle had much of that eminent writer's sharpness of vision and bluntness of speech together with even more of his contempt for the bulk of his fellow-men. "No, Mrs. Cranston," said he, "don't wait a day for her. Start just as soon as you are ready, and don't give a thought to this little flibberty ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... in the passages when I was dressed as a boy. Though he complimented me on my self-denial in making what he called "some sacrifice of beauty" to pass for a boy, "so that the audience can't say, 'Why, James must be a fool not to see she is a girl,'" he scolded me for my want of bluntness. ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... she don't weigh very heavy," said Jerry, in a shamefaced bluntness, as if he wronged the absent goddess through such crudities. "You can't seem to see anybody that's had the thoughts she has and the way she's got of putting 'em—you can't see 'em very big-framed or heavy, ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... difference of styles. Had I been to have told my thoughts on this occasion; instead of saying how Mr. H[arle]y was "treated by some persons," and "preserved from some unparalleled attempts"; I should with intolerable bluntness and ill manners, have told a formal story, of a com[mitt]ee[6] sent to a condemned criminal in Newgate, to bribe him with a pardon, on condition he would swear high treason against his master, who discovered ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... doubted. Olivares said to Buckingham, "You gave me some assurance and hope of the prince's turning catholic." The duke roundly answered that it was false. The Spanish minister, confounded at the bluntness of our English duke, broke from him in a violent rage, and lamented that state matters would not suffer him to do himself justice. This insult was never forgiven; and some time afterwards he attempted to revenge himself on Buckingham, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... a quaint turn of old English speech or by the force of its delight in rude bodily skill—for Davin had sat at the feet of Michael Cusack, the Gael—repelling swiftly and suddenly by a grossness of intelligence or by a bluntness of feeling or by a dull stare of terror in the eyes, the terror of soul of a starving Irish village in which the curfew was still ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... cannot "size up" so readily. He never saw the like of us before, and we are beyond his Teutonic frontier-like comprehension. He gives us up; he fails to solve the puzzle; he knows not how to unravel the mystery; and, with characteristic Teutonic bluntness, he advises us to push on through fifteen miles of rocks, sand, and darkness, to Wadsworth. The prospect of worrying my way, hungry and weary, through fifteen miles of rough, unknown country, after ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... others, who were too far behind to hear them. Lisle looked at his companion steadily. The man was engaged in a business that was regarded with general disfavor, but there was something he liked about him and he did not resent his bluntness. ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... adhered to it; and he was at no loss in clubs and other assemblies to overbear and silence, if not to confute, his censurers. Beside which, Hawkins had certain accomplishments which qualified him to be a favourite with Mr. Tyrrel. The bluntness of his manner and the ruggedness of his temper gave him some resemblance to his landord; and, as these qualities were likely to be more frequently exercised on such persons as had incurred Mr. Tyrrel's displeasure, than upon Mr. Tyrrel ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... with the young man's bluntness; she had no right to hold herself aloof from Mrs. Duncan's nephew. He must know how she had avoided him all these months, but he seemed too good-humored to resent it. He talked to her very pleasantly about the weather and the falls and ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... was a little shocked at her friend's bluntness, a little puzzled as to what lay behind her arguments. "You don't have to be a hungry spinster. There are other men besides Herbert that want to ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... on going again to the same place, and again she was obviously on the look-out. Horace grew more and more puzzled by her demeanour. And when the third day came, and once more Mrs. Errington called him to set forth to the Serpentine, he said to her, with a boy's bluntness—— ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... way. I know you are wrong, just as certainly as the people who believed the sun moved round the earth. The trouble is that I know it only with the same cold mental conviction, and therefore can be of no help to either of you. Pardon me for my bluntness: do you expect to marry Grace, should she become ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... we mean to speak with the bluntness and decision demanded by the circumstances. A committee of men, mature in years and solid in judgment, some of whom we can name, must be put in control of the campaign. Mr. Grayson must be kept within strict limits; he must take advice before delivering his speeches, and he must not be permitted ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... — N. bluntness &c adj.. V. be blunt, render blunt &c adj.; obtund^, dull; take off the point, take off the edge; turn. Adj. blunt, obtuse, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... coarseness and bluntness of her thoughts and the vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, though she had been brought up in ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the least—more likely six weeks," she said with kind bluntness. It was best he should ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... negotiator. Perhaps no other course could have been more effectual in securing success than this obvious indifference to it. In the prevalent condition of public feeling and of his own sentiments Mr. Adams easily assumed towards General Vives a decisive bluntness, not altogether consonant to the habits of diplomacy, and manifested an unchangeable stubbornness which left no room for discussion. His position was simply that Spain might make such a treaty as the United States demanded, or might take (p. 124) the consequences of her ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... the horror of youth at seeing its shy fastnesses of reserve laid open to indifferent feet. Divining, however, through his affection for her, that she was really more than pleasantly startled by his bluntness, he began to make everything smooth by saying: "There aren't many girls in Endbury who don't envy my little Lydia, I ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... with an air of dignity far superior to his usual bluntness and even rudeness of address, he slowly departed. Thoughts crowded, like a honey swarm, to this hive of mystery, nor could she throw off the impression which clung to her. She had been warned against revealing this communication, but at one time she ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... said, "I like your courage, your truth, and your bluntness. You Texans, or rather you Americans,—because the Texans are Americans,—have some of the ruder virtues which we who are of the Spanish and Latin blood now and then lack. You are only a boy, but you have in you the qualities that can make a career. The Texans belong ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... replied with the greatest good humor, "No, Mr. Dean; I will sing for you now, if you please." From this time he conceived the greatest esteem for her, and always behaved with the utmost respect. Those who knew Swift, took no offence at his bluntness of behavior. It seems Queen Caroline did not, if we may credit his words in the verses on his ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... with entire sincerity,—I said,—always feels himself in danger of two things, namely,—an affectation of bluntness, like that of which Cornwall accuses Kent in "Lear," and actual rudeness. What a man wants to do, in talking with a stranger, is to get and to give as much of the best and most real life that belongs to the two ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... bluntness, not hitherto used in American communications with the belligerents, marked this note of protest to Austria-Hungary. Demands were made for a denunciation of the submarine commander's act as "illegal and indefensible," for his punishment, and for reparation ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... impossible after these months of hopeless want to smell the rough, high-spiced sea victuals without lust, and his mouth watered with desire of the champagne. It was no less impossible to have assisted at the scene between Huish and the captain, and not to perceive, with sudden bluntness, the gulf where he had fallen. He was a thief among thieves. He said it to himself. He could not touch the soup. If he had moved at all, it must have been to leave the table, throw himself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson |
