"Brawny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a guard, but did condescend to wear his revolvers. He says that the first thing he saw as he entered the court room were six big, brawny cavalrymen, each one a picked man, selected for bravery and determination. Of course each trooper was armed with large government revolvers and a belt full of cartridges. He also saw that they were sitting near, and where they could watch every move of a man who answered precisely to ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... the thrilling work of felling a pine-tree to extend his father's clearing, they found the settler's son, a brawny fellow about Cyrus's age, in buckskin leggings and coon-skin cap, who wielded his axe with arms which were tough and knotted as pine limbs. He bawled to them in the forceful language of the backwoods, which to unaccustomed ears sounded a trifle barbaric, to ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... livery, and as I followed the lithe yet brawny figure along the corridor, I found myself considering critically his breadth of shoulder and the extraordinary thickness ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... Bull a-saying?" asked a brawny fellow, placing himself in front of the irate vestryman. "Look here, old fellow," he continued, "if you want to save a whole bone in your body, you had better slope, and never dare to talk again about hauling down the American flag in the city of ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... (the draw-bridge being down) Gallantly stalk'd the brawny Duke of Limbs, Bearing Johannes, of the shaven crown, Fame'd, when alive, for spoiling maids, and hymns; For mangling Pater-Nosters, and goose-pies, And telling sundry beads,—and ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... of Whitsunday of the year 1439, in the fairest and heartsomest spot in all the Scottish southland. The twined May-pole had not yet been taken down from the house of Brawny Kim, master armourer and foster father to William, sixth Earl of ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... unfortunate from street to street, and torturing, mutilating, drowning, and assassinating him! For what, in the name of Heaven? Because he breathed the air of his native land, and dared to pray to the God that made him; because he wanted work for his black and brawny arm, to support his cheerful black wife, and his ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... said he in a husky voice to his companion. Then, softly pushing his brawny arms under the dimpled form, he lifted it as tenderly as its mother could have done. Tom smoothed the clothing so as to cover the body as fully as possible. Hugh doffed his coarse cap and covered the mass of silken tresses that ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... before they went back to the school room several of the boys, Jack among the rest, were standing in front of the main building when Peter Herring, a big, brawny fellow with a disagreeable face and manner said brusquely to the ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... roads which tenaciously fought an uphill fight with encroaching working-class thoroughfares. Its inhabitants referred with pride to the fact that Baynham Street overlooked a railway, which view could be obtained by craning the neck out of window at risk of dislocation. A brawny man was standing before the open door of No. 11 as Mavis walked up ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... one of the pirates: a brawny, black-browed giant almost as large as himself, and decided to go for him when the time came. He whispered this to Carse; then, keeping his gaze on the man, ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... me git at him, cap'n!" came from Bahama Bill, who was being held back by Fred and Songbird. "I'll show him wot I think o' sech a measly scoundrel!" And he shook his brawny ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... figures, combining all ages and the most varied attitudes, and reproducing with singular vividness the Italian soldiers of adventure of his day. We see before us the long-haired followers of Braccio and the Baglioni; their handsome savage faces; their brawny limbs clad in the parti-coloured hose and jackets of that period; feathered caps stuck sideways on their heads; a splendid swagger in their straddling legs. Female beauty lay outside the sphere of Signorelli's sympathy; and in the Monte Oliveto cloister he ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... afterward he learned that it had been brought complete from St. Louis, where he had seen it in a saloon. It seemed a huge, glittering, magnificent monstrosity in that coarse, bare setting. Wide mirrors, glistening bottles, paintings of nude women, row after row of polished glasses, a brawny, villainous barkeeper, with three attendants, all working fast, a line of rough, hoarse men five deep before the counter—all these things constituted a scene that had the aspects of a city and yet was redolent with an atmosphere ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... said Jasper, who in the mean while, swaying to and fro his brawny bulk, had cleared the space round him, and stood resting his hands on the heavy armchair ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the great landowners of the neighbourhood. For a few days, he kept working here with all the strength he could muster, which was not sufficient, however, for the demands of the overseer. There were drains and ditches to be made, which required the use of brawny arms and a body untouched by ague, and the work being done by contract, the foreman was exacting, and saw at once that he was not up to the mark. He, consequently, got his discharge, and went home in a very sad mood. ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... destiny! What, I— Ho! I have found my use at last—What, I, I, the great twisted monster of the wars, The brawny cripple, the herculean dwarf, The spur of panic, and the butt of scorn— be a bridegroom! Heaven, was I not cursed More than enough, when thou didst fashion me To be a type of ugliness,—a thing By whose comparison all Rimini Holds itself beautiful? Lo! here I stand, A gnarled, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... errant arms! Spain's boasted pride, La Mancha's matchless knight, Whose valiant deeds outstrip pursuing fame! Wouldst thou to beauty's pristine state restore The enchanted dame, Sancho, thy faithful squire, Must to his brawny buttocks, bare exposed, Three thousand and three hundred stripes apply, Such as may sting and give him smarting pain: The authors of her change have thus decreed, And this is ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... handsomely when he was in cash himself; and was an honorary member of Barker's academy. Nay, when the guardsman was not forthcoming, who was standing for one of Barker's heroic pictures, Bayham bared his immense arms and brawny shoulders, and stood as Prince Edward, with Philippa sucking the poisoned wound. He would take his friends up to the picture in the Exhibition, and proudly point to it. "Look at that biceps, sir, and now look at this—that's Barker's masterpiece, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the better class. Was it knowledge such as M'sieu Ralph had? And the good-hearted home-making Mere scouted learning for women. Their business was cooking and keeping the house. But she decided she liked the lady the best, just as she liked M'sieu Ralph better than the brawny leathern- and fur-clad workmen. But the Mere had been very good and never ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... them. The beasts bellowed, the men cursed as they slipped and fell. All of the Pyrrans tugging on the lines weren't male, women were there as well. Shorter on the average than the men, they were just as brawny. Their clothing was varied and many-colored, the first touch of decoration Jason had seen on ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... now entered, in neglected attire, with the aspect of a thinker, but somewhat too rough-hewn and brawny for a scholar. His face was full of sturdy vigor, with some finer and keener attribute beneath. Though harsh at first, it was tempered with the glow of a large, warm heart, which had force enough to heat his powerful intellect through and through. He advanced ...
— The Intelligence Office (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his way to the office two persons conversing upon that important topic. He innocently eavesdrops. The individual who advocates the wearing of gloves is (of course) frivolous, fashionable, and feeble. His companion, who despises such vanities, is poor, though honest,—brawny and impregnable. It is wonderful how stupidly the kid-glove advocate reasons. The honest son of toil overwhelms him in a few moments. When a man talks so splendidly about the hard palm of labor being more useful to the world than the silken fingers of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... estimated that about twenty-two thousand immigrants had arrived in that year in the ports of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, of whom four thousand were Germans and the rest inhabitants of the British Isles. Fully one half of these British subjects were brawny Irishmen, often a turbulent lot, but always in demand for hard labor on the roads and canals which were projected in every part of the Union. Among these newcomers, however, were many undesirables. Not a few English parishes emptied their poorhouses by ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... convincing. With a graceful swaying movement she passed along the promenade, and even envy praised her. Her hand lay lightly on the arm of a brown stalwart native of the Indian hills, fierce and savage in attire. Against his wild picturesqueness and brawny strength, her perfectness of animal beauty, curbed and rendered delicate by her inner coldness, showed in fine contrast; and yet both were matched in the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of Franklin Poynter's arms, fainted quietly. Sandra shrieked piercingly. The four men stared, goggle-eyed. Temple and Teddy, as though by common thought, burrowed their faces into brawny shoulders. ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... Big and brawny Tashtu was nodding his head earnestly, but Robin seemed unconvinced. "Why," she said, "there isn't even anything about Wild Country in ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... his shirt,—bought with human blood, doubtless. The man was the black curse of slavery itself in the flesh, in his thought somehow, and he hated him accordingly. Our men of the Northwest have enough brawny Covenanter muscle in their religion to make them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... bows were knights in Arthur's reign, Twelve they, and twelve the peers of Charlemain; For bows the strength of brawny arms imply, Emblems of valour and of victory. Behold an order yet of newer date, Doubling their number, equal in their state; Our England's ornament, the Crown's defence, In battle brave, protectors ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... Why, the muscles in her arm wouldn't blush to be seen by the side of mine, and a woodcutter would have to cut deep into the forest before muscles stood out like these." And with a great laugh Stefan bared his brawny arms ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... a brawny Kentish man-at-arms ranged up beside him, his cloak thrown over his left arm, and his sword in his ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... unfingered, that the listening stillness, strained into pauses and waits, would again and again, for years, have kept distinct, she also wondered what she would eventually decide upon to present in gratitude. She would give something better at least than the brawny Victorian bronzes. This was precisely an instance of what she felt he knew of her before he had done with her: that she was secretly romancing at that rate, in the midst of so much else that was more urgent, all over the place. So much for her secrets with him, none of which really required ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... a sight to behold this family sit down to supper of an evening. The blacksmith would come in and seize little Jim in his brawny arms, and toss him up to the very beams of the ceiling, after which he would take little Molly on his knee, and fondle her, while "Old Moll," as he sometimes called his wife, spread the cloth and loaded the table with ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... scented grave! Or whether, sitting in the shepherd's shiel,[42] Thou hear'st some sounding tale of war's alarms; When at the bugle's call, with fire and steel, 50 The sturdy clans pour'd forth their brawny swarms, And hostile brothers met, to ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... through, Delaney, a brawny Irishman standing next to him, started to follow. He took one step. At the same instant Limber Jim's long legs took three great strides, and placed him directly in front of Delaney. Jim's right hand held an enormous bowie-knife, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... deep toned brazen gong sounded somewhere below; the trumpeters blew an ear-piercing note; and, at a gesture from the high priest, four of the brawny executioner-priests leaped forward, seized one of the Atlantean victims, hurled him to the stone platform and, in an unbelievably short interval, strapped the shrieking wretch by wrists, elbows, ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... oars, the fire was soon passed and left behind, and the cavern entered through a great rocky arch. At the foot of some natural steps the boat stopped. The beacon brands which had served to guide them were thrown hissing into the water, and Edward found himself lifted out of the boat by brawny arms and carried almost bodily into the depths of the cavern. Presently, however, he was allowed to walk, though still guided on either side, when suddenly at a turn of the rock passage, the cave opened out, and Edward found the famous Cateran, ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... him, we might almost say, with his legs apart, the hatchet high above his head, and every muscle tense and rigid, preliminary to a sweeping blow. He "took" him with a monstrous pile of logs on his brawny shoulder; he portrayed him resting for a moment in the midst of his toil; he even attempted to delineate him tumbling over one of the logs, and hurling a shoulder-load upon the ground; but he failed utterly in the last attempt, being quite destitute of comical ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... together. The Captain, an enormous brawny Celt, with superhuman whiskers, and a shock of the fieriest hair, had figged himself out, more majorum, in the full Highland costume. I never saw Rob Roy on the stage look half so dignified or ferocious. He glittered from head to foot, with dirk, pistol, and skean-dhu, and at least ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... oaths were so horribly coarse. Colin, who was asking local questions of the other men appeared to take it all as a matter of course. The men stopped their work to stare at Lady Bridget. They wore dirty corduroys hitched up with a strap over flannel shirts that were open at the neck and left their brawny breasts exposed. There were other loafers in flannel shirts, hitched up trousers and greasy felt or cabbage-tree hats, and there were two or three blacks of the demoralised type seen in coast townships. Now, one of the bullocks got loose and rushed blindly down the wharf, and Bridget shrieked ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... into her old attitude against the wall, her hands behind her, and was listening to the appeal of a brawny youth with a hunting-knife ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... bent his brawny back over the steering-oar, and the clumsy craft slowly turned toward the left-hand shore, where a long, low bank of green willows and cottonwoods gave welcome relief to the eyes. Upon the opposite side of the river Shefford saw a boat, similar to the one ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... spoke, he turned back his sleeve, distending the muscles of his brawny, hairy, tattooed arm, till ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... seized George Fielding, the muscles started on his brawny arm as he held it aloft with a heavy stone in it. The black was so hard pressed the last time, and so dead beat, that he could make but a short duck under the fish's back and come out at his tail. The shark did ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... let hang by the chain, And griped his hardy foe in both his hands, In his strong arms Tancred caught him again, And thus each other held and wrapped in bands. With greater might Alcides did not strain The giant Antheus on the Lybian sands, On holdfast knots their brawny arms they cast, And whom he hateth most, each ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... with no less than three enormous representations of the last day, where an innumerable host of sinners are exhibited as striving in vain to avoid the tangles of the devil's tail. The woes of several fat luxurious souls are rendered in the highest gusto. Satan's dispute with some brawny concubines, whom he is lugging off in spite of all their resistance, cannot be too much admired by those who approve this class of subject, and think such strange imbroglios in the least calculated to raise a sublime or a ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... fool!" he cried. "Don't mind him, lieutenant. He's only a day at the depot, sir. Sit still, you blackguard, or I'll smash you!"—this to Murray, who, half suffocated, was writhing in his effort to escape. "A—ch!" he cried, with sudden wrenching away of the brawny hand, "the beast has bitten me," and the broad palm, dripping with blood, was held up to ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... a runner. He was a good two inches shorter than Hugh, who lacked nearly that much of six feet. Calvert was heavily built—a dark, brawny chap, both quick and powerful. Hugh looked at him and for a moment hated him. Although he did not phrase it so—in fact, he did not phrase it at all—Calvert was his obstacle in ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... anything or everything required, from a shoestring to a complete outfit for a four months' journey across the plains. Beads of sweat clung to the merchants' faces as they rushed to and fro, filling orders. Brawny blacksmiths, with breasts bared and sleeves rolled high, hammered and twisted red hot metal into the divers forms necessary to ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... he saw a lonely white man in a miserable native hut thousands of miles from civilization, waiting, waiting, waiting for he knew not what fate. Again he saw monstrous men stalking along—men who towered ten feet or more, and who were big and brawny. All this passed through the mind of Tom in ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... by brawny arms And filled with treasure from the earth Has drifted on your current strong From out the hills ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... bursting from the combined effects of disappointment, humiliation, and grief, poor Ebony stood at the stern of the man-of-war, his arms crossed upon his brawny chest, and his great eyes swimming in irrepressible tears, a monstrous bead of which would every now and then overflow its banks and ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... tall, well-made, brawny man; his face was not exactly handsome, but it was bold and intellectual; his eye was bright and clear, and his forehead high and open—he was a man of immense muscular power and capable of great physical exertion—he was above forty-five years of age but still apparently in the prime of his ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... native garment round the loins, and a black beaver hat. But the most ludicrous personage of all, and one who seemed to be chief, was a tall, middle-aged man, of a mild, simple expression of countenance, who wore a white cotton shirt, a swallow-tailed coat, and a straw hat, while his black, brawny legs were totally ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... his well-bred hand, and smiled, On the cropped head of one who stood beside. Ah me! in sooth it was no ruddy child Nor brawny youth that thrilled the father's pride; 'Twas but a Mind that somehow had beguiled From soulless Matter processes that served For speech and motion and digestion mild, Content if all one moral purpose nerved, Nor recked thereby its spine ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... brawny Yorkshire Englishman, with a scar across one cheek, and, to add to the ugliness of his face, he had only one good eye. Over the other he always wore a ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... however, interferes not in the very least with his intention to "get on" by dint of his handsome face and brawny figure. On the very day of his wedding he goes to visit a lady of position, and also of devoutness, who is a great friend of the President and his wife, has been present at the irregular enquiry, and has done something for him. This quickly results in a regular assignation, which, however, is ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... but he seemed somewhat inclined to stoop. Nature had gifted him with an immense head and placed it clean upon his shoulders, for amongst the items of his composition it did not appear that a neck had been included. Arms long and brawny swung at his sides, and the whole of his frame was as strong built and powerful as a wrestler's; his body was supported by a pair of short but very nimble legs. His face was very long, and would have borne some slight resemblance to a human countenance, had the nose been more visible, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Christianly done. You cannot hurl a thunderbolt, or pull a trigger, or lisp a syllable, against those amiable monsters who with tenderest fingers are sticking pins all over you. So you shut fast the doors of your lips, and inwardly sigh for a good, stout, brawny, malignant foe, who, under any and every circumstance, will design you harm, and on whom you can lavish your lusty blows with a hearty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses—and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak—there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. The shepherd's dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?—and these pale men rarely stirred ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... A brawny man twice whirled the hissing blade about his head, and as he swung forward with both hands on the haft with a dull crash the wedge of tempered steel clove the softer metal. The great door tilted and went down, and Breckenridge ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... had consented to take charge of the Columbia players, and help them get in condition for the work ahead, when they were to meet the brawny cohorts of Clifford, and those ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... time when abolitionists were dangerously unpopular, a crowd of brawny Cape Cod fishermen had made such riotous demonstrations that all the speakers announced, except Stephen Foster and Lucy Stone, had fled from an open-air platform. "You had better run, Stephen," said she; "they are coming." ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... the right of it," volunteered a brawny youth known as Slim. "All you got to do is to take up a claim near a couple of big outfits with easy brands, then keep your iron hot and industrious. There's sure ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... were getting a bit above themselves, he was afraid, but they were seldom dangerous, seldom attacked one unprovoked. "Live and let live" was their motto. For all that they did get a trifle de trop sometimes; he himself had lost his temper when he awoke one morning to find a brawny rat sitting on his face combing his whiskers in mistake for his own (a pardonable error in the dark); and, determining to teach them a lesson, had bethought him of his old friend, the noble fert. He therefore sent home for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... at her children, and asked Althea if she did not think that they were looking very well. They certainly were, and Althea had to own it. 'But don't let them overdo their athletics, Aunt Julia,' she said. 'It is such a pity when girls get brawny.' ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... 1264, gave the English of Meath a great defeat upon the Brosna, where he that was not slain was drowned. Following the blow, he burned their villages and broke the castles of the stranger throughout Devlin, Calry, and Brawny, and replaced in power over them the McCoghlans, Magawleys, and O'Breens, from whom he took hostages according to ancient custom. Two years afterwards he repulsed Walter de Burgh at Shannon harbour, driving his men into the river, where many of them perished. At his death (A.D. ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... gladiators, marshaled in ceremonious procession, entered the arena. They swept round the oval space very slowly and deliberately, in order to give the spectators full leisure to admire their stern serenity of feature—their brawny limbs and various arms, as well as to form such wagers as the excitement of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... you, gentlemen," he said. He was a head taller than either, coatless and hatless, a lean but brawny figure in white crash trousers. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, displaying hard, sinewy forearms, browned by the sun and wind. "It's very good of you to come down. I'm sure we won't have to call out the British or American gunboats to preserve order ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... the school, this long and lank fifteen year old pedagogue faced sixty pupils from the "a, b, c, tot" to the brawny twenty-one-year-older, spoiling for a fight. When I assayed to take a seat, the half-sawed-off hind legs of the chair gave way, and I fell heels in air upon the dirty floor amid the yells and cat-calls of this ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... tent, pale and trembling, and informed that a great crowd of people were approaching. "I know why they are coming," said the prince, and he immediately sent his young son away on a message, that the child might not witness the cruel execution of his father. Two brawny barbarians entered the tent. As the prince was fervently praying, they smote him down with clubs, trampled him beneath their feet, and then plunged a poignard into his heart. The crowd which had followed ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... was the only one of the white company who could boast of such a pronounced adornment. As she looked round Durbeyfield was seen moving along the road in a chaise belonging to The Pure Drop, driven by a frizzle-headed brawny damsel with her gown-sleeves rolled above her elbows. This was the cheerful servant of that establishment, who, in her part of factotum, turned groom and ostler at times. Durbeyfield, leaning back, and with his eyes closed luxuriously, was ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... approached and placed his great right arm fraternally across Scraggs's skinny shoulder. Mr. McGuffey performed a similar office with his brawny left, and Captain Scraggs looked apprehensive, like a man who is about to be kissed by another ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... moment a score of dark figures appeared, coming swiftly from the direction of the light. The next instant the girls were surrounded, seized in brawny arms, and borne away, their gasping cries of terror being smothered ere they were ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... shepherds' homely bow'rs, The gates and streets; and hears, from ev'ry part, The noise and busy concourse of the mart. The toiling Tyrians on each other call To ply their labor: some extend the wall; Some build the citadel; the brawny throng Or dig, or push unwieldly stones along. Some for their dwellings choose a spot of ground, Which, first design'd, with ditches they surround. Some laws ordain; and some attend the choice Of holy senates, and elect by voice. Here some design a mole, while others there Lay deep foundations ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... violently, blew out their angry breath from their protruded muzzles, as if they were already aware of the nearly approaching danger. What terribly powerful brutes! what vast strength in their broad and brawny necks! It would have been a noble sight, had not their eyes the while expressed ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... Athenaeum a hundred dollars; and Cole's allegorical pictures, and his immense and dreary canvas, in which the prostrate shepherds and the angel in Joseph's coat of many colors look as if they must have been thrown in for nothing; and West's brawny Lear tearing his clothes to pieces. But why go on with the catalogue, when most of these pictures can be seen either at the Athenaeum building in Beacon Street or at the Art Gallery, and admired or criticised perhaps more justly, certainly not more generously, than in those ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... evidently by her two sons, and the bow is taken by her strapping daughter. One of her arms encircles the merchandise she intends to dispose of on board our vessel, while the other vigorously helps to propel the oar held by her brawny husband. All the while she is urging on her crew in her native language, with what may be commands, exhortations, or even blessings, but sounding to the unaccustomed Saxon ear very much like curses, which chase one another out of her capacious ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Blunt was tall and fair, a brawny young Englishman still, though the champagne of fashionable restaurants and racecourses was beginning to show itself in a slight puffiness in his handsome florid cheeks. He shook hands carelessly with Miss Clive, whom he called Cis, and declared himself dead beat. She hastened to hand him ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... labouring like his cousin GEORGE, With arms all bare and brawny, Within the blacksmith's glowing forge; He ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... windows you look down upon a sea, a kind of whirlpool, of melancholy grey mountains. Then there are the people, dark, bushy-bearded men, riding about like brigands, wrapped in green-lined cloaks upon their shaggy pack-mules; or loitering about, great, brawny, low-headed youngsters, like the parti-colored bravos in Signorelli's frescoes; the beautiful boys, like so many young Raphaels, with eyes like the eyes of bullocks, and the huge women, Madonnas or St. Elizabeths, as the case ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... a tall, brawny man, of great size and corresponding wisdom, who had been the village arbiter and general councillor for a generation. There was not a will made in Clinton Magna that he did not advise upon; not a bit of contentious business that he had not a ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... who had not to begin so early, was walking with her husband, as was her custom, even when the weather was not of the best, to see him fairly started on his day's work. It was with something very like pride, yet surely nothing evil, that she would watch the quick blows of his brawny arm, as he beat the cold iron on the anvil till it was all aglow like the sun that lighted the world—then stuck it into the middle of his coals, and blew softly with his bellows till the flame on the altar of his work-offering was awake ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... and fourth Satires he complains of the universal ignorance of our true interests, the ridicule which the world heaps on philosophy, and the hap-hazard way in which men prepare for hazardous duties. The contemptuous disgust of the brawny centurion at the (to him) unmeaning problems which philosophy starts, is vigorously delineated; [17] but some of his tableaux border on the ridiculous from their stilted concision and over-drawn sharpness ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... are familiar with the peculiar conformation of Cape Cod. It juts out into the Atlantic like an immense elbow, and, indeed, is understood to be modelled after the brawny arm of the gallant CHARLES SUMNER. Vessels passing between ports on the western and those on the southern coast of Massachusetts, are now obliged to make a wide detour in order to circumnavigate the Cape. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... the stranger on his prow; tall and broad-shouldered was he, with a torrent of ruddy hair floating in the wind. As Ulf turned to give an order to bale out the inrushing water, up rose a brawny arm, and a great spear flashed down from the high bow of the enemy and struck fairly between his shoulders. So sharp was the blow, so sudden, that Ulf pitched forward on one knee for just half a breath. But the spear fell clanging to the deck. ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... has a broad Slavic face, with prominent red cheeks. When she opens her mouth, it is tragical, but you cannot help thinking of a horse. She wears a blue flannel shirt-waist, which is now rolled up at the sleeves, disclosing her brawny arms; she has a carving fork in her hand, with which she pounds on the table to mark the time. As she roars her song, in a voice of which it is enough to say that it leaves no portion of the room vacant, the three musicians follow ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... which impressed the French people was the individual appearance of these samples of American manhood. Our men were tall and broad and brawny. They were young and vigorous. Their eyes were keen and snappy. Their complexions ranged in shade from the swarthy sun-tanned cheeks of border veterans to the clear pink skins of city youngsters. But most noticeable of all to the French people ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... painted a light-blue, a circle of green and orange was drawn round each eye, while serpentine stripes of black, white, and vermilion alternately were smeared on his forehead, and descended over his cheek-bones to his chin. His manly chest was similarly tattooed and painted, and round his brawny neck and arms hung innumerable bracelets and necklaces of human teeth, extracted (one only from each skull) from the jaws of those who had fallen by the terrible tomahawk at his girdle. His moccasins, and his blanket, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... contracted a mixed style, bearing traces of Hellenic and foreign influence alike." See Mahaffy, "Hist. of Greek Lit." vol. ii. ch. x. p. 257 (1st ed.); cf. Walt Whitman, "Preface to" original edition of "Leaves of Grass," p. 29—"The English language befriends the grand American expression: it is brawny enough and limber and full enough, on the tough stock of a race, who through all change of circumstances was never without the idea of a political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty; it has attracted the terms of daintier and gayer and ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon
... seen to be endowed with an incredible, uncanny rocking movement of its own. Looking beneath, they saw a huge cripple straining himself, Atlas-like, to heave it over. In spite of inferior legs, his brawny shoulders had almost accomplished the feat when he was unceremoniously interrupted. While he sprawled away, a mob of blacks rushed suddenly from the cover of some rocks, the leader of the assailants being Blue Shirt, who had painted his unclad ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of placing the huge monolith in position begins. Ropes are attached to one extremity, and while a line of brawny savages strains to raise this, others guide that end of the monolith destined for enclosure in the earth toward the pit which has been dug for its reception. Higher and higher rises the stone, until at last it sinks slowly into its earthy bed. It is held in an upright position while ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... notes the pipe uttered, You heard as if an army muttered; And the muttering grew to a grumbling; And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; And out of the house the rats came tumbling. Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, Cocking tails and pricking whiskers, Families by tens and dozens, Brothers, sisters, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... sensible when the first hope of rescue came. It seemed as if he had just kept up to sustain them till then, and when they no longer depended on him for encouragement, he sank. The moment came at last. He was drawn up perfectly insensible, together with a great brawny-armed hewer, a vehement Chartist, and hitherto his great enemy, but who now held him in his arms like a baby, so tenderly and anxiously. As soon as he saw Lady Lucy, he called out, "Here he is, Miss, I hope ye'll be able ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that there is no insight without force to back it,—bedizened in conceit and magnificent in littleness,—he is thrown on society, walking in a vain show of knowledge, and doomed to be upset and trampled on by the first brawny concrete Fact he stumbles against. A true method of culture makes drudgery beautiful by presenting a vision of the object to which it leads;—beware of the conceit that dispenses with it! How much better it is to delve ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... from that day forth. "I can't help pitying the beggar," said JOSKINS—"but I had to do it. You must make these fellows feel you're their master, or they'll never give you a moment's peace. Halloa!" he continued, as a brawny athlete sauntered into the room, "how's the boat going, BULLEN? Not very well, eh? Well, remember I'm ready to lend you a hand, and pull you through when things get desperate." The smile with which this offer was received had no effect upon my companion. He took ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... as heaps and heaps on 'em is. Nobody knows you are here but Bab and me, and nobody must know if you want to git off with a whole hide. I could git a hundred dollars by givin' you up, but you don't s'pose Jack Jennin's is agwine to do that ar infernal trick? No, sir,' and he brought his brawny fist down upon his knee with a force which made me tremble, while I tried to express my thanks for his great kindness. He was a noble man, Helen, while Aunt Bab, the colored woman, who nursed me so tenderly, and whose black, bony hands I kissed at parting, was as ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... dread contact with the mechanic's blouse, with the cotton gown of the grisette, or the velveteen vest of the titi of the Boulevards; he must even make up his mind to see his neighbour, dispensing with his upper garment, exhibit his brawny arms in shirt sleeves of questionable purity. If he dare encounter these little imaginary contaminations, he will find entertainment in the humours of the Boulevard du Temple; in the pantomimes of the Funambules—once the scene of poor Debureau's triumphs—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... progress. Mute, dignified, and majestic stood the unfortunate victim, occasionally stooping his elastic neck toward his persecutor, the tears trickling from the lashes of his dark humid eye, as broadside after broadside was poured into his brawny front. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... believe in 'ristercrats; I like the honest tan That lies upon the healthful cheek An' speaks the honest man; I like to grasp the brawny hand That labor's lips have kissed, For he who has not labored here Life's greatest pride ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... considering a curl of smoke or a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation, Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of the antique wars, Minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction, Their brawny limbs passing safe over charr'd laths, their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames; By the mechanic's wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person born, Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Grant White, from whom this account of the game has been derived, says that "it required great accuracy of eye, and steadiness of hand, much more than ten-pins." He states that, when a boy, he saw it played by "brawny" men, in Brooklyn, N.Y., and that the pieces then used were of brass. It is probable that the "pieces" used on Bridget Bishop's shovel-board were made of some heavy wood, as they were thrown into the fire for the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... from the rules of labor organizations, a sharp competitor with the wage-earner in the strife for bread. His blood has no lazy microbes to dam the current of its movement. Assure him of reasonable compensation, and his brawny arm is bared to the pick and the mattox. His ax and hoe and plow drag out wealth from mine ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... addressed some words to his tribe, whereupon two brawny fellows seized Cadurcis, and placed him again, in spite of his struggling, upon his pony, with the same irresistible facility with which they had a few nights before dismounted him. The little lord looked very sulky, but his position was beginning to get ludicrous. Morgana, pocketing ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Sheila before folks who would know what that meant. Mr. Mackenzie was evidently a most irascible old gentleman. Goodness only knew what sort of law prevailed in these wild parts; and to be seized at midnight by a couple of brawny fishermen, to be carried down to a projecting ledge of rock—! Had not Ingram already hinted that Mackenzie would straightway throw into Loch Roag the man who should offer to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... myself impulsively on my companion, grasped his big brawny shoulders, and with my face close to his I whispered, "Pete, I believe the slide occurred at ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... his waistcoat and draws his shirt over his head, and naked, trembling all over, and exhaling an odor of tobacco, spirits, and sweat, goes into the revision office, not knowing what to do with his brawny bare arms. ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... stared A sudden buffet from a brawny hand Made all my senses swim, and the room rang With laughter as upon the rush-strewn floor My feet slipped and I fell. Then a gruff voice Growled over me—"Get up now, John-a-dreams, Or else mine host must find another drawer! Hast thou not heard us ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... for an interview which could not but take place. He passed me, however, without appearing to notice my existence. He came so near as almost to brush my arm, yet turned not his head to either side. My nearer view of him made his brawny arms and lofty stature more conspicuous; but his imperfect dress, the dimness of the light, and the confusion of my own thoughts, hindered me from discerning his features. He proceeded with a few quick steps along the road, but presently darted to one side and disappeared ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... the Pancration.—Athletics, then, are a means to an end and should not be tainted with professionalism. True, as we wander about the Academy we see heavy and over brawny individuals whose "beauty" consists in flattened noses, mutilated ears, and mouths lacking many teeth, and who are taking their way to the remote quarter where boxing is permitted. Here they will wind hard bull's hide thongs around their hands and wrists, and pummel one another ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... for California—as was all the world just then—and that the Mormon was, after all, not so strong in his new faith as to resist the universal golden lure. His design in taking the squatter with him might be merely of a secular character—having for its object the securing of a partner, in whose brawny arms the wash-pan and rocker might be handled to advantage. That they whom we sought were gone with the caravan, we were soon satisfied. Holt was too marked a man to have escaped observation, even in a crowd of rough squatters like himself; but more than one eye had rested upon ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... armed and waiting, Hurled the pine-cones down upon him, Struck him on his brawny shoulders, On his crown defenceless struck him. "Death to Kwasind!" was the sudden ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... at the jury: "He was still the big, strong, able-bodied man that you had knocked down with your brawny fist, eh?" ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... Ernest Wilton came up and stood by the side of Mr Rawlings, while Seth was rubbing the boy's bared chest vigorously with his brawny hand to hasten the restoration of the circulation; and at that moment Sailor Bill opened his eyes—eyes that were expressionless no longer, but with the light of reason in their hidden intelligence—and fixed his gaze on the young engineer as if he recognised ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... take place till sexual attachments begin to obtain. And the case is the same in quadrupeds; among whom, in their younger days, the sexes differ but little: but, as they advance to maturity, horns and shaggy manes, beards, and brawny necks, etc., etc., strongly discriminate the male from the female. We may instance still farther in our own species, where a beard and stronger features are usually characteristic of the male sex: but this sexual ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White |
