"Forthright" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... girls. She didn't know whether Dick was worth millions or whether he was running a cabaret because he was hard up, and she cared less. She always followed her heart. Fancy the situation: Dick the uncatchable, and Paula who never flirted. They must have sprung forthright into each other's arms, for inside the week it was all arranged, and Dick made his call on me, as if my decision meant anything one way or ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... conducts himself at home and abroad, and how, in his native town, he delivers his mind on sacred things, and profane. In New York, for instance, or in Turabu for that matter, he could say in plain forthright speech what he thought of Family, Church or State, and no one would mind him. But where these Institutions are the rottenest existing he will be minded too well, and reminded, too, of the fate of those ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the scale of merit. But a style which is indefatigably lively, telling, and picturesque through six large volumes of everyday experience, which deals with the whole matter of a life, and yet is rarely wearisome, which condescends to the most fastidious particulars, and yet sweeps all away in the forthright current of the narrative,—such a style may be ungrammatical, it may be inelegant, it may be one tissue of mistakes, but it can never be devoid of merit. The first and the true function of the writer has been thoroughly performed throughout; and though the manner of his utterance may be ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... wave-maned steed: and the wise of the princes 1400 Went stately his ways; and stepp'd out the man-troop, The linden-board bearers. Now lightly the tracks were All through the woodland ways wide to be seen there, Her goings o'er ground; she had gotten her forthright Over the mirk-moor: bore she of kindred thanes The best that there was, all bare of his soul, Of them that with Hrothgar heeded the home. Overwent then that bairn of the athelings Steep bents of the stones, and stridings full narrow, Strait paths nothing pass'd over, ways all uncouth, ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... but simply by a tacit agreement to ignore their claims: so that the true insight they were based on is too often buried under them. The hypostasis of philosophical terms is an abuse incidental to the forthright, unchecked use of the intellect; it substitutes for things the limits and distinctions that divide them. So physics is corrupted by logic; but the logic that corrupts physics is perhaps correct, and when it is moral dialectic, it is more important than physics itself. Mr. Russell's ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... sobering him a little. Claire was amazed to find that she did not feel indignant. His tone was offensive, but at least it was forthright. Besides, she had known instinctively that some day he would force the issue, and she was rather glad to get it settled. And she began to hope that she could persuade him skilfully against his warped convictions. She was trembling inwardly, too, at the thought that she might ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... assuming that she was not talking to idiots and cretins, but to men and women of mature minds—so she could speak as she thought in a forthright manner. She inveighed against the double standard. When someone in the auditorium asked what she meant by the single standard she replied, she meant sexual expression and experience for man and woman on an equal footing ... the normal living ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... The enlisted man's credentials are shown to be bona fide. But he has had his pocket picked, or has lost his wallet, or has just missed the train that would have carried him back from his leave on time, and he doesn't know what to do. For any officer to brush-off a forthright request for aid or advice under such circumstances is an unofficerly act. Likewise, if one suspects, just from appearances, that the man is in trouble and somewhat beyond his depths, it will be found that, far ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... away the blackbird swept, And out from the brake and towards me a naked man there crept, And straight I rode up towards him, and knew his face for one I had seen in the hall of the Hundings ere its happy days were done. I asked him his tale, but he bade me forthright to bear him away; So I took him up behind me, and we rode till late in the day, Toward the cover of the wild-wood, and as swiftly as we might. But when yet aloof was the thicket and it now was moonless night, We stayed perforce for a little, ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... now was but weak with her prison and the sudden light, and the hope and fear of her purpose of bewailing her story, sat her down on the stair there, almost, as it were, 'twixt home and hell, till her heart came back to her and the tears began to flow from her eyes. Forthright came back Aloyse, bearing a white loaf and a little pitcher of milk on a silver serving-dish; she laid them down, unlocked the door into the garden, and thrust Goldilind through by the shoulders; then she turned and took up ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... Someone says, (I know his name, no matter)—so much less! Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged. There burns a truer light of God in them, In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, 80 Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine. Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know, Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me, Enter and take their place there sure enough, 85 Though they come back and cannot tell the world. My works are ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... was not an easy thing to sever the connection which had been so strangely established between herself and this good friend, who seemed each moment to be less the simple mountaineer she had once believed him to be. Western he was, forthright and rough hewn, but he had shown himself a man in every emergency—a candid, strong man. Her throat filled with emotion, but she ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... present at this concert, and there is a vivid image before us of our son, a tall, powerful figure in evening dress, standing on the platform in front of the choir, his eager face now following the conductor's baton, now glancing at the music-score, now looking in his forthright way at the audience. The reception that greeted him when he stepped on to the platform must have thrilled every fibre of his being; another rapturous outburst of cheers acclaimed him as he retired to his place in the choir. Those cheers, loud, shrill and clear, with ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... its waning. It was nearly six o'clock when the door slowly opened and Aholibah entered. She was alone. Her scarlet plumage was wet, and she was painted like a Peruvian war-god. She did not appear so brilliant a bird of paradise—or elsewhere—as at the aviary across the water. Yet her gaze was as forthright as ever. She sat on a divan between two domino parties, and was hardly noticed by the fanatics of that bony diversion. Recognizing Ambroise, she made a sign to him. It was some minutes before he could reach her table; he ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... make itself a nuisance to people of every other faith. The Jew not only does not bid for converts, but discourages them by imposition of hard conditions, and the Moslem True Believer's simple, forthright method of reducing error is to cut off the head holding it. I don't say that this is right; I say only that, being practical and comprehensible, it commands a certain respect from the impartial observer ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Ballin. But the note of color runs through the school and one hardly needs to name individual men. Whether our landscapists glaze and scumble with the tonalists, or use some modification of the impressionist hatching, it is for the sake of color; and even our most forthright and dashing wielders of the big brush often achieve a surprising power ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... however brilliant his surrounding invention may be, the purpose will always be firmly implicit in the central subject. Some of the early epics manage to do without any conspicuous added invention designed to extend what the main subject intends; but such nobly simple, forthright narrative as Beowulf and the Song of Roland would not do for a purpose slightly more subtle than what the makers of these ringing poems had in mind. The reality of the central subject is, of course, to be understood broadly. It means that ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... neglected the elders and hast dissipated thy moneys and the moneys of the monarchy, and thou hast lavished all thy treasure upon wilfulness and carnal pleasuring." Zayn al-Asnam, awaking from the slumber of negligence, forthright accepted his mother's counsel and, faring forth at once to the Diwan,[FN15] he entrusted the management of the monarchy to certain old officers, men of intelligence and experience. But he acted on this wise only after Bassorah-town was ruined, inasmuch as he had ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... front oblivion; and because I failed, And all my rhymes were gawky, shambling camels, Or else obscene, blue-buttocked apes, I'm doomed To lackey it for things such as I've made, Till one of them crunches my backbone with his teeth, Or knocks my wind out with a forthright kick Clean in the midriff, crumpling up in death The hunched and stunted body that was me— John, the apostle of the Perfect Form! Jerusalem! I'm talking like a book— As you would say: and a bad book at that, A maundering, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... visioned Life as it might be, And from his dream forthright a picture grew, A painting all the people thronged to see, And joyed therein — till came the Man Who Knew, Saying: "'Tis bad! Why do ye gape, ye fools! He painteth ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... meeting-house, it has become glorified by our men of letters. John Fiske and other historians have celebrated it in some of the most brilliant pages of our political writing; and that citizen literature, so deeply characteristic of us, found in the plain, forthright, and public-spirited tone of town-meeting discussions its keynote. The spectacular debates of our national history, the dramatic contests in the great arena of the Senate Chamber, the discussions before huge popular audiences in the West, have maintained the civic point of view, have developed ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... leap upward, Forthright my planets roll, And still the man-child is not born, The summit of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... stature, and of rather spare habit of body, alert, compact and vigorous, he carried himself with a half-military self- respect, redeemed from aggressiveness by an open candor of face and the pleasant, forthright gaze of kindly blue-gray eyes. In spite of a certain gravity of mien, his eyes seemed wont to smile upon occasion, as witnessed divers little wrinkles at the corners. He was smooth- shaven, except for a well-trimmed dark mustache; the latter offering a distinct contrast to the color of his hair, ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... glowing coal; And the redness ran in the mass and burrowed within like a mole, And copious smoke was conceived. But, as when a dam is to burst, The water lips it and crosses in silver trickles at first, And then, of a sudden, whelms and bears it away forthright: So now, in a moment, the flame sprang and towered in the night, And wrestled and roared in the wind, and high over house and tree, Stood, like a streaming ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of swords. It shows how easily Browning, had he so chosen, could have stirred the national feeling with his songs. The Home-Thoughts from Abroad belongs, in its simple directness, its personal and forthright fervour of song, to this section of the volume. With the two pieces now known as Home-Thoughts from Abroad and Home-Thoughts from the Sea, a third, very inferior, piece was originally published. It is now more appropriately included with Claret and Tokay (two capital little ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... gentle, frail little body also joined our circle, adding one more pair of eyes to those whose scrutiny must have been somewhat trying to the bride. To meet these blunt, forthright folk at such a table without betraying amusement or surprise, required tact, but the New Daughter succeeded in winning them all, even Mary, the cook, who ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... himself on the ground and lay there weeping and shivering. When the Sultan saw his condition and heard his story, the vein of rage started out between his eyes[FN37] and he turned to his body-guard who stood before him, forty white slaves, smiters with the sword, and said to them, "Go down forthright to the house built by the son of Khakan and sack it and raze it and bring to me his son Nur al-Din with the damsel; and drag them both on their faces with their arms pinioned behind them." They replied, "To hear is to obey;" and, arming themselves, they set out for the house of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... stories I am indebted to the Rev. J. Howard Melish, D.D. whose forthright denunciations of political corruption in Cincinnati were further "shots ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick |
