"Plain-spoken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... misfortunes of this admirable hero. But take Hippolitus out of his poetic fit, and I suppose he would think it a wiser part, to set the saddle on the right horse, and chuse rather to live with the reputation of a plain-spoken honest man, than to die with the infamy of an incestuous villain.[1] In the mean time we may take notice, that where the poet ought to have preserved the character as it was delivered to us by antiquity, when he should have given us the picture of a rough young ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... theology; I may differ from the preacher in some things, and listen doubtfully to others. But I know of no modern sermons at once so suggestive and so inspiriting, with reference to the whole range of Christian duty. He is fresh and original without being recondite: plain-spoken without severity; and discusses some of the exciting topics of the day without provoking strife or lowering his tone as a Christian teacher. He delivers his message, in fact, like one who is commissioned to call men off from trifles and squabbles, and conventional sins and follies, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... public-house habitue, are entirely dominated by the cathedral clique. He may have been a bad authority, this doddering old septuagenarian, mouthing his pint of beer, but he entertained us during the half-hour of a passing shower with many plain-spoken opinions about many things, including subjects as wide apart as ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... and I felt at home with them, though I had to bear with roughnesses from one or two of the more venerable dames, which were not quite proper to good breeding. Old Lady Kane, great-aunt of the Marquis of Edbury, was particularly my tormentor, through her plain-spoken comments on my father's legal suit; for I had to listen to her without wincing, and agree in her general contempt of the Georges, and foil her queries coolly, when I should have liked to perform Jorian DeWitt's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... known aught of Harry, nor he of me, six months before; and that I deserved whipping for fancying he could mean anything serious. And so, between a kind of fear and a good deal of pride, I tried, as I have said, to avoid any private talk with him; and I succeeded pretty well. But Harry's blunt, plain-spoken ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... seemed her plain-spoken, cheery self, intent only on making the most of this genial hour in the autumn of her life, and yet she was watching over a hope that she felt might make her last days her best days. She was almost praying ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... pressing forward, 'if my Lord of Douglas be plain-spoken, bethink you that it is no cause for casting aside this one hope of freedom that we have sought so long. If you have the heart to strike for Scotland, ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... number, were left alone in New York City. Helen, who went in for art and music, kept the little flat uptown, while Margy just out of a business school, obtained a position as a private secretary and Rose, plain-spoken and businesslike, took what she called a "job" in a ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... disposed to speak the truth than those more civilized of the valley itself. 'They have not yet learned the value of a lie,' said he, with the greatest simplicity and sincerity, for he was a very honest and plain-spoken man. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the president's room and boasted of what he had done. The delighted head of the business gave him a cigar and invited him to tell the story. The salesman betrayed such egotism that his employer was disgusted. The president was plain-spoken. He warned the successful salesman against getting a ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... thanked him and, taking up the bottle, refilled their glasses. Then, catching the dull, brooding eye of Mr. Stobell as that plain-spoken man sat in a brown study trying to separate the serious from the jocular, he drank success to their search. He was about to give vent to further pleasantries when he was stopped by the mysterious behaviour of Mr. Chalk, who, first laying a finger on his lip to ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... McClure was not without plain-spoken remonstrance against his contemplated act of inhumanity. In the prosecution of his spiritual functions Neville Trueman had free access to the people of the town of Niagara, many of whom were members, of his church or congregation. Among these a large ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... learned at Funchal that His Highness was a villanously bad character, and he positively refused to permit him to visit or to meet the lady passengers on board his ship. He was an honest, upright, and plain-spoken man. He stated that the Pacha was not a suitable person ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... he had renounced all his titles, all his feudal rights, and had assumed, as far as possible, the manners of a blunt, plain-spoken man, was still, next to the king, in the enjoyment of the richest revenue in France. He could by no possibility place himself upon a social equality with his boot-black. He manifested no disposition to divide ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Hudson for governor by acclamation. Kelley was a large farmer of respectable character and talents, who had served with credit in the State Senate and supported Van Buren in 1848 with the warmth of a sincere Free-soiler. He was evidently a man without guile, and, although modest and plain-spoken, he knew what the farmer and workingman most wanted, and addressed himself to their best thought. It was generally conceded that he would poll the full ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... be so rough," Thorpe declared, with spontaneous contrition. Upon the instant, however, he perceived the danger that advantage might be taken of his softness. "I'm a plain-spoken man," he went on, with a hardening voice, "and people must take me as they find me. All I said was, in substance, that I intended to be of service to you—and that that ought ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Barnaby Final, that was as decent a man as ever stepped in leather—he wanted her: but Benden promised a trifle better in way of money, and Master Hall, like an ass as he was, took up wi' him. There's no end to men's doltishness [foolishness]. I'm homely, [plain-spoken] you'll say, and that's true; I love so to be. I never did care for dressing my words with all manner o' frippery, as if they were going to Court. 'Tis a deal the best to speak plain, and then folks know what ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... and that quaint, misshapen room, seemed to have exchanged their stern and awful character for something wonderfully pleasanter to me, notwithstanding the unpleasantness of the personal criticism to which the plain-spoken lady ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... and cotton planter in middle life, he had experienced most that was common to his fellows and had gained a prestige which in their admiring eyes surpassed that of all other men since Thomas Jefferson. Brave and generous, plain-spoken and sometimes boisterous, he embodied most of the qualities that compelled admiration throughout the Mississippi Valley. No matter what Webster or Calhoun or even Clay said of "Old Hickory," it was not ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... of tougher fibre than one's mother, and one would not feel the same scruples, perhaps, in using him professionally as material in a novel; still, while you are employing him as bait,—you see I am honest and plain-spoken, for your characters are baits to catch readers with,—I would follow kind Izaak Walton's humane counsel about the frog you are fastening to your fish-hook: fix him artistically, as he directs, but in so doing I use him as ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the desert; all the same, he continued to tell of fetid, stale, putrid wells, and of the haunting terror with which the Saharian starts in the morning lest he should find no water at the nearest watering-place, only a green scum fouled by the staling of horses and mules I Owen was as plain-spoken as Shakespeare, so Harding said once, defending his friend's use of the word "sweat" instead of "perspiration." There was no doubt the language was deteriorating, becoming euphonistic; everybody was a euphonist except Owen, who talked of his belly openly, blurting ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... fame as a warrior. The returning victorious army was met, in Oriental fashion, by a triumphal chorus of women, with their shrill songs, accompanied by the dissonant noises which do duty for music to Eastern ears. The words of their chant were startlingly and ominously plain-spoken, and became more emphatic and insulting in Saul's ears, because they were sung by two answering bands, one of which rang out, 'Saul hath slain his thousands,' while the other overtopped them by pealing ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... who, on the plea of the needle-like sharpness and single-heartedness which sometimes distinguishes her fifteen years, was permitted to be more plain-spoken and ruder than her sisters; "I hate to hear you telling of doing everything you like with such enjoyment. I think, if you had been a man, you would have been an abominable fellow, and you are only harmless because you are ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... plain-spoken to express much concern for the loss of his grammar learning on this occasion; but after modestly hinting that he had seen many men who could not fill their father's bonnet, though no one had been suspected of wearing their father's nightcap, he inquired "whether Lord Dalgarno had consented to ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... crust which was to cover the tender chicken boiling in the pot, while in the oven bubbled and baked the custard pie, remembered as Katy's favorite, and prepared for her coming by Helen herself—plain-spoken, blue-eyed Helen—now out in the strawberry beds, picking the few luscious berries which almost by a miracle had been coaxed to wait for Katy, who loved them so dearly. Like her mother, Helen had wondered how the change would impress her bright little sister, for she remembered well that even to ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... been reading Ferrers Court, by JOHN STRANGE WINTER, author of Bootle's Baby and a number of other novelettes of like kind. He says that he is getting just the least bit tired of Mignon, and the plain-spoken girls, and the rest of them. By the way, he observes that it seems to be the fashion, judging from the pages of Ferrers Court, in what he may call "Service Suckles," to talk continually of a largely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... by himself as plain-spoken, and by other people as offensively rude, said that I had never really been as good-looking as that, with all possible allowances made, and any way he wanted a photograph and not a memorial card. I took a firm stand, and said that if he wasn't satisfied with that one he could go without altogether, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... Captain Osborne sneered. He hesitated, glowering in the difficulty of thinking. "See here, Monsieur Duchemin—since you prefer that style—I'm not going to beat about the bush with you. I'm a plain man, plain-spoken. They tell me you reformed. I don't know anything about that. It's my conviction, once a thief, always a thief. I may ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... that he could remember only two events in the West before that time: the coming of Mrs. Aydelot and the grasshopper raid. With Leigh in his home, he almost forgot that he had ever been sad-hearted. This loving little child was such a constant source of interest and surprise. She was so innocently plain-spoken and self-dependent sometimes, and such a strange little dreamer of dreams at other times. She would drive a shrewd bargain for whatever she wanted—some more of Uncle Jim's good cookies, or a ride all alone on the biggest pony, or a two-days' visit at the Aydelot ranch, scrupulously rendering ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... "But they are curt, plain-spoken, practical-in everything antipodal to the knot of hapless men, who, unable from some defect or morbidity to help on the real movement of their nation, are fain to get their bread with tongue and pen, by retailing to 'silly women,' 'ever learning and never coming ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... a straight course—can you skipper?—when you can get there by tacking. Here: I'm a plain-spoken guy, let me act as an interpreter. Mr. Lanyard: this giddy association of malefactors here present has the honour to invite you to become a full-fledged working member and stockholder of equal interest with the rest of us, participating in all benefits of the organization, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... his own inability to resist her. He knew that she spoke on the side of his secret hope. He knew that a debate which had long gone on within himself, to himself unavowed, had at length to find its plain-spoken issue. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... keynote; but history, natural and metaphysical science, poetry, and art, each in their turn join in the harmony, independent, yet ministering to the whole. If from the poem itself we could be for a single moment in doubt of the reality and dominant place of religion in it, the plain-spoken prose of the Convito would show how he placed "the Divine Science, full of all peace, and allowing no strife of opinions and sophisms, for the excellent certainty of its subject, which is God," is single perfection above all other sciences, "which are, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of his breeding Jan was, as a matter of fact, unique among hounds. Apart from this, no hound of his size or splendid development had ever before been seen upon Regina station platform. The people of the West are a forthright, plain-spoken, and enterprising folk, and before he left the station Captain Arnutt was offered fifty dollars for Jan. Nothing damped by the captain's smiling refusal of his offer, the ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... sharp sense of the humorous, and in his enjoyment of a comical situation he liked company. His heart was stirred to put his expedition in its true light before this man who was so honest and plain-spoken. "Mr. Sadler," said he, "if you will take it as a piece of confidential information, and not intended for the general ear, I will tell you what sort of a holiday my wife and I are taking. We are on a wedding-journey." And then he told the story of ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... laughing spite of herself, "you are plain-spoken." I was in the vein now, did not say an improper word, but gave baudy hints, smutty suggestions about the dullness of sleeping alone, of the results of wives being away from husbands, etc., till her eyes twinkled, and she laughed much. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... "You are plain-spoken, indeed," the Major replied. "The boldness with which you recount your shams is most surprising. ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... much, I think I must quote the next sentence, because it involved a question which was often discussed in the spring of 1915 at the tea-parties. That was a rather plain-spoken article which I had written in The Spectator in regard to President Wilson's policy of neutrality on a moral issue. I spoke frankly, and my words were not unnaturally resented by those of Mr. Wilson's friends who were personal admirers and ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... mounting a tub at Deptford, were to Philippicize, or entertain this motley auditory with speeches against Catiline or Verres, straightway the Superintendent of the X division, with a posse of constables at his heels, dismounts the patriot orator from his tub, and hands him over to a plain-spoken business-like justice of the peace, who regards an itinerant Cicero in the same unsympathizing point of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... folly of proceeding farther, conclude that I knew more about Jim Hosley than his man, Smith, return home and wait to see me again before going ahead. But he didn't seem to realize that I was only joking. I was so plain-spoken about it—put the thing so broadly—that I supposed any sane man would understand I was merely stating my loyalty to Jim in terms of sarcasm. All jokes to fathers-in-law of the Tescheron inflammable character should, however, ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... first place, a few specimens of the hatred which animates the champions of Swaraj—of Indian independence, or, at least, of Colonial self-government. The Hind Swarajya is nothing if not plain-spoken:— ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... another batin'?" Samuel grinned. He stayed, and played with them all afternoon, in spite of Jane's plain-spoken requests for him to be off. Before he left he had a good tea in the kitchen, and got sixpence from Lull, who had a tender heart for the poor. After that he came frequently. He said his mother was dying, and wrung Lull's heart ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... laws.' If this were not allowed moral progress must come to a standstill. So I say, 'instruct! instruct!' The knowledge must come sooner or later; let it come wholesomely. A girl must find out for herself if she is not taught, and she may, in these plain-spoken times, obtain a wholly erroneous theory of life and morality from a newspaper report which she reads without intention in an idle moment while enjoying her afternoon tea. We are in a state of transition, we women, and the air ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... are at a loss to understand this confession of Paul and feel obliged to save his honor. That the chosen vessel of Christ should have had the law of sin in his members seems to them incredible and absurd. They circumvent the plain-spoken statement of the Apostle by saying that he was speaking for the wicked. But the wicked never complain of inner conflicts, or of the captivity of sin. Sin has its unrestricted way with them. This is Paul's very own complaint ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... poor stuff that no one was anxious to pay for; mostly in essay form expressing my own opinions on various important subjects. But it didn't go. I was complaining of my bad luck to a plain-spoken woman in charge of a circulating library, and she gave me grand advice. 'No one cares a snap for your opinions. You must tell something that folks want ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... you get this story told, if you don't quit talkin'," said the plain-spoken Maggie. "Did the minister have a ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... farming. So when a nation becomes poor and bankrupt, it is its own fault; that nation has broken the laws of political economy which God has appointed for nations, and its ruin is God's judgment, God's plain-spoken opinion again of the sins of extravagance, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... too small for such unequivocal condemnation. The following superlative summary is put into the mouth of a minor character, but I think it is fairly representative of Remington's later attitude. "But of all the damned things that ever were damned," says the plain-spoken Britten, "your damned shirking, temperate, sham-efficient, self-satisfied, respectable, make-believe, Fabian-spirited Young Liberal is the utterly damnedest." As a commentary, I find this exaggerated; and although it is in the ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... polite letter?" asked inquisitive Maggy Ann, and Grizel assured her that it was most polite. "I hardly expected it," said the plain-spoken dame, "for I'm thinking by their manner it's more than can be ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... G. K. Chesterton, who shows all the physical and mental stigmata of a Bavarian. Shaw's plays, which once had all England by the ears, were set down as compendiums of the self-evident by the French, a realistic and plain-spoken people, and were sniffed at in Germany by all save the middle classes, who correspond to the intelligentsia of Anglo-Saxondom. But in America, even more than in England, they were viewed as genuinely satanic. We shall never forget, indeed, the tremulous manner in which American audiences ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... people holding millions of their fellow-beings in the most horrible slavery, while they prate and vaunt of liberty until all men turn in loathing from the sickening folly, what can be expected?" (Vol. v, p. 31.) Napier possessed to a very eminent degree the virtue of being plain-spoken. Elsewhere (iii, 450), after giving a most admirably fair and just account of the origin of the Anglo-American war, he alludes, with a good deal of justice, to the Americans of 1812, as "a people who (notwithstanding the curse of black slavery ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... were uncommonly plain-spoken," Phipps acknowledged, "but what's the odds? You're not a coward, Dredlinton; neither am I. Neither is Skinflint Martin, nor Stanley. Chuck letters like that on the fire, as they have, and keep cheerful. The streets of London are the safest ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... effort I restrained my words, eager to proclaim my service, yet comprehending instantly that I dare not even trust this plain-spoken girl with the truth. She respected the men, sympathized with the sacrifices of Washington's little army, contrasted all they endured with the profligacy of the English and Hessian troops, and yet remained ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... of it. No wonder you are shocked. A fine state of affairs, isn't it, when a plain-spoken, pleasant-mannered gentleman, such as I surely am,—a university graduate, by all the gods, the nephew of a United States Senator, and acknowledged to be the greatest exponent of scientific poker in this territory,—should ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... the most important instance we have of the deliberate application of a mechanical philosophy to human affairs. Leaving out all question of the Fathers' ideals, looking simply at the bias which directed their thinking, is there in all the world a more plain-spoken attempt to contrive an automatic governor—a machine which would preserve its balance without the need of taking human nature into account? What other explanation is there for the naive faith of the Fathers in the "symmetry" of executive, ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... low voice, and pale earnest face of the plain-spoken invalid were such that it would have been impossible for any one to be offended with him, much less La Certe, whose spirit of indignation it was almost impossible to arouse. He winced a little at the home-thrust, however, because he knew ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... said the girl, who appeared, like so many people in time of war, to be of a simple, plain-spoken nature; "you'll find her in the garden." And she let the old lady ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "She is very plain-spoken, is my little girl, and strangers can't understand her sometimes. Can ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... the conquest and the subsequent behavior of the conquerors were true to the old Spanish nature, so succinctly characterized by a plain-spoken Englishman of Mary's reign, when the war-cry of Castile encircled the globe and even hovered ominously near the "sceptered isle," when in the intoxication of power character stands out so sharply defined: "They be verye wyse and politicke, and ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... person and conscience. The nightmare fear of Popery overcame their love of religious liberty; and they meekly offered their necks to the yoke of prelacy as the only security against the heavier one of Papist supremacy. In a far different manner the cleareyed and plain-spoken John Milton met the claims and demands of the hierarchy in his time. "They entreat us," said he, "that we be not weary of the insupportable grievances that our shoulders have hitherto cracked under; ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... very good reason," says WILLIAM MURPHY, once mildest-mannered man that ever built a tram or railway, now transformed into exceedingly plain-spoken politician. "If PARNELL had taken corner seat, his comings and goings—especially his goings—would have been more easily marked. Sitting midway down the Bench, amongst the ruck of Members, he was not noticeable except when he wanted to be noticed. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... not quite six feet high; well-built, with blue eyes, a somewhat stately walk, and a full beard, which he was the first in the society to wear. He was extremely industrious, and never wasted even a minute; knew admirably how to use every spare moment. He was cheerful, kindly, talkative; plain-spoken when he had to find fault; not very enthusiastic, but somewhat dry and very practical. In his earlier years, in Germany, he was witty; and to the last he was ready and apt in speech. His conversation centered always upon religion and the conduct of life; and no matter with ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... Dioscuri, and her husband, having her temple, statue, and altar at Therapnae and elsewhere. Various examples of her miraculous intervention were cited among the Greeks. The lyric poet Stesichorus had ventured to denounce her, conjointly with her sister Clytemnestra, in a tone of rude and plain-spoken severity, resembling that of Euripides and Lycophron afterward, but strikingly opposite to the delicacy and respect with which she is always handled by Homer, who never admits reproaches against ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... your mind, friend Griggs," he said, not in the least disconcerted at my attack. "You want me to speak plainly to you, because you think you are a plain-spoken, clear-headed man of science yourself. Very well, I will. I think you might yourself become a brother some day, if you would. But you will not now, neither will in the future. Yet you understand some little distant inkling of the science. When you ask your scornful questions ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... mind, and because every one loved to hear him; but the hearer who made these disclosures the occasion for unmeaning compliment, as if he fancied a craving vanity to have prompted them, soon found himself rebuked by the straightforward and plain-spoken patriarch. Precious indeed were those seasons of outpouring, when one interesting recital suggested another, till the listener seemed to see the whole mystery of prison-life and obscure wretchedness laid open before him with the distinctness ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... certain sense of unfitness or disinclination stopped me after a few sentences, and I did not again refer to my new friends; though I had been thinking a good deal of Constance Grey and her plain-faced, plain-spoken aunt. I felt strangely out of key with my environment in that glaring place, and the strains of an overloud orchestra, when they came crashing through the buzz of talk and laughter, and the clatter of glass and silver, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... is not a translation. In the publications of the Irish Ossianic poetry we see what that poetry really was—rude, homely, plain-spoken, leagues removed from the ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... not offensively disinterested and just, no one was indisposed to listen to the projects of his friend, who usually rose in estimation, as he was found to be ingenious, calculating, and shrewd. The effect of all this was to render society singularly sincere and plain-spoken; and one unaccustomed to so much ingenuousness, or who was ignorant of the cause, might, plausibly enough, suppose, at times, that accident had thrown him into an extraordinary association with so many ARTISTES, who, as it is commonly expressed, lived by their wits. I will avow that, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... I knew ye were goin' to say somethin' good of Abraham. Yer heart is just set on that boy. I could see it when ye were here. I remember all that ye prophesied about him. I ain't forgot it. Well, I am a very plain-spoken woman. Ye ain't much of a prophet, in my opinion. He hain't got anywhere yet—now, has he? He's just a great, tall, black, jokin' boy; awful lazy, always readin' and talkin'; tellin' stories and makin' people laugh, with ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... in my mind, yet I could not say anything to Sylvia about it. And after what Miss Laniston had read to me I could not ask her anything, even if my mind had been sufficiently composed to formulate questions. She was a very plain-spoken ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... while the patient ate his supper. Dud found that, although Helen used many Western idioms, and spoke with an abruptness that showed her bringing up among plain-spoken ranch people, she could, if she so desired, use "school English" with good taste, and gave other evidences in her conversation of being quite conversant with the world of which he was himself a part ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... a plain-spoken boy, and had a straight-forward way of speaking the truth. He came up to his father, and looked full in his face, and said, "The baker came for his money to-night, and would not leave the loaves without mother paid for them; and though he was cross and rough to mother, he said ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... father showed this willingness to have Lizzy Grant to stay in his house, for he was fond of all the Grants; there was a kind of plain-spoken intimacy between him and them that he enjoyed. The two elder had always been his very good friends, and during his wife's lifetime had generally called him "John dear," and looked to him and his wife to take them about whenever their brother was away. Liz, who was rather a ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... statesman, archbishop of Toledo, a bold defender of the faith against the Moor and a plain-spoken man in the interest of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... vigorous, plain-spoken, was the only woman within a dozen miles, and it was not long before Mrs. Roberts hated Mrs. Cummins as Jeremiah hated Babylon. For Mrs. Cummins was bent on spreading "culture," and Mrs. Roberts was determined that by no seeming acquiescence should ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... answer very fiercely. If he had, no one would have thought any harm, in those plain-spoken times. But he was wise; and restrained himself, remembering that Torfrida was there, all but alone, in the midst of a fleet of savage men; and that beside, he had a great deed to do, and must do it as he could. So ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... interest to his congregation or himself. And his people looked for his religious comment upon passing events just as now-a-days we read articles upon like subjects in the newspaper. Thus was the Puritan minister not only a preacher, but a teacher, adviser, and friend, and a pretty plain-spoken one too. ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... dispose of her histrionic remains! Think of it, ye managers who have to subdue the passions and limit the extravagant hopes of your players, and pity poor, unfortunate Mr. Rich. Do you wonder that Nance only contrived to get the plain-spoken Leonora? The wonder of it is that she ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... you have got it at last!" he cried. "It's pleasant to understand each other, isn't it? You see, I'm a plain-spoken fellow; I don't wish to give offence. If there's one thing more than another I pride myself on, it's my indulgence for human frailty. But, in my position here, I'm obliged to be careful. Upon my soul, I can't continue my acquaintance with a man who—oh, come! come! don't look as if ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... faded into the background. As for the lad himself, he was happy enough, wandering about by himself studying "effects" to transcribe to paper, or scouring the countryside with the Chieftain, whom he frankly adored, despite the many exceedingly plain-spoken criticisms and exhortations received from ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... was presently pulled down in a rather ignominious fashion by his more plain-spoken though not a ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... This plain-spoken epistle failed to reach its destination until after the prophecy had been fulfilled. Its warning would probably have been futile had Charles read it before he marched on towards Berne, on June 8th. On the road that he chose lay the town of Morat, which had made ready for his approach. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... money, and where is one to get it? You may break the floor beating your head against it, but if you haven't got it you haven't. And the other reason she prays is because, you know, every woman imagines there is no one in the world as unhappy as she is. I am a plain-spoken man, and I don't want to conceal anything from you. She comes of a poor family, a village priest's daughter. I married her when she was seventeen, and they accepted my offer chiefly because they hadn't enough to eat; it was nothing but poverty and misery, while ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of china. He muttered something about the machines having been long preserved in the Imperial family, as being made on the model of those which guarded the throne of the wise King of Israel; to which the blunt plain-spoken Count expressed his doubt in reply, whether the wisest prince in the world ever condescended to frighten his subjects or guests by the mimic roarings of a wooden lion. "If," said he, "I too hastily took it for a living creature, I have ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... answer, De Lacy, who had hitherto remained on his knee, rose gently, and assuming a seat beside the Lady Eveline, continued to press his suit,—not, indeed, in the language of passion, but of a plain-spoken man, eagerly urging a proposal on which his happiness depended. The vision of the miraculous image was, it may be supposed, uppermost in the mind of Eveline, who, tied down by the solemn vow she had made on that occasion, felt herself constrained to return evasive answers, where ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Terry is an estimable type of hardy fisherman, honest and plain-spoken, but manifesting in his phrasing a ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... to his country. It defined once for all the principles that should govern the relations of the colony with the mother country, and laid the foundations of the present Canadian unity. It did not please the factions in Canada; it was too plain-spoken. Exception may be taken, even at the present day, to some of its recommendations and conclusions. But its faithful pictures of 'this hitherto turbulent colony' enable the historical student and the honest patriot to measure the progress the country has since made on the road to nationhood. ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... noted and wealthy publisher could be found, in respectable and conventional England, venal enough to publish perhaps the most corrupting poem in our language,—worse than anything which Boccaccio wrote for his Italian readers, or anything which plain-spoken Fielding and the dramatists of the reign of Charles II. ever allowed to go into print; for though they were coarser in their language, they were not so seductive in their spirit, and did not poison the soul ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... for you. How shall I forward you the remaining L2?" Mr. Alaric Watts frequently importuned Clare for contributions for the "Literary Souvenir" and the "Literary Magnet," but he was exceedingly fastidious and plain-spoken, and although he sent Clare presents of books he never said in his letters anything about payment. At length Clare hinted to him that some acknowledgment of that kind would be acceptable, and then Mr. Watts replied, "I have no objection to make you some ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... before, he is still more puzzled when he hears the worthy Jansenist declare that it is no heresy to hold that “all the just have always the power of obeying the Divine commandments.” Confounded by such a reply, he felt that he had been too plain-spoken with both Jansenist and Molinist. {120} There must be something more in this dispute than he understood; and if not, there was no reason why there should not now be peace in the Church and the Sorbonne. He returned to the Molinist, ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... but little consideration at the hands of the plain-spoken dreamer. Their extravagance is commented on; their growing pride, which prompted them to abandon the great hall and take their meals in a private room, and their uncharitableness to the poor. They practise the saying, that "to him that hath shall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... pleasure of meeting on the boat Mr. H. P. Davison, a member of the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co. He is a plain-spoken gentleman with a strong personality. He is one of the leading partners in the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co. and ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... was a lamentably plain-spoken man, who said but little, and said that little strong. Lord Ferriby's affectionate grasp of the soldier's arm relaxed imperceptibly. One must, he reflected, be prepared to meet unpleasantness in the good cause of charity—but there are words hardly applicable to the ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... trying to interpret her; to come the prophet! I don't condemn the poetry in your nature, Ludlow," Wetmore went on, "and if I could manage it for you, I think I could keep it from doing mischief. That is why I am so plain-spoken with you." ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... very Truth has to change its vesture, from time to time; and be born again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against them, and Heaven's Chancery itself; and, slowly or fast, advance incessantly towards their hour. 'The sign of a Grand Seigneur being landlord,' says the vehement plain-spoken Arthur Young, 'are wastes, landes, deserts, ling: go to his residence, you will find it in the middle of a forest, peopled with deer, wild boars and wolves. The fields are scenes of pitiable management, as the houses are of misery. To see so many millions of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... on the one hand, is almost a tract for rectitude, a Warning to the Young; its motto might be Scheut die Dirnen! And on the other hand, it is full of a laborious truculence that can only be explained by imagining the author as heroically determined to prove that he is a plain-spoken fellow and his own man, let the chips fall where they may. So, in spots, in "The Financier" and "The Titan," both of them far better books. There is an almost moral frenzy to expose and riddle what passes for morality among the stupid. The isolation of irony is never reached; ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... exposition of a parable which gives his essential doctrine more forcibly than I could do it. I will only add that he remained upon good terms with Newman, who had, as he heard, spoken of his article as honest, plain-spoken, and fair to him. He hopes, as he says upon this, to see the old man and talk matters over with him—a phrase which probably anticipates the interview of which I have spoken. Newman afterwards (September ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... that father was hard-hearted. Plain-spoken he certainly was, and sometimes harsh in dealing with those whom he thought to be doing wrong. He was so thoroughly in earnest that when he thought a certain way right or wrong, it was hard for him to understand that some other way might be equally ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... moralist and satirist rather than a poet, and the force and truth of his historical pictures gives him a unique place in 14th-century poetry. M. Raynaud fixes the date of his death in 1406, or at latest, 1407. Two years earlier he had been relieved of his charge as bailli of Senlis, his plain-spoken satires having made him ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... campaign of 1888, Roosevelt was on the firing line again, fighting for the Republican candidate, Benjamin Harrison. When Mr. Harrison was elected, he would have liked to put the young campaigner into the State Department. But Mr. Blaine, who became Secretary of State, did not care to have his plain-spoken opponent and critic under him. So the President offered Roosevelt the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... annoyance. He had the reputation of being a confirmed woman-hater, and it was plain that he was ill at ease in presence of this plain-spoken young person. ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... out on a tray the empty glasses of the evening's entertainment, so she carried out on a platter the dissevered head of that good man, while all the banqueters shouted, and thought it a grand joke, that, in such a brief and easy way, they had freed themselves from such a plain-spoken, troublesome minister. ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... Church in Christ; and they talk it to their husbands, to their daughters, and to their neighbors, and say that they have not seen a week's happiness since they became acquainted with that law, or since their husbands took a second wife."* The coarse and plain-spoken H. C. Kimball, in a discourse in the Tabernacle, November 9, 1856, thus defined the duty of polygamous wives, "It is the duty of a woman to be obedient to her husband, and, unless she is, I would not give a damn for all her queenly right or authority, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... the license for reprinting it is never issued.[121] The censors were not paid; and in addition to being overworked and over-burdened with responsibility, they were rarely men of adequate learning. In a letter from Bartolommeo de Valverde, chaplain to Philip II., under date 1584, we read plain-spoken complaints against these subordinates.[122] 'Unacquainted with literature, they discharge the function of condemning books they cannot understand. Without knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, and animated by a prejudiced hostility against authors, they take the easy course of proscribing ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... afterward Napoleon the Third had introduced into French political and social life a plain-spoken cynicism which ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... dialogue with the Prince, of that feeble, hysterical death-scene, and it irritated me that she, with her beauty, and with British Philistinism and British virtue to back her, should be trampling on Desforets and genius. But I was conscious of my audacity. If a certain number of critics have been plain-spoken, Isabel Bretherton has none the less been surrounded for months past with people who have impressed upon her that the modern theatre is a very doubtful business, that her acting is as good as anybody's, and that her special mission is to regenerate the ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... my reader to subscribe at once to The Tyre Times, and thus aid to sustain the paper of a gentleman and a scholar, who was, as editors usually are, a plain-spoken, sensible man, conscious of the presence of talent in his sanctum, by 'sympathetic attraction.' The editor of the Times looked into the circumstances of my case with an experienced and kindly eye, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... with that calm frankness which was somehow misunderstood, for the administration never placed him among the suspects. Poland has always been a plain-speaking country, and the Poles, expressing themselves in the roughest of European tongues, a plain-spoken people. They spoke so plainly to Henry of Valois when he was their king that one fine night he ran away to mincing France and gentler men. When, under rough John Sobieski, they spoke with their enemy in the gate of Vienna, their meaning was quite clear ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... interfering, and she is frightfully stuck-up. Please forgive me, but I am always very plain-spoken; I always tell the truth. I don't want her. I like you, and wish that I lived with you, and that you'd have Ruth Craven instead of your own daughter in the house. Then I'd be perfectly happy. I always did say what I thought. Will ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... my life, Dick, I am sorry to see you. Whatever made you come so soon?" and at the plain-spoken words there was such a general laugh that the boy's reserve ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... said he, "this is Sergeant Tom McChesney, one of the best friends I have in Kentucky. I think a vast deal of Tom, Major. He was one of the few that never failed me in the Illinois campaign. He is as honest as the day; you will find him plain-spoken if he speaks at all, and I have great hopes that you will agree. Tom, the Major and I are boyhood friends, and for the sake of that friendship he has consented ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... I asked this plain-spoken agent whether he was quite sure that he could pass the government station? "Oh yes," he replied, "a little backsheesh will open the road; there is nothing ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... profanity, and other small vices. Cowperwood could tell from looking at him that he must have a fund of information concerning every current Chicagoan of importance, and this fact alone was certain to be of value. Then the old man was direct, plain-spoken, simple-appearing, and wholly unpretentious—qualities ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... thinks, Beatrice," suggested Margaret, after a gentle "Hush!" to the somewhat too plain-spoken Marie. "Thou canst do it, but it would not come so ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... the book needed to teach what most people do not know how to teach, being scientific, simple and plain-spoken, yet delicate." ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... stronger-willed temptress at his side, and by the stern ascetic from the desert. How John had found his way into 'kings' houses' we do not know; but, as he carried thither his undaunted boldness of plain-spoken preaching of morality and repentance, it was inevitable that he should soon find his way from the palace to the dungeon. There must have been some intercourse between Herod and him before his imprisonment, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... in number, were left alone in New York City. Helen, who went in for art and music, kept the little flat uptown, while Margy, just out of business school, obtained a position as secretary and Rose, plain-spoken and business like, took what she called a "job" in a department store. The experiences of these girls make fascinating reading—life in the great metropolis is thrilling and full of strange adventures ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... very rude and plain-spoken. You must put up with that if you come to stay with me. I did promise not to catechise you the first evening, didn't I? But the temptation proves too strong. I have had a lot of disagreeable business to-day, and now I feel ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... lads, gentlemen, but, like all British sailors, a bit plain-spoken. P'raps Sir Humphrey here mightn't like it, though I answer for 'em that ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... Clergy, written about 1528, is so plain-spoken, and goes so directly to the point of the matter, that it is difficult to find a presentable extract. The following lines on the bishops are among the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude |
