"Gruffness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... general opinion about him was that he was without faults of character. He had only two weaknesses: he was ashamed of his own good nature, and tried to disguise it by a surly expression and an assumed gruffness; and he liked his assistants and his soldiers to call him "Your Excellency," although he ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... upstairs and put that coat and hat away," ordered Jennie, with sudden gruffness. "You're no more fit to roam this wild desert of boarding-school life alone than a baby in long clothes! Run, now!" and Jennie darted ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... time he snapped, "That's enough. Don't give him any more ether." He was concentrated on tying an artery. His gruffness seemed heroic to her. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... depth and fervor of friendship, or by the pathetic constancy and pure affection of the poor, desolate old man before me, who tried to conceal his tenderness and sense of irremediable loss by a show of gruffness and philosophy. He never speaks of Thoreau's death," she says, "but always 'Thoreau's loss,' or 'when I lost Mr. Thoreau,' or 'when Mr. Thoreau went away from Concord;' nor would he confess that he missed him, for there was not a day, an hour, a moment, when he did not feel that his ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... suspect that the unconscious gruffness of his tone had repulsed her. She blamed herself for a ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett |
