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More "Downright" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over wild and bloodthirsty passions with a pleasing exterior—never clothed crime and want of principle with a false show of greatness of soul; and in that respect he is every way deserving of praise. Twice he has portrayed downright villains, and the masterly way in which he has contrived to elude impressions of too painful a nature may be seen in Iago and Richard the Third. I allow that the reading, and still more the sight, of some of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... his view, occupying himself chiefly with observing the effect of his dog on the various janitors. Some were frankly hostile; some covertly so. Some didn't mind dogs—but there was rules. And some defeated themselves by a display of over-enthusiasm that manifestly veiled indifference, or perhaps downright dislike. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... 'The Moorings' to think about!" snapped Merle. "You wouldn't like them to go home crowing they'd absolutely wiped us off the face of the earth? I've had a little experience in matches and I know what I'm talking about. It would be downright silly to give ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... affirm repentance to be the gift of God and to teach that nature is wholly corrupt, is to drive men to despair, and that to suppose the righteousness of Christ sufficient to justify is to make it unnecessary to have any of our own. Though compelled to listen to such downright heresies, to hear himself described as knowing neither what he said nor whereof he affirmed, and as aiming only to gratify self sufficiency, pride and uncharitableness,—"I rejoiced," said this meek and ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... be something in this downright wisdom of childishness since Christ went (as we must believe) out of His way to lay such stress on it; and since our own hearts respond so readily when Vaughan or Wordsworth claim divinity for it. We cannot of course go the length of believing that the great, wise, and eminent ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... old woman. "Why, ye 'most take my breath away. I declar', I'm downright sorry you're goin', I hev tuk sech a shine to ye. I kind o' think ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... a variety of vernaculars it was necessary to keep up and extend a practical acquaintance with the language which supplies all the religious and most of the metaphysical phraseology; and during my last year at Sindian Karachi (1849), I imported a Shaykh from Maskat. Then work began in downright earnest. Besides Erpenius' (D'Erp) "Grammatica Arabica," Richardson, De Sacy and Forbes, I read at least a dozen Perso-Arabic works (mostly of pamphlet form) on "Serf Wa Nahw"—Accidence and Syntax—and learned ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... herself, saying, 'I be come to help you.' The intelligence was very agreeable, and I welcomed her in the most gracious manner possible, and asked what I should give her by the year. 'Oh Gimini!' exclaimed the damsel, with a loud laugh, 'you be a downright Englisher, sure enough. I should like to see a young lady engage by the year in America! I hope I shall get a husband before many months, or I expect I shall be an outright old maid, for I be most ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... they flung lavish masses of unshaped metal, caring little for immediate effect or minute dexterity of stroke, but knowing full well that the emotional energy of their temperaments was capable of fusing the most intractable material, and that in the end they would produce their great, downright effect. Their spirits rose and fell, but the case was desperate, copy had to be despatched for the current serial. Good and bad had to make up the tale against time, and revelling in the very exuberance and excess of their humour, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... the blood streamed to his girdle, and the soil of the ford was crimson with the blood that fell from the body of that warrior so valiant in fight. And Cuchulain's endurance was at an end, for Ferdia continually struck at him, not attempting to guard, and his downright blows, and quick thrusts, and crushing strokes fell constantly upon him, till Cuchulain demanded of Laeg the son of Riangabra to deliver to him the Gae-Bulg. Now the manner of using the Gae-Bulg was this: it was set with its end pointing down a stream, and was cast from ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... yer never mind, sir, when you've been laying out for some great pull, you feel as if you'd got fixed fustrate, and was sure ter win, till the minute comes; and then, all ter once, your gitting-ready seems no account somehow, and you feel downright shamed uv what, a minute before, ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... but as this young gentleman chose to throw out the gratuitous belief that the missing child had been converted into sausages by the butcher, his testimony was received with some caution by the female portion of the court, and with downright scorn and contumely by its masculine members. But whatever might have been the hour of his departure, it was certain that from half past ten A. M. until nine P. M., when he was brought home by a policeman, Charles Summerton ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... undertake these measures. They would then knock the bottom out of the Home Rule agitation. The people are downright sick of the whole business. They expected to be well off before this. They find themselves going down ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... mention as a proof, in all my rambles I have never had any one accident or scrape...Continue in your good custom of writing plenty of gossip; I much like hearing all about all things. Remember me most kindly to Uncle Jos, and to all the Wedgwoods. Tell Charlotte (their married names sound downright unnatural) I should like to have written to her, to have told her how well everything is going on; but it would only have been a transcript of this letter, and I have a host of animals at this minute ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... dear. I'm your man, for, to tell 'ee the downright truth, I've taken a great fancy to these two sisters, an' would steer a long way out o' my ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... She seems a very clever woman, and gives a capital account of the battle between OUR and YOUR weeds. Does it not hurt your Yankee pride that we thrash you so confoundedly? I am sure Mrs. Gray will stick up for your own weeds. Ask her whether they are not more honest, downright good sort of weeds. The book gives an extremely pretty picture of one of your villages; but I see your autumn, though so much more gorgeous than ours, comes on sooner, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... and the ancient writings of the classic authors; sometimes, it is true, a manuscript of the last order is discovered possessing a very different reading in some particular passage; but these appear rather as futile emendations or interpolations of the scribe than as the result of a downright blunder, and are easily perceivable, for when the monkish churchmen tampered with ancient copies, it generally originated in a desire to smooth over the indecencies of the heathen authors, and so render them ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... behind, which threw her out on her face in the middle of the floor. But Alec did catch sight of him in the very deed, was down upon him in a moment, and, having already proved that a box on the ear was of no lasting effect, gave him a downright good thrashing. He howled vigorously, partly from pain, partly in the hope that the same consequences as before would overtake Forbes; and therefore was still howling when Mr ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... but little doubt as to the truth of their reports. I hope I shall not be induced to enter into any large speculation; never having been endowed with courage in my younger days, it would now be nothing less than downright folly. May heaven guard me from my friends as ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... he answered, in a deprecating manner, "and hope you'll forget what I've said. If you're not downright handsome, you've a sartain look that says, plainer than any words, that all's right within. Then you set no value by looks, and will the sooner forgive any little slight to your appearance. I will not ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... and the long of it is—I refuse my consent downright; my daughter's intended for a lofty station, and I'll go to law if my husband is ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Mr. Brady chuckled as they went on into the darkness of the orchard. "Bet you he's downright peeved with us, boys, for wetting that roof down! I happen to know that he's been losing money on this place for five years and been trying to sell it for ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... his spectacles and feels he has been sold! This life on the other side of Jordan he finds to be what his American cousins would call a "humbug," a downright swindle upon the sympathies and good taste of those who wear long streamers of crape, and groan and sob over his funeral rites! He feels in duty bound (out of consideration for those mourners who expect nothing else) to go ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... on my work. I know better, because I am making a collection of such criticisms, showing the rating of our several painters. These summings up of mine will be extremely valuable as marking the changing taste of the public; for I have never supposed that either ill will or downright ignorance formed the basis of current criticism. The critics are merely expressing the trend of public opinion. It is not new to our age. Diaz, so one story goes, once came stumping (he had lost one leg) into Millet's cottage at Barbizon fresh from the Salon. Millet had ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... do I think he's got 'em about him? First, 'cos he swore so steady he hadn't. For a ready lie, and for acting a lie, and over-acting it at times, give me townspeople; but for a thundering big un, against all reason, and for sticking to it stupid when they're downright convicted, and with a face as innercent as a baby's, give me a country lump. And next, because I can tell with folks a deal sharper than him, even to which side of 'em the pocket is they've got what they wants to hide in, by the way they moves ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... those wonderful beasts, half dog half fish, called "Roane," or seals, no doubt because he got a long price for their skins, which are not less curious than they are valuable. The truth is, that the most of these animals are neither dogs nor cods, but downright fairies, as this narration will show; and, indeed, it is easy for any man to convince himself of the fact by a simple examination of his tobacco-spluichdan, for the dead skins of those beings are never the same ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... Esquire Bickerstaff is of all authors the most ingenuous. There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake, though all the World sees them to be in downright nonsense. You'll be pleased, Sir, to pardon this expression, for the same reason for which you once desired us to excuse you when you seemed anything dull. Most writers, like the generality of Paul Lorrain's[2] saints, seem ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... danced by their fathers and their mothers and their Uncle Johns before their eyes. Appeals have been made to them on filial, not to say religious, grounds. Threats would have availed nothing; but appeals—downright tearful appeals from mamma, husky, hand-gripping appeals from papa—that is what has made escape impossible. A huge act of unselfishness has been compelled; a lifetime of reactionary egotism is inevitable and legitimate. I was ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... my friend is an honest Country man, and his name is Coridon, a most downright witty merry companion that met me here purposely to eat a Trout and be pleasant, and I have not yet wet my line since I came from home: But I wil fit him to morrow with a Trout for his breakfast, if the weather be any ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... zeal. Whereas people who change, except under strong conviction, (a thing now rather rare,) the religion of their early prejudices, especially if the conversion is brought about by any political machine, are very apt to degenerate into indifference, laxity, and often downright atheism. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... his hand. "It appears that you are thinking of war in any event. You want to pick a quarrel with France over Mexico and with Spain over St. Domingo, and unite the nation in a war against foreigners. I tell you honestly I don't like the proposal. It seems to me downright wicked. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... seen the Temple of Neptune at Paestum bathed in Lucanian moonlight—which I very promptly told him I had, for it was on the ride home from Paestum that a certain person had proposed to me. We talked about temples and Greek Gods and the age of the world and Indian legends until I got downright sleepy. Then Percy threw away his last cigarette and got up. He said "Good night;" I said "Good night;" and he went into the shack. He said he'd leave the door open, in case I called. There were just the two of us, between earth and sky, that night, and not ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... when he sees any one having a godlike face or form, which is the expression of divine beauty; and at first a shudder runs through him, and again the old awe steals over him; then looking upon the face of his beloved as of a god he reverences him, and if he were not afraid of being thought a downright madman, he would sacrifice to his beloved as to the image of a god; then while he gazes on him there is a sort of reaction, and the shudder passes into an unusual heat and perspiration; for, as he receives the effluence of beauty through the eyes, the wing moistens and he warms. And as he warms, ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... aware that in giving you this story just as I was told it I shall incur the charge of downright ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... blessin' to have hens a-layin'," she said one day. "I took half a dozen over to the minister's wife this mornin', and she was so pleased! She said it was sich a blessin' to have fresh eggs again. She was gittin' sick o' them she's been buyin' at Billings'. She was downright thankful." ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... also, my dear sir, was a benefit and a progress in its day, but that which was a benefit yesterday may it not become an evil to-morrow—a danger? That which is progress to-day, may it not one hundred years hence have become mere routine, and a downright trammel? Is not that the history of the world? And if you wish to know, Monsieur, by what sign we may recognize the fact that a social or political system has attained its end, I will tell you: it is when it is manifest only in its inconveniences and abuses. Then the machine ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... of its variety; but an excess of joy, a surprise of joy, has a thousand extravagances in it. There were some in tears; some raging and tearing themselves, as if they had been in the greatest agonies of sorrow; some stark raving and downright lunatic; some ran about the ship stamping with their feet, others wringing their hands; some were dancing, some singing, some laughing, more crying, many quite dumb, not able to speak a word; others sick and vomiting; ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... "I will deal with you like a downright Swiss, and point out a method by which you may shift the load of obligation from your own shoulders to mine. You know my birth, rank, and expectations in the service; but perhaps you do not know, that, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... But if you know, you mustn't ever be led by dullness or loneliness into anything less, Peter. Not that I'm afraid you'll be led into anything wrong ... but there are things that are almost more wrong than downright wickedness.... ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... There is no dispute here. But what he proceeds to argue is that the effect must be discernible in the cause, which is a different statement altogether. When he says that an effect cannot be greater than its cause, what he means is that an effect cannot be different from its cause, which is downright nonsense. He asks, How can that which has not life produce life? as though the question were on all fours with the necessity for a man to possess twenty shillings before he can give ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... side, and carefully studied her face, with his hand on her pulse. There was no sympathy here between the dreamy mystical temperament of the patient and the downright practical character of the doctor. Clara secretly disliked her medical attendant. She submitted impatiently to the close investigation of which he made her the object. He questioned her—and she answered irritably. Advancing a step further (the doctor was not easily discouraged) ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... "She's getting downright mean, is that old Deb!" grumbled he; "especially if Jan happens to be out. Wasn't it different in West's time! He knew what was good, he did. Catch her daring to put bread and cheese on the table for supper then. I shall be quite exhausted ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... sufficiently apparent from a statement like the following, actually addressed to a miscellaneous audience: "If there is an eternal throne, you are on it now; there has never been a moment when you were not on it." Such downright extravagance is most suitably met with a bald contradiction: man is not on the eternal throne, and there has never been a moment when he was on it. It is this fact which makes worship so much as possible; it is, in short, the transcendent God with whom we are concerned in the ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... first downright cowardly thing I have ever known you to say!" she declared. "And I wish you to know, Mr. Thomas Jefferson Gordon, that Mr. Duxbury Farley and Mr. Vincent Farley and Miss Eva Farley are my guests and my friends!" And with that for her leave-taking, ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... sight o' deaths lately in the village," he resumed cheerfully, having once broken the silence. "I dunno as I can ever call to mind so many. The bell's forever agoin'. It's downright mournful." ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... will not exceed two guineas. Forster plays, and Stone plays, and I play, and some of the Punch people play. Stanfield, having the scenery and carpenters to attend to, cannot manage his part also. It is Downright, in "Every Man in his Humour," not at all long, but very good; he wants you to take it. And so help me. We shall have a brilliant audience. The uphill part of the thing is already done, our next rehearsal is next Tuesday, and if you will come ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... are suitable to them, and it will be quite hopeless to attempt to induce the general body of a purely artistic class to make louder and more fussy professions of virtue and religion than other people. In fact, it is a downright insult to the dramatic profession to exact or to expect any such thing. Equally objectionable, and equally impracticable, are the attempts of Quixotic "dramatic reformers" to exercise a sort of goody-goody censorship over the selection and the text ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... unselfish disposition that little 'Big Brother' has!" Mr. Estel said presently. "It shows itself even in their play." Then he added warmly, turning to his wife, "Dora, it would be downright cruel to send him ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... submissive, because you were a gentleman's child. Do you remember—no, you will certainly have forgotten—how you once took the baits of the hooks off and hung my wooden shoes on instead? Then I said in anger, and the anger of man is never good, 'Can no one, then, tame this boy for me? He was making downright fun of you to your own face,' said I to the player. 'Do you not know some art by which you can tame this wild-cat?' Then he laughed maliciously, but I thought no more of the matter. The following day, however, he said, ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... to depress the sense, and so much the more offensively as they do it obliquely; and yet I am much deceived if many other writers deliver more worth noting as to the matter, and, how well or ill soever, if any other writer has sown things much more material, or at all events more downright, upon his paper than myself. To bring the more in, I only muster up the heads; should I annex the sequel I should trebly multiply the volume. And how many stories have I scattered up and down in this book, that I only touch upon, which, should anyone more curiously search into, they ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... there leaves them, and goes no further. So up and to my office, where we sat, and among other things I had a fray with Sir J. Minnes in defence of my Will in a business where the old coxcomb would have put a foot upon him, which was only in Jack Davis and in him a downright piece of knavery in procuring a double ticket and getting the wrong one paid as well as the second was to the true party. But it appeared clear enough to the board that Will was true in it. Home to dinner, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... sight, saw nothing of this; but Hiiaka, in downright pity and goodness of impulse, plucked a hala fruit from the string about her neck and threw it so that it fell before the poor creature, who eagerly seized it and with the stumps of her hands held it up to enjoy its odor. At the sight of ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... aloof spirit informing the inanimate, and in such resentment thereof as properly rewarded a studied insolence—never before to-day had Sarah Manvers found the genius of the neighbourhood so unmitigatedly intolerable. It was with downright relief that presently she turned from the avenue eastward and accomplished in the span of one short cross-town block a transit of the most violent contrasts, from the dull dignity of the socially ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... Stonor foresaw that it would take them close on ten days to make the Horse-Track. He and Mary took turns tracking the canoe from the bank, while the other rested. Clare steered. Ascending the rapids presented no new problems to a river-man, but it was downright hard work. All hands joined in pulling and pushing, careless of how they ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... the first to arrive, perhaps for the reason that he is a downright suitor, who has left the city and business, in order to further the interests nearest his heart. He is a keen-eyed, strong-looking fellow, well equipped for success by knowledge of the world and society; resolute, also, in attaining his desired ends. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... that my name would be on the tax list, and I would refuse to pay the taxes thereon, and then I could carry that branch of the question into the Courts. Protests are no longer worth the paper they are written on. Downright resistance, the actual throwing of the tea overboard, is now the word and work. With ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... authority, or cannot obtain powerful intercession, or is unable to give heavy bribes, his property is valued at perhaps five per cent, or is set at so low a figure as to make the appraisal differ little from downright robbery. We, however, are used to such measures, for when they banished us some time past from certain districts of the city of Brest-Litovsk, where for centuries celebrated scholars of our people dwelt, nothing better was done by the crown to compensate us for our houses.[42] ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... undertaking the study of any thing, a man decides for what purpose he is studying this subject, and not the others. But to study every thing, as the men of scientific science in our day preach, without any idea of what is to come out of such study, is downright impossible, because the number of subjects of study is endless; and hence, no matter how many branches we may acquire, their acquisition can possess no significance or reason. And, therefore, in ancient times, down to even a very recent date, until the appearance of scientific science, ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... game-cock, which, watching the calm looks and contented manner of the goose, which contrasted so greatly with his own fiery disposition, began to get angry,—just as human beings who are out of sorts sometimes do with those who appear happy and smiling. At last, working himself into a downright passion, he flew at the poor goose, pecked out one of her eyes, and while she was attempting to defend herself, trampled on and destroyed several of her eggs. The gander, which was waddling about on the other side of the pond, on ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... know how to resent it. The whole tendency of his mind and disposition was opposed to any contra-assumption of grandeur on his own part, and he hadn't the worldly spirit or quickness necessary to put down insolent pretensions by downright and open rebuke, as the archdeacon would have done. There was nothing for Mr Harding but to submit ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... cannot take the Professor's tobacco," said John; then, angrily turning upon poor M'Allister, he cried, "And as for your filthy stuff, it's a downright insult to offer it ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... "Yes, scared—downright scared," he answered. "I reckon I'm like an Indian. An Indian doesn't believe it's good medicine to let the gods know he's big happy. ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... said Arthur. 'Helen had light hair and eyes, a fat sort of face, and no pretence to be pretty—a downright sort of person, not what you would fancy John's taste. If any one else had compared you it would have been no compliment; but he told me you had reminded him of her from the first, and now your white cheeks and sick dress recalled her illness so much, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Freydissa, diving again into the tub; "do you call that weeping? I call it downright blubbering. Why, your face is as much begrutten as if you were ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... racing and shrieking round the tennis court like a she tom-cat, the heartless hussy. Her and that simpering silly that's trotting round after her had ought to be put in a bag and shaken up, that they ought. It's downright scandalous to be carrying on like that ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... and looked at her. She had fairly fallen in love with this new cousin of hers; her beauty, and gracious ways, her foreign accent, and now her experiences of nuns and convents had come like a revelation to the little English girl in her downright, everyday life. With a comical incongruity, she could compare her in her own mind to nothing but an enchanted princess in some fairy tale; and she stood gazing first at her and then at the glass, where soft wavy brown hair and red and ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... his hut, without his hat, his eyes staring wildly about him, and his hair in disorder. He was trembling with emotion, and pointed to a black animal, half hid in the water and the rushes, which seemed very large, and was rolling from side to side in the agonies of approaching death. Fright, downright fright, had tied the banker's tongue; and while he is collecting his senses, allow me to tell you, good reader, what had ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... Piscator, my friend is an honest countryman, and his name is Coridon; and he is a downright witty companion, that met me here purposely to be pleasant and eat a Trout; and I have not yet wetted my line since we met together: but I hope to fit him with a Trout for his breakfast; for ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... They never end an article with the mystical hint, this occasions great speculation. They seem to have been ignorant of such engaging introductions as, we hear it is strongly reported; and of that ingenious, but thread-bare excuse for a downright ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... if you will not commit downright idolatry, as some of their saints teach you, then you must be careful to observe these plain distinctions; and first be sure to remember that when you worship an image, you do it not materially but formally; not as it is of such a substance, but as it is a sign; next take care that you ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... from the warm Devon land, but little of it reached so far, on account of the distance, the difficulties of intercourse, the rare occasions on which the merchant succeeded in escaping the vexatious interference, the downright robbery of the way. Intercourse was often entirely ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... applying these, in tiresome, pedantic agitation, to Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Lamb, we must beg leave to cry off! What we want is not the formulating of new Critical Standards, and the dragging in of the great masters before our last miserable Theory of Art. What we want is an honest, downright and quite personal articulation, as to how these great things in literature really hit us when they find us for the moment natural and off our guard—when they find us as men and women, and not as ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... her motive in maintaining the alias, though I was certain it was more than a mere whim. How great it was I could not know. Should she persist in it I would help her up to the point of telling Max a downright ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... and holy horror occasioned by its first announcement—to observe these subsiding gradually into patient endurance and permissive sufferance, and these again giving place to a certain curiosity and wakeful interest, culminating at last in downright ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... red mouth tremble, and tears show in her eyes as she looked at him. "Only don't commence by disliking, that's all; for unfriendliness is a bad thing in a household, let alone in a canoe, and I can be of more downright use to you, if you give me all the confidence ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... next morning, or any morning of the twenty-odd we spent in England. Often the weather was cloudy, and occasionally it was rainy; and then London would be drenched in that wonderful gray color which makes it, scenically speaking, one of the most fascinating spots on earth; but it was never downright foggy and never downright cold. English friends used to speak to me about it. They apologized for good weather at that season of the year, just as natives of a Florida winter ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... p'raps a trifling mauvaise humeur, Papa may worry o'er his own affairs, Or it, perchance, may be a downright "fumer," And judging from the countenance he wears He may be vexed with sundry business cares, A something he would not communicate, In which the happy household never shares, It is not wise it should, at any rate; At least till matters ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... warden hot and testy, and put him almost out of all patience, so that I feared it would have come to a downright quarrel betwixt them, for both were confident and neither would yield; and so earnestly were they engaged in the contest, that there was no room for me to put ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... Love!—which is to say alone with God, and therefore surrounded by all god-like, lasting and revivifying things. You will go back from this place to the world of conventions,—and you will meet a million influences to turn you from your chosen way. Opinion, criticism, ridicule, calumny and downright misunderstanding—these will come out against you like armed foes, bristling at every point with weapons of offence. If you tell them of your quest of life and youth and love, and of your experience here, they will cover you with their ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... intellectual for popular digestion. The orthodox brand it as intolerably heretical and terribly unscriptural; the multitude of human beings;—like "Oyster Nan" who couldn't live without "running her vulgar rig"—consider it downright infidelity, the companion of rationalism, and the "stepping Stone to atheism." Still there are many good people who are Unitarians; many magnificent scholars who recognise its principles; and if "respectability" is any proof of correctness—this age, in the obliquity of its vision, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... Durvasas who was the son of Atri's wife, got by the lady through a boon of Mahadeva. Daksha's Sacrifice sought to fly away from Siva, but the latter pursued it and shot his arrow at it for destroying it downright. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... have a true and faithful lover; but I should not quite like to break his heart—it would not be friendly, knowing him so long; for indeed," she added, gaily, "though I don't like Edward Lynne well enough to marry him, I like him too well to break his heart in downright earnest." ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Him. We have the glory of His Kingdom,—that every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess Him. And in what connection? Is it a theological study? No. Is it a description of what Christ is? No; it is in connection with a simple, downright call to a life of humility in our intercourse with each other. Our life on earth is linked to all the eternal glory of the Godhead as revealed in the exaltation of Jesus. The very looking to Jesus, the very bowing of the knee to Jesus, ought to be inseparably connected with a spirit ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray
... a nest unlike the robin's nest. Each is qualified in its own work. We know that these birds would be sorely handicapped, and would probably be downright failures in providing nests in season for eggs, if each were required to work to plans and specifications of ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... said,—"The abolition of the remaining term of apprenticeship must take place; let them then join hand and heart in doing it well, and with such grace as we now could. Let it have the appearance of a boon from ourselves, and not in downright submission to the coercive measures adopted by ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... This was the first downright charge of an African elephant that I had seen, and instinctively I followed my old Ceylon plan of waiting for a close shot. She lowered her head when within about six yards, and I fired low for the centre of the forehead, exactly in the swelling above the root of the ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... weekly journalism, and for nearly forty years was the stormy petrel of Canadian politics. From England there came, among others, Dr. John Rolph, shrewd and politic, and Captain John Matthews, a half-pay artillery officer. Peter Perry, downright and rugged and of a homely eloquence, represented the Loyalists of the Bay of Quinte, which was the center of Canadian Methodism. Among the newer comers from the United States, the foremost were Barnabas Bidwell, who had been Attorney General ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... no business to interfere, and that I was not sure it would be right even for me to meddle with the course things had taken." I was aware of weakening my case as I went on; I had better left her with a dramatic conception of a downright and ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... more than angry with her—I felt her second flight from me as a downright outrage. In five minutes I had hurried on my clothes and was on my way to the inn in the Canongate as fast as a ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... manuscript was destroyed by a prescient friend, who knew that its publication would ruin the writer in the political market. There is reason to believe that Burns contributed to Lincoln's scepticism, but he drew it more directly from Volney, Paine, Hume and Gibbon. His fits of downright atheism appear to have been transient; his settled belief was theism with a morality which, though he was not aware of it, he had really derived from the Gospel. It is needless to say that the case had never been rationally ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... intervals, to be announced in the bills. Its hero, when Palmer played it at least, was Joseph Surface. When I remember the gay boldness, the graceful solemn plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice—to express it in a word—the downright acted villany of the part, so different from the pressure of conscious actual wickedness,—the hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy,—which made Jack so deservedly a favourite in that character, I must needs conclude ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... their tread. Countless the swarm of the foe, and we A marvellous little company." Roland answered him, "All the more My spirit within me burns therefore. God and his angels of heaven defend That France through me from her glory bend. Death were better than fame laid low. Our Emperor loveth a downright blow." ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... them drawn or described in any of the otherwise comprehensive architectural works, which appear from time to time, is the rarest of experiences. The Hollanders are accused of mere apishness in employing the Gothic style, and of downright dulness in apprehending its import and beauty. Yet a man who has found that bit of Rotterdam which beats Venice; who has seen, from under Delft's lindens on a summer evening, the image of the Oude Kerk's leaning ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... York, both City and State, had been notoriously Loyalist—that is, pro-British—ever since the troubles between the Colonists and the British grew angry. Governor Tryon, the Governor of the State, made no secret of his British preferences; indeed, they were not preferences at all, but downright British acts. ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... Friend, this is a downright deep Tragedy. The Catastrophe is manifestly wrong, for an Opera ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... pastry, and ham. Our company, Mr. and Mrs. Porter, Mr. and Mrs. Coates, Mrs. Atkins, Mrs. Hicks, Mr. Piper and wife, Joseph Fuller and wife, Tho. Fuller and wife, Dame Durrant, myself and wife, and Mr. French's family. After supper our behaviour was far from that of serious, harmless mirth; it was downright obstreperious, mixed with a great deal of folly and stupidity. Our diversion was dancing or jumping about, without a violin or any musick, singing of foolish healths, and drinking all the time as fast as it could be well poured down; and the parson of the parish was ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... the whole a satisfactory clerk for Mr. Offutt, though his downright honesty must have seemed occasionally as eccentric in that position as afterwards it did to his associates at the bar. Dr. Holland has preserved one or two incidents of this kind, which have their value. Once, after he had sold a woman a little bill of goods and received ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... ether for its display. Father Antonio could create the beautiful; he could warm, could elevate, could comfort; and when a stronger nature went before him, he could follow with an unquestioning tenderness of devotion: but he wanted the sharp, downright power of mind that could cut and cleave its way through the rubbish of the past, when its institutions, instead of a commodious dwelling, had come to be a loathsome prison. Besides, the true artist has ever an enchanted island of his own; and when this world perplexes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... its journey at the reputable hour of three in the afternoon, by pretending to start a coach at five o'clock in the morning, was an imposition "tolerable" only in Dogberry's sense of the word—it was "not to be endured." And then, the downright absurdity of the undertaking! for admitting that the proprietors might prevail on some poor idiot to act as coachman, where were they to entrap a dozen mad people for passengers? We often experience an irresistible impulse to interfere, in some matter, simply because it happens to be no business ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... of this kind of life, he began to want some more fierce excitement. He had tried making downright love to Elsie, with no great success as yet, in his own opinion. The girl was capricious in her treatment of him, sometimes scowling and repellent, sometimes familiar, very often, as she used to be of old, teasing and malicious. All this, perhaps, made her more interesting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... this terrible dream with some show of playful humor. 'Hill,' said he, 'your apprehension of harm to me from some hidden enemy is downright foolishness. For a long time you have been trying to keep somebody-the Lord knows who—from ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... trudged at Jerry's heels he had explained to them, before entering the woods, the mode of operation to be carried out. In order to pipe tunes as bullfinches so marvellously do, they have to go through a period of training, and downright severe training the hapless mites find it. But, as Jerry tersely put it to his hearers, one of whom winced secretly, what is training but 'keeping the body under subjection'—a period of toilsome effort that any ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... creamery therefore claims large and peculiar advantages, and offers a price for milk or cream markedly above the ordinary price paid for it by other creameries, you may be sure there is something illegitimate about it. It may be done to drum up business, to beat a rival, or it may be a downright swindle, it surely will not be lasting, and the operator intends at some time to ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... all points by such amplifications of the contracted version which holds the stage. The events are evolved with unsuspected naturalness. The hero's character gains by the expansion of its setting. One downright error which infects the standard abridgement is wholly avoided. Ophelia is dethroned. It is recognised that she is not entitled to share with Hamlet the triumphal honours of the action. Weak, insipid, destitute of all force of character, she deserves an insignificant place ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... M. either she is a very sincere lover of downright idleness, or she has cousen'd all parts of Christendom, where she has wandred for these last Ten years. I hope our solid Author will pardon me this digression; but now we have had our dance, let us to ...
— His Majesties Declaration Defended • John Dryden
... procedure is made apparent by merely calling attention to the fact that the original argument has been garbled but in no wise refuted, An opponent can convict the one who has "answered himself" either of unpardonable ignorance about the subject or of downright dishonesty. ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... there," and Curtis entered the vehicle, which whirled out of sight in the peculiarly downright fashion ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... hurriedly began, "you do not know me, nor the like of me. I've got no right to speak to you, but I couldn't help it. Oh! please believe me, I am not real downright bad. I'm Sally Johnson, daughter of a man whom they drove out of the town. My mother died when I was little, and I never had a show; and folks think because I live with my father, and he makes me know the crowd he travels with, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... Respect, that nothing might give him Offence. I diligently observed his Inclinations and Temper, and also observed what were his easiest Moments, what Things pleas'd him, and what vex'd him, as they use to do who tame Elephants and Lions, or such Sort of Creatures, that can't be master'd by downright Strength. ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... come next week," says the professor, troubled in somewise by the meaning in her eyes. What is it? Simple loneliness, or misery downright? How young she looks—what a child! That tragic air does not belong to her of right. She should be all laughter, ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... voluntary acts, the free-will offerings of good-breeding and good nature; they are received, remembered, and returned as such. Women, particularly, have a right to them; and any omission in that respect is downright ill-breeding. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... shiftless, shambling figure, and pictured in every rag of the fluttering raiment, and yet—the fellow really was hungry,—and again came the thought of that fifteen cents. The young man was hungry himself; had been hungry many a time in the past, and downright, gnawing, helpless hunger is a great leveler of mankind; in fact, it is just about the only real bond of fellowship between men. "Come on," he said at last, "I've got fifteen cents; I reckon we can find something to eat." ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... Atheism. Au contraire, he makes fine sport with those who do. Himself a Pantheist of the all-God school, he took to calling Atheists 'ugly names,' as if quite innocent that no 'thinking mind' can fail to perceive the downright lunacy, or something worse, of supposing a pin to choose on the score of piety, between universal Deity and no Deity at all. The 'Shepherd' of a new philosophic flock should have known better than to attempt the reform of 'vulgar theology' by setting forth the mystical nonsense ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... growing a downright numbskull," he said one evening in disgust; "I have been three weeks at it and no single ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... be sure they are, and smoking; and big fires they are making, too, for I saw red sparks coming out of one. Why, what's the matter, Miss Sarah? You must be getting downright nervous,' observed Naomi, for Sarah had started and given a little ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... "I think you're downright stingy, child," commented Miss Upton when the girl had overruled certain suggestions Miss Mehitable had made with the fear of ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... rather the reverse, and also that he was apt to be decided and even imperious if thwarted or interfered with. He must always have been fearless,—in the play he appears insensible to fear of any ordinary kind. And, finally, he must have been quick and impetuous in action; for it is downright impossible that the man we see rushing after the Ghost, killing Polonius, dealing with the King's commission on the ship, boarding the pirate, leaping into the grave, executing his final vengeance, could ever have been shrinking or slow in an emergency. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... or silence, when he would have wished, as he knew perfectly how, to be considerate, gentle, sympathetic, responsive. On the other hand, his shyness and reticence were seemingly contradicted by a downright bluntness, a deliberate frankness in matters of opinion in which his convictions were involved; for his views were most positively held and his convictions were often passionate in intensity, and he declared them, ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... Max, unable to hide his annoyance, "that if I were to tell you it was not a joke at all, but that I spoke in downright earnest, you ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... just the same as the others, Maggie; once there is a young man to flirt with, you don't care what he is or where he comes from. When there are no young men, you will snub the old ladies fast enough; and as for Sally, she is downright rude. I didn't want to see the haberdashers, but while they were in my house ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... hanging from her hand, and fell again to listening to Erik. His word made an endless echo in her head.... "Perins a droll species. A sort of indomitable ass. Refuses to succumb to his intelligence. If you think he's in love with your Mary you're a downright imbecile. The man adjusts his passions to his phrases as neatly as a pretty woman pulling on her stockings...." She didn't like Erik to refer to pretty women pulling on their stockings. What an idiot! If Erik wanted to he could go out and help all the pretty women ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... themselves, me puttin' th' brake on and th' horses a-trottin' after. Long as it was daylight we were good friends, but when we got fair into th' dark, and could nobbut see th' day shinin' at the hole like a lamp at a street-end, I feeled downright wicked. Ma religion dropped all away from me when I looked back at him as were always comin' between me and 'Liza. The talk was 'at they were to be wed when she got better, an' I couldn't get her to say yes ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... own, till at least we discover the point of view from which each philosopher looked at the facts before him and catch the light in which he regarded them. We shall then find that there is much less of downright error in the history of philosophy than is commonly supposed; nay, we shall find nothing so conducive to a right appreciation of truth as a right appreciation of the error by which it is surrounded." (p. 360. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... evocation of an instantaneous vision of the household thus thrown open to him. Such opportunities for falsity, artificiality, downright humbuggery, for plutocratic upholstery and indecorous statues and light-minded paintings, for cynical and insolent servants, for the deployment of vast gains got by methods that at best were questionable! Could he ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... all through not to tell a direct falsehood," said Master Joseph; "it is bad enough to deceive people, without being guilty of downright lying." ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... gods themselves depend upon the fruits of action.[20] The Pitris, that support (by rain) the lives of even all disbelievers, observing the ordinances (of the Creator as declared in the Vedas), are, O king, engaged in action.[21] Know them for downright atheists that reject the declaration of the Vedas (which inculcate action). The person that is learned in the Vedas, by following their declarations in all his acts, attains, O Bharata, to the highest region of heaven by the way ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... I could wear myself out cleanin', I suppose," retorted Jane. "And like as not run the risk of gittin' some bad germs on my hands, and dyin' of 'em. From what Rosa says, it was downright shameful the way you muddied your clothes, and tore 'em, and messed in the water after nasty tad-poles that week you was up country. I won't allow you to treat your beautiful dresses like that, or climb about, or let the hot ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... and unimpeachable propriety of conduct—unsullied by the breath of detraction—rendered her in a great measure impervious to downright ill-nature; but still she was open to teasing and bantering; and the more she was teased, and the more she was bantered, the more impenetrable she became. We endeavoured to find out from herself—but unsuccessfully—if she had always led such ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... lamentation, in strange accordance with his feelings at that moment, condoned the sharpness of her words, which hardly reached him. The failure of the missionaries to see the merit in his work showed ignorance, but was their own affair; the omission to say "thank you" for his gift was downright rudeness. Their open contempt of his little masterpiece rankled hot in his mind. He vowed before Allah never again to seek to please a Frank and risk such insult. Henceforth he would cleanse his mouth whenever he so much as passed in the street near ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... really, this visiting and tending the poor, and all that, seems very well in a story, where the lady goes into a picturesque cottage, half overgrown with honeysuckle, and finds an emaciated, but still beautiful woman propped up by pillows. But come to the downright matter of fact of poking about in all these vile, dirty alleys, and entering little dark rooms, amid troops of grinning children, and smelling codfish and onions, and nobody knows what—dear me, my benevolence always evaporates before ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the fall of the oligarchy and the establishment of the Roman Empire was fixed as by a law of fate. Yet, with data before us, it is hard to imagine the creation of the new German Empire without Bismarck. His downright Prussianism rises like a rock through the mists, amid the vaporous Liberalism of the pre-Revolutionary period. His unbroken resolution gave strength to the wavering purpose of Frederick William IV. His diplomacy led to Koeniggraetz, and the manipulated telegram ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... Aiken, "were always like that—downright and outspoken. It is an Aiken trait. No Aiken could ever help blurting out the truth if he knew he were to die ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... man," replied Tom, "how can you say so. I am downright chilly; but as there is to be dancing, it is better it ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... house before the paper was printed to talk the matter over. Wasn't the governor mad, though! But it's all settled, I tell you. We're to pay Wingate fifteen dollars for the old go-cart, which he wanted to sell the other day for seventy-five cents, and couldn't. It's a downright swindle. But the funny part ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and that job is done with. I am downright afraid of her, and the worst of it is she speaks the truth," said Philip to himself, as ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... the subject must either be known to be used in its whole extent or not; and any proposition, whether universal or particular, must be either affirmative or negative, for by denying modality to the copula we have excluded everything intermediate between downright assertion and denial. This classification therefore may be regarded as a Procrustes' bed, into which every proposition is bound to fit ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... alluded to this terrible dream with some show of playful humor. 'Hill,' said he, 'your apprehension of harm to me from some hidden enemy is downright foolishness. For a long time you have been trying to keep somebody-the Lord ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... of 'The Moorings' to think about!" snapped Merle. "You wouldn't like them to go home crowing they'd absolutely wiped us off the face of the earth? I've had a little experience in matches and I know what I'm talking about. It would be downright silly to ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... honour, with a downright hanchor, but with sum'mat like a killog. But, that's no hanchor, a'ter all, but only a kedge, catted ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... provincial native who dreamed of forests infested with leeches, he was of doubtful family, with a priest for an uncle, who would perhaps be an enemy to luxury and balls, of which she was very fond. One beautiful morning therefore it occurred to her that she had been a downright fool to prefer him to his rival, and from that time on Pelaez's hump steadily increased. Unconsciously, yet rigorously, Paulita was obeying the law discovered by Darwin, that the female surrenders herself to the ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... you what," remarked Tom, as he was stowing away his second generous piece of pie, "the feed at the Hall is all right, but when it comes to a real, downright spread, like this, the palm goes to Aunt Martha." And Dick and ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... the evil, it is peculiarly hard to find the remedy for it. If the books to which I have been alluding were books of downright wickedness, we might destroy them wherever we found them; we might forbid their open circulation; we might conjure you to shun them as you would any other clear sin, whether of word or deed. But ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... know these municipalities. If you had a little island in your name, no bigger than this room, they'd tax you for it, and make you pay school rate, and do statute labour beside, though there wasn't a school or a road within ten miles of it. For downright jewing and most unjustifiable extortion on non-residents, commend me to a township council. You'll be sold out by the sheriff of the county, sure as eggs, and the Grinstun man'll buy your property for the ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... profit. At any rate, I bought a good many of them, conceiving that it might be the civillest way of requiting her for her instructive conversation and the trouble she took in showing me the house. It cost me a pang (not a curmudgeonly, but a gentlemanly one) to offer a downright fee to the lady-like girl who had admitted me; but I swallowed my delicate scruples with some little difficulty, and she digested hers, so far as I could observe, with no difficulty at all. In fact, nobody need fear to hold ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... well, old Tom," said Hurry, winking and laughing, though he too used the precaution to speak low—"Give me a ready witted squaw for a fri'nd, and though I'll not downright defy an Iroquois, I think ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... think of things to say that will be the truth and yet not give the whole thing away!" sighed the downright Cynthia. "I wish I were ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... armour on my back, under the correction of bragging, be it spoken, I should quickly leap into a wife. But, before Heaven, I cannot look greenly,[11] nor gasp out my eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protestation; only downright oaths, which I never use till urged, nor never break for urging. If thou canst love a fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth sun-burning, that never looks in his glass for love of any thing he sees there, let thine ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... a grimace, and began to set the room in order, bending herself into graceful attitudes, and by each of her gestures making Lavretsky feel that she considered him an uncivilized bear. It was with a sensation of downright hatred that he watched the mocking expression of her faded, but still piquante, Parisian face, and looked at her white sleeves, her silk apron, and her little cap. At last he sent her away, and, after long hesitation, as Varvara Pavlovna did not return, he ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... deathless, and has called up a train of subsequent haunters. John Kendrick Bangs has made the darker regions seem comfortable and homelike for us, and has created ghosts so human and so funny that we look forward to being one—or more. We feel downright neighborly toward such specters as the futile "last ghost" Nelson Lloyd evokes for us, as we appreciate the satire of Rose O'Neill's sophisticated wraith. The daring concept of Gelett Burgess's Ghost Extinguisher is altogether American. The field ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... weak drinking, if I may coin a phrase to describe him; he actually uses no energy even in that business. Just staggers around and bemoans his lot; a most unfortunate man, in his own estimation, with whom the world, through no fault of his, has gone wrong. He is never downright intoxicated, and never free from the effects of liquor. He is much like a wilted leaf in the hands of this boy and girl. They could pitch him out of the window without much difficulty, and if the fall did not kill him he would shed ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... a strong escort every day, out or in, on the Picolata road, there had been more downright murdering there than in any other part of the territory, some having been shot down almost in sight of Augustine. This was not escort-day, but if it had been, our horses were not disposed to be six hours in the sun, in going so short a distance. The little grey ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... true, is ever there; and should she and he meet after many years, though their heads be gray and their cheeks wrinkled, there will still be a touch of the old passion as their hands meet for a moment. Methinks that love never dies, unless it be murdered by downright ill-usage. It may be so murdered, but even, ill-usage will more often fail than succeed in that enterprise. How, then, could Harry fail to love the woman whom he had loved first, when she returned to him still young, still beautiful, ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... came suddenly upon them, or waked them out of their sleep (for they are a sluggish sleepy animal) they would raise up their heads, snort and snarl, and look as fierce as if they meant to devour us; but as we advanced upon them, they always ran away; so that they are downright bullies." Cook's Voyages Volume 4 ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... me what it was, it was of course something to do with Augustus. The way Charles is hunting down that unfortunate king is shocking, it is downright malignity. Why, he has wasted fifteen months over it already, and it has cost him Ingria. He could have made any terms with Poland he liked, after his victory on the Dwina, and would then have been free to use all his forces against us. As it is, he has wasted ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... incredible, Melitus, and that, as appears to me, even to yourself. For this man, O Athenians! appears to me to be very insolent and intemperate and to have preferred this indictment through downright insolence, intemperance, and wantonness. For he seems, as it were, to have composed an enigma for the purpose of making an experiment. Whether will Socrates the wise know that I am jesting, and contradict myself, or shall I deceive him and all ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... don't care about being made to look fools. The dear old Mater, you know, is one of those simple, trusting natures that, if they once discover they have been taken in by a sham title, why, they kick up the row of a deuce! And, as for the Governor, he's the sort of old retiring chap that has a downright loathing of publicity, when it makes him ridiculous. If he came across you just now, there's really no saying what he mightn't do. He's such a ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... the writer as being "throughout in downright almost pathetic earnestness." While The National Reformer seems to be in doubt whether the book is a covert attack upon Christianity or a serious defence of it, but declares that both orthodox and unorthodox will find matter requiring ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... through with my errand," he said, moving toward the steps and pausing with one hand on a great white column. "The sooner you get him out of my barn the better riddance it will be. There's one thing certain, though, and that is that you don't lay eyes on him without the doctor. He's downright ill, on my oath." ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... praise my Lady's kindness, Expecting me to speak; I like the proud ones best Who sit as struck with blindness, As if I wasn't there. 340 But if any gentleman Is staying at the Hall (Though few come prying here), My Lady seems to fear Some downright dreadful evil, And makes me keep my room As closely as she can: So I hate when people come, It is so troublesome. In spite of all her care, 350 Sometimes to keep alive I sometimes do contrive To get out in the grounds For a whiff of wholesome air, ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... might-have-beens. We have to deal with facts. A conspiracy of silence is impossible about matters which have been vehemently discussed for centuries. We have to take sides; and we at least have agreed to take the side of the downright thinker, who will say nothing that he does not believe, and hide nothing that he does believe, and speak out his mind without reservation or economy and accommodation. Indeed, as things are, any other course seems to me to be impossible. I have spoken, for example, of General Booth. Many ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... emotional outbursts were comprehended and admired. His authority was sufficient to override all scruples that might have stood in the way of this downright description of Mary's charms. He became the model for all her later worshippers; Suso, for instance, often quotes him, and Brother Hans called him the harpist and fiddler ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... their place and that the chiefs of them had come to strife with one another: for when Euryanax and Pausanias both exhorted Amompharetos not to run the risk of remaining behind with his men, alone of all the Lacedemonians, they did not at all persuade him, and at last they had come to downright strife; and meanwhile the herald of the Athenians had arrived and was standing by them. And Amompharetos in his contention took a piece of rock in both his hands and placed it at the feet of Pausanias, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... that his hands were clean from those ill-gotten gains which made the fortunes of many of the wealthiest public men at Rome, who were criminals in only a less degree than Verres—peculation, extortion, and downright robbery in the unfortunate provinces which they were sent out to govern. Such opportunities lay as ready to his grasp as to other men's, but he steadily eschewed them. His declining the tempting prize of a provincial government, which was his right on the expiration ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... frankly observes, 'I was interested.' She described her life in the Arab camps, and explained that her influence over the tribes was partly due to her long sight, a quality held in high esteem in the desert, and partly to a brusque, downright manner, which is always effective with Orientals. She professed to have fasted physically and mentally for years, living only on milk, and reading neither books nor newspapers. Her unholy claim to supremacy in ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... public, wherever English books penetrate, from the White Sea to Australia, from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, loves the brilliant, manly, downright optimist; the critics and the philosophers care more for the moody and prophetic pessimist. But this does not decide the matter; and it does not follow that either public or critic has the whole truth. If books were written only in the dialect, and ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... grief and sorrow when they read my bill; but as for her, nothing she resolv'd, that look'd bright or joyous, should after her love's death approach her. All her servants that were not coal-black must turn out; a fair complexion made her eyes and heart ake, she'd none but downright jet, and to exceed all example, she hir'd my mourning furniture by the year, and in case of my mortality, ty'd my son to the same article; so in six weeks time ran ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... perception, Iris saw that Mountjoy had not only pounced on his opportunity prematurely, but had spoken with a downright directness of allusion which must at once have put such a ready-witted person as Mrs. Vimpany on her guard. In trying to prevent him from pursuing his unfortunate experiment in social diplomacy, Iris ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... and Derette away to the anchorhold—I shall be a lost woman without Agnes and Ermine! Nigh on seven years they've been here, and I haven't been so comfortable in all my life afore. They may have some queer notions in their heads—that I can't say; most folks have one way or another—but they're downright good for help ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... in your head, Olive," said Mary Bertram. "That is one of your faults, you know. I expect those girls will be downright jolly; and, of course, being Fan's relations, they will become members of the Specialities. That ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... to be offended and tell Olga that she was tired of him: or to be dignified and say he was unusually busy. Never had he shown such forbearance towards downright rudeness as he had shown to Lucia, and though he had shown that for Olga's sake, she seemed to be without a single spark of gratitude, but continued to urge ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... the sort of people who pronounce judgments on the moral and intellectual capacity of the negro, the Malay, or the Chinaman. You have missionaries, native schoolmasters, employers of coolies, traders, simple downright men, who scarcely suspect the existence of any sources of error in their verdicts, who are incapable of understanding the difference between what is innate and what is acquired, much less of distinguishing them in their interplay. Now and then one seems to ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... first descent of Freedom to our modern world, the first unfurling of her standard on the rocky pinnacle of Europe, is here celebrated in the style which it deserved. There is no false timsel-decoration about Tell, no sickly refinement, no declamatory sentimentality. All is downright, simple, and agreeable to Nature; yet all is adorned and purified and rendered beautiful, without losing its resemblance. An air of freshness and wholesomeness breathes over it; we are among honest, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... morning, he found his cotton piled by the track and ready for shipment. Two men were engaged effacing the marks upon the bales. By some means they had obtained a sufficient number of Government wagons to remove the entire lot during the night. It was a case of downright theft. The offenders were banished beyond the lines of ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... mind is too innocent to understand all these immoral writers. I'm sure I don't want to criticize Bernard Shaw; I understand he is very popular with the highbrows in Minneapolis; but just the same——As far as I can make out, he's downright improper! The things he SAYS——Well, it would be a very risky thing for our young folks to see. It seems to me that a play that doesn't leave a nice taste in the mouth and that hasn't any message is nothing but—nothing but——Well, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... word, conceived of stage personages on the basis of a ruling trait or passion (a notable simplification of actual life be it observed in passing); and, placing these typified traits in juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck the spark of comedy. Downright, as his name indicates, is "a plain squire"; Bobadill's humour is that of the braggart who is incidentally, and with delightfully comic effect, a coward; Brainworm's humour is the finding out of things to the end of fooling everybody: ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... bridle. Dashing aslant-wise as before, the winged horse made another arrow-flight toward the Chimera, and Bellerophon aimed another downright stroke at one of the two remaining heads as he shot by. But this time neither he nor Pegasus escaped so well as at first. With one of its claws the Chimera had given the young man a deep scratch in his shoulder, and had slightly damaged the left wing of the flying steed with the other. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... "You won't like it," he observed. "But it's got to be said. Look here, Eustace! It's all very well to be in love. But you're carrying it too far. The child's downright afraid of you." ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... became moody, and downright unhappy, and went more and more to the "Red Lion," seeking comfort there now ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the general tendency of the speeches was towards universal Emancipation, mental and physical. I doubt whether an English audience composed in so large proportion of the conventionally "respectable classes" ever listened to so much downright Democracy before. The French speakers, the French writers, were full of it, and the great event, at least of the last day's session, was the entrance of a body of fifteen French workmen, delegates to the World's Exhibition of the "Working Associations" of Paris, who ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... too downright jolly!" Roger exclaimed, as he looked at the sea and shore, and then brought his gaze back to the merry group on the veranda. "Haven't you any chaperon person? Or are we ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... not to do it. It is ridiculous; there's neither sense nor fun nor anything else in it. It is downright, positive cruelty. You make your mother's life wretched, and you make the servants miserable. As to poor Miss Frost—oh, you can go to see her or not, just as you please. I am going into her ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... world know what is here, and we'd have a boom in six months that would shake the empire. But what's the use? They're dead. They're mummies. They're wooden images. There isn't enough real, old-fashioned, downright rustle and razzle-dazzle and 'git up and git' in Gokral Seetaram to ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... too well, not to feel assured she must despise a man of Stryker's character," said Harry, with some indignation. "He can't appreciate her; it can be nothing more, on his part, than downright fortune-hunting." ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... times, inordinately long. In the hundred encounters between Mr. Gladstone and Bethell, polished phrase barely hid unchristian desire to retaliate and provoke. Bethell boldly taunted Mr. Gladstone with insincerity. Mr. Gladstone, with a vivacity very like downright anger, reproached Bethell with being a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water to the cabinet who forced the bill into his charge; with being disorderly and abusing the privileges of speech by accusations of insincerity, 'which ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... sharper and money-lender, had long had his eye on Featherhead as just about silly enough for their purposes,—engaging him in what he called a speculation, but which was neither more nor less than downright stealing. ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... thirsting for liberty, as was evinced by Lear Green, made the efforts of the most ardent friends, who were in the habit of aiding fugitives, seem feeble in the extreme. Of all the heroes in Canada, or out of it, who have purchased their liberty by downright bravery, through perils the most hazardous, none deserve more praise ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... as may be supposed from the high position and eminent virtues of that lady, calm and dignified; but Miss Jemima had already whimpered several times at the idea of Amelia's departure; and, but for fear of her sister, would have gone off in downright hysterics, like the heiress (who paid double) of St. Kitt's. Such luxury of grief, however, is only allowed to parlour-boarders. Honest Jemima had all the bills, and the washing, and the mending, and the puddings, and the plate and crockery, and the servants to superintend. But ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... perhaps, this time, considering the warmth of the speech he was making against the late war—pushed them aside, and helped himself after the usual fashion. A cloud came over Mrs. Zachariah's face; she compressed her lips in downright anger, pushed the tongs towards him with a rattle, and trod on his foot at the same time. His oration came to an end; he looked round, became confused, and was suddenly silent; but the Major gallantly came to the rescue by jumping up to prevent ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... tread. Countless the swarm of the foe, and we A marvellous little company." Roland answered him, "All the more My spirit within me burns therefore. God and the angels of heaven defend That France through me from her glory bend. Death were better than fame laid low. Our Emperor loveth a downright blow." ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... kidnapper of children, a refugee, a priest, a monster. Mothers caught up their infants and ran into their houses as I passed; men eyed me spitefully, and muttered threats and curses. I was the object of suspicion and distrust - ay, of downright ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... by Apollo! And immediately the little broth plays the mischief with me, and is disturbed and rumbles like thunder, and grumbles dreadfully: at first gently pappax, pappax; and then it adds papa-pappax; and finally, it thunders downright papapappax, as ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... Bashful was I in youth, Now somewhat am I altered. Well, what I like myself ... Must know that my one delight ... Is a merry damsel,—and small, I do not ask a whale, nor a world-map to study, Nor, like a full moon, A face round and ruddy; But leanness, downright leanness, No! No! Lean women's claws oftentimes are scratchy, Their temper somewhat catchy, Full of aches, too, and mourning, As my wife ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... "These are," she said, "several articles of clothing, belonging to our old mistress; they were presented to her in years gone by, by members of our family on her birthdays and various festivals; her ladyship never wears anything made by people outside; yet to hoard these would be a downright pity! Indeed, she hasn't worn them even once. It was yesterday that she told me to get out two costumes and hand them to you to take along with you, either to give as presents, or to be worn by some one in your home; but don't make fun of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... she adhered to her beloved Miss Frost, did not really mind the quiet suggestive power of Miss Pinnegar. For Miss Pinnegar was not vulgarly insinuating. On the contrary, the things she said were rather clumsy and downright. It was only that she seemed to weigh what she said, secretly, before she said it, and then she approached as if she would slip it into her hearer's consciousness without his being aware of it. She seemed to slide her speeches unnoticed into one's ears, so that one accepted them ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... Curtis entered the vehicle, which whirled out of sight in the peculiarly downright fashion of ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... broken with her altogether," replied Mrs. Cobb. "If he isn't a downright brute he'll want to ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... not give in, so McKibben in the kindness of his heart rode several miles in order to procure the beef himself, and thus save me from the dire results which he thought would follow should Halleck get wind of such downright insubordination. The next day I was made Commissary of Subsistence for the headquarters in addition to my other duties, and as this brought me into the line of fresh beef, General Halleck had no cause thereafter ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... this masculine ergo:—"Therefore we may know that those who will not learn such sciences as they might get their living by, or do not fall into husbandry, are either downright fools, or else propose to get their living by robbery ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... perplexities and his very gray hair, and his manner seemed quite natural. I use the word natural, in the sense of its being unaffected; there was something comic in his distraught way, as though it would have been downright ludicrous but for his own perception that it was very near being so. When he had talked with me a little, he said to Mrs. Pocket, with a rather anxious contraction of his eyebrows, which were black and handsome, "Belinda, I hope you have welcomed Mr. Pip?" And she looked up from her book, and said, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the auld and wrastling times, when folk were gifted wi' a far look into eternity, to make up for the oppressions whilk they suffered here below in time. She freely allowed that many devout ministers and professors in times past had enjoyed downright revelation, like the blessed Peden, and Lundie, and Cameron, and Renwick, and John Caird the tinkler, wha entered into the secrets, and Elizabeth Melvil, Lady Culross, wha prayed in her bed, surrounded by a great many Christians in a large room, in whilk it was placed ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Hexarly with six years' service and half your talents. He asked for what he wanted, and he got it. See, down by the Convent! There's McArthurson who has come to his present position by asking—sheer, downright asking—after he had pushed himself out of the rank and file. One man is as good as another in your service—believe me. I've seen Simla for more seasons than I care to think about. Do you suppose men are ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... scene. How much less romantic the town looked now than when I saw it floating, as it seemed, upon the sky-blue water in a haze of gold-dust fired by the slanting rays! It was then like the Castillon of some troubadour's song; now it was a mean-looking little sun-baked town modernized to downright plainness, with no remnant of its ramparts remaining save a sombre old Gothic gateway near the river, and no ecclesiastical architecture deserving notice. Its site, however, is the same as that which it occupied in the Middle Ages, namely, close to the Dordogne, upon a ridge ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... a camel in a bad temper, Mr. Jim," said Dave Boone darkly; he had put in a weary time in Egypt. "For downright wickedness them snake-headed ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... law to serve his interests could devise was thrown in the way. It was a new doctrine to that day that any power should intervene between him and the tenants who represented his income, and it was held to be a hardship if not downright robbery. The builder took the same view. Every tenement house plan was the subject of hot debate between the Health Board and the builder, or his architect. The smallest air-shaft had to be wrung out of him, as it were, by main strength. The church itself was too often on the side of the ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... So's Gray, and more of 'em too; but there's a difference between them and the downright murdhering Tory set. Poor Tom doesn't throuble the Church much; but you'll be all for Protesthants now, Martin, when you've your new brother-in-law. Barry used to be one of your ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... man, and more particularly so when his quiver is fairly full, that he presides over the happiest home in the land. But there is a corner of Regent's Park where stands a house whose four walls contain an amount of fun and unadulterated merriment, happiness, and downright pleasure that would want a lot of beating. The fact is that Mr. Harry Furniss is not only a merry man with his pencil. Humour with him may mean a very profitable thing—it unquestionably does; fun and frolic as ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... all, I know no work which gives a fairer measure of Mr. Maurice's intellect, both political and exegetic, and a fairer measure likewise, of the plain downright common sense which he brought to bear on each of so many subjects, than his Commentary on the very book which is supposed to have least connection with common sense, and on which common sense has as yet been seldom employed— namely, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... rights associations and lectures in creation. Love in the family is the one thing needful to regenerate the earth and cause the wilderness to become as Eden and the desert to blossom as the rose. Reversed, love and discord have broken more hearts, caused more sorrow, estrangement, and downright death than war, pestilence, and all other causes combined. It palsies energy and ambition, engenders gloom and despair, and transforms manhood into an icicle. Statistics prove that the married live longer, on the average, by several years than the unmarried, a most satisfactory proof that ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... plans, this interloper into his caravan? Must he call upon Texas Smith to assassinate the fellow? It was a disagreeably brutal solution of the difficulty, and moreover it might lead to loud suspicion and scandal, and finally it might be downright dangerous. There was such a thing as trial for murder and for conspiracy to effect murder. As to causing a United States officer to vanish quietly, as might perhaps be done with an ordinary American ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... at ma! Did you ever see her so bright and jolly? She looks downright pretty. She can hold her own better than I thought ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... education, which can take into account woman's peculiar physical organization when necessary, rather than by co-education, no one, I think, can predict. Thus far, the idea of co-education has not penetrated the German brain, and the German woman is too shy and modest to think of downright, decided competition with man. ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... Sniatynski had given me a downright scolding, instead of larding his letter with sentences like this "In spite of all your good qualities it will come to this, that you will always be a cause of suffering and anxiety to those who love you." He brings it home with a vengeance. I have caused suffering to Aniela, her mother, and ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... with loudly expressed applause. "Such a blackguard, dirty, thieving job never was up before in my time. I don't know 'ow to talk of it in language as a man isn't ashamed to commit himself to. It's downright robbery." ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... to each (exclusive of the dress, which every man finds for himself) will not exceed two guineas. Forster plays, and Stone plays, and I play, and some of the Punch people play. Stanfield, having the scenery and carpenters to attend to, cannot manage his part also. It is Downright, in "Every Man in his Humour," not at all long, but very good; he wants you to take it. And so help me. We shall have a brilliant audience. The uphill part of the thing is already done, our next rehearsal is next Tuesday, and if you will come in you will find ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... time when it so puzzled and troubled me in Jenny. It marred the pleasure of the visit most miserably. I was continually fearing the displeasure of my father and the discomfort of my mother. The whole household were disturbed by what seemed to them downright rudeness. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... and exhibiting in their freedom of speech more sorrow and sympathy than fault-finding; but in the prevention of wrong-doing and in earnest fighting against the passions they are vehement and inexorable and assiduous: for that is the time for downright plainness and truth. Besides we see that enemies censure one another for what they have done amiss, as Diogenes said,[495] he who wished to lead a good life ought to have good friends or red-hot enemies, for the former told you what ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... that sort. But when, at John's suggestion, I spoke of the possibility of having in the Cravens and the Blakes,—the Cravens are very musical, you know—and Wallace Hood who would be really hurt if we left him out, Paula came nearer to being downright rude than she often allows herself to be. She said among other things that she didn't propose to have March subjected to a 'suffocating' affair like that. She said she wanted him free to interrupt as often as he ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... teach that nature is wholly corrupt, is to drive men to despair, and that to suppose the righteousness of Christ sufficient to justify is to make it unnecessary to have any of our own. Though compelled to listen to such downright heresies, to hear himself described as knowing neither what he said nor whereof he affirmed, and as aiming only to gratify self sufficiency, pride and uncharitableness,—"I rejoiced," said this meek and ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... ——— in a little upper room. She has a small, brisk, wide-awake figure, not ungraceful; frank, simple, straightforward, and downright. She had on a robe, I think, but I did not look so low, my attention being chiefly drawn to a sort of man's sack of purple or plum-colored broadcloth, into the side-pockets of which her hands were thrust as she came ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Nance, of the Third. It must be remembered that the privates played many practical jokes upon their officers in camps, when at other times and on other occasions such would be no joke at all, but a bit of downright rascality and meanness—but in the army such was called fun. A nice chicken, but too old to fry, so it must be stewed. As the wagons were not up, cooking utensils were scarce—about one oven to twenty-five men. Captain Nance ordered Jess to bake the biscuit ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... made no reply. He had made up his mind to put up with every thing short of downright aggression, and for three days more, he obeyed all orders, however arbitrary and however annoying. During this period the man who had been injured became gradually worse; his illness increased rapidly, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... that the details of New England history were essentially dry and unpoetic. Everything is near, authentic, and petty. There is no mist of distance to soften outlines, no mirage of tradition to give characters and events an imaginative loom. So much downright work was perhaps never wrought on the earth's surface in the same space of time as during the first forty years after the settlement. But mere work is unpicturesque, and void of sentiment. Irving instinctively divined and admirably illustrated in his "Knickerbocker" the humorous element ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... not quite like to break his heart—it would not be friendly, knowing him so long; for indeed," she added, gaily, "though I don't like Edward Lynne well enough to marry him, I like him too well to break his heart in downright earnest." ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... I don't call them sharpers; I can admire a good, genuine piece of keen rascality, don't you know, for I can play just as sharp a game myself as the best of them, but w'en it comes to such downright, beastly work as this, so blundering and bungling you know, w'y it looks too much as though they thought we were all born idiots, ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... I thought you were blind. You are downright mean, David Eby! When you wore your first pair of long pants I noticed it right away and made a fuss about them and it takes you ten minutes to see that my hair is up instead of hanging in a silly braid ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Madame de Brinvilliers, kill off numbers of respectable relations in the first four acts; and, at the last, be actually burned at the stake, to which she comes shuddering, ghastly, barefooted, and in a white sheet. Sweet excitement of tender sympathies! Such tragedies are not so good as a real, downright execution; but, in point of interest, the next thing to it: with what a number of moral emotions do they fill the breast; with what a hatred for vice, and yet a true pity and respect for that grain of virtue that is to be found in us all: our bloody, daughter-loving ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... may find much to delight and interest on the banks of the Rhine, always provided that he suits his mood to his environment, and takes but little of Rhine scenery at a time. For surely between Coblentz and Bingen there is an iteration as regards castles and ruins which is downright wearisome. Do we not between these points find Lahneck, Marksburg, Sterrenberg, Liebenstein, The Mouse, Rheinfels, The Cat, Schoenburg, Gutenfels, The Pfalz, Stahleck, Furstenberg, Hohneck, ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... said Mr. Prohack. "But that was neither more nor less than a downright lie. You see I was in such a state that I had to pretend, to both you and myself, that things aren't what they are.... And then, without the slightest warning, you suddenly arrive without a scratch on you. You aren't hurt. You ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... paint up to the life, the mixture of pique, confusion and disappointment, that appeared in his countenance, joined to the mournful exclamation: "By heavens, a woman!" This at once opened her eyes, which had been shut in downright stupidity. However, as if he had meant to retrieve that escape, he still continued to toy with and fondle her, but with so staring an alteration from extreme warmth into a chill and forced civility, that even Emily herself could not but take notice of it, and now began to wish she ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... woman, and gives a capital account of the battle between OUR and YOUR weeds. Does it not hurt your Yankee pride that we thrash you so confoundedly? I am sure Mrs. Gray will stick up for your own weeds. Ask her whether they are not more honest, downright good sort of weeds. The book gives an extremely pretty picture of one of your villages; but I see your autumn, though so much more gorgeous than ours, comes on sooner, and ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... nudged each other. They knew what was coming. One day when the preacher stopped by, Abe had asked him the same question. The preacher had been downright flustered when he ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... that I should apply the remark. I am not in need of any further wealth, if you like. I am rich enough already, to be sure. But you, Critobulus, I look upon as singularly poor, and at times, upon my soul, I feel a downright compassion ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... impression of himself: he was at times gauche, blunt, awkwardly infelicitous in speech or silence, when he would have wished, as he knew perfectly how, to be considerate, gentle, sympathetic, responsive. On the other hand, his shyness and reticence were seemingly contradicted by a downright bluntness, a deliberate frankness in matters of opinion in which his convictions were involved; for his views were most positively held and his convictions were often passionate in intensity, and he declared them, upon occasion, with an utter absence of diplomacy, ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... the Ocean have such an honest and amusing frankness about you," he said, "that I vow to God you are overwhelming. I am a downright admirer of your noble calling, and something skilled in its terms. What spectacle, for instance, can be finer than a noble ship 'stemming the waves with her taffrail,' and chasing her wake, like ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... beheld me two or three times in a downright passion; once, as I have stated, on account of her having brought me bad coffee, and a second ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... Jonsonian comedy of types that the practice of advertising a "humour" or "passion" in a name (English or Italian) established itself most firmly. Hence such strange appellatives as Sir Epicure Mammon, Sir Amorous La Foole, Morose, Wellbred, Downright, Fastidius Brisk, Volpone, Corbaccio, Sordido, and Fallace. After the Restoration, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger were, for a time, more popular than Shakespeare; so that the label-names seemed to have the sanction of the giants that were ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Lord Chancellor, "is running on Sundays to the Caledonian Chapel in Hatton Garden, where they bear a Presbyterian orator from Scotland preaching, as some ladies term it, charming matter, though downright nonsense. To the shame of the King's Ministers be it said, that many of them have gone to this schism-shop with itching ears. Lauderdale told me that when Lady —— is there, the preacher never speaks of an heavenly mansion, but an heavenly Pavilion. For ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... we may detect a feeling of surprise creeping over our minds, that the Lord, who had the whole world and its history before him whence to select his examples, should have chosen a specimen of worldly wisdom, damaged by an admixture of downright falsehood, in order to stimulate thereby the spiritual zeal of his own disciples. The three following observations will, in my judgment, explain and completely remove the difficulty:—(1.) The Holy One, precisely ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... be a stranger in New France or you would not express such hasty, honest sentiments upon the Intendant's hospitality. It is not the fashion, except among plain-spoken habitans, who always talk downright Norman." Master Pothier looked approvingly at Colonel Philibert, who, listening with indignant ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... at such times a motto of which I might have made earlier use, but the fact is that I have only once before described a downright burglary in which I assisted, and that without knowing it at the time. The most solemn student of these annals cannot affirm that he has cut through many doors in our company, since (what was to ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... off duty, are no safer guides of attractive young women than other mortal men; and Lillie had so often seen their spiritual attentions degenerate into downright, temporal love-making, that she held them in as small reverence as the rest of their sex. Only one dreadful John the Baptist of her acquaintance, one of the camel's-hair-girdle and locust-and-wild-honey species, once ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... almost as rich as himself, and in his distress he very nearly succumbed; but Clara swooped in to save him, and found that her position was made almost impossible by whispered tittle-tattle, cold looks, and downright rudeness. She was distinctly left out of picnic and boating parties, and almost in contempt she was partnered with Sir Henry who, after Lady Bracebridge's arrival, was no longer master in his own ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... playing of bands, bumping of trunks and boxes, and finally the steady pulsation of the engines as the big ship stood out to sea. After nine days of discomfort in the stuffy steerage and thirty-six hours of downright misery while crossing the stormy North Sea, Inga found herself once more in the land of her birth. Full of humiliation and shame she met her husband at the railroad station, and prepared herself for a deluge of harsh words and reproaches. ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the lover who tries to play peacemaker between two of his mistresses. This is enough to bring lava from any "extinguished volcano." Liszt, after almost vain efforts to avoid downright hair-pulling, decided to take the comtesse away from Nohant. He seems to have sided with her against Sand, and said afterward: "I did not care to expose myself to her insolence" (sottise). Chopin, however, took sides ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... disposed for pleasantry, would gladly now have dropt the subject; but Dr Lyster, turning to the Miss Charltons, said, "Young ladies, I call you both to witness if this is not very bad usage: this young woman has connived at my writing a downright falsehood, and all the time took me in to believe it was a truth. The only way I can think of to cure her of such frolics, is for both of you to leave us together, and so make her keep her word whether she will ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the Frenchman continued, frowning. "I—no! Pardon me, sare, I do not fence with les estropies. That is downright! That is certain, sare. I do not ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... next morning we found that we had all gone soundly to sleep, too tired to take the Taube seriously, all except our two chauffeurs, who were downright annoyed because no bomb had entered their bedroom. Then we all went out and looked at the little hole in the roof of the fish market, and the big hole in the hotel garden, and thought of bombs as curious natural phenomena that never had and never would ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... Paul again; but she clung and laughed, and, in a sudden spasm of downright horror, he put out more strength than he guessed, and wrenched himself free. The woman tottered backwards, swayed for an instant, and then fell. The back of her head came into sharp contact with ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... of course very sad, and, as has already been urged, Crabbe's earlier works had the advantage of much criticism, and even correction from his friends. But however this may be, it may fairly be urged that in a "downright" painter of human life, with that passion for realism which Crabbe was one of the first to bring back into our literature, mere "polish" would have hindered, not helped, the effects he was bent on producing. It is difficult in polishing the heroic couplet not to produce the impression of ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... them to be bound with iron bands, and delivered them to sixty knights, who were good in fight, fast to hold over the weald. And he himself drove him forth, and made much din, and Gorlois the fair, forth on the other side, and all their knights ever forth-right slew downright all that they came nigh. Some they crept to the wood on their bare knees, and they were on the morrow most miserable of all folk. Octa was bound, and led to London, and Ebissa, and Ossa—was never ...
— Brut • Layamon
... Curtain, there will be more money gathered in one afternoon than will be given to Kingsland Spittle in a whole month; also, if at this time about the hours of four and five it wax cloudy and then rain downright, they shall sit dryer in the galleries than those who are the ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... Cappy Ricks with the closest approach to downright affection he considered quite dignified to permit ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... dirty trick, he'd do it; and now he's done it. What's got into the man, all of a sudden? He's a skinflint—always closer than hair to a dog's back; but I don't believe I've ever known him do somethin' downright ugly, like this." ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... principles of the early ages, these men wished to bring back the ignorance of the early ages. This notion, grounded first on some hardness in their earlier works, which resulted—as it must always result—from the downright and earnest effort to paint nature as in a looking-glass, was fostered partly by the jealousy of their beaten competitors, and partly by the pure, perverse, and hopeless ignorance of the whole body of art-critics, so called, connected ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... man, about whom she had never been able to take any position that he did not shortly oust her from it. Considering her resolution only last night, she too had thought, when she began, that she was carrying generosity to the point of downright disloyalty to papa. By what strangeness of his expression did he make her feel that even this was not generous enough, that more was required of the daughter of the Works than merely withdrawing ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... that you do not have so much work—man's work, to do. Yes, regular downright drudgery it was. Why, I hardly blame you for running away, that is, taking a brief vacation." He went on talking, she looking silently into the fire. "But now," he said finally, "you have had a good rest, and you are ready to ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... not reply, but seemed hesitating what to say. But here Walter broke in again. "I call it downright mean!" he exclaimed bitterly; "but he's getting meaner and meaner, that he is. What he does with his money nobody knows. I suppose he spends it in religious pocket-handkerchiefs and pious bed-quilts for the little niggers in Africa, or something ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... into me! It's the only way." Rupert's smile flashed suddenly upon him. "I've been an ungrateful brute, and I'm ashamed of myself. Seriously, Trevor, I'm sorry. I sometimes think to myself it's downright disgusting the way we all sponge on you. It's deuced good of you to put ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... on him with a subdued fierceness. "I'll attend to the scoundrel presently, Captain Rawlings, though he doesn't deserve it. He is a downright sweep—like all his ear-ringed kidney. He had no right to kick this man, who is one of the best and smartest men aboard. I gave him a clip on the jaw, and when I've dressed his arm and he is able to ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... tell that counts, only he kep' comp'ny with me, an' I wouldn't hev ennythin' else but a real marriage, an' so he giv in, an' we hed a couple o' rooms in a real respectable house an' hed it fine till he had to go away on business, he said. I never 'b'leeved that. Why he was downright rich. He's a real swell, you know. What kind o' business cud he have?" Lizzie straightened herself proudly and held ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... physical or moral, nothing but pure, unconditional passiveness, alike in movement or in quiescence, in action or in capacity. The sole power, the sole motor, movement, energy, and deed is God; the rest is downright inertia and mere instrumentality, from the highest archangel down to the simplest atom of creation. Hence, in this one sentence,' La Ilah illa Allah,' is summed up a system which, for want of a better name, I may be permitted to call the Pantheism of ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... mounted horsemen. When their weapons were inferior, as on the first occasions when they were brought into contact with troops carrying breech-loading arms of precision, or when they tried the tactics of downright fighting, and of charging fairly in the open, they were often themselves beaten or repulsed with fearful slaughter by mere handfuls of whites. In the years 1867-68, all the horse Indians of the plains were at war with us, and many battles were fought with varying fortune. Two were especially ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... while I misunderstand him, for possibly he meaneth his own dear words I have excerpted. Why doth he not speak in plain, downright English, that the world may see my faults? For every one doth not know what is excerpting. If I have been so bold to pick or snap a word from him, I hope I may have the benefit of the clergy. What words have I robbed him of?—and how have I become the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... additional thousand. His stories varied; there was a measure of vitality and a sort of instinctive in all of them, but none attained the personality of "The Demon Lover," and there were several that Anthony considered downright cheap. These, Dick explained severely, were to widen his audience. Wasn't it true that men who had attained real permanence from Shakespeare to Mark Twain had appealed to the many as well as to ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the Cortlandts, and he breakfasted alone. When he strolled out upon the veranda for his smoke he found Allan waiting for him, as usual. The Jamaican had not missed a morning so far, and it was only by a show of downright firmness that Kirk had been able to get rid of him at any time during the day. The black boy seemed bent upon devoting his every waking hour to his hero, and now, finding himself regarded with friendly eyes, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... shake them off. Her mistress is her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Colisle, a coarse, vulgar, half-bred woman, whose husband acquired a sudden wealth from contracts and petroleum speculations, and who has in consequence set herself up for a leader of ton. A certain downright persistence and energy of character, acquired, it may be, in bullying the kitchen-maids at the country tavern where she began life, a certain lavish expenditure of her husband's profits, the vulgar display ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... God bless my soul! Just listen. I never was a downright, unvarnished heathen, but twice in my life; and I guess you know about both of those times, and my first request is that you let them slide from your memory. The Lord knows I'd like to! Yes, child, I want you to call me uncle, I hoped you would, but I wasn't going to ask you to. Before ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... through not to tell a direct falsehood," said Master Joseph; "it is bad enough to deceive people, without being guilty of downright lying." ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... questions of folk that he came across, as people new come to the city and hunters from the mountain-feet and the forests of the plain, and mariners and such like, concerning the damsel and the Lord of Utterbol; and Bull also went about seeking tidings: but whereas Ralph asked downright what he wanted to know, Bull was wary, and rather led men on to talk with him concerning those things than asked them of them in such wise that they saw the question. Albeit it was all one, and no tidings came to them; indeed, the name of the ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... will follow many a stave. I know it well, so rings the book throughout; Much time I've lost in puzzling o'er its pages, For downright paradox, no doubt, A mystery remains alike to fools and sages. Ancient the art and modern too, my friend. 'Tis still the fashion as it used to be, Error instead of truth abroad to send By means of three and one, and one and three. 'Tis ever taught and babbled in the ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... the arrival of the doctor, who bore the sounding official designation of the Residency surgeon. This gentleman was wont to be sceptical in the matter of ailments, limiting his recognition only to honest, downright illness worthy of the attention of a medico whose name stood in front of a formidable array of honourable letters, too numerous for him to mention. But even really great people are not always strictly consistent, and occasionally make small lapses from the straight ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... the other a blond girl with a dazzling skin and glorious shimmering hair wound around a shapely head. Both were in aprons, but the younger wore a dull green that set off her fair beauty to perfection, while the checked gingham of the other proclaimed a hopelessly downright taste. ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... that horrid black patch over your eye?" she asked, a trifle timidly. He muttered a sharp exclamation and clapped his hand to his eye. For the first time since the beginning of their strange acquaintanceship Beverly observed downright confusion in this ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... add, "I said 'It's dear,' but still, it'll do, eh, you others?" On this downright question ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... irreligion is too strong For early stomachs, to prove wholesome food; I can't help thinking Juvenal was wrong, Although no doubt his real intent was good, For speaking out so plainly in his song, So much indeed as to be downright rude; And then what proper person can be partial To all those nauseous epigrams ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Thus it is speculatively probable that a Catholic might without sin remain years without confession, never having any grievous sins to confess, grievous sin alone being necessary matter for that sacrament. There is no downright cogent reason why a man might not do so. And yet, if he neglected such ordinary means of grace as confession of venial sin, having it within reach, month after month, no one, considering "the sin which surrounds us," would expect that man to ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... all things, and believe all things. The household is such a menagerie that it is no wonder that the German translation of this novel is called "Tollhaus oder Herrenhaus"? Some of the inmates are merely abnormal; others are downright mad. There is not a natural or a normal character in the entire book, and not one of the persons holds the reader's sympathy, though frequent drafts are made on his pity. The hero is a colossal hypocrite, hopelessly exaggerated. If one finds Dickens's characters to be caricatures, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... Mr. Moss the very opposite to the truth in a matter in which he had, she thought, no business to be inquisitive; but when she did so she had no power to look the lie. You might say of her frequently that she was a downright liar. But of all human beings whom you could meet she was the least sly. "My dear child," the father used to say to her, "words to you are worth nothing, unless it be to sing them. You can make ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... left. But I do not think the charter gives him very much power over me; moreover, I shall soon come to an end of my examinership, and therefore I am not afraid, but shall go on to say what I was going to say, and that is, that in my belief it is a downright cruelty—I have no other word for it—to require from gentlemen who are engaged in medical studies, the pretence—for it is nothing else, and can be nothing else, than a pretence—of a knowledge of comparative anatomy as part of their medical curriculum. ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... I left town soon after receiving your first letter, and was moving about from place to place, till the coronation brought me to town again, and has fixed me here for the winter; however I do not urge my unsettled situation during the summer as any excuse for my silence, but aim to lay it upon downright indolence, which I was ashamed of before I received your second letter, and have been angry with myself for it since; however, as often as you'll do me the pleasure, and a very sincere one it is I assure you, of letting me hear ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... "That is the first downright cowardly thing I have ever known you to say!" she declared. "And I wish you to know, Mr. Thomas Jefferson Gordon, that Mr. Duxbury Farley and Mr. Vincent Farley and Miss Eva Farley are my guests and my friends!" And with that for ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... at last continued, more calmly, "I 'm well aware what your conclusions must be; the responsibility for that old man's death lies between—between that secretary fellow and me; any fool can see that. It's downright devilish to be one of two such alternatives; but if I tell you what brought me here last night—Swift, I just ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... of losing her that I behaved like a ruffian to my angel wife, and would have committed bigamy, and been a felon. What was all this but madness? You, who are so wise, will you not forgive me a crime that downright ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the woman might argue, "That there was no use in adding the words 'as may be chosen,' if the matter was left to the selection of the heir; for if no such words had been inserted, there could have been no doubt at all that the heir might have given whatever he himself chose. So that it was downright madness, if he wished to take precautions in favour of his heir, to add words which might have been wholly left out without such omission prejudicing his ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... of Modern Painters" we read: "All her pictures are softly tender and full of fresh light. But the execution is downright and virile. It is only in little touches, in fine and delicate traits of observation which would probably have escaped a man, that these paintings are recognized as the work of a ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... certain failure; but to the earnest, serious, conscientious worker, I would say a word of hope. The promotion from the rank of amateur to the dignity of authorship may be long in coming, but it will come at last. Fame, like all else that this world has to give, depends largely upon downright hard work; and he who has the courage to strive in the face of disappointments will achieve ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... work horses were often fatally gored and not a few men lost their lives. Notwithstanding the fact that it was such a downright desperate task, the men became so expert that they did not even hesitate to tackle, alone and single-handed, great bulls of twice the weight of their small ponies; they roped, held, threw, and branded them. The least accident or mistake, a slip of the ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... cry I, scornfully, standing scarlet and deeply ashamed, facing them all; "it is real, plain, downright, simple truth." ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... northern Protestant princes took alarm. If they had viewed with composure the failure of Frederick's foolhardy efforts in Bohemia, they beheld with downright dismay the expansion of Bavaria and the destruction of a balance of power long maintained between Catholic and Protestant Germany. And so long as the ill-disciplined remnants of Frederick's armies were behaving like highwaymen, pillaging and burning throughout the Germanics, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... sense, and so much the more offensively as they do it obliquely; and yet I am much deceived if many other writers deliver more worth noting as to the matter, and, how well or ill soever, if any other writer has sown things much more material, or at all events more downright, upon his paper than myself. To bring the more in, I only muster up the heads; should I annex the sequel I should trebly multiply the volume. And how many stories have I scattered up and down in this book, that I only touch upon, which, should anyone more curiously search ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... 'Seven Stars' I do," he said. "In fact, I want for 'The Tiger' to swallow the 'Seven Stars,' in a poetical way of speaking. I'm a downright man and never take ten minutes where five's enough, so there it is. It came over me last night as a thing that must be—like the conversion of Paul. And I'll go further; I won't have you beat about the bush, Nelly. You're the sort of woman that can make up your mind in a ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... sorrow when they read my bill; but as for her, nothing she resolv'd, that look'd bright or joyous, should after her love's death approach her. All her servants that were not coal-black must turn out; a fair complexion made her eyes and heart ake, she'd none but downright jet, and to exceed all example, she hir'd my mourning furniture by the year, and in case of my mortality, ty'd my son to the same article; so in six weeks time ran away with ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... is not a short cut to the millennium, it is no way of changing human nature, and in the new type of assembly, as in the old, spite, vanity, indolence, self-interest, and downright dishonesty will play their part. But to object to a reform on that account is not a particularly effective objection. These things will play their part, but it will be a much smaller part in the new than in the old. It is like objecting to some projected and ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... a little upper room. She has a small, brisk, wide-awake figure, not ungraceful; frank, simple, straightforward, and downright. She had on a robe, I think, but I did not look so low, my attention being chiefly drawn to a sort of man's sack of purple or plum-colored broadcloth, into the side-pockets of which her hands were thrust as she came forward to greet us. She withdrew ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he could have a month of downright play and idleness; and no doubt it would have been the very best thing for him. However, now he had ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... positively say, that on the fatal morning I was arrested, the money I had on my possession, and what I had in my tent in real cash, was 49 pounds. ALL OF WHICH I had earned by the sweat of my brow, honestly, through downright ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... endeavoring vainly to say Yes and No to all questions, Foreign and Domestic, that may rise. Whereby, in the Affairs of England, there has, as it were, universal St.-Vitus's dance supervened, at an important crisis: and the Preparations for America, and for a downright Life-and-Death Wrestle with France on the JENKINS'S-EAR QUESTION, are quite in a bad way. In an ominously bad. Why cannot we draw a veil ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... Cobbett, son of a labourer who had risen to be a small farmer, had in spite of all obstacles learned to read and write and become a great master of the vernacular. His earliest model had been Swift's Tale of a Tub, and in downright vigour of homely language he could scarcely be surpassed even by the author of the Drapier's Letters. He had enlisted as a soldier, and had afterwards drifted to America. There he had become conspicuous as a typical John Bull. Sturdy and pugnacious in the highest ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... to be much interested in the outlaw. Miss Terry," he observed, as if by chance the thought had just occurred to him, when, in reality, he was downright jealous. ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... I have left the Saga era of the North untouched, I would say that I have preferred to deal here only with downright historic figures. For valuable aid rendered in insuring accuracy I am indebted to the services of Dr. P.A. Rydberg, Dr. J. Emile Blomen, Gustaf V. Lindner, and Professor Joakim Reinhard. My thanks are due likewise to many friends, Danes ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... over a year. Then he writes that he has give up the cattle business for good, because Mexico is in a state of downright anarchy and he has been shot through the shoulder. He put it well. He said he had been shot from ambush by a cowardly Mexican and I wouldn't believe how lawless that country was. So now he was going to take up mining in God's own country, ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... is. So's Gray, and more of 'em too; but there's a difference between them and the downright murdhering Tory set. Poor Tom doesn't throuble the Church much; but you'll be all for Protesthants now, Martin, when you've your new brother-in-law. Barry used to be ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... was his first observation. "Downright handsome of Ruthven!" and then as the colour rose a little in his face, "Just the thing for you, Jock, home work, which ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... never to be complied with. It is not for him to lend the sanction of his presence to a meeting with which he could not sit to its final termination. It is not for him to stand associated, for a single hour, with an assemblage of men who begin with hypocrisy, and end with downright blackguardism. It is not for him to watch the progress of the coming ribaldry, and to hit the well selected moment when talk and turbulence and boisterous merriment are on the eve of bursting forth upon the company, and carrying ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... observer would not have failed to detect that the Girl took a little less pleasure in her surroundings than she had taken in them before she had made the trip to Monterey. Downright glad, to use her own expression, as she had been on her return to see the boys of the camp and hear their boisterous shouts of welcome when the stage drew up in front of The Polka, she had to acknowledge ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... window. For a moment he wondered whence it shone; then he remembered that the glebe lands lay in that direction. The parish was building a house for its new minister, when he left Virginia, those many years ago. Suddenly he recalled that the minister—who had seemed to him a bluff, downright, honest fellow—had told him of a little room looking out upon an orchard, and had said that it ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... she said, "several articles of clothing, belonging to our old mistress; they were presented to her in years gone by, by members of our family on her birthdays and various festivals; her ladyship never wears anything made by people outside; yet to hoard these would be a downright pity! Indeed, she hasn't worn them even once. It was yesterday that she told me to get out two costumes and hand them to you to take along with you, either to give as presents, or to be worn by some one in your home; but don't make fun of us! In the box you'll find the flour-fruits, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... engaged. It was to be distinctly understood that there was to be nothing precipitate. This condition has its advantages; very particularly that it postpones, or averts, family introductions. Yet it cannot be enjoyed to the full without downright immorality, and it always does seem to us a pity that people should be forced into Evil Courses, in order to shun the terrors of Respectability. Why should not some compromise be possible? The life some couples above ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... me no Uses; for if ever you catch me at your damn'd Clubs again, I'll give you my Mother for a Maid: Why, you talk downright Treason. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... Confederate generals alike were astonished at the sudden change. McDowell found it impossible to stem the tide once set in, and gave orders to fall back across Bull Run to Centreville, where his reserves were stationed. As the retreat went on it turned to a downright rout. The Confederates made only a feeble pursuit, but fear of pursuit spread alarm through the flying ranks, demoralized by long marching and hard fighting. Baggage and ammunition-wagons, ambulances, private vehicles which had been standing in the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... I am pretty," she repeated softly under her breath, "but father likes me anyhow." She thought over this somewhat curious problem. Why should father like her anyhow? Why should mother only kiss her and pet her when she was downright pretty? ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... whims and wishes of superiors, and of saying what they think Signori like. This habit, while it smoothes the surface of existence, raises up a barrier of compliment and partial insincerity, against which the more downright natures of us Northern folk break in vain efforts. Our advances are met with an imperceptible but impermeable resistance by the very people who are bent on making the world pleasant to us. It is the very reverse ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... what is incredible, Melitus, and that, as appears to me, even to yourself. For this man, O Athenians! appears to me to be very insolent and intemperate and to have preferred this indictment through downright insolence, intemperance, and wantonness. For he seems, as it were, to have composed an enigma for the purpose of making an experiment. Whether will Socrates the wise know that I am jesting, and contradict myself, or shall I deceive ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... a godlike face or form, which is the expression of divine beauty; and at first a shudder runs through him, and again the old awe steals over him; then looking upon the face of his beloved as of a god he reverences him, and if he were not afraid of being thought a downright madman, he would sacrifice to his beloved as to the image of a god; then while he gazes on him there is a sort of reaction, and the shudder passes into an unusual heat and perspiration; for, as he receives the effluence of beauty through the eyes, the wing moistens and he warms. And as he warms, ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... that, even without Caius Julius, the fall of the oligarchy and the establishment of the Roman Empire was fixed as by a law of fate. Yet, with data before us, it is hard to imagine the creation of the new German Empire without Bismarck. His downright Prussianism rises like a rock through the mists, amid the vaporous Liberalism of the pre-Revolutionary period. His unbroken resolution gave strength to the wavering purpose of Frederick William IV. His diplomacy led to Koeniggraetz, and the manipulated telegram from Ems turned, ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... create her nature and order her fortunes with that sort of downright energy with which resolute people always attack the problem of a new human existence. This child should be happy; the rocks on which her mother was wrecked she should never strike upon,—they were all marked on Elsie's chart. Love had been the root of all poor Isella's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... not be always favourable to the besieged. By a chance ball from the enemy, one of the galleys which brought relief was sunk downright with 40 men and goods to the value of 40,000 ducats. But, next day, Ferdinand Tellez made a sally with 400 men, and gained a victory equal to that of Gonzalez de Camara, and brought away one piece of cannon with some ammunition, arms, and other booty. This action was seen by the Nizam in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... believed what turned out to be a mass of rank lies and impostures. He would gladly then have done something for the welfare of his friends' souls by mass-reading and acts of devotion in places of particular sanctity. He felt downright sorry, he tells us, that his parents were still alive, as he might have performed some special act to release them from the pains ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... women or children, and it was also very rarely the case that they committed murder except in self-defense or for revenge. This led a good many sentimental people to regard them rather in the light of dashing heroes than that of downright criminals. You have probably heard of Captain Melville, have you not?" he asked, ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Salters; "that 'u'd cost ye a dollar to hear at any theatre—maybe two. Some folk, I presoom, can afford it. 'Seems downright waste to me. . . . Naow, how in Jerusalem did Cap. Bart Edwardes ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... that, it may be made invariably palatable by a little care in a few plain particulars, through neglect of which it often becomes intolerable. The soggy, waxy, indigestible viand that often appears in the potato-dish is a downright sacrifice of the better ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... disciples and followers of Buchanan, Hobbs and Milton, who have exceeded their masters in downright impudence, scurrility, and lying, and the new modellers of commonwealths, who, under a zealous pretence of securing the rights of a fancied original contract against the encroachments of monarchs, are sowing the seeds of eternal disagreements, confusions, {269} and bloody wars throughout ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... assertions, suggestive of individual ways of looking at things; here are headings that signalize particular events in the authors' experience,—moments' monuments. Beside them, Johnson's title, "The Vanity of Human Wishes", looks very dogged and downright. ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... that. They got too much respect for my judgment. And they admitted that Safety's way of standing the gaff had been downright uncanny. So there was nothing to do but pay over their share of this tainted money and wait for the blow, eight hundred and seventy-five dollars being the amount I split with 'em for their masterly ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... at an Inn and stepped within The Bar and read the "Times;" And never such a treat, as—the epistle of one "Vetus,"[42] Had he found save in downright crimes: "Though I doubt if this drivelling encomiast of War Ever saw a field fought, or felt a scar, Yet his fame shall go farther than he can guess, For I'll keep him a place in my hottest Press; 130 And his works shall be bound in Morocco d'Enfer, And lettered behind with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... slander all the afternoon, to get money to buy velvet pulpit-cushions or gilt chandeliers with, or to help pay some missionary's passage to the Tongoo Islands, is, in my opinion, a humbug, and, what's worse, a downright breach of the Golden Rule. At any rate, with my notions, it would be hypocrisy in me to join in, and that's why I don't invite the society here. I don't know but I have spoke too strong; if so, I'm sorry; but I've had to earn my own livin', ever since I was a girl, with my needle, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... general has taken a great fancy to her. I think I begin to appreciate her fascination; it's her courage and her candor together. Most girls are so uncertain and capricious. It's delightful to meet such a straightforward and downright creature." ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... see your point," I rejoined; "but mine is that you labored it. You needn't have written me a downright lie about the fellow." ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... that, while the whole executive machinery of the country was being subject to a tremendous strain, there would be in some districts a condition of affairs which differed very little from downright anarchy. Yet here, again, the existing records are surprisingly free from any evidence tending to support such an assumption, England was not governed by the Home Secretary in those days. Every parish ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... Professor's tobacco," said John; then, angrily turning upon poor M'Allister, he cried, "And as for your filthy stuff, it's a downright insult to offer ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... a way, but it wasn't much of a way. She liked the fine clothes and the trinkets he gave her, but, after he went blind, she could hardly tolerate him. Lots of times, she would have been downright cruel to him if I ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... family's bosims," said Clegg sententiously. "You was took ill sudden in my cab the larst time. Offal bad you was, to be sure—to hear ye, and I druv' yer back; and I never got no return fare, I didn't, and yer par he made hisself downright nasty over it, said as if it occurred agin he shouldn't employ me no more. I durstn't go and offend yer par; he's a good customer to me, ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... outside the guarded gate had been his, but no other ten days of his life had seemed so eventful or passed so swiftly. For at last he stood before his goal, had actually fastened his eyes upon so much of it as might be seen through its gate. Never had he achieved so much downright actuality. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... "'I'm downright glad ye came,' she said heartily. 'I do so like folks to be neighborly and sociable. Ye ain't stuck up, nuther, like most city folks; no airs, nor the like o' that. Pap'll be home soon, and he'll be glad ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... my own trousseau. I don't see why a gentleman isn't to have a trousseau as well as a lady. At any rate, I wanted a new black suit, fit for the hymeneal altar. And when there I made out John Gordon, and soon wormed the truth out of him. At least he did not tell me downright, but he let the cat so far out of the bag that I soon guessed the remainder. I always knew how ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... speak the plain, downright, honest truth, as a Coombeland man should, whether he be ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... was, as may be supposed from the high position and eminent virtues of that lady, calm and dignified; but Miss Jemima had already whimpered several times at the idea of Amelia's departure; and, but for fear of her sister, would have gone off in downright hysterics, like the heiress (who paid double) of St. Kitt's. Such luxury of grief, however, is only allowed to parlour-boarders. Honest Jemima had all the bills, and the washing, and the mending, and the puddings, and the plate and crockery, and the servants to superintend. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with a downright hanchor, but with sum'mat like a killog. But, that's no hanchor, a'ter all, but only a kedge, catted ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... could watch the man from where I was snuggled down, and would you believe me, he had no sooner got behind the little building they use for a woodshed than he started to dance a regular old hoe-down, snapping his fingers, and looking particularly merry. I tell you I could hardly hold in, I was so downright mad; I wanted to rush out and denounce him for an old fraud of the first water. But on considering how useless that would be, besides giving it away that I suspected. him, and was spying on his actions, I managed to get a grip ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... companion older than myself, who had been in the habit of bullying me freely, until one day he went too far and I took him by the collar and shook and swung him till he was dizzy and begged for mercy, for of downright pugilistics I knew nothing, and a deliberate blow in the face with my fist in cold blood was a measure too brutal to enter ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... more whippings than the sum total of his own chubby fingers and toes to instil into him a proper understanding of parental authority. Sometimes his mother, who was a slight small woman, stronger of mind than of body, would feel downright discouraged about her vigorous, wilful boy, and wonder, half-despairingly, if she were really equal to the task of bringing him up in ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... constable. I perform some of the duties of the town-clerk by promulgating public notices when they are posted on my front. To speak within bounds, I am the chief person of the municipality, and exhibit, moreover, an admirable pattern to my brother-officers by the cool, steady, upright, downright and impartial discharge of my business and the constancy with which I stand to my post. Summer or winter, nobody seeks me in vain, for all day long I am seen at the busiest corner, just above the market, stretching out my arms to rich and poor alike, and at night I hold a lantern over ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... always been mighty pleasant to me, but he never was as downright good before," murmured Greg, looking down into the big black eyes that glanced ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... society he would rather be a burglar, and that we starved him, and that the women had to dress each other because they had no lady's maids, and that the whole lot of us were in love with one man, it was downright malicious. ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Milton contained columns of abuse, of misrepresentation and of downright charges of self-seeking against him. Man after man in the party that had asked him to run for Senator came to him to beg him to desist from his fight on corporations that broke the laws and charged the people prohibitive ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... that the practice of advertising a "humour" or "passion" in a name (English or Italian) established itself most firmly. Hence such strange appellatives as Sir Epicure Mammon, Sir Amorous La Foole, Morose, Wellbred, Downright, Fastidius Brisk, Volpone, Corbaccio, Sordido, and Fallace. After the Restoration, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger were, for a time, more popular than Shakespeare; so that the label-names seemed to have the sanction of the giants that were before the Flood. Even when ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... singular antipathy to trees. When Garcia Moreno made a park of the dusty Plaza Mayor, he was ridiculed, even threatened. To plant a fruit or shade tree (a thing of foresight and forethought for others) in a land where people live for self, and from hand to mouth, is considered downright folly in theory and practice. A large portion of the valley, left treeless, is becoming less favorable ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... days, till she made them a positive nuisance. She's not a happy way of inculcating a moral economic lesson, hasn't Louisa. But I own I'm fond of this boy. He's far the best of the whole lot—gentlemanlike, and a sportsman, and good-looking—unusually so for one of that family—and, my dear, he's downright honestly in love with Kathleen. I've watched him—did so when he was down at Ranelagh one day last month with her and Victoria Sokeington—and I know the real thing when ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... downright disappointed at not having the boat for Ann when he came home. Was he meaning to deliver that lecture on the army? She hoped that whatever he talked about it would bring Ann home without that strained, ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... is THE TRUE FORM of the verb in the present tense of the passive voice!"—Ibid. Had we not met with some similar expressions of English or American blunderers, "the act or action of being smitten," would be accounted a downright Irish bull; and as to this ultra notion of neologizing all our passive verbs, by the addition of "being,"—with the author's cool talk of "the presentation of this theory, and [the] consequent suppression of that hitherto employed,"—there is a transcendency ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... may be the case; but still there is no excuse for your folly: and mark me, Sir Gilbert, I will not have that pert minx, Lucy Bargrove, closeted with my daughter Agnes. As to the boy, it is a downright puppy and fool, or, to speak less plebeianly, is ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... the hope of Gruenewald," cried Fritz. "He doesn't suit some of your high-and-dry, old, ancient ideas; but he's a downright modern man—a man of the new lights and the progress of the age. He does some things wrong; so they all do; but he has the people's interests next his heart; and you mark me—you, sir, who are a Liberal, and the enemy of all their governments, you please ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was downright cruel to us. Not a dozen feet away was liberty; and now we were back at the beginning again, with the ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... were a bold man with women, and I know that at least that part of what you said was untrue, for you are a bashful man, John, you are downright bashful. It is I who have been bold. You were too timid to woo me, and I so longed for ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... as they say in Parliament, where no one could be expected to give a downright and straightforward "yes" or "no," is in the affirmative. The scenes of these early dramas are characteristically Mesopotamian. The well-ordered garden "planted" with the tree of life "in the midst," and a river to water it, the ark of Noah pitched "within and without with ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... truth went farthest this time. Why do I think he's got 'em about him? First, 'cos he swore so steady he hadn't. For a ready lie, and for acting a lie, and over-acting it at times, give me townspeople; but for a thundering big un, against all reason, and for sticking to it stupid when they're downright convicted, and with a face as innercent as a baby's, give me a country lump. And next, because I can tell with folks a deal sharper than him, even to which side of 'em the pocket is they've got what they wants to hide in, by the way they moves their ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... disbursed, To be with peace and too much plenty cursed: Who their old monarch eagerly undo, And yet uneasily obey the new? Search, satire, search; a deep incision make; The poison's strong, the antidote's too weak. 'Tis pointed truth must manage this dispute, And downright English, Englishmen confute. Whet thy just anger at the nation's pride, And with keen phrase repel the vicious tide; To Englishmen their own beginnings show, And ask them why they slight their neighbours ...
— English Satires • Various
... apothegms, and sometimes the subject changes on every second page. This fact constitutes one of the counts in the orthodox indictment of him: it is cited as proof that his capacity for consecutive thought was limited, and that he was thus deficient mentally, and perhaps a downright moron. The argument, it must be obvious, is fundamentally nonsensical. What deceives the professors is the traditional prolixity of philosophers. Because the average philosophical writer, when he essays to expose his ideas, makes such inordinate drafts upon the ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... the statement of his trainers, Mr. and Mrs. McArdle, that Peter's proficiency is not so much the result of training as of downright self-education." ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... hollow enough to a disinterested listener. To Julia the words were as sweet as the first rain after a tedious drouth. She had heard complaint, censure, innuendo, and downright abuse of poor Gus. These were the first generous words. They confirmed her judgment, they comforted her heart, they made her feel grateful, even affectionate toward the fop, in spite of his watch-seals, his curled ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... and its sister star were the twin beacons that marked the last outposts of the Earth System. Past them was only a trackless waste of inter-stellar space. Ben Sessions knew that the charts he carried were probably worse than useless, were likely downright traps. ...
— Daughters of Doom • Herbert B. Livingston
... complexion, though perfectly healthy; and there was something of the same expression, half keen, half dreamy, as in Geraldine, his junior by one year; while the grace of all the attitudes of his slender lissome figure showed to advantage beside Felix's more sturdy form, and deliberate or downright movements; while Clement was paler, slighter, and with rather infantine features, and shining wavy brown hair, that nothing ever seemed to ruffle, looked so much as if he ought to have been a girl, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... we offered tobacco-leaves to the dancers and musical ladies: both sexes eagerly seized the favourite refreshment, and crammed their mouths with it, then recommencing the music and dancing with renewed alacrity. When at length downright exhaustion put an end to the spectacle, the Kalushes were entertained with a favourite mess of rice boiled with treacle. They lay down round the wooden dishes, and helped themselves greedily with their dirty hands. During the meal, the women were ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... little spinster of fifty, with endless interests and not a hobby to her name, the most downright, practical person I have ever known, and the most helpful to strangers and pilgrims in the city. It is quite incidental that she is uncommonly rich and uncommonly homely. Nobody ever stops ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... opposing qualities. But the Steingerdas and Gudrunas were generally equal to any emergency of fate or fortune, and slashed their way through the history of their time more after the manner of men than women; supplementing their downright blows by side thrusts of craftier cleverness when they had to meet power with skill, and were fain to overthrow brutality by fraud. The Norse women were certainly as largely framed as they were mentally energetic, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... only too apt to do in your place. You told the simple truth, when you said you didn't want the ragged wretch in your house. And what person of refinement, I'd like to know, would have wanted him? For, say what you will, it is a most disagreeable thing to admit downright dirty vagabonds into our elegant dwellings. And dangerous, besides; for they might murder us in the night,—or steal something! Oh, we fastidious and fearful! where is our charity? where is the heart of trust? There ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... and said that he were fainer if she were yet to wed, whereas she had done him shame and all them of his lineage; and he told her how and wherefore. When she heard that, she was sore grieved and denied the deed downright; but nought availed. For it is well known that shame so sore is contrary to all women, that if a woman were to burn all, she would not be trowed of such a misdoing, once it ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... is what I call downright mean," cried Matt to Andy. "Of course all these cracks at rival concerns are meant for us. He wants to draw the crowd away ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... many of them, conceiving that it might be the civillest way of requiting her for her instructive conversation and the trouble she took in showing me the house. It cost me a pang (not a curmudgeonly, but a gentlemanly one) to offer a downright fee to the lady-like girl who had admitted me; but I swallowed my delicate scruples with some little difficulty, and she digested hers, so far as I could observe, with no difficulty at all. In fact, nobody need fear to hold out half a crown to any person with whom he has occasion to ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he shook the bridle. Dashing aslant-wise as before, the winged horse made another arrow-flight toward the Chimera, and Bellerophon aimed another downright stroke at one of the two remaining heads as he shot by. But this time neither he nor Pegasus escaped so well as at first. With one of its claws the Chimera had given the young man a deep scratch in his shoulder, and had slightly ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... an element which contrasted strongly with the general environment. Yet Bonner, perhaps, was not without qualifications which fitted him for his mission. He was not, indeed, virtuous; but he had a certain downright honesty about him, joined with an entire insensibility to those finer perceptions which would have interfered with plain speaking, where plain speaking was desirable; he had a broad, not ungenial humour, which showed him things and persons ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... are not questions that should be discussed in the hostile dogmatic tone adopted in both countries by those who only know their own. The ceremonies that are foreign to you impress you, while those you have been used to all your life have become a second nature. An Englishwoman feels downright uncomfortable in her high stuff gown at night, and a German lady brought up at one of the great German Courts told me that when she stayed in an English country house and put on what she called a ball dress for dinner every night, she felt like ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... is a way all women have with him. What think you a Virginian female, who happened to be passing through camp, had the forwardness to say to me but t' other day? 'When General Washington,' she writ, 'throws off the hero and takes up the chatty, agreeable companion, he can be downright impudent sometimes, Martha,—such impudence as you and I, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... there was nothing to be done (short of downright brutality) but to yield. He did it with the worst possible grace. 'Well?' he resumed. 'What do ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... and believe all things. The household is such a menagerie that it is no wonder that the German translation of this novel is called "Tollhaus oder Herrenhaus"? Some of the inmates are merely abnormal; others are downright mad. There is not a natural or a normal character in the entire book, and not one of the persons holds the reader's sympathy, though frequent drafts are made on his pity. The hero is a colossal hypocrite, hopelessly exaggerated. ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... word 'white,'" and added: "The question of striking out the word 'male' we, as an equal rights association, shall of course present as an intellectual theory, but not as a practical thing to be accomplished at this convention." Mr. Phillips also emphasized this point; but I repudiated this downright insolence, when for fifteen years I had canvassed the entire State, county by county, with petition in hand asking for woman suffrage! To think that those two men, among the most progressive of the nation, should dare look me in the face ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... and he drew closer. Beasley always had a knack of so blending truth with his personal venom that it stung far more than downright insult. He wondered what the Padre's generosity had been, and wherein lay its connection with their present purpose. The explanation was not long in coming, for Montana Ike took up the challenge amidst a storm of ominous murmurs from the ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... you ever see her so bright and jolly? She looks downright pretty. She can hold her own better than I thought ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... raged with great fierceness, and with almost uninterrupted success for the knights, till the final battle which took place near Pillerent, in 1456. A Nuremberg painter, Hans Rosenpll, celebrated this in verses like Veit Weber's, with equal vigor, but downright prosaic street-touches. Another poem describes the rout of the Archbishop of Cologne, who attempted to get possession of the city, in 1444. All these Low-German poems are full of popular scorn and satire: they do not hate the nobles so much as laugh at them, and their discomfitures in the field ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... longer be recognised. He would speak gravely to his mother about it. If Andrew again presented himself at the house he should be given plainly to understand that his visits were something less than welcome,—if necessary, a downright blunt word must effect their liberation. Godwin felt strong enough for that, musing here alone. And, student-like, he passed on to debate the theory of the problem. Andrew was his father's brother, but what is a mere ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... it. Coal-trucks!"—with a debonair reference to the fact that Leigh pere was a wealthy coal-owner. "But, you see, when I was having my fling, which came to such an abrupt end at Monte, the governor got downright ratty with me—kicked up no end of a shine. Told me not to darken his doors again, and that I might take my own road to the devil for all he cared, and generally played the part of the outraged parent. I must say," he added ingenuously, ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... conviction, (a thing now rather rare,) the religion of their early prejudices, especially if the conversion is brought about by any political machine, are very apt to degenerate into indifference, laxity, and often downright atheism. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... surprised and distant gaze upon him; but Baldassare was not to be discouraged. He had that tough skin of true vulgarity which is impervious to any thing but downright hard blows. ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... Francis Burdett his spokesman in the House and to the country, often venting his chagrin or singularity of sentiment at the expense of his friend; but what in the first was trick or reckless vanity, was in the last plain downright English honesty and singleness of heart. In the case of the State Trials, in 1794, Mr. Tooke rather compromised his friends to screen himself. He kept repeating that "others might have gone on to Windsor, but he had stopped at Hounslow," as if to go farther might have been dangerous and unwarrantable. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... them you must; but do try and bear them without losing your temper. If a man have a stubborn Or skittish horse to manage, he knows that the best way to deal with it is by gentle, good-humoured coaxing. Just so it is in other things: kindness, gentleness, and downright good-humour will do what all the blustering and anger in the world can not accomplish. If a wagon wheel creaks and works stiff, or if it skids instead of turning round, you know well enough that it ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... granny had august company, and removed them to sup apart with an anaemic eight-year-old little girl; in none of whom Sister Nora showed more than a lukewarm interest, comparing them all disparagingly with Dave. In fact, she was downright unkind to the anaemic sample, likening her to knuckle of veal. It was true that this little girl had a stye in her eye, and two corkscrew ringlets, and lacked complete training in the use of the pocket-handkerchief. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... will soon get out," exclaimed the other neighbor. "I call it downright unconscionable to crowd up Christian women like this. Might I make bold to inquire, miss, when you ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... sovereign, having proved him sure Erewhile on auburn Ganymede; Stirr'd by warm youth and inborn power, He quits the nest with timorous wing, For winter's storms have ceased to lower, And zephyrs of returning spring Tempt him to launch on unknown skies; Next on the fold he stoops downright; Last on resisting serpents flies, Athirst for foray and for flight: As tender kidling on the grass Espies, uplooking from her food, A lion's whelp, and knows, alas! Those new-set teeth shall drink her blood: So look'd the Raetian mountaineers ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... onset that in all that day there had been no such cruel press, and rage, and smiting. At that same moment rode fiercely into the thickest of the struggle King Arthur and Kings Ban and Bors, and slew downright on both hands right and left, until their horses went in ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... Rotten Row in April,—how in the name of common sense can Jimjams be expected to show up against high-class yearlings like Ballarat and Tifftoff on the Goodwin Sands, T. Y. C.? The whole thing is only another instance of the hare-brained imbecility and downright puddling folly with which the cackling herd will follow any brazen-headed nincompoop who sets up to advise them on turf matters. Jimjams has just as much chance of winning this race as Mr. JEREMY has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... better to say. His mind was still confused by this sudden upheaval of his ideals. All that was best in Villon's poetry had stirred his enthusiasm, while all the much which was worst had left his sane wholesomeness untainted. To the half-dreamer, half-downright, practical lad in Poitou, Villon, with his jovial, bitter humour and even flow of human verse, had been something of an idol, and when our idols crash into ruin the thunder of the catastrophe bewilders judgment. But there was more than bewilderment, there was an inevitable ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... wander like pilgrims. They beg, and esteem it A paying profession. The people consider That misery drives them 20 More often than cunning, And so to the pilgrims Contribute their mite. Of course, there are cases Of downright deception: One pilgrim's a thief, Or another may wheedle Some cloth from the wife Of a peasant, exchanging Some "sanctified wafers" 30 Or "tears of the Virgin" He's brought from Mount Athos, And then she'll discover ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... a pained surprise throughout England. Men awaited with some irritation the proper work of the Convention. But on the second day, when the two strongest opposing candidates did not together count as many votes as the demagogue, there was downright consternation. ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... lack of sympathy with the northern cause. In 1887 it even became necessary for him to withdraw his acceptance of an invitation to attend a meeting of the Grand Army in St. Louis, because of danger that he might be subjected to downright insult.[4] ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... the truth once in a while. But there ain't anything in my life makes me feel as bad as this.... I s'pose you couldn't understand and I don't myself.... Only the sixteen years keeping still made me think she was gone sure ... but you were so downright good, that's what was the worst ... do you see what ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... ideal of chastity. The great Buffon refused to recognize chastity as an ideal and referred scornfully to "that kind of insanity which has turned a girl's virginity into a thing with a real existence," while William Morris, in his downright manner, once declared at a meeting of the Fellowship of the New Life, that asceticism is "the most disgusting vice that afflicted human nature." Blake, though he seems always to have been a strictly moral man in the most conventional sense, felt nothing but contempt for chastity, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... sheathed my prick in her bottom-hole to its full extent. Mrs. B at this awoke, and exclaimed, "Good Heavens! Fred, you hurt me cruelly. I wish you would be content with my cunt, I shall be unable to walk tomorrow. You know it always has that effect. It is downright cruel of you—but since you are in, stay quiet a little, and then continue to frig me with your fingers, as you know that eventually ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... This is downright sophistry. To any sane man it could not but be evident that this was an "unmistakable disregard of rights secured by the Supreme law of the land." The school authorities had separated white and Negro children ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... wish both the poem and the appointment at the place where pepper grows if you are to become pale and nervous on its account! Promise me now next post-day to be reasonable, and not to look like the waning moon, else I promise you that I shall be downright angry, and will keep ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... measure its weakness and strength. It is not helpful to a race to be continually praised and have its weakness overlooked, neither is it the most helpful thing to have its faults alone continually dwelt upon. What is needed is downright, straightforward honesty in both directions; and this is not always ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... things are going in the world-news, I tell you, girl! My heart is fairly dancing in my body. And, besides, a little puss like you is always glad to hear of an admirer, and only a short time ago you praised him loudly enough as a splendid dancer. A downright good fellow, child, just as I was myself at his age. An uncle of his, a captain ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... unhesitatingly as the word of any white man, and there are white men in the country whose word carries no more assurance than the word of any Indian. The Indian is prone to evasion and quibbling rather than to downright lying, though there are many who ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... Mrs. Vane drew herself up (figuratively). "Speak for yourself. It may be that I am too old to accept new ideas, but this one certainly seems to me downright immoral and indecent. This is not intended to reflect on you personally, Mary, and of course you were more or less demoralized by your close contact with the war. I mean the idea—the thing—itself. We may call in doctors and surgeons when we are in bodily discomfort, ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... he has saved his own skin at the expense of theirs, do their best to make up the difference to him in contempt and abuse. Schoolboys are not distinguished for a fastidious reticence. If they dislike, they never hesitate to say so, and they have a painfully downright way of giving reasons for their behaviour, which is apt to jar on a temperament so sensitive that its owner always and only treads the path of high principle when self-interest points him in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... wouldn't give a fip for all your politics, generally, but I think this is something downright cruel and unchristian. I hope, my dear, no ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... homely yet not poverty-stricken kitchens, keeping us as long as they can whilst they chat about their own lives or ask us questions. The beauty, politeness, and clear direct speech of the children, are remarkable. Life here is laborious, but downright want I should say rare. As in the Jura, the forest gorges and park-like solitudes are disturbed by the sound of hammer and wheel, and a tall factory chimney not infrequently spoils a wild landscape. The greater part of the people gain, their livelihood ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... it, or when I felt unable to help it. My mother had been so much alienated by my behaviour toward Marshall and De Saussure, that I thought it needful to please her by every means in my power, short of downright violation of conscience. "Children, obey your parents in the Lord," - I did not forget; I thought I was doing the very thing. For it was not to please myself, that I let my mother make me look as she chose and let her take me - where she would. My heart was too sore to be ambitious and ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... advantage of perseverance, till just about nightfall we got fairly into Mount's Bay. We thought ourselves very fortunate in so doing, for just then a strong breeze which had before been blowing grew into a downright heavy gale, against which we could not possibly have contended. It seemed, however, to be veering round more to the northward, and the captain, hoping that it would come round sufficiently to the westward of north to enable us to stand up Channel, instead of running in and bringing the ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... humorous. For once he had not the courage to pursue the downright course which his nature prompted. Little Coqueline was foremost in his thoughts. Then there was the memory of all the happiness his home meant to him, and he feared that which ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... cause of his father's ruin and death. Paul, had he been asked, would have acknowledged how he ought to feel towards young Devereux, but he at times allowed himself to regard him with bitterness and dislike, if not with downright hatred. He well knew that this feeling was wrong, and he had more than once tried to overcome the feeling when, perhaps, some careless expression let drop by Gilbert Devereux, or some order given by him, would once more arouse it. "I could bear it from another, but not from him," Paul over ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... immediate neighbourhood had, many of them, but little enjoyment of the exquisite sunny days and the calm nights of August and September. To several of the older people—Dr. Ayloff, among others, as we have seen—the summer proved downright fatal, but even among the younger, few escaped either a sojourn in bed for a matter of weeks, or at the least, a brooding sense of oppression, accompanied by hateful nightmares. Gradually there formulated itself a suspicion—which grew into a conviction—that ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... wondered at that some honest-hearted, thorough-going Abolitionists should have lost their equanimity? As you well know I am comparatively no bigot to any creed, political or theological, yet to tell the plain truth, I look upon your notions of government and religious perfection as downright fanaticism—as harmless as they are absurd. I would not care a pin's head if they were preached to all Christendom; for it is not in the human mind (except in a peculiar and, as I think, diseased state) ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... mean a great deal. I'd give I don't know what to be beautiful; but as I am not I don't mean to fret about it. Well, Maggie's downright plain; in fact—in fact—almost ugly, I may say; and yet—and yet, she is just Maggie; and you are not five minutes in her society before you'd rather have her face than any other face in the world. But the ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... absolutely immoral, downright wicked, to forego it," Alice declaimed, with energy. "It would be nothing short of ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... Articles of Faith let it be by direct teaching, not by question and answer. Children should only answer what they think, not what has been drilled into them. All the answers in the catechism are the wrong way about; it is the scholar who instructs the teacher; in the child's mouth they are a downright lie, since they explain what he does not understand, and affirm what he cannot believe. Find me, if you can, an intelligent man who could honestly say his catechism. The first question I find in our catechism is as follows: "Who created you and brought you into the world?" To which ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... recur to the principles of the early ages, these men wished to bring back the ignorance of the early ages. This notion, grounded first on some hardness in their earlier works, which resulted—as it must always result—from the downright and earnest effort to paint nature as in a looking-glass, was fostered partly by the jealousy of their beaten competitors, and partly by the pure, perverse, and hopeless ignorance of the whole body of art-critics, so called, connected with the press. No notion was ever more baseless or more ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... a word, conceived of stage personages on the basis of a ruling trait or passion (a notable simplification of actual life be it observed in passing); and, placing these typified traits in juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck the spark of comedy. Downright, as his name indicates, is "a plain squire"; Bobadill's humour is that of the braggart who is incidentally, and with delightfully comic effect, a coward; Brainworm's humour is the finding out of things ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... daughter who sings admirably, and has a lovely pure voice; she is only fifteen. She fails in nothing but in stage action; were it not for that, she might be the prima donna of any theatre. Her father is a downright honest German who brings up his children well, for which very reason the girl is persecuted here. He has six children,—five girls and a son. He and his wife and children have been obliged to live for the last fourteen years on an income of 200 florins, but as he has already done his duty ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... for me, that a tall stately lass soon presented herself, saying, 'I be come to help you.' The intelligence was very agreeable, and I welcomed her in the most gracious manner possible, and asked what I should give her by the year. 'Oh Gimini!' exclaimed the damsel, with a loud laugh, 'you be a downright Englisher, sure enough. I should like to see a young lady engage by the year in America! I hope I shall get a husband before many months, or I expect I shall be an outright old maid, for I be most seventeen already; besides, mayhap I may want to go to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... good-for-nothing Spanish piece racing and shrieking round the tennis court like a she tom-cat, the heartless hussy. Her and that simpering silly that's trotting round after her had ought to be put in a bag and shaken up, that they ought. It's downright scandalous to be carrying on like that at such ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... in the last chapter.[200] In 48 Caelius was praetor; in the master's absence he suddenly took up the cause of the debtors, and tried to evoke appeals against the decisions of his colleague Trebonius,—a great lawyer and a just man. Failing in this, he started as a downright revolutionary, proposing first the abolition of house-rent, and finally the abolition of all debts; and Milo, in exile at Massilia, was summoned to help him to raise Italy against Caesar. This was too much, and both were quickly caught and killed as they were ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... ground, and while examining these proofs, and arguing upon them rationally, he overlooked the light attacks of his adversary, when not to the point, appeared insensible to his sarcasms and wit, and remained always cool and serious. Voltaire's vivacity at last turned to downright anger; his eyes flashed fire whenever they met the benign and placid countenance of the quaker, and the dispute went so far at last, that the latter, getting up, said, "Friend Voltaire! perhaps thou mayst come to understand these matters rightly; in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... untangling for a good many years. Nobody else seemed to want to take the job, and so I took it, and I flatter myself that I made a pretty good job of it. The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hour for a call, and if I have interrupted you in your work, pray go on. I wouldn't for the world. What a day, hasn't it been? I always think that these sort of grey depressing days are so much worse than the downright pouring ones, don't you? You are always expecting, you know, and then nothing ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... that counts, only he kep' comp'ny with me, an' I wouldn't hev ennythin' else but a real marriage, an' so he giv in, an' we hed a couple o' rooms in a real respectable house an' hed it fine till he had to go away on business, he said. I never 'b'leeved that. Why he was downright rich. He's a real swell, you know. What kind o' business cud he have?" Lizzie straightened herself proudly and ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... readers sleep, and their huge remains lie embedded in the deep morasses of Chambers and Anderson. We wonder at the length of face and general atrabilious look that mark the portraits of the men of that generation, but it is no marvel when even their relaxations were such downright hard work. Fathers when their day on earth was up must have folded down the leaf and left the task to be finished by their sons,—a dreary inheritance. Yet both Drayton and Daniel are fine poets, though both ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... sank into his body, till the blood streamed to his girdle, and the soil of the ford was crimson with the blood that fell from the body of that warrior so valiant in fight. And Cuchulain's endurance was at an end, for Ferdia continually struck at him, not attempting to guard, and his downright blows, and quick thrusts, and crushing strokes fell constantly upon him, till Cuchulain demanded of Laeg the son of Riangabra to deliver to him the Gae-Bulg. Now the manner of using the Gae-Bulg was this: it was set with its end pointing down a stream, ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... Napoleon's general. For reasons connected with its manufacture, and best not inquired into, the Italian vellum enjoyed the greatest reputation for smooth and silky whiteness. Dibdin calls "our modern books on vellum little short of downright wretched." But the editor of this series could, I think, show examples that would have made ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... when Euryanax and Pausanias both exhorted Amompharetos not to run the risk of remaining behind with his men, alone of all the Lacedemonians, they did not at all persuade him, and at last they had come to downright strife; and meanwhile the herald of the Athenians had arrived and was standing by them. And Amompharetos in his contention took a piece of rock in both his hands and placed it at the feet of Pausanias, saying that with this pebble he gave his vote not to fly from the ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... gentleman and mason, among other general toasts, gave "Caledonia, and Caledonia's Bard, Brother Burns," which rung through the whole assembly with multiplied honours and repeated acclamations. As I had no idea such a thing would happen, I was downright thunderstruck, and, trembling in every nerve, made the best return in my power. Just as I had finished, some of the grand officers said, so loud that I could hear, with a most comforting accent, "Very well indeed!" which set me something to ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... which is directed against him or his favorites, the moderation of the prince is meritorious. The pardon which he grants is a triumph obtained over himself! But when one treats of a crime against society, the pardon is not an act of clemency, it is a downright prevarication.... Every criminal who escapes justice threatens the public safety and innocence is not protected by being exposed to become the victim of a new crime. When a criminal is absolved all the crimes that he can perpetuate are committed by his hands." In no army ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... the purpose of emphasizing some idea, a writer has not entire freedom. Good use, which is the use of acknowledged masters, decides what may be done. There are certain arrangements of words to which we are accustomed; and the disregard of them leads to obscurity or downright contrariety in the thought. "Brutus stabbed Caesar" is the common order; "Brutus Caesar stabbed," or "Stabbed Brutus Caesar," is obscure; while "Caesar stabbed Brutus" is the very opposite of the truth. Those who have studied Latin know that as far as understanding the sentence is concerned, it ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... men—healthy dead men, don't you know? But—give you my word—a cadaverous spectacle like that poor chap, bones stickin' out of his hide, and breathin' as if he was stuffed with dry shavin's, or husks like the Prodigal Son, gives me the downright horrors!" ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... another with cords; many of them together held men in their arms, and going round the holy Sepulchre, let them fall, and then raised horrible shouts of laughter, while they who had fallen ran after the others to avenge themselves: it seemed that both old and young were downright mad. From time to time they raised their eyes, and stretched their hands, full of taper, to heaven, crying all together eleison, as if they were wearied at the delay of the holy fire. This scene continued till towards three ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... difficult task of re-allotting the wastes and open fields in proportion to the rights of the lord of the manor, the tithe-owner, and the parishioners, sometimes furnished an occasion for downright robbery of the poor. That staunch champion of high-farming and enclosures, Arthur Young, names many instances of shameful extortion on the part of landlord and attorneys. Where the village carried out its enclosure fairly and cheaply, the benefits were undoubtedly great. The wastes then ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... brought Colonel Thom to see me to aid in his negotiations, but I would not give in, so McKibben in the kindness of his heart rode several miles in order to procure the beef himself, and thus save me from the dire results which he thought would follow should Halleck get wind of such downright insubordination. The next day I was made Commissary of Subsistence for the headquarters in addition to my other duties, and as this brought me into the line of fresh beef, General Halleck had no cause thereafter to complain of a scarcity of that ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Wit able enough to justify the town For three days past—wit that might warrant be For the whole city to talk foolishly Till that were cancelled; and when that was gone, We left an air behind us, which alone Was able to make the two next companies Right witty; though but downright ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... interfered definitely with what he did, and why should she? She exerted a silent influence upon everything he did, stamped each of his thoughts from the moment they began to shoot up. For the very reason that she did not know how to discuss, she could not be refuted; what to him was downright logic had no effect whatever upon her. He did not get his own thoughts again stale from her lips, and did not wish to either; her wonderful power over him lay in the fact that she rested so securely on her own, and answered the most ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... gossip of the newspapers. And nothing amazed her more than the announcement that Dora Dundas, of all people in the world, was to inherit his millions. Thoughts of Dora sent cold shivers down her back. She knew the downright and straightforward nature so well that she could easily imagine the hot indignation flaming in the girl's breast for any wrong or ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... I consider it a bloomin' liberty, and a downright piece of himpertinence, you comin' 'ere interferin' with with my business—and so I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... that an agreement on the subject had actually been made, and that it had been reduced to writing by his Excellency's own hand. The devices to which he had had recourse in his attempts to prove that he had merely been guilty of tergiversation instead of downright lying, were such as positively to aggravate the original offence, and to fully justify the Assembly in refusing to attach any weight to his unsupported statement upon any subject.[235] As the weeks passed by, the quarrel ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... seen, time's something server, In mankind's medley a duty-swerver, At downright 'No or yes?' Doffs ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... you were a bold man with women, and I know that at least that part of what you said was untrue, for you are a bashful man, John, you are downright bashful. It is I who have been bold. You were too timid to woo me, and I so longed for ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... expression of divine beauty; and at first a shudder runs through him, and again the old awe steals over him; then looking upon the face of his beloved as of a god he reverences him, and if he were not afraid of being thought a downright madman, he would sacrifice to his beloved as to the image of a god; then while he gazes on him there is a sort of reaction, and the shudder passes into an unusual heat and perspiration; for, as he receives the effluence of beauty through ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... audience nightly with his fine baritone voice, good enough for a ballad in those latitudes, and good enough indeed for something much better if it had been properly exercised under a master. He was not downright dissolute, but his experience with his father, who was weak and silly, had given him a distaste for what he called religion; and he was loose, as might be expected. Still, he was not so loose as to have lost his ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... I ever saw when it comes to downright luck, and that's the truth, Dick," said Mr. Winslow, as he stepped out and joined the other when banking hours were done; which on this day was not until ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... aside, is it not a glorious part to play, when you pit yourself against mankind, and the luck is on your side? I have thought a good deal about the constitution of your present social Dis-order. A duel is downright childish, my boy! utter nonsense and folly! When one of two living men must be got out of the way, none but an idiot would leave chance to decide which it is to be; and in a duel it is a toss-up—heads or tails—and there ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... repeated Persis, the tears running down her cheeks. "But there's a difference in women. And the Annabel Sinclair kind, with brains enough to keep 'em from being downright bad and not enough conscience to make 'em good, are the worst of the lot. If the devil couldn't count on their help in laying traps for good men, he'd ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... Slesinger, who was plain but almost as rich as himself, and in his distress he very nearly succumbed; but Clara swooped in to save him, and found that her position was made almost impossible by whispered tittle-tattle, cold looks, and downright rudeness. She was distinctly left out of picnic and boating parties, and almost in contempt she was partnered with Sir Henry who, after Lady Bracebridge's arrival, was no longer master in his own house.... When the Cabinet Ministers ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... some gentlemen towards others, who differed in opinion from them on a subject of so much difficulty as the present. He protested against a debate, in which he could trace nothing like reason; but, on the contrary, downright phrensy, raised perhaps by the most extraordinary eloquence. The abolition, as proposed, was impracticable. He denied the right of the legislature to pass a law for it. He warned the Chancellor of the Exchequer to beware ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... this very moment in my little shop, home in Falmouth, I've a corner cupboard of his under repair that he wouldn't trust to another living soul! And along comes you an' say, 'That man's innocent! Look at his face!' you says, which it's downright womanly instink, if ever there was such a thing in ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... grasp that does not grasp a truth. When he speaks of nature as "immeasurably superior to all that the human mind can conceive," and professes to "pay no regard whatsoever to what may be thought beautiful, or sublime, or imaginative," and to "look only for truth, bare, clear downright statement of facts," he seems to forget what nature is, as adopted by, as taken into art; it is not only external nature, but external nature in conjunction with the human mind. Nor does he, in fact, adhere in the subsequent part of his work to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... brutal, downright words, leaving the poor young thing nothing to say, no little pretence even to herself that she had guarded the proprieties, had comported herself circumspectly, leaving her with not even a little rag of a claim that she had conducted herself with seemly decorum, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... and gives a capital account of the battle between OUR and YOUR weeds. Does it not hurt your Yankee pride that we thrash you so confoundedly? I am sure Mrs. Gray will stick up for your own weeds. Ask her whether they are not more honest, downright good sort of weeds. The book gives an extremely pretty picture of one of your villages; but I see your autumn, though so much more gorgeous than ours, comes on sooner, and that ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... you've learned all you have about boats without ever goin' near the water beats me. Now you ain't a-goin' to think of quittin' Wilton an' leavin' me high an' dry with this propeller idee, are you? 'Twould be a downright shabby trick." ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... always said it) a sailor is the most unfortunate chap alive, one day dried up in these burning latitudes, and then sent to cool his nose up among the icebergs. It's all very well for Dio there. It's his nature to like heat. For us poor white-skinned chaps, it's nothing but downright cruelty." ...
— Sunshine Bill • W H G Kingston
... as if your own body ran into the horse's body and it was your own forelegs grown with his that sprang, rushing through the air you go, the ground resilient, bodies a mass of muscles, yet you have command too, upright stillness, eyes accurately judging. Then the curves cease, changing to downright hammer strokes, which jar; and you draw up with a jolt; sitting back a little, sparkling, tingling, glazed with ice over pounding arteries, gasping: "Ah! ho! Hah!" the steam going up from the horses as they jostle together at the cross-roads, where the signpost is, and the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... ad infinitum, with ceaseless arguments that proved nothing and convinced nobody, and a continual stream of contradiction that just fell short of downright quarreling. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... consists of German elements already resident in the Tsardom. It is a monument of Teuton audacity and Slav forbearance. One might ransack the history of European nations without finding another such instance of downright effrontery and disloyalty on the part of a privileged section of the community, and of easy-going toleration on the part of the State. The German elements of the provinces of Kurland and Livland, subjects of the Tsar though they are, resolved after the ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... labourer who had risen to be a small farmer, had in spite of all obstacles learned to read and write and become a great master of the vernacular. His earliest model had been Swift's Tale of a Tub, and in downright vigour of homely language he could scarcely be surpassed even by the author of the Drapier's Letters. He had enlisted as a soldier, and had afterwards drifted to America. There he had become conspicuous as a typical John Bull. Sturdy and pugnacious ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... few hours old. Look there! that chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here comes another with a sou'-wester and a bombazine cloak. No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one — I mean a downright bumpkin dandy —a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now when a country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguished reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... be offended and tell Olga that she was tired of him: or to be dignified and say he was unusually busy. Never had he shown such forbearance towards downright rudeness as he had shown to Lucia, and though he had shown that for Olga's sake, she seemed to be without a single spark of gratitude, but continued ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... Yes, that was certainly very odd—that is, it was either very odd or very commonplace. And in either case the family is terribly cut up about it. The boy's name was Arthur Benham, and he was rather a young fool, but not downright vicious, I should think. I never knew him at all well, but I know he spent his time chiefly at the Cafe de Paris and at the Olympia and at Longchamps and at Henry's Bar. Well, he just disappeared, that is all. He dropped completely out of sight between two days, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... importance to you and for me, but after all it does not concern the orbit of a planet and there is no use talking and acting as if it did." This sense of humour often saves the American in a situation in which the Englishman would have recourse to downright brutality; it unties the Gordian knot instead of cutting it. A too strong conviction of being in the right often leads to conflicts that would be avoided by a more humorous appreciation of the relative importance of phenomena. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... a slightly differing friend more than a downright enemy. I quite calculate on my being one day or other holden in worse repute by many Christians than the Unitarians and open infidels. It must be undergone by every one who loves the truth for its own sake beyond all ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... "Shore you're a downright good pard," declared Stevens, in admiration, as he took the money. "I give my word, Buck, an' I'm here to say I never broke it yet. Lay low, an' look fer me ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... he was half mad and loved to frighten her, and that she believed in the stories she circulated. [73] The Duke of Wellington said of George IV's story that he was at the Battle of Waterloo, "At first it was a lie, than a strong delusion, and at last downright madness." ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... over there, and I should not have strength to strike a blow; whereas with the rope under my arms and my foot on the edge of the sill, which projects a few inches beyond the side of the window, I could stand upright and strike a downright blow ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... patriotism and national pride often go along with credulity, so that we find here and there in literature of this kind, even downright fabrication. After the introduction of printing, by which literature became more widely diffused, and comparative criticism was rendered possible, it at once became evident among Catholics that error was mixed with truth and that ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... means," Dick replied. "We can come very close to thrashing Fred Ripley and his crew. And they can be scared away, too. But Mr. Fits is downright dangerous." ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... Mrs. Cluppins and Tommy. Entering the coach in waiting, to be driven, as they thought, to Dodson and Fogg's, they were alas! sadly deceived, for shortly afterwards Mrs. Bardell was safely deposited in the Fleet Prison for not having paid those rascals their costs, and promptly fainted in "real downright earnest." ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... a Controversy of Scripture against Scripture, or of Reason against Reason, but of downright Impudence against the plain meaning of Scripture, and all the Sense and Reason of Mankind." And accordingly he scruples not to say, in a most drolling manner, that "Transubstantiation is one of the chief ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... hold of him there. It is really too bad of Cathcart, being a downright good fellow, to forget that he ran away with Miss Selby, old Sir George, the baronet's daughter. Neither of them ever repented it; though he was only Captain Cathcart then, in a regiment of foot, too, and was not even next heir to the ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... this downright and unmistakeable opinion, Miss Lavinia raised her head with dignity, and smoothed down her ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... while longer no sound came from the deck of any sort whatever, and by that I knew that all the boats must have got away. And as I realized that I was forsaken, and felt sure from what I had heard that the ship would float for only a few minutes longer, I gave a cry of downright despair—and then I lost track of the whole bad business by tumbling to the floor in the darkness in ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... scrupulous investigation. Well, on my soul and conscience, I do not find the fruit ripe enough, or to speak plainly, I do not consider that you have sufficient grounds to justify your petition for a judicial separation. Let us not forget that the French law is a very downright kind of thing, totally devoid of delicate feeling for nice distinctions. It recognizes only acts, serious, brutal acts, and unfortunately it is these acts we lack. Most assuredly I have been deeply touched while reading the account of the first ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... brought the two girls nearer and nearer together; and Peggy found herself yielding more and more—often against her own judgment—to the fascination of the lawless girl, who on her part seemed curiously drawn to the simple, downright, ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... capable of great presumption, but in this insolent and dictatorial address you surpass yourself—you positively out-Herod Herod! In the whole history of the country, and of parties, I venture the assertion, that a parallel piece of impudence, and downright bold-faced assurance, cannot be pointed to, as the act of any partisan. It is really past all belief, if I had not your production before me. But ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... narrowing the plain much there, till it made a bight, the face whereof looked wellnigh north, instead of west, as did the more part of the wall. And in the midst of that northern-looking bight was a dark place which seemed to Walter like a downright shard in the cliff. For the face of the wall was of a bleak grey, and it ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... trick once too often," said old Billy. "It's downright murder in you boys to try and fool me into going up seven long flights of steps on an awful hot ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... was ready, and the heavy bar caught and shivered the light sword, and then swung and hurled the thane back among his men with a rib broken. Havelok followed that up, falling on the men even as their leader was among their feet. Two he felled with downright strokes, and another shrank away in time to save himself from the like fate. Then a fourth got in under his guard, and wounded Havelok slightly in the left arm; and unless Biorn had been out and beside him by that time it would have ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... resistance Trina had induced her husband to consent to such a move, bewildering him with a torrent of phrases and marvellous columns of figures by which she proved conclusively that they were in a condition but one remove from downright destitution. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... poor Larkspur got a fall, and I broke my knee, and so of course I was of no more use there. But I could not live without horses, of course I couldn't, so I took to the hotels. And I can tell ye it is a downright pleasure to handle an animal like this, well-bred, well-mannered, well-cared-for; bless ye! I can tell how a horse is treated. Give me the handling of a horse for twenty minutes, and I'll tell you what sort of a groom he has had. Look at this one, pleasant, quiet, ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... sheer modesty of the honor of being President of the United States. His is one of the truly Homeric figures in American history. By downright purity of motive, transparency of purpose, and the devotion of commanding powers to the public good, he won for himself the honor, the love and the unbounded confidence of all his fellows. It used to be said of him that he was as honest as any man under heaven or in it. He might have aspired ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... sort. It is the basis on which society rests, the conventional agreement. If society is about to be overturned, it is on this point. Women are beginning to tell men what they really think of them; and to insist that the same relations of downright sincerity and independence that exist between men shall exist between women and men. Absolute truth between souls, without regard to sex, has always been the ideal life of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... by not answering me with a compliment. it is very weak to be pleased with flattery; the stupidest of 'all delusions to beg it. From You I should take it ill. We have known one another almost fifty years—to very little purpose, indeed, if any ceremony is necessary, or downright sincerity not established between us. tell me that you are recovered, and that I shall see you some time or other. I have finished the catalogue of my collection; but you shall never have it without fetching, nor, though a less punishment, the prints you desire. I propose ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... said Mrs. Medlock. "She's begun to be downright pretty since she's filled out and lost her ugly little sour look. Her hair's grown thick and healthy looking and she's got a bright color. The glummest, ill-natured little thing she used to be and now her and Master Colin laugh together like a pair of crazy young ones. Perhaps ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Ashamed!—It needn't have been downright feats, Such as the braving men, the like of Shale, Do easily, and smile, keeping them up. If I could look back to one manful hour Of romping in the face of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... so," said I. "I have always preferred the excitement of downright fighting to the sort of work we ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... remark. At the epoch of our narrative, had this peculiarity not attracted observation, there would have been room for wonder indeed. It was soon reported that, upon all occasions of the kind, the smile of Bon-Bon was wont to differ widely from the downright grin with which he would laugh at his own jokes, or welcome an acquaintance. Hints were thrown out of an exciting nature; stories were told of perilous bargains made in a hurry and repented of at leisure; ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the first downright cowardly thing I have ever known you to say!" she declared. "And I wish you to know, Mr. Thomas Jefferson Gordon, that Mr. Duxbury Farley and Mr. Vincent Farley and Miss Eva Farley are my guests and my friends!" And with that for her leave-taking, ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... a scene. How much less romantic the town looked now than when I saw it floating, as it seemed, upon the sky-blue water in a haze of gold-dust fired by the slanting rays! It was then like the Castillon of some troubadour's song; now it was a mean-looking little sun-baked town modernized to downright plainness, with no remnant of its ramparts remaining save a sombre old Gothic gateway near the river, and no ecclesiastical architecture deserving notice. Its site, however, is the same as that which it occupied in the Middle Ages, namely, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Junius, Modus, Currency Lass, and others of Australian turf pedigree; nay, even a young girl, when asked how she would like to go to England, replied with great naivete, "I should be afraid to go, from the number of thieves there," doubtless conceiving England to be a downright hive of such, that threw off its annual swarms to people the wilds of this colony. Nay, the very miserable looking trees that cast their annual coats of bark, and present to the eye of a raw European the appearance of being actually dead, I have heard praised as objects of incomparable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... himself a salesman. Therefore he has never studied with personal interest the fine art of selling. He does not realize that ignorance of salesmanship, and consequent non-use of the selling process, almost always are responsible for the merely partial success or the downright failure in life of the man who deserves to ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... even to boldness in her scrutiny, and her manner was rough and ready; but there was a touch of something fine about her—something true, downright, unmistakable—that somehow won people's confidence. Nan Beresford drew nearer to ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... variety of vernaculars it was necessary to keep up and extend a practical acquaintance with the language which supplies all the religious and most of the metaphysical phraseology; and during my last year at Sindian Karachi (1849), I imported a Shaykh from Maskat. Then work began in downright earnest. Besides Erpenius' (D'Erp) "Grammatica Arabica," Richardson, De Sacy and Forbes, I read at least a dozen Perso-Arabic works (mostly of pamphlet form) on "Serf Wa Nahw"—Accidence and Syntax—and learned by heart one-fourth of the Koran. A succession of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... bread, it is held as a sort of sine-qua-non; like that, it may be made invariably palatable by a little care in a few plain particulars, through neglect of which it often becomes intolerable. The soggy, waxy, indigestible viand that often appears in the potato-dish is a downright sacrifice of the better ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... dear native mud. The air here is too thin for me, and the sky's too clean; and—oh, Lord!—when you're wed to the roar of the traffic—the 'busses and the cabs and what not—the silence in these parts is downright awful. I'll wish you good evening, miss; and get back ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... six, or oftener. Hence very erroneous views are held in relation to the courage of this animal. Some naturalists, led away by what appears to be a feeling of envy or anger, accuse the lion of downright cowardice, denying him a single noble quality of all those that have from earliest times been ascribed to him! Others, on the contrary, assert that he knows no fear, either of man or beast; and these endow ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... yet by his own lights he was a man of honour, incapable of falsehood, even though it were calculated to save his skin. I do not deny that Sir Thomas Picton has described him as a "thieving blackguard." But I am sure that this was merely the downright, rather extravagant manner, of censure peculiar to that distinguished general, and that those who have taken the expression at its purely literal value have been lacking at once in charity and in knowledge of the caustic, ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... points, if you please," said the funny creature, marking each point with one of his favourite knots. "He was a man who might that night have had access to the key of the safe, unsuspected by the manager or even his wife, and a man for whom Mrs. Ireland was willing to tell a downright lie. Are there many men for whom a woman of the better middle class, and an Englishwoman, would be ready to perjure herself? Surely not! She might do it for her husband. The public thought she had. It never struck ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... one of the three by-standers, a blow which has cost many a brave man his life. He struck right down on Hereward's head. Hereward raised his shield, warding the stroke, and threw in that coup de jarret, which there is no guarding, after the downright blow has been given. The stranger dropped upon ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... thing she had said? "'Tis what you give and not what you get is wealth." Extraordinary! And where had Robin picked up these notions concerning the Mill people? And her House of What-did-she-call-it? There was considerable significance about it. Uncanny, downright uncanny, though, for a girl her age to have such a far-reaching vision. Probably the child didn't realize, herself. Well, there was Jeanne d'Arc, and others, too, he pondered, hazily. And this talented girl Robin had found—a most unusual girl, who'd ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... with habit, as elementals will, they found themselves without a tie of sympathy or common interest to link them each to the other. She was by nature blythe; a thing of sunshine, flowers and music, who craved a very poet for her lover; and by "a poet" I mean not your mere rhymer. He was downright stolid and stupid under his fine exterior; the worst type of Briton, without the saving grace of a Briton's honor. And so she had wearied him, who saw in her no more than a sweet loveliness that had cloyed him presently. And when the chance was offered him by Bentinck ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... you haven't. When you stop to think it over, you see it's a fellow's plain duty to take a chance when it's necessary, but it's downright foolish to do it on a dare. One thing about Bob's live-wire adventure I don't believe even he realizes," added Sure Pop. "It was that hurry-up patrol of small boys that he threw out around the live wire which really gave him the idea of how to organize the Safety Scouts of America. I knew the ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... Homer, and a laugh that brings the roof down. He has wasted all his money on two great objects: to help others, and on alchemy. He holds huge courts every day in his garden of all the learned men of all religions—Rajahs and beggars and saints, and downright villains, all delightfully mixed up, and all treated as one. And then his alchemy! Oh dear, night and day the experiments are going on, and every man who brings a new prescription is welcome as ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... I was downright glad that Jack "made good" with Jessie Gordon. She was the sort of girl to get out the best that was in him, and I was glad to have her begin early. Try as I might, I could not feel unhappy that beautiful September morning as we steamed up the finest waterway ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... gracious. After all, what better luck could she look for than to be married for her money? with such a temper as she has, too. He certainly is handsome; but for my part, I would rather have a man who is downright ugly than one who grins and bows like William Dalzell. I will be quite glad when this affair is over. Lovers are very tiresome when one does not quite believe ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... at her. She had fairly fallen in love with this new cousin of hers; her beauty, and gracious ways, her foreign accent, and now her experiences of nuns and convents had come like a revelation to the little English girl in her downright, everyday life. With a comical incongruity, she could compare her in her own mind to nothing but an enchanted princess in some fairy tale; and she stood gazing first at her and then at the glass, where soft wavy brown hair and red and white daisies ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... think of any way of stopping them without being downright rude to our new cousin, they had fled the scene, just like any old conspirators. Rupert—me, I mean—was left alone with the ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... customs of the age. Pope's enemies made as free with his person as with his poetry, and there is little doubt that he felt the former attacks the more bitterly of the two. Dennis, his first critic, called him "a short squab gentleman, the very bow of the God of love; his outward form is downright monkey." A rival poet whom he had offended hung up a rod in a coffee house where men of letters resorted, and threatened to whip Pope like a naughty child if he showed his face there. It is said, though perhaps not on the best ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... which rivaled Florence as a financial center, Nuremberg, famous for artistic metal work, Ulm, Strassburg, and Cologne. The feeble rule of the German kings compelled the cities to form several confederacies for the purpose of resisting the extortionate tolls and downright robberies of ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... the innkeeper's son was stealing away his sitters: even his good friends the Whigs. He chafed under this. He began to speak out. He denounced Lawrence's prudent abstinence from all political feeling as downright hypocrisy. He thought it cowardice "to side with neither faction, and be ready and willing to paint the faces of both." And then he commenced to talk disrespectfully of his rival's art. He claimed for his own portraits greater purity of look and ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... one or two on board who know how to spin a yarn with due effect; some are musical, and others can sing. Concerts, lectures, theatricals, and dances are got up; while, as there is generally a due admixture of the sexes, not a little flirting and downright courting is carried on; and, lastly, if there is any quarrelling and bickering, the differences of those who engage in it afford much amusement to ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... profaned the lake. They allowed the people to trample the grass. They threw papers and banana skins about. And they wasted! His years in Germany had taught him to regard all these things as sacrilege, and the last as downright criminal. He was lonesome for his Germany. That was plain. He hated it, and loved it, much as he hated and loved the woman who had so nearly spoiled his life. The maelstrom known as the southwest corner of State and ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... know you didn't, but I did," flared the man. "Miss Maggie, it's a downright shame—the way they impose on ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... sincerity; and hence the well-known alliterations, 'fair and false,' 'smooth and slippery.' The fair and false Greek, the polished and wily Italian, the courteous and deceitful Frenchman, are associations which, to the strong, downright, courageous Anglo-Saxon, make up-and-down rudeness and blunt discourtesy a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... than was ours, my dears. Your art has tempered love and passion into sentiment, and hate you have learned to call aversion or dislike. But we of that simple-hearted elder time were more downright; and I have writ the word I mean in saying that my love was at ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... disposition he soon found the fashions of the court, and obtained a general love and notice of the nobility; for he was no carry-tale, nor flattering insinuator to breed discord and dissension, but an honest, plain, downright [man], that would speak home without halting, and tell the truth of purpose to shame the devil—so that his plainness, mixed with a kind of facetiousness, and tartness with pleasantry, made him acceptable into the company of all men." There cannot, perhaps, be a greater ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... exclaimed Schwarzenberg warmly; "that is putting himself in downright opposition to his ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
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