"Stiff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from political motives and for political services rendered, it is impossible to expect that while in office the appointees will not regard their tenure as more or less dependent upon continued political service for their patrons, and no regulations, however stiff or rigid, will prevent this, because such regulations, in view of the method and motive for selection, are plainly inconsistent and deemed ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... tore the paper into bits, and then strode slowly up and down the room. Presently he took down his hat, rubbed it abstractedly with the sleeve of his coat, and went out, remarking that he might not be back that day. He felt like a criminal as he stepped upon the sidewalk. But he was stiff, and merely nodded to the tradesmen who bowed to him cringingly. He was looking for Sawyer, but was afraid to inquire after him. He went to the wagon yard where Sawyer stabled his mules, and looked about, but did not find him. The owner of the place, hard in the presence of the farmers, ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... light failed, and the night had come down on the claims like a black curtain let fall suddenly, the men left the ground, and stiff with cold, their muscles almost rigid, plodded slowly and silently back to the cabin. The hired men dispersed in different directions, some going down town and some to their cabins near. When Stephen and Talbot entered they found the fire leaping and crackling as if it had just been tended, and ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... cormarants consume, Whose bones, defrauded of a regal tomb And common turf, lie naked on the plain, Or doom'd to welter in the whelming main. Should he return, that troop so blithe and bold, With purple robes inwrought, and stiff with gold, Precipitant in fear would wing their flight, And curse their cumbrous pride's unwieldy weight. But ah, I dream!-the appointed hour is fled. And hope, too long with vain delusion fed, Deaf to the rumour of fallacious fame, Gives to the roll ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... field, the moon was shining clear, the wind was blowing a stiff gale from the north, and the sheaves of corn, where any moisture had attached to them, were frozen as hard as iron. There was only one of the working horses now serviceable: to supply the place of another, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... ledge. On the tug's forward deck, hat off and jacket swinging loose, stood Captain Joe Bell in charge of the submarine work at the site, glorious old Captain Joe, with the body of a capstan, legs stiff as wharf posts, arms and hands tough as cant hooks and heart twice as big as ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... quantity of euphuism about "classic shades," "groves of Academe," et cetera. Trollope had his fling at the square brick buildings; but it was a fling that they richly deserved, for they are in very deed as ugly as it is possible to conceive,—angular, formal, stiff, windowy, bricky,—and the farther in you go, the worse it grows. Why, I pray to know, as the first inquiry suggested by Class-Day, is it necessary for boys' schools to be placed without the pale of civilization? Do boys take so naturally to the amenities of life that they can safely dispense ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... running bowline, and do a variety of things peculiar to the web-footed gentry. Some of them also tried hard, by precept and example, but in vain, to induce me to chew tobacco and drink grog! Indeed, they regarded the ability to swallow a stiff glass of New England rum, without making a wry face, as one of the most important qualifications ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... cane, beholding the advancing current, bends to it. The others do not act in that way. After the current has passed away, the cane resumes its former posture. The cane knows the virtues of Time and opportunity. It is docile and obedient. It is yielding, without being stiff. For these reasons, it stands where it grows, without having to come with us. Those plants, trees, and creepers that bend and rise before the force of wind and water, have never to suffer discomfiture (by being taken ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... la Mode, concerning which we well understand how, common, uninteresting, or even worthless in themselves, they have come to please us at last as things picturesque, being set in relief against the modes of our different age. Customs, stiff to us, stiff dresses, stiff furniture—types of cast-off fashions, left by accident, and which no one ever meant to preserve—we contemplate with more than good-nature, as having in them the veritable accent of a time, not altogether to be replaced by ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... stage was more like a king than His Majesty was when he spoke it, if he had but kept his wig and robe on. And yet you know he is rather stiff and wrinkled for so great a monarch; and his eyes, I am afraid, are beginning to fail him, he looks so close ...
— English Satires • Various
... as we have, two years nex' October, an' I've yet to hear her give a friendly word to anyone in the house. When little Miss Smith up on the third was sick las' winter did her nex' door neighbor lend a hand? She did not. She was just worried stiff for fear she'd catch somethin'. She gave me no peace till Miss Smith was out of the house an' into a hospital. Peace! I've forgot there was such a word. They won't stand for any kid in the house when the lease says no childern, ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... the old mansion of their earliest friends, The chapel of their first and best devotions; When violence or perfidy invades, Or when unworthy lords hold wassail there, And wiser heads are drooping round its moats, At last they fix their steady and stiff eye There, there alone—stand while the trumpet blows, And view the hostile flames above its towers Spire, with a ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... terms as are charged to the fullest with significance—this would seem to be the aim and end of Mr. Meredith's ambition. Of simplicity in his own person he appears incapable. The texture of his expression must be stiff with allusion, or he deems it ill spun; there must be something of antic in his speech, or he cannot believe he is addressing himself to the Immortals; he has praised with perfect understanding the lucidity, the elegance, the ease, of Moliere, and yet his aim in art (it would appear) is ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... dawned upon Polly and Eleanor what all this meant! They could see Jeb coming from behind the lilac bushes, some ten feet away from the swinger. He seemed ill at ease, and loosened his stiff collar, pulled down his vest, and ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... if with one consent, they all made up their minds to relieve the tedium of the contemplative life by an exhibition of humor, and, scrambling out of the water, proceeded to canter along the bank with stiff raised tails, with an artificial noose sustained with difficulty just ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... watches of the night by periods and intervals of torment. They were then led out, in the severe depth of winter, which there at certain seasons would be severe to any, to the Indians is most severe and almost intolerable,—they were led out before break of day, and, stiff and sore as they were with the bruises and wounds of the night, were plunged into water; and whilst their jaws clung together with the cold, and their bodies were rendered infinitely more sensible, the blows and stripes were renewed upon their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... it briskly across the hearth, a tiny fluff of down detached itself from one of the stiff quills, and floated to the rug. When she picked it up it clung to her fingers, and only after repeated attempts did she succeed in dislodging it, and in ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... creatures which lived in former ages; and the array of books on the shelves of a library stores up in like manner the errors of the past and the way in which they have been exposed. Like those creatures, they too were full of life in their time, and made a great deal of noise; but now they are stiff and fossilized, and an object of curiosity ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... journalism naturally care for writing, but in an art to "care" is little and most have never had the personal environment, the training, or the personal command of English to enable them to do more than write a stiff prose with a narrow vocabulary and no sense of style. Even those who have some such capacity are hampered by the family heritage already outlined. College writing is in the same condition; but the average college man is not expecting to earn his living by his typewriter. In order to receive ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... of voices, and therefore it does not so need the sound of rushes; but they are most sensitive to the stealthy breezes, and betray the passing of a wind that even the tree-tops knew not of. Sometimes it is a breeze unfelt, but the stiff sedges whisper it along a mile of marsh. To the strong wind they bend, showing the silver of their sombre little tassels as fish show the silver of their sides turning in the pathless sea. They are unanimous. A field of tall flowers tosses many ways ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... on, the muscles of the face twitch, the body is stiff, immovable, and then in a short time, in a state of twitching motion, the head and neck are drawn backwards and the limbs violently bent and stretched. Sometimes these movements are confined to certain muscles or are limited to one ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... castle of Chantelle, and headed southward in the direction of Spain. The leader was dressed in armor, and carried sword by side and battle-axe at his saddle-bow. Of his followers, some fifteen of them were attired in a peculiar manner, wearing thick jackets of woollen cloth that seemed as stiff as iron mail, and jingled metallically as they rode. Mail they were, capable of turning arrow or spear thrust, but mail of gold, not of iron, for in those jackets were sewed up thirty thousand crowns of gold, and their wearers served as the ambulatory treasury of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... remarked Chimp's apprentice at breakfast one morning, 'although I must admit that many impulses and movements that come naturally to you are acquired by me with difficulty. Last evening's attempt at leap-frog, for example, has left me so stiff that I can hardly move, and I assure you that it has never before occurred to me to climb that tree all the years I have known it. Perhaps in a week or so, when my hands are healed, I may try again. But I can see, Sim, that it must be very good ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... was the first that applied it, together with experiment, to natural philosophy. The former rejected, with the most positive disdain, the system of Copernicus: the latter fortified it with new proofs, derived both from reason and the senses. Bacon's style is stiff and rigid: his wit, though often brilliant, is also often unnatural and far-fetched; and he seems to be the original of those pointed similes and long-spun allegories which so much distinguish the English ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... grass, taking off the Scot's hat and knocking him down with the shock as it fell. The thing had burst in the ground, and it was as good as a Chinese puzzle to fit the great chunks of iron together. At first we could not find the solid base, but we dug it out with a pick from the stiff, black clay. It had sunk 3 ft. 8 in. down from the surface, and had run 7 ft. 6 in. from the point of contact. It was a 45-pounder, thrown by a 4.7 in. gun—probably one of the four howitzers which the Boers possess, standing half-way down Lombard's Kop, about four miles away, and is identical ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... the chest, which was opened by the key. As everybody knows, if we once begin to think we soon begin to do, and it was not very long before the key was no longer in the maiden's hand but in the lock of the chest. But the lock was stiff and resisted all her efforts, and in the end she had to break it. And what was inside after all? Why, nothing but a serpent's skin, which her husband, who was, unknown to her, a magician, put on when he was at work; ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... voices, he moves unconsciously along the edge of the woodpile. With stiff steps—his one hand leaning on the hoe, his other reached as to unseen hands, that draw him—he totters toward the sunlight and the green lawn, at back. As he does so, his thin, cracked voice takes up the battle-hymn where ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... good father," said she, "how shall I discharge all my obligations to you? Alas, I cannot now. I can only thank you for all the words, for all good advice I received from your dear lips, now sealed in death. Your hand, which is now cold and stiff, I kiss with gratitude, and remember that that hand has bestowed upon me many benefits, and has all my life laboured for my good. Oh, if I could at this moment follow you into the heavenly kingdom, ...
— The Basket of Flowers • Christoph von Schmid
... could pitch him overboard, but he butted and kicked so they could not lay hands on him. No more hands could be spared from the crew to help, as it required all the rest to manage the ship. Stubby and Button also put up a stiff fight as the men chased them all over the dirigible from under chairs and tables in this stateroom and that, where they upset things generally as the aviators tried to hit them with brooms, ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... which makes the resemblance to twigs very close indeed. Some of these quaint insects rest through the day and have the remarkable habit of putting themselves into a sort of kataleptic state. Many creatures turn stiff when they get a shock, or pass suddenly into new surroundings, like some of the sand-hoppers when we lay them on the palm of our hand; but these twig-insects put themselves into this strange state. The body is rocked from side to side for a short time, and then it stiffens. An advantage may ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... in the Chim del Manro, brother," said Antonio; "at the gallop and at the speedy trot, there is no one to match him. But he is eighteen years old, and his joints are stiff, especially of a morning; but let him once become heated, and the genio del viejo comes upon him, and there is no holding him in with bit or bridle. I bought that horse for ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... coquetted with the fear of punishment. By terror you may drive men long, but not far. Here, in Apemama, they work at the constant and the instant peril of their lives; and are plunged in a kind of lethargy of laziness. It is common to see one go afield in his stiff mat ungirt, so that he walks elbows-in like a trussed fowl; and whatsoever his right hand findeth to do, the other must be off duty holding on his clothes. It is common to see two men carrying between them on a pole a single bucket of water. To make two bites of a cherry is good enough: to make two ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... petition granted only encourages him to another. Six times he pleads, and God waits till he has done before He goes away; He cannot leave His friend till that friend has said all his say. What a contrast the fiery fervour and unwearying pertinacity of Abraham's prayers make to the stiff formalism of the intercessions one is familiar with! The former are like the successive pulses of a volcano driving a hot lava stream before it; the latter, like the slow flow of a glacier, cold and sluggish. Is any part of our ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... Expedition embraced her; and she very soon had her gloves on, and was on her way to John Peerybingle's in a state of unimpeachable gentility; with a paper parcel at her side containing a cap of state, almost as tall, and quite as stiff, as a mitre. ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... are like our routs, or rather worse, for the women sit in a semi-circle by the lady of the mansion, and the men stand about the room. To be sure, there is one improvement upon ours—instead of lemonade with their ices, they hand about stiff rum-punch—punch, by my palate; and this they think English. I would not disabuse them of so agreeable an ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... spectators even seemed to feel pity and sympathy for the unfortunates, as they saw them carried along, some covered with blood, others paralysed by the sudden cold, with faces pale as death and limbs stiff and rigid. But as the fury and violence of the combatants augmented, the bystanders forgot every other feeling in the excitement of the fight, about the result of which they seemed as anxious as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... his delighted concurrence; Mr Delvile forced himself to make a stiff inclination of the head; and Lady Honoria gaily exclaimed, "Dr Lyster, when you say the best and the most faultless, you should always add the rest ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... about to explain when a halloo from the stables cut him short. "There's Frank now. I ought to be out helping him this minute; we've got a good stiff drive ahead of us. You ask Gertie about it, she'll explain ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... obtained it at a public sale in Paris, against a very stiff commission left for it by myself. A copy of equal beauty is in the Library of the Right Hon. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... young author will naturally differ from what he has settled by practice at an advanced period of life. This has been observed in many eminent writers, and in none more than Lipsius himself. His language, in the outset, was easy, flowing, and elegant; but, as he advanced in years, it became stiff, abrupt, and harsh. Tacitus relates a conversation on a literary subject; and in such a piece, who can expect to find the style of an historian or an annalist? For these reasons Brotier thinks that this Dialogue may, with good reason, be ascribed ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... Boer had known; for he could not allow the Rooinek to get to the point where his own position would be threatened or commanded. When Kruger's men did discover the truth, there would be fighting as stiff as had been seen in this struggle for half ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... spectacle which met their view; but at the next instant they advanced to the couch, and contemplated with mournful attention the scene presented to them. For there—upon that couch—side by side, lay Fernand Wagner and Nisida of Riverola—stiff, motionless, cold. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... he was aware that a tall, lanky cowboy in chaps, woollen shirt, and stiff, broad-brimmed hat was pounding his cayuse over the ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... on the deck of the sloop, and before light the next morning Dan was awakened by the groaning of the chain as the anchor was hauled up, and the flapping of the sails as Timothy hoisted them to catch a stiff breeze which was blowing from the northeast. The second day passed like the first. The weather was fine, the winds favorable, and that evening they rounded Duxbury Point and entered Plymouth Bay just as the sun sank behind the hills ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... to exculpating Pendennis or Ethel Newcome than any other author, who saw what he saw, would have been. The rare wrath of such men is all the more effective; and there are passages in Vanity Fair and still more in The Book of Snobs, where he does make the dance of wealth and fashion look stiff and monstrous, like a Babylonian masquerade. But he never quite did it in such a way as to turn the course ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... I can use my stiff little wings. A dinner now and then and a luncheon occasionally when I know enough nice women to make a decent showing. Clothes and women, when adopted late in life, are difficult. But oh! Brace, it is great—this blessed ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... the Claiborne place had broken free and run away; so that he must now trudge back afoot to report to his masters. He had made a mess of his errands and nearly lost his life besides. The bullet from Oscar's revolver had cut a neat furrow in his scalp, which was growing sore and stiff as it ceased bleeding. He would undoubtedly be dealt with harshly by Chauvenet and Durand, but he knew that the sooner he reported his calamities the better; so he stumbled toward Lamar, pausing at times to clasp ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... Their hands had clasped in leave-taking and her eyes were lifted to his, when some plea with which "the entire man" seemed overcharged to the very lips was suddenly, subtly, and not this time by disconcertion, but by self-mastery, withheld. Irby put in a stiff good-by, and as he withdrew, Hilary echoed only the same threadbare word more brightly, and was gone; saying to himself as he looked back from the garden's ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... become suspicious of her, and would have left her after many vacillations. He did not instinctively recognise humility and nobility when he met them, because they bore but slight resemblance to the stiff lay figures which represented those qualities in his mind. To meet them in reality would have been to him ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... introduction; during which the young barrister published two books or pamphlets on the Laws of Nations, married a sister of Lady Mulgrave, and was slowly working his way at the bar. In 1802, Pitt, in a stiff enough letter, offered Mr. Ward a seat for Cockermouth, one of the Lowther boroughs; and when he returned to power, his protege became Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign Department, (his brother-in-law, Lord Mulgrave, being Principal Secretary,) after he had published a pamphlet ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... tight but I didn't button it, and I'd just got a stiff little hat perched on my head when I heard the tramp of men on the sidewalk, and in the dusk saw the ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... Lady Ludlow; and now and then we rode out with her in her coach and four. She did not like to go out with a pair of horses, considering this rather beneath her rank; and, indeed, four horses were very often needed to pull her heavy coach through the stiff mud. But it was rather a cumbersome equipage through the narrow Warwickshire lanes; and I used often to think it was well that countesses were not plentiful, or else we might have met another lady ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... here that I removed his pocket-book and slipped it into my great-coat. Not daring to examine it openly, I fingered it cautiously, and felt the stiff softness of bank-notes. I was so carried away with pleasure that I was quite surprised to hear his voice returning from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... over and peering into my eyes was the face, the fleshless, mouldering face of a foul and barely recognisable corpse! With a shriek of horror I rolled backwards, and, springing to my feet, prepared to fly. I glanced at the mummy. It was lying on the ground, stiff and still, every bandage in its place; whilst standing over it, a look of fiendish glee in its light, doglike eyes, was the figure ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... is in good hands," she wrote, "and it is so pleasant here that I really do want to stay a little longer. Pray write to me just how Hugh is, and if I must come home. What a delightful lady that Mrs. Richards is—not one bit stiff as I can see. I don't know what people mean to call her proud. She has promised, if mamma will leave me here, to be my chaperon, and it's possible we may visit New York together, so as to be there when ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... hated, because less despised than the King. Attired in cloth of gold—for silk and satin were grown too coarse a material for them—with their little velvet porringer-caps stuck on the sides of their heads, with their long hair stiff with pomatum, and their heads set inside a well-starched ruff a foot wide, "like St. John's head in a charger," as a splenetic contemporary observed, with a nimbus of musk and violet-powder enveloping ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the man at that post. But the feeling did not last very long. The silly fellow would not give up adoring him as his savior. And when he stammered, "I take the liberty of wishing you good luck, Captain," standing in stiff military attitude, but in a voice hoarse and quivering from suppressed tears, such fervor, such ardent devotion radiated from his wish that the captain suddenly felt a strange emptiness again in the pit of his stomach, and he turned ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... a school being placed within the reach of Tom Hicks, he gave up every thought to the acquirement of knowledge. And now came a serious difficulty. His bent, stiff fingers could not be made to hold either pen or pencil in the right position, or to use them in such a way as to make intelligible signs. But Tom was too much in earnest to give up on the first, or second, or third effort. He found, after a ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... so short that he stands on a platform at the side, to bring his figure into harmonious relation to the group. His dress is blue satin, of stiff, full skirt, which, with the close white cap on his head, makes him a quaint little figure. A chubby, innocent looking baby, he is nevertheless a personage who fully realizes the important place he occupies ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... an' he throws a ball, Just like a boy, with the curves an' all, An' he knows the kids by their first names, too, An' says they're just like the boys he knew. Some of the fellers are scared plumb stiff When their fathers are near 'em an' act as if They wuz doing wrong if they made a noise, But my pa seems to be one ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... how I love it, and how I wish for you to see me in it. I plans to put it on a little while everyday and pretend that I am a real nurse like I am going to be. I done it yesterday, and somehow when I shet my eyes and run my hands over its crackely stiff whiteness, it seemed to me that the room was full of sweet little babies for me to ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... of the poets of the Cancionero de Baena is mainly historical. In spite of many an illuminating side-light on manners, of political invective and an occasional glint of imagination, the amorous platitudes and wire-drawn love-contests of the Galician school, the stiff allegories of the Italianates leave us cold. It was a transition period and the most talented were unable to master the ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... quite dark, with a stiff breeze blowing right abaft. The night, a moonless and very black one, favoured us altogether for the run which, I did not doubt, we had to make against some Government vessel that would follow us. ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... my boy? I knew how it would be. Tired out? Stiff with so long a ride? Lean over this way and ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... "Stiff breeze—short sea," returned the bluff old seaman; "great risk in making land—boats heavily laden with women and children will be swamped. Not a soul goes on shore ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... unmistakable dismissal, one arm pointing gracefully aloft from its enveloping foam of draperies, that same too-intense smile upon the Greek face that even Nancy, in moments of humane expansion, had admitted to be all but faultless. And the latter, wondering not a little at the stiff disposition to have her quickly away, which she had somehow divined through all the gushing cordiality of Mrs. Wyeth's manner, went on upstairs. As she rapped at Mrs. Eversley's door, the bell of the street door sounded ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... servant,' she said, very stiff; 'I'm her aunt, and her guardian, and I allow no messages to pass ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... factious times With public zeal to cancel private crimes. (THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM) Some of their chiefs were princes of the land; In the first rank of these did Zimri stand, A man so various, that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome: Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts and nothing long; But, in the course of one revolving moon, Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon; Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... with the outline of the Parrot will fail to recognize any member of that Family by a general form which is equally common to the diminutive Nonpareil, the gorgeous Ara, and the high-crested Cockatoo. Neither will any one, who has ever observed the small head, the straight bill, the flat back, and stiff tail of the Woodpecker, hesitate to identify the family form in any of the numerous Genera into which this group is now divided. The family characters are even more invariable than the generic ones; for there are Woodpeckers which, instead of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... under the aegis of diplomatic immunity. Here the ideologies could rant and rave against each other, seeking a rendering of a final decision in men's age-old arguments; but elsewhere such discussions were verboten, and subject to swift, stiff penalties. ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... not free his style from what are called Byzantine or Romanesque mannerisms. To unpractised eyes his saints and angels, with their stiff draperies and angular attitudes, though they exhibit stateliness and majesty, belong to the same tribe as the grim mosaics and gaunt frescoes of his predecessors. It is only after careful comparison that we discover, in this picture of the Rucellai for example, a distinctly fresh endeavour ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... jollier and more radiant little soul than she all through the opening exercises. She listened to the speaking and the singing with the greatest appreciation and delight. She sat up perfectly straight in her prim and stiff basque; she folded her small red hands before her; her two tight braids inclined stiffly towards her ears, and her face was ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... sought him out an' indeavored to intherview him on th' Nicaragooan Canal, th' Roomanyan Jews, th' tahriff an' th' thrusts. Th' comin' statesman rayfused to be dhrawn on these questions, his answer bein' a ready, "Go chase ye'ersilf, ye big stiff!" Afther a daylightful convarsation th' rayporther left, bein' followed to th' gate be his janial young host who hit him smartly in th' back with a brick. He is a ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... certainly had never been seen on ice before. It made the most extraordinary bounds on its long hind legs, with its little fore legs tucked up in front of it as if it wanted to carry a muff; and its long, stiff tail sticking out straight behind, to balance it itself with apparently. The children at first started with surprise, and then burst out laughing, for it was the funniest creature, and had the funniest ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... you you will study harder than you ever did in your precious life," whispered he. "I know Bob. He can be stiff as any college professor. He tutored me in Latin once to pull me through my exams and I barely lived. I don't envy ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... He was plain-featured and yet assuming in manner. He hobbled in walking from lameness of tell-tale origin,—a cleaver falling on his foot in childhood, compelling him to wear an artificial heel—and he was morbidly sensitive over it. His prim formality of manner, his sword and stiff-curled wig, his small and sickly face trying to maintain an expression impressively dignified, made him a ludicrous figure, which his contemporaries never tired of ridiculing and caricaturing. Henderson, the actor, said that "Akenside, when he ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... refines, but does not relieve it. I was at Stirling Castle not long ago. It gave me no pleasure. The declivity seemed to me abrupt, not sublime; for in truth I did not shrink back from it with terror. The weather-beaten towers were stiff and formal: the air was damp and chill: the river winded its dull, slimy way like a snake along the marshy grounds: and the dim misty tops of Ben Leddi, and the lovely Highlands (woven fantastically of thin air) mocked my embraces and tempted my longing eyes like her, the ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... those last words as her head fell back against her chair, all the light fading out of her eyes, and then she slipped away into unconsciousness. When she came to herself again she was cold, and stiff, and ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... city, bent on various quests, went the victorious Federals. Not so the old sailor. The revered flag, flaunting the colors so joyously above his head once more, was far too weather-beaten, he feared, to withstand long the stiff breeze blowing about the elevated site. Torn to ribbons it must not be, howsoever good ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... especially liable to produce tones untrue to the pitch. Stiff-throated singers almost invariably exhibit this faulty tendency. An excessive tension of the throat hampers the vocal cords in their adjustments, and the result is an impure tone. This is more often the cause of an artist singing out of tune than a deficiency of the sense of hearing. ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... invasion continues, we and the other nations of the world cannot conduct business as usual with the Soviet Union. That's why the United States has imposed stiff economic penalties on the Soviet Union. I will not issue any permits for Soviet ships to fish in the coastal waters of the United States. I've cut Soviet access to high-technology equipment and to agricultural products. I've limited other commerce with the Soviet Union, and I've asked our ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... my word or take something else," came the stiff response. "Be quick, now, and say which ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... rising "so very high, that there is often a greater length from his chin to the top of his head than to the sole of his foot. One would believe that we thought a great man and a tall man the same thing." Then he describes the embarrassment of the actor, forced to hold his neck extremely stiff and steady all the time he speaks, when, "notwithstanding any anxieties which he pretends for his mistress, his country, or his friends, one may see by his action that his greatest care and concern is to keep the plume of feathers from ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... away. They breathed and thought, and that was all. At length the chill air began to tell, and he plainly heard the chatter of her teeth, the rustling of her dress as her body shivered. He arose, stiff and cold, drew off his coat and threw it about her shoulders. She resisted at first, but he was master. Later his waistcoat was wrapped about her throat and the warm lantern was placed at her feet, but she never gave him one ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... 'ead," he grunted as he stamped off below. He went to a small cupboard in the corner of the cabin, and mixed himself a stiff "go" of gin and water, which he tossed off ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... somewhat stiff and uninteresting. Gore's Bampton Lectures on much the same subject are far more interesting to my mind, far more human. Lectures IV, V, VI of Gore would perhaps interest and educate you on ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... Mulga Scrub. Feel very stiff and ill. Started at daylight, and passed through three belts of thick mulga scrub, between which there were low stony hills. At three miles passed a small gum creek, emptying itself into the scrub. At ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... going to," she answered, smiling through her tears, "but it's a blessed privilege to have a nice stiff collar and a new tie to ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... to each person. Beat the whites to a stiff froth. Heap them into individual dishes, make a nest, or hole, in the center. Drop into this a whole yolk. Stand the dish in a pan of water, cover, and cook in the oven about two or three minutes. Dust ...
— Many Ways for Cooking Eggs • Mrs. S.T. Rorer
... brown tousled hair. A man of thirty-five, though the decision of his manner, the quiet dominance of his voice made him seem older. He stood up now, surveying the blue lit glassite room with its low ceiling close overhead. He was bow-legged; in movement he seemed to roll with a stiff-legged gait like some sea captains of former days on the deck of his swaying ship. Odd looking figure! Heavy flannel shirt and trousers, boots heavily weighted, and bulky metal-loaded belt ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... turns up his nose at. He abuses the leaders of the people, and only reads conservative newspapers, and on election days he votes against all his parish. The farmer maintains and pays him, but his conviction is that he is better than any farmer. What, therefore, can be more stiff-necked of him than to refuse to serve his country with his own, reverend person? Off with his black coat and clap on a red, and let the corporal teach him. He is a learned fellow, but, ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... sons of Dichu, lest any of them should raise the head to defend themselves, or the heel to offend him. For he, being rooted in the errors of idolatry, strenuously favored the magicians and the soothsayers; and his neck was stiff and his head was stubborn against the true religion. But when he understood that Dichu, with all his household and kindred and people, had turned unto Christ, and renounced the gods of their country, even the devils, his mind and ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... Epic Poem be Perspicuous, unless it be also Sublime. To this end it ought to deviate from the common Forms and ordinary Phrases of Speech. The Judgment of a Poet very much discovers it self in shunning the common Roads of Expression, without falling into such ways of Speech as may seem stiff and unnatural; he must not swell into a false Sublime, by endeavouring to avoid the other Extream. Among the Greeks, AEschylus, and sometimes Sophocles, were guilty of this Fault; among the Latins, Claudian and Statius; and among our own Countrymen, Shakespear and Lee. In these Authors the Affectation ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... answer, and, vexed with himself decided that action was more efficient than speech. So he stepped between her and the wind and drew her so that she stood close in the shelter of him. An unusually stiff squall blew about them and thrummed overhead in the tree-tops and both paused to listen. A shower of flying leaves enveloped them, and hard on the heel of the wind came driving drops of rain. He looked down on her and on her hair wind-blown about her face; and because of her closeness to him ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... "I was not sitting in the sun, but under the shade of a peach tree. Also, I was working out the sums that Monsieur Leblanc set me on my slate. See, here they are," and she held up the slate, which was covered with figures, somewhat smudged, it is true, by the rubbing of my stiff hair and of ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... man became aware of their presence, he straightened himself up with the slow movement of one stiff with age or rheumatism and threw them a tentatively friendly look out of a pair ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... hall. Long and rough was the road I trod, and wearisome was the way. Will no one bid me welcome? Will none give me a seat at the feast? Will none offer me a drink of the precious mead? Why are you all so dumb? Why so sulky and stiff-necked, when your best friend stands before you? Give me a seat among you,—yes, one of the high-seats,—or else drive me from your hall! In either case, the world will never forget me. I ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... Cubano or an Havanero. The appellations are as mutually offensive as were in the olden times those of Southron and Scot, although Cuba is eternally making a boast of her loyalty. The manner of a Cuban is as stiff and hidalgoish as that of any old Spaniard; in fact, so far as my short acquaintance with the mother country and the colony enables me to judge, I see little or no difference. Some of them, however, have a dash of fun ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... stood about on the sidewalk jeering and fleering, jigging and singing, talking loud, horse-laughing, and hungrily eyeing the girls and women that passed by, who tried hard to seem, as they went, not self-conscious and stiff-stepping because of our observation ... and sometimes we whistled after them or called out to them ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... first gray glimmer of the wintry dawn, Noll was awake. He felt stiff and lame after his adventure of the previous evening, and not at all inclined to stir. But a sudden recollection of Dirk and his child, and the aid which he had promised them, came to him almost as soon as he was conscious of the day's dawning, and he got up and limped to the window to see ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... yourself behind my chair. But you're not to stand so, with your hands in your pockets. Take your hands from your pockets, Roger; and from your head, you blockhead you! See how Diggory carries his hands. They're a little too stiff, indeed, but ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... loquacity, or with the sharp remarks of Lady Flora Hastings, one of her maids of honour, who had no love for the Baroness. The subject lent itself to satire; for the pastor's daughter, with all her airs of stiff superiority, had habits which betrayed her origin. Her passion for caraway seeds, for instance, was uncontrollable. Little bags of them came over to her from Hanover, and she sprinkled them on her bread and butter, her cabbage, and ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... of the grade school dressed as Uncle Sam. He led them to the pot. He directed them up the steps to the rim, and inside. He called them out again on the other side. They came, dressed in derby hats, coats, pants, vest, stiff collar and polka-dot tie, undoubtedly, said my friend, each with an Eversharp pencil in his pocket, and ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... between the two schools is all off, then," yawned Martin. "You fellows don't want to go into it, for you know you'd be beaten stiff. That's why you try to hedge ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... until her own fair, warm cheek rested against the icy cold face of the dead man she loved, here she neither wept nor moaned, but in silent, tearless anguish mourned over her departed friend. She gently chafed the stiff, cold hands with hers, and smoothed back the silver hair from his marble brow, there was a load of crushing weight and pain and care down deep in her poor heart, but still no tear would come to her burning eyes. By and bye, when she had spent nearly an ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... said the Captain: and bending to Pendennis, he added, "Rejuiced in circumstances, sir, I was for some time a fencing-master in Dublin (there's only three men in the empire could touch me with the foil once, but Jack Costigan's getting old and stiff now, sir), and my daughter had an engagement at the thayater there; and 'twas there that my friend, Mr. Bows, who saw her capabilities, and is an uncommon 'cute man, gave her lessons in the dramatic art, and made her what ye see. What have ye done ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of their shooting. Thus the arrows pierced an oak door four inches thick; they had been left there as a curiosity, and Gerald saw them with their iron points coming through on the inner side. He describes these bows as "made of elm—ugly, unfinished-looking weapons, but astonishingly stiff, large, and strong, and equally useful for long and short shooting." Add to this that the longbow was not a characteristic English weapon till the latter part of the thirteenth century, that the first battle in which an English king made effective use of archery (at Falkirk, ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... Hayes. You hold that Packard is not the legal governor of Louisiana, and President Hayes has no title." And the other leaders of the Republican party, for the most part, held this view. To these and their followers Blaine applied the name "Stalwarts," stiff partisans, who did not believe in surrendering the hold of the ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... hijious thing—a very hijious thing if, when I come a-gatherin' watercress in the marnin', I should find you a-danglin' on t' stapil, cold and stiff—like t' other, or lyin' a corp wi' your throat cut; 'twould be a hijious—hijious thing, Peter, but oh! 'twould mak' a ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... not keep the corners of her mouth quite stiff, but she still said, "You do not know what ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he said, "art thou better off for being pope?" At first she sat as stiff as a post, without stirring. Then he said, "Now, wife, be content with being pope; higher thou canst ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... Obviously he was scared stiff. "They were empty," he said. "All of them. Empty! Honest! And in one I found this." He handed Rick the scrap of ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... courtesy her governess had taught her. Were we not king and queen returned to our summer palace? And Spot and Silver and Song and Knipe, the wolf-hound, were our train, though not as decorous as rigid etiquette demanded, since they were forever running after the butterflies. On we went through the stiff, box-bordered walks of the garden, past the weather-beaten sundial and the spinning-house and the smoke-house to the stables. Here old Harvey, who had taught me to ride Captain Daniel's pony, is equerry, and young Harvey our personal attendant; old Harvey smiles as we go in and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... much as we can do, sir, if we could do it at all," he answered. "The brig is not particularly stiff, or she would not have heeled over as sharply as she ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... that no breath drove in from the outside, and the air of the chamber was heavy and earthlike. The place was bone-dry. I picked up the billiard chalk, and felt that the green paper wrapping was crisp and stiff. The name of Rolandi et Cie. was printed upon it, but there was nothing which told me whence it came or how long it had been there. Only that scribbled word Hereingefallen on the newly-scraped plaster seemed to fix a date on the ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... righteousness towards him, and it makes another man impatient of receiving and bearing an injury or disrespect. While every man seeks to please himself, the contention arises. Pride in both parties makes both stiff and inflexible to peace and equity, and in this there is a great deal of folly. For, by this means, both procure more real displeasure and dissatisfaction to their own spirits. "But with the well advised is wisdom." They who have discretion and judgment will not ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... and far-seeing, and radiantly handsome!" There the picture was of a high, haughty, and overbearing woman, in velvet, or brocade, or poplin-yes, something stiff and overbearing, like grey poplin. Kitty looked at herself suddenly in the mirror-the half- length mirror on the opposite wall—and she felt her hands clench and her bosom beat hard under her pretty and inexpensive calico frock, a thing for Chloe, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a change came o'er the spirit of his red mustaches. They ceased to sport about his nose. They were distinctly less playful than they had been, and by degrees they became positively stiff. In the mean time, Mr. Gallivant had returned to his law office. He had also gone back to live in Harlem, and one night last December he shut himself in his room—a hall bed-chamber on the third floor, rear—sat himself upon the only chair at hand, stretched his legs in front ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... most kind to Lord Clarendon, and make a marked difference between their marked cordiality to him and the stiff etiquette with which ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... back against her cushions, looking so white and exhausted that Ann was thoroughly alarmed and despatched Marie in search of the doctor, who promptly prescribed rest and quiet. By the following morning Lady Susan found herself too stiff even to wish to move. She had tripped and fallen suddenly, without being able to save herself at all, and she was more bruised and shaken than she or any one else ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... the same manner as a witch does, but employs the spirit of the dead person in casting out other evil spirits by which his clients may be possessed. One of the miracles performed by the Baiga is to make his wet cloth stand in the air stiff and straight, holding only the two lower ends. He can cross a river walking on leaves, and change men into beasts. Witches are not very common among the Dhanwars. A witch, male or female, maybe detected by a sunken and gloomy appearance of the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... resemblance to it, or, at least, a fixed aspect which we took from it. Husband and wife come to look alike at last, as has often been noticed. It is a common saying of a jockey, that he is "all horse"; and I have often fancied that milkmen get a stiff, upright carriage, and an angular movement of the arm, that remind one of a pump and the working of ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... farm on the ridge road five miles out of Cleveland, he entered with zeal into the business of scientific farming. Here he demonstrated that a stiff clay soil derived from the underlying Devonian Shales may be made highly productive in fruit. His success stimulated others along the ridge road, until the old pastures and meadows on that side of the city have ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... approached each other, I saw that he wore a plumed helmet, and seemed to be otherwise clothed in steel, but bore a curious addition also—a stiff square garment like a herald's tabard. However, I had to smile at my own forgetfulness when I got nearer and read this ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... or arm is broken, straighten the limb gently and if necessary pull upon the end firmly to get the bones in place. Then bind the limb firmly to a splint to hold it in place. A splint may be made of any straight, stiff material—a shingle or piece of board, a bayonet, a rifle, a straight branch of a tree, etc. Whatever material you use must be well padded on the side next to the limb. Be careful never to place the bandages over the fracture, but ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... not amiss. But when the sigh with its attendant murmurs had passed away it was necessary that some initiative step should be taken. "Dr Tempest," said the bishop, "what are we to do about this poor stiff-necked gentleman?" Still Dr Tempest did not speak. "There is no clergyman in the diocese," continued the bishop, "in whose prudence and wisdom I have more confidence than in yours. And I know, too, that you are by no means disposed to severity where severe measures are not necessary. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope |
