"Stolidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eyes, and the heavy droop of his eyelids almost caricatures the usual Japanese peculiarity. He is the most stupid-looking Japanese that I have seen, but, from a rapid, furtive glance in his eyes now and then, I think that the stolidity is partly assumed. He said that he had lived at the American Legation, that he had been a clerk on the Osaka railroad, that he had travelled through northern Japan by the eastern route, and in Yezo with Mr. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... made Dave sat with his gaze riveted to the face of Lieutenant Cantor. The officer looked stolid, but his stolidity had ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... converse. When an Indian has announced his intention of having a "big talk," he immediately lights his pipe and relapses into silence until the big talk shall break out accidentally and naturally. But Julia, having neither the pipe nor the Indian's stolidity, found herself under the necessity of beginning abruptly. Every minute of delay made her position worse. For every minute increased her doubt ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... was to be done, and thrust his rifle into the Indian's hands. The latter listened in silence and stolidity, then turned, and without a word departed swiftly in the darkness. The two white men stood a minute attentive. Nothing was to be heard but the steady beat of rain and the roaring of ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... therefore only faintly conjecture Mr. Wintermuth's surprise and genuine anguish upon receiving, one bright April morning, a communication in German, which, being translated by Mr. Otto Bartels with something more than his customary stolidity, proved to read, stripped of all ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... poor solace of remonstrance would have been denied. As it was, I spent much breath in trying to hurry them, and it is pleasanter now than it was then to reflect how futilely. For I rated them roundly, while they accepted my verbal goadings with the trained stolidity of folk who were used to ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... produce, purely agricultural, is the result of the industry and intellect of the men who till the soil. In Devonshire and Somersetshire we are charmed by the scenery, and amazed by the rich fertility of the soil, while we are amazed by the stolidity of the farmers and their labourers—nay, sometimes of the landlords—whose two ideas are comprised in doing what their forefathers did, and in hating every innovation. There fences, guano, pair-horse ploughs, threshing machines, and steam-engines, are almost as ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... The sight of the open door leading to freedom was too much for the youth's stolidity. Twisting suddenly, he drove his yellow teeth deep into the fleshy part of Standish's hand. And, profiting by the momentary slackening of Milo's grasp, he made one wildly scrambling dive across the hall, ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... simple as that of a vast antique bas-relief, there is an imaginative suggestion far surpassing this of Tintoret's. The breathless effort of the youths breaking through the earth's crust, shaking their long hair and gasping; the stagger of those rising to their feet; the stolidity, hand on hip, of those who have recovered their body but not their mind, blinded by the light, deafened by the trumpets of Judgment; the absolute self-abandonment of those who can raise themselves no higher; the dull, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... stolidity was a very useful pose. You'd find it a useful one, too, darling, 'out in the world,' as you call it; but you'll never be clever in that way, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... entertainment I had frequently turned my eyes toward the prime minister, and had been much impressed by his apparent stolidity. When he presented his arm to the lady mayoress, when he walked with her, and during all the time at table, he seemed much like a wooden image galvanized into temporary life. When he rose to speak, there was the same wooden stiffness and he went on ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... of great strength but little alertness; the stray glimpses I had had of them, revealing a breadth of back that was truly formidable, if it had not been joined to a heaviness of motion that proclaimed a certain stolidity of mind that was eminently in ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... Thrusty Ellen accepted this information with much stolidity. The grandeur of having old silver made no impression on them. They saw that Grandma Padgett had one pair of horses hitched to her moving-wagon instead of three pairs, and they secretly rated her ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... had to give it up, and to turn to the black sailors. Going forward, he addressed one after the other; but as he spoke, their countenances also changed, and they stood before him with downcast looks, pictures of stolidity. Suddenly he at last bethought him of calling up Pango from the pinnace, to try if he could elicit any information from his sable countrymen. Pango, on being summoned, immediately sprang on board. No sooner had he done so than his eye fell on one of the blacks, from whom Adair was ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... deceive themselves as to the character of other shrewd people. The difficulty was quite different. It was a peculiar sort of stolidity on the part of Mr. Shanks, for which she ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... wood on the flank of a hill—was blank, and the hounds moved on across country to the next draw. It was a land of pasture, and in every fence was a deep muddy passage, through which the field splashed in single file with the grave stolidity of the cows by whom the gaps had been made. Mrs. Pat was feeling horribly bored. Her escort had joined himself to two of the ladies of the hunt, and though it was gratifying to observe that one wore a paste brooch in ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... largely rest upon his typical childhood: his sculpture bears eloquent witness to the closest observation of all its varying and changeful moods. Others have excelled in this or that interpretation of child-life: Greuze with his sentimentalism, the Dutch painters with their stolidity. In Velasquez every child is the scion of some Royal House, in Murillo they are all beggars. They are too often stupid in Michelozzo: in Andrea della Robbia they are always sweet and winsome; Pigalle's children know too much. Donatello alone grasped the whole psychology. ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... than Russian stolidity, as he watched the oncoming of a small boat, beautifully riding the waves, and masterfully rowed by sailors who understood the art. Drummond stood imperturbable as ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... of landscape, but that it is an ungrateful and painful task to attack the works of living painters, struggling with adverse circumstances of every kind, and especially with the false taste of a nation which regards matters of art either with the ticklishness of an infant, or the stolidity of ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... splendidly garrisoned pride. Singing Arrow stood equally aloof, intrenched in her stoicism, but I think the root motives of the two were different, though the outside index was the same. Indeed, we all had different wellsprings for our composure. Pierre's stolidity was largely training. Starling's quiet might mean instinctive imitation, but I feared it was something more sinister. While mine—— But I had no composure. I swaggered and shrugged and played harlequin ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... With the stolidity of their race the Britishers did not show any surprise, as, some time afterward, they strolled down toward Tom's big craft, after supper, and looked it over. Soon they went back to their own camp, and a little later, ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... digression. For our purpose it is enough that the contrast between Miss Widdicombe's vivacity and the deadly stolidity of the County families, between her youth and the maturity of her vanquished competitors, entirely won the heart of Mr. St John Deloraine. He saw—he loved her—he was laughed at—he proposed—he was accepted—and, oh, shame! the County had to accept, ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... (Sternly, with great emphasis). This is as strong and impressive a piece as MacDowell ever composed for the pianoforte. From the first bar the note of the stern stolidity of the Red man is struck. The rude, elemental power of the bare octaves of the introductory bars is unmistakable. The ensuing stolid oration, punctuated by emotionless grunts, is an ingenious musical sketch of a pow-wow ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... roving eye. He seemed, indeed, steady of hearing to the verge of stolidity, yet in a few seconds he had noted and drawn rapid conclusions from the environment. The cheerlessness of the house had struck him and the somber room, decorated, if one calls it decoration, with faded steel engravings of Landseer hunting dogs guarding dead ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... their first spell by the trail, Stonor was highly amused to watch Clare's way with Mary. She simply ignored Mary's discouraging red-skin stolidity, and assumed that they were sisters under their skins. She pretended that it was necessary for them to take sides against Stonor in order to keep the man in his place. It was not long before Mary was grinning broadly. Finally ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... admired the stolidity of that sandy-haired young man's countenance. He envied the unrevealing blankness ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... apathy, which are the most fundamental symptoms of the stupor reaction as a whole. Initiative is lost and with this comes a tendency for the acceptance of other people's ideas. That is the probable basis for the suggestiveness which we concluded was a prominent factor in catalepsy. Indifference and stolidity may exist with those milder degrees of regression which do not conflict with one's critical sense, and hence may be present without any false ideas. The next stage in regression is that where the idea of death appears. Although not accepted placidly ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... could get nothing out of him. I have not often sat out with a more embarrassing partner. To be continually stared at and never spoken to would, I think, make the boldest woman shy. There was a stolidity about Thomas that promised well for England's future. There was a steady resistance from attack that was really admirable; but I was not altogether sorry when Fraulein pounced upon him. As she led him off I heard him say, "Parties do last a ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... himself was shocked for a moment out of his Oriental stolidity. A delighted smile spread over his face and he broke into an excited jargon of "pidgin English," of which ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... hypocrisy, stolidity, inhumanity, or vice finds its way into the chambers of disease through the would-be 365:27 healer, it would, if it were possible, convert into a den of thieves the temple of the Holy Ghost, - the patient's spiritual power to resuscitate him- 365:30 self. The unchristian practitioner ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... "have ye all drank the toast?—What is that old wife about? Give her a glass of brandy, she shall drink the king's health, by"—"If your honour pleases," said Cuddie, with great stolidity of aspect, "this is my mither, stir; and she's as deaf as Corra-linn; we canna mak her hear day nor door; but if your honour pleases, I am ready to drink the king's health for her in as mony glasses of brandy as ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the gods according to the form consecrated by tradition. Even in the expression of the face the same process is to be traced. In early works we find sometimes no expression at all, or an apparent stolidity which is really the absence of expression; in the archaic smile we see an attempt to enliven the face, and possibly also, as we have noticed, to express and even to induce the benignity of the deity. But this attempt, made with inadequate artistic resources, ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... but with patient, bovine eyes looking out heavily from under half-closed lids. He breathed jerkily, but he neither cried out nor groaned. There was something almost brutal and inhuman in his absolute stolidity. He asked no sympathy, for his life had been without it. It was a broken tool rather than ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... time to learn that the very coach in which he rode brought the news to the authorities there that all intercourse between the two nations was indefinitely suspended. The characteristic taciturnity and formal stolidity of his fellow-travellers—all Englishmen, mutually unacquainted with each other, and occupying different positions in life—having prevented his sooner hearing ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... how glorious it would be to see her taking it!' whispered Bertha into Phoebe's ear, unheard by Augusta, who, in her satisfied stolidity, was declaring, 'No, I could not undertake that. I am the worst person in the world for taking ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... half-opened lips. Immediately, his face assumed the obstinate, expressionless look which made those who searched no deeper than the surface pronounce him a dull boy. Rutford, for instance, interpreted this stolidity as unintelligence and lack of perception. John, meantime, was struggling with a thought which shaped itself slowly into a plan of action. He had just heard Lovell lie to save the Caterpillar. John knew well enough that he might be called ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... robe, Prosper ascended the steps of the platform and passed to the Lord Keeper's side. He looked eagerly into Dom Gillian's eyes, but the old man's face might have been a mask in its impassive stolidity. Plainly he had neither heard nor understood aught of all that ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... capable; all the overflowing and uncultivated talent and love of art and beauty, which in Russia brings forth so much that approaches indefinitely near to genius without ever quite reaching it. In Paul the effect of the Slavonic blood was totally opposite, and showed itself in that strange stolidity, that cold and ruthless exercise of force and pursuance of conviction, which have characterized so many Russian generals, so many Russian monarchs, and which have produced also so many Russian martyrs. There is something fateful in that terrible sternness, something which ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... Hepsy with a business-like stolidity inexplicable to Carrie Goldthwaite's warm heart, "an' she's left two children, which Josh an' me'll hev to take, I reckon, seein' their parents is both dead now. We'd a letter to-day from the minister there—Mr. Penn he ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... illustrations shows the fate which befell an infant chiton upon intrusion on a small black-lip oyster, and coincidentally the origin of a blister. The chiton family being notorious for stolidity, the infant could not have realised the risks of its trespass until the strait-jacket made its retirement impossible. The nacre has reproduced the details of the chiton's exterior with the fidelity of a casting, and further reveals ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... won't understand when I tell you that I'm one and that I'd see your 'Clarion' blazing in hell before I'd take another cent of your money." The fire died from her face, and in her former tone of dulled stolidity she repeated, "I want ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... With the stolidity and indifference of despair, however, he endured it all, sleeping in an attic at the roof of the house, eating what the cook gave him, accepting a few dollars a week, which he tried to save. His constitution was in no shape ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... concealment. It was a well-constructed domicile, composed of grass, twigs, and moss, but without mortar. The shy owner was nowhere to be seen, nor did she make any outcry, even though I stood for some minutes close to her nest. What stolidity the mountain birds display! You could actually rob the nests of some of them without wringing a chirp from them. On two later visits to the place I found Madame Thrush on her nest, where she sat until I came quite close, when she silently flitted away and ensconced ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... Green Flycatcher, their ways and general habits are the same. Slow in flying from point to point, they yet have a wonderful quickness, and snap up the fleetest insects with little apparent effort. There is a constant play of quick, nervous movements underneath their outer show of calmness and stolidity. They do not scour the limbs and trees like the Warblers, but, perched upon the middle branches, wait like true hunters for the game to come along. There is often a very audible snap of the beak as they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... once she made Joel bear the brunt of her own unrest; and because it is not always good for two people to be too much together, and because she had nothing better to do, she began to pick Joel to pieces in her thoughts, and fret at his patience and stolidity. She wished he would grow angry, wished even that he might be angry with her.... She wished for anything to break the long days of deadly calm. And she watched Joel more intently than it is well for wife to watch husband, or ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... fact that the worst shocks of life are often received without outcries, without gestures, without a flow of tears and the convulsions of sobbing. The insatiable governess missed these signs exceedingly. This pitiful stolidity was only a fresh provocation. Yet the poor girl was ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... man on the mountain?" Billy looked up sharply, startled out of his usual stolidity with which he had learned from early youth to mask all interest or emotion from ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... Pinkerton, the incredible plague of flies in summer. And during all those racing years of clangour and success in New York, the life of Bursley, self-sufficient and self-contained, had preserved its monotonous and slow stolidity. Bursley had become a museum to him; he entered it as he might have entered the Middle Ages, and was astonished to find that beautiful which once he had deemed sordid and commonplace. Some of the streets seemed like a monument of the past, a picturesque survival; the crate-floats, drawn by swift ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... humour and stolidity of Khalid, are shaken, aroused, by the ghoulish greed, the fell inhumanity of these sharpers. And Shakib from his cage of fancy lets loose upon them his hyenas of satire. In a squib describing the bats and the voyage he says: "The voyage ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... of warfare in the Great War—submarines and aircraft. The first free flight of an aeroplane, December 17, 1903. Attitude of the peoples; English stolidity. The navy and the air. The German menace hastens the making of our air service. The British air force at the outbreak of the war, and at its close. The achievement of the British air force. Uses of aircraft in war ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... that the preparations for the wedding must be stopped and that the invitations to the two big dinners that were to be given in honor of Colonel Ashley had been withdrawn she gathered from small signs—the feigned stolidity of some of them and the overacted astonishment of others—that they had probably been even better informed than Drusilla Fane. After that the food they brought her choked her and the maid's touch on her person was like fire, while she still found ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... jail behind the court house, or somewhere. The throng had dispersed, though its elements were every place talking, in pairs or in little knots of people. As he came along, these fell silent at his passing. They stared at him, motionless, expressionless, with the characteristic Mexican stolidity that is the heritage of Indian blood. By his automobile he found Martinez posted, stroking his long black mustache and regarding Sorenson's office, which was still lighted though the curtain remained drawn over the broad ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... Lilliputian boys. Puff—played by Powell (I don't forget that name)—was simply marvellous. And yet Powell, if he will forgive me for saying so, was the merest whipper-snapper. Sir Christopher Hatton could scarcely have emerged from the nursery; and yet the idea of utter stolidity never found a better exponent than that ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... nobody questioned him; the train officials were civil and incurious, and went calmly about their business with all the traditional stolidity of official ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... and the burgomaster, who was an honest man and blessed with true Dutch stolidity, after consulting with his clerk and colleague, informed me that inquiries would be made, and that meanwhile I should remain ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... home and tells: he gathers warmth and rapidity as he goes on, and in a little you become aware that for a few hundred pounds a year you may sometimes get a man who would have made an Attorney-General or a Lord-Chancellor; you discern, that, under the appearance of almost stolidity, there was the sharpest attention watching every word of the argument of the other speaker, and ready to come down on every weak point in it; and the other speaker is (in a logical sense) pounded to jelly by a succession of straight-handed hits. Yes, it is a wonderful thing to find a combination ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... pleased! Devilish proper girl!" said the man with a stupid blush, justifying the stolidity of his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... flexibility of the English character and national system, and to the consequent ease with which they adapted themselves to changing environment. Indeed, whatever may be the case at present, a survey of English history suggests that the conventional stolidity ascribed to John Bull was the least obvious of his characteristics; and even to-day the only people who never change their mind at general elections are the mercurial Celts. Certainly England has never suffered from ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... foil of the butcher-bird's stolidity we may set the inquisitive, garrulous temperament of the white-eyed vireo and the yellow-breasted chat. The vireo is hardly larger than the goldfinch, but let him be in one of his conversational moods, and he will fill a smilax thicket with noise enough for two or three cat-birds. ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... come?" he demanded in Ojibway. "Where you get your blankets? Where you get your grub? How you make the Long Trail? What you do when we go far and fast? What we do with you now?" Then meeting nothing but the stolidity with which the Indian always conceals pain, he flung her aside. "Stupid owl!" ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... pat—for even the jasper-tinted tropical soil is beautiful, climbs through the glorious woods to the chief Sanatorium of the Malay Peninsula. A free fight among the coolies before starting demands a lengthy exercise of that stolidity with which the Western pilgrim must invest himself, as the invulnerable armour needed by the conflict of daily life. As a mere matter of personal convenience, this quality bears scant resemblance to the weapons enumerated by S. Paul in the ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... still in him, but care again had clouded his brow. I think our early ancestors must have been much like Landers in this dance, strong, and merry for the time, seeking the woman in pleasures, fiery in movement for the nonce, and relapsing into stolidity. I can see why Landers, who takes what he will of womankind in these islands, still dominates in the trading, and bends most people his way. The animal way is the way here. The way of the city, of mere subtlety, of avoidance ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... which we were standing, and straightway bent the knee and crossed himself. Some few of the Indians likewise made the sign upon their breasts, though the greater part contained themselves with the same stolidity that had marked them from ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... native province in China might have been an aggressively, sensitively genial person; but in Samburan he had clothed himself in a mysterious stolidity and did not seem to resent not being spoken to except in single words, at a rate which did not average half a dozen per day. And he gave no more than he got. It is to be presumed that if he suffered he made up for it with the Alfuro woman. He always went back to her at the first fall of dusk, vanishing ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... the prisoner had remained silent in his chair, with a stolidity that aroused no sympathy for him. Not once was he seen to lift his eyes to the judge; and but once, when Tess was being maligned by Dominie Graves, did the bible-back rise and fall as if the heart beneath ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... fondly worshipped,—it would be impossible for me to peruse the meagre accounts given in the New Testament of this so prominent an object of Catholic reverence and worship,—to read the brief, frigid, not to say harsh speeches of Christ,—to contemplate the stolidity of the Apostles with regard to her, throughout their Epistles,—never even mentioning her name,—I say it would be impossible for me to read all this without having the idea suggested that it was never intended that I should pay her such homage as ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Whereas at Carthage there reigns among the scholars a most disgraceful and unruly licence. They burst in audaciously, and with gestures almost frantic, disturb all order which any one hath established for the good of his scholars. Divers outrages they commit, with a wonderful stolidity, punishable by law, did not custom uphold them; that custom evincing them to be the more miserable, in that they now do as lawful what by Thy eternal law shall never be lawful; and they think they do it unpunished, whereas they are punished with the very blindness whereby ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... picture of the mental torments to which his hero is exposed. He is frightened by a parrot calling him by name, and by the strangely picturesque incident of the footmark on the sand; but, on the whole, he takes his imprisonment with preternatural stolidity. His stay on the island produces the same state of mind as might be due to a dull Sunday in Scotland. For this reason, the want of power in describing emotion as compared with the amazing power ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... exterior a softness of disposition and a tenderness of heart which brooks no rivalry. Men who have taken the Boer character second-hand, or have not taken the trouble to enter into his feelings or obtain his friendship, have often been misled by his quiet phlegmatic demeanour, which at times verges on stolidity. They have described him as being sour, morose and unkind. To such he appeared a sort of obstreperous, cantankerous being, who simply delights to quarrel with every man he meets—especially if an Englishman came in his way. Needless to say he is ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... were not wool-gathering, and when Slatin said to him, "If I escape, I will try to arrange yours," Macnamara replied, with a respectful but placid stolidity: "Right, sir. Where does the old ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the second time what was her errand up there—whether she was following the man, or had suspected that he would be there—she shook her head vaguely and took refuge behind the stolidity of her race. ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... ever since been a scene of continual wars, dynastic changes, and territorial confusion. What evils have not the wars of the present century brought upon her! Yet, owing to the phlegmatic disposition, one might call it the stolidity of the majority of Germans, the disturbances have been so far external, and the lower masses of society have scarcely been agitated, except by the first rude explosion of Protestantism, and the sudden patriotic ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... was stacked a number of long clay pipes with tobacco, from which the men assisted themselves, smoking with the silence and stolidity of Indians, the women preserving the same mute attitude, save for an occasional groan and suppressed sigh—the feminine method in Lancashire of mourning ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... compose, on the spur of the moment, a new and original language or telegraphy of the legs, kicking for assistance with all his might. Juan of Aragon was usually the hero to extricate these poor estrays from the false step they had taken, the other peons regarding the scene with their tranquil stolidity. A glass of brandy to the unfortunate would always compose his nerves again, and make him hope for a few more accidents of a like nature and bringing a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... me he would have developed a little more soul, and a little less stomach - but what of it? -" with a graceful shrug. "For the good of his country it is written that he shall acquire weight and stolidity, instead of an ideal soul, and for the benefit of posterity I sentenced him to speedy rotundity, and dull respectability, and the begetting of future bankers. He will presently marry some one named Alice or Annie, and invite ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... quite plain now," he answered seriously, the young girl's sarcasm slipping harmlessly from his Indian stolidity. "Don't ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... air of indifference, as if hunting Whigs were much the same to him as cleaving firewood. He did his duty with a stupid unconcern which successfully imposed on the soldiers; and as soon as they allowed him to go, he fell to his wood-chopping with the same stolidity and rustic boorishness ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... apparent stolidity, nodding his head from time to time as she spoke. The keenness of his dislike of her as a woman began to be blunted. He thought she was rather pretty, that he even liked her because she was so small, so prettily made, so ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... easily surpassed his achievement as author. Mr. TOZER as a slum-parson was extremely probable with his quiet sincerity. But our chief consolation came from Miss RACHEL DE SOLLA as the maiden aunt, a reactionary type of the most confirmed stolidity, with a weakness for diamonds and indigestion. Miss MARIE LOeHR had many clever things to say, but it didn't matter what Miss DE SOLLA ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... to her, Lylda spoke to the youth and the girl in her native tongue. They listened quietly; Oteo with an almost expressionless stolidity of face, but with his soft, dog-like eyes fixed upon his mistress; Eena with heaving breast and trembling limbs. When Lylda paused they both fell upon their knees before her. She put her hands upon their heads and smiling ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... wound, and on the lineaments of a face that then expressed the extremity of mental agony, fell full the wavering light of the uplifted torches. The Dutch, accustomed to every species of extra-judicial cruelty by sea and land, looked on with the most grave stolidity and apathetic indifference; while I felt an astonishment and indignation that rapidly gave place to ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... of the opinion that if you are a cyclone, it is never too soon to begin behaving like one. He danced round the Kid with an india-rubber agility. The Cosy Moments representative exhibited more stolidity. Except for the fact that he was in fighting attitude, with one gloved hand moving slowly in the neighbourhood of his stocky chest, and the other pawing the air on a line with his square jaw, one ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... casting Galileo into prison, even crucifying Christ. There is a haunting and horrible sense of insecurity about the book. The terror we thus feel is a terror for the machinery of law, that we can hear tearing, in the dark, good and bad between its formidable wheels with the iron stolidity of all machinery, human or divine. This terror incarnates itself sometimes and leaps horribly out upon us; as when the crouching mendicant looks up, and Jean Valjean, in the light of the street lamp, recognises the face ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... creatures were entirely cut off, shut out from life, wandering wearisomely through the world in one long battle with Nature whereby to gain the wherewithal to live in that grim desert. There were no exceptions, it was the common lot. Each day and every day did these men and women, with a stolidity of long-continued destitution, and temporal and spiritual tribulation, gaze upon that bare, unyielding country, pregnant only with aggravation ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... unanswerable. Ambrose, divided between annoyance and compassion, fumed in silence. He himself had only enough food for a few days. The breed wore him out with his stolidity. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... still not wholly satisfied. His complete stolidity frustrated every effort she made ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to my questions, with mingled distrust and contempt, and my own limited experiences most assuredly did not tend much toward impressing me with a more favorable opinion. The countenances of most of the Laps present a combination of stolidity, low cunning, and obstinacy, so as to be decidedly repulsive; yet it is undeniably true, that crimes attended with violence rarely occur among them, though I take that as no decided proof of the mildness of their disposition. They also are strict in their attendance at church, whenever ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... He was outraged. 'I know nothing of East Side.' Her absolute unconsciousness of his spiritual tumult, her stolidity before this spectacle of his triumphant genius, her matter-of-fact acceptance of his racial affinity, her refusal to be impressed by the heroism of a Hebrew pianoforte solo, all she said and did not say, jarred ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... with elation and tightly clutching the precious box, Drew hastened to the rail where the men were preparing to launch the boat. Wah Lee and Namco stood by, blinking with true Oriental stolidity. They betrayed neither eagerness nor reluctance, nor was there the slightest trace of curiosity. For them it was ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... Wilmot, glancing at the scout, who was at the moment seated on a keg before the fire lighting his pipe, and with a look of simple benignant stolidity on his grave countenance. "Have you no idea, Ben, where these outlaws ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... though he had not heard—a proceeding which his natural stolidity rendered easy. The little old gentleman, however, was not so easily put off. He tapped the man ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... down at one-third their value, and so on. He began to wish he could bid; but he had no money, just a little pocket change. The auctioneer noticed him standing almost directly under his nose, and was impressed with the stolidity—solidity—of the boy's expression. ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... them triumphantly to the very door,—with what contortion of face or simulation of character she was unable to guess,—after he had entered the schoolroom and taken his seat every vestige of his previous facial aberration was gone, and only his usual stolidity remained. In vain, as Mrs. Martin expected, the hundred delighted little eyes before her dwelt at first eagerly and hopefully upon his face, but, as she HAD NOT expected, recognizing from the blankness of his demeanor that the previous performance ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... time, although the old system still stands in many countries with the inert stolidity of established institutions, it no longer commands general approval. As Paul and Victor Margueritte have truly stated, in the course of an acute examination of the phenomena of state-regulated prostitution as found in Paris, the system is "barbarous to start with and almost inefficacious as well." ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to Evreux (for a consideration), which Markham refused, an the two companions took to the road and soon passed out of sight, leaving the group of peasants staring after them, still mystified as to the whole occurrence and wondering with Norman stolidity whether Hermia was mad ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... the mind-storms which swept across him, was that in these moods everything that people said or wrote had power to arouse his irritation, to interrupt his work, to break his sleep, and to show him that he was powerless indeed. What he feared was derision, and the good-natured indifferent stolidity that is worse than any derision, and the knowledge that, with all his powers and perceptions, his common-sense, which was great, and his sense of responsibility, he was treated by the world like a spoilt ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... be the one high goal of human endeavour on that day of long ago when she named her first-born Samuel? Or was hers the stubborn obstinacy of the ox? the fixity of purpose of the balky horse? the stolidity of the self-willed peasant-mind? Was it whim or fancy?—the one streak of lunacy in what was otherwise an eminently rational mind? Or, reverting, was hers the spirit of a Bruno? Was she convinced of the intellectual rightness of the stand she had taken? Was hers a steady, enlightened opposition ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... nursing their bruises, while Hansen, his stolidity momentarily vanished in the rush of the fight and not yet regained, exhibited an unusual vocabulary as he bossed them. Lund turned to the two hunters, who ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... position on the police force which would enable me to prove my capabilities, and lead to promotion. I had no knowledge, at that time, of the immense income which awaited me entirely outside the Government circle. Whether it is contempt for the foreigner, as has often been stated, or that native stolidity which spells complacency, the British official of any class rarely thinks it worth his while to discover the real cause of things in France, or Germany, or Russia, but plods heavily on from one mistake to another. Take, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... philosophical state as Peter. Their mother had been German——a lady-in-waiting to one of the German princesses; and their father had met her and married her while he was secretary at the English Embassy in St. Petersburg. And Susie, who had heard of German philosophy and German stolidity, and despised them both with all her heart, concluded that the German strain was accountable for everything about Peter and Anna that was beyond her comprehension; and sometimes, when Peter was more than usually ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... were not enthusiastic. A traditional pastime is to be distinguished from a mere revival in no more striking feature than in this, that while in the revival all is excitement and fervour, the survival is carried on with a stolidity and absence of stir which sets one wondering why a thing that is done so perfunctorily should be kept up at all. Like Balaam and other unwilling prophets, the agents seem moved by an inner compulsion to say and do their ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... human sorrow in the city, the shrieks of mothers that lacked sons, the greetings of wives whose loves 'came coffined home.' And he does not mind aggravating the intense selfishness, and narrowness, and stolidity of these private passions and affections of the individual to a truly unnatural and diabolical intensity, by charging on poor Volumnia and Marcius his own reminiscences; as if they could have dared to heighten their joy at that moment by counting its cost—as if they could have looked in ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... somewhat ashamed to face Mary Eastmann, she received us with the same stolidity she had manifested when we first met, and at once insisted that I should remain for dinner. "Go into ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... now an even longer pause. Pitiable, ridiculous infants were pondering, somewhat vaguely but very solemnly, over certain mysteries of existence, which most of us have learned to accept with stolidity. We were young, and to us the miraculous insecurity and inconsequence of human life was still a little impressive, and we had not yet come to regard the universe as a more or less comfortable place, well-meaningly constructed ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... the contemplation of Chinese Charley at the ranch. He has been with Mrs. Kitty twenty-five years; he wears American clothes; he speaks English with hardly a trace of either accent or idiom; he has long since dropped the deceiving Oriental stolidity and weeps out his violent Chinese rages unashamed. Yet even now Mrs. Kitty's summing up is that Charley ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... to observe is this. We are inside, and the Boche is outside! Fenced by a mighty crescent of prosaic trenches, themselves manned by paladins of an almost incredible stolidity, Ypres still points her broken fingers to the sky—shattered, silent, but inviolate still; and all owing to the obstinacy of a dull and unready nation which merely keeps faith and stands by its friends. Such an attitude of mind is incomprehensible to the Boche, and we are ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... The ice is quiet to-day. Does longing stupefy one, or does it wear itself out and turn at last into stolidity? Oh that burning longing night and day were happiness! But now its fire has turned to ice. Why does home seem so far away? It is one's all; life without it is so empty, so empty—nothing but dead emptiness. Is it the restlessness of ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... with the stolidity of the veteran hunter waiting to make sure. Torpor rapidly seized on Parker's mind. He shouted as best he could, but his voice was hoarse from hours of shouting into the vastness of the deserted woods. His faculties were growing befogged. He dared not exert himself enough to keep awake, for ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... lieutenants sometimes cracked and broke away the formidable husks which enveloped divine kernels in the hearts of some of the wretches, and she frequently wept at the stories of victories gained over monsters whose defences of silence and stolidity had suddenly fallen into ruin above the slow but persistent sapping of constant kindness. Acute tinglings and chilling thrills would pervade her entire body when she read that on Christmas every wretch seemed to become for that day, at least, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... thinking a great deal, or she would not write his name unconsciously. The only Geoffrey that I know is Mr. Geoffrey Bingham, the barrister, who is staying at the Vicarage, and whose life Beatrice saved." She paused to watch her companion's face, and saw a new idea creep across its stolidity. "But of course," she went on, "it cannot be Mr. Bingham that she was thinking of, because you see ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... me, looked again, then, startled out of his Dutch stolidity, cried to his wife, who was seated on the ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard |
