"Truculent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... abused if he failed. The Reverend Thomas Prince openly regretted the change of enemy. 'The Heavenly shower is over. From fighting the Devil they needs must turn to fighting the French.' But Parson Moody, most truculent of Puritans, had no doubts whatever. The French, the pope, and the Devil were all one to him; and when he embarked as senior chaplain he took a hatchet with which to break down the graven images of Louisbourg. In the end Whitefield warmed up enough to give the expedition ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... any thing else aroused the hatred of the British was the share Baltimore took in fitting out and manning those swift privateers, concerning whose depredations upon British commerce we shall have something to say in a later chapter. "It is a doomed town," said Vice-admiral Warren. "The truculent inhabitants of Baltimore must be tamed with the weapons which shook the wooden turrets of Copenhagen," cried the editor of a great London paper. But, nevertheless, Baltimore did not fall before the invader, although for some time the army and navy of the enemy were united in the attempt ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... A truculent look came into Rachel's eyes, as they rested upon the smooth face so unusually agitated beneath the smooth ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... creeds which was their actual state after the political and social and religious chaos produced by Henry VIII. Gardiner is a Catholic, but not an Ultramontane; Lord William Howard is a Catholic, but not a fanatic; we find a truculent Anabaptist, or Socialist, and a citizen whose pride is his moderation. The native uncritical tendency of the drama is to throw up hats and halloo for Elizabeth and an open Bible. In place of this, Cecil delivers a well-considered analysis of ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... to him. After the Eucharist, Raleigh talked very freely to the Dean, defending himself, and going back in his reminiscences to the reign of Elizabeth. He declared that the world would yet be persuaded of his innocence, and he once more scandalised the Dean by his truculent cheerfulness. He ate a hearty breakfast, and smoked a pipe of tobacco. It was now time to leave the Gate House; but before he did so, a cup of sack was brought to him. The servant asked if the wine was to his liking, and Raleigh replied, 'I will answer ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... mercenaries, or auxiliaries, or mixed. 'Mercenary and auxiliary forces are both useless and perilous, and he who founds the security of his dominion on the former will never be established firmly: seeing that they are disunited, ambitious, and undisciplined, without loyalty, truculent to their friends, cowardly among foes; they have no fear of God, no faith with men; you are only safe with them before they are attacked; in peace they plunder you; in war you are the prey of your enemies. The cause of this is ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... other periodical was ever like it. Perhaps all periodicals are like it. But I don't believe there's another publication in New York that could bring together, in honor of itself, a fraternity and equality crank like poor old Lindau, and a belated sociological crank like Woodburn, and a truculent speculator like old Dryfoos, and a humanitarian dreamer like young Dryfoos, and a sentimentalist like me, and a nondescript like Beaton, and a pure advertising essence like Fulkerson, and a society ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... shaggy head in mild protest against the flies. Three more pessimistic-looking horses I never saw. They were harnessed abreast, and fastened by a prodigious tow-rope to a short post in the middle of the forward deck. Their driver was a truculent, brigandish, bearded old fellow in long boots, a blue flannel shirt, and a black sombrero. He sat upon the middle horse, and some wild instinct of colour had made him tie a big red handkerchief around his shoulders, so that the eye of the beholder took delight in ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... good-looking if he had sometimes washed; the Chief Engineer was a Swede, who spoke English and quoted Ibsen; and the other officers I never came specially across. There was only one of my own countrymen on board, a fireman from Hull, one of the strongest men I ever met, and certainly the most truculent ruffian. His name was Tordoff on the ship's books, but that was a "purser's name." He spoke pure English when he forgot himself, and certainly had once ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... of closed ports was given in our cabin, where the fair chatelaine was reclining in her berth reading, fanned by the genial air which floated in at the open port,—a truculent Red Sea billow, meeting a slight roll of the ship, entered the cabin in an unbroken fall on the lady's head. A damp tigress flew out through the door, wildly demanding the steward, a set of dry bedding, and the instant execution of the captain, the officer of the watch, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... understand these matters,' replied Zero, with an air of great dignity. 'This will shake England to the heart. Gladstone, the truculent old man, will quail before the pointing finger of revenge. And now that my dynamite ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... asserted, were composed by a Highland bard of the third century, handed down through ages by oral tradition, and finally committed—at least in part—to writing and now extant in manuscripts in his possession, there ensued at once a very emphatic expression of incredulity. Among the most truculent of the disbelievers was Dr. Johnson. He had little liking for Scotland, still less for the poetry of barbarism. In his tour of the Western Islands with Boswell in 1773, he showed an insensibility, and even a kind of hostility, to the wild beauties of Highland scenery, which gradually ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... who had done the shooting, his voice truculent. "Anybody got anything to say? Say it quick, ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... of massive and powerful build, with somewhat harsh features, black hair and beard just touched with grey, and a sallow complexion sunburnt as brown as a berry. According to the prevalent fashion in those latitudes, he wore truculent-looking boots up to his knees, and a big sombrero hat slouched over his brow. There was a stern, hard expression about his face, except when he smiled or looked at Barbara Thorne. He did not look stern now, as she came quickly to meet him, and welcomed ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... you be?" demanded an individual in top-boots, a large man chiefly remarkable for a pair of fierce, black whiskers and a truculent eye. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... lesson from this truculent apostle of his god. He is not the only instance of apparent religious zeal which is at bottom nothing but masterfulness. 'You shall worship my god, not because he is God, but because he is mine.' That is the real meaning of a great deal which calls itself 'zeal for the Lord.' The zealot's ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... soda before the Rev. J. D. Eltham, also sliding the tobacco jar nearer to his hand. The refined and sensitive face of the clergyman offered no indication to the truculent character of the man. His scanty fair hair, already grey over the temples, was silken and soft-looking: in appearance he was indeed a typical English churchman; but in China he had been known as "the fighting ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... people's minds had had a little time to cool, they were ready enough to acknowledge their mistake in imagining a similarity between General Blood-and-Thunder's truculent physiognomy and the benign visage on the mountain-side. But now, again, there were reports and many paragraphs in the newspapers, affirming that the likeness of the Great Stone Face had appeared upon the broad shoulders of a certain ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sufficient time to reach the boats, and then set off at a brisk pace to the "Black Hole." He soon reached it; and on his approach was promptly challenged by the two guards, who happened to be the same two truculent ruffians who were on guard when Dickinson tried ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... British, and an Anglo-Saxon section in the school, and a wider teaching which embraces the whole "white race" in one remarkable tolerance—as the superior race, as one, indeed, superior enough to own slaves, collectively, if not individually; and the exponents of this doctrine look with a resolute, truculent, but slightly indistinct eye to a future in which all the rest of the world will be in subjection to these elect. The ideals of this type are set forth pretty clearly in Mr. Kidd's Control of the Tropics. The whole world is to be administered ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... six states were effaced. The man who had so largely contributed to this great result stood there to defend his honour, almost his life. Guerrazzi compared him to the Earl of Clarendon—"hard towards the king, truculent to Parliament, who thought in his pride that he could do everything." Cavour retorted: perhaps if Clarendon had been able to show in defence of his conduct many million Englishmen delivered from foreign yoke, several counties added to his master's possessions, Parliament would not have been so ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... muffs seem to have been then the fashion, often combined in use with umbrellas, such as we now should call Japanese sunshades; the perruquier here, too, must have his muff, though both hands are filled with the shaving-pot and curling tongs; the trim abbe in his short cassock, even the truculent-looking postilion are all provided. In the corner a poodle is being clipped, just as we may see to-day beside the Seine, and is loudly vociferating his complaints; and, above all, we see the quaint ensign of the trade, which combined the shoeblack's ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... gymnasium shoes, "leathers," and a brown sweater (warranted not to show the dirt), looked quite definably what he was, a Commercial Road ruffian; and his foreheadless face, greasy cow-lick "quiff" (or fringe), and truculent expression, inspired more disgust than confidence ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... felt that my tone was truculent, and almost hesitated; but as I saw no anger or indignation on my Lady's face, but rather an eager approval, I was reassured. A woman, after all, is glad to see a man strong, for all belief in him ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... cattle from the herds we saw among the Bedouins a couple of hours ago; fine large creatures, well bred and well fed, some cream-coloured, some red, some belted with white. And these men who follow them, on foot or on horseback, truculent looking fellows with blue eyes and light hair and broad faces, clad in long, close-fitting tunics, with belts around their waists and small black caps of fur, some of them with high ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... of his troop. The knight was closely followed by the Alsatian captains, who, with tremendous oaths in their mouths, and slashing blades in their hands, declared they would make minced meat of any one opposing their progress. Sir Thomas was equally truculent in expression and ferocious in tone, and as the whole party laid about them right and left, they speedily routed the defenders of the garden, and drove them towards the house. Flushed by their success, the besiegers shouted loudly, and Sir ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to see the man cringe in abasement and contrition. But the heavy jaw thrust forth in truculent defiance; hate blazed forth from the deep-set eyes; the florid features were empurpled with rage. He made as if to reply, but turned away from the withering scorn in ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... with an indefinite something which stamped him as a man of lower caste, one who had gained promotion from the ranks—rose to his feet, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and swaggered towards the prisoners, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, his head pushed forward, and a truculent, domineering, brutal air about him. Halting in front of the two prisoners, he gave them the benefit of a stare which would have been rude at any time, and which even warfare hardly excused, and then, without the smallest warning, so swiftly in fact that Henri was staggered, he suddenly drew ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... heel, truculent: "Would you have me ruin myself by this miserable war? I've about enough of losing money all ways ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... themselves shoulder to shoulder across the doorway, plainly with intent to bar the way. Gaubert, followed immediately by Marius, stepped aside and approached the landlord with arms akimbo and a truculent smile on his pale hawk face. What he and Marius said, Rabecque could not make out, but he distinctly heard the landlord's answer delivered with a ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... will help you—and me, too!" responded Castlemayne, who was obviously incensed and truculent. "'Pon my honour, when I got your cards, I wondered if I'd been sleep-walking last night, and had gone and done for this man—I really did! It was all I could do to keep from punching his nose last night in ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... from Prince Charlie's army fell upon Swanston in the dawn. The great-grandfather of the late farmer was then a little child; him they awakened by plucking the blankets from his bed, and he remembered, when he was an old man, their truculent looks and uncouth speech. The churn stood full of cream in the dairy, and with this they made their brose in high delight. "It was braw brose," said one of them. At last they made off, laden like camels with their booty; and Swanston Farm has lain out of the way of history from that time forward. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this is their effect the thoughtful apologist for sports will not rest content, and commonly, it is to be admitted, he does not rest content. His discontent with his own vindication of the practice in question is ordinarily shown by his truculent tone and by the eagerness with which he heaps up asseverations in support of his position. But why are apologies needed? If there prevails a body of popular sentient in favor of sports, why is not that fact a sufficient legitimation? The protracted ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... in 1631, their grandson built the cottage which now stands—the property of the Alden Kindred Association. John Alden seems to have been an attractive young fellow—it is easy to see why Priscilla Mullins preferred him to the swart, truculent widower—but from our point of view John Alden's chief claim to fame is that he was ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... been always. The other jaguars shunned Warruk because they feared him. And being thus made an outcast intensified the black one's naturally savage and truculent disposition. ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... the Major, with a truculent look. "No man shall appeal to Dick Querto till he is purged of ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... Gorst, acting on Grey's orders, issued a sheet in opposition, entitled Te Pihoihoi Mokemoke, or The Lonely Lark. Fierce was the encounter of the rival birds. The Lark out-argued the Phoenix. But the truculent Kingites had their own way of dealing with lese majeste. They descended on the printing-house, and carried off the press and type of Te Pihoihoi Mokemoke. The press they afterwards sent back to Auckland; of the type, it is said, they ultimately made bullets. Gorst, ordered to quit ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... 'roaring forties.' Broadway here might be the offspring of Shaftesbury Avenue and Leicester Square, with, somehow, some of Fleet Street also in its ancestry. I passed two men on the sidewalk, their hats on the back of their heads, arguing fiercely. One had slightly long hair. The other looked the more truculent, and was saying to him, intensely, "See here! We contracted with you to supply us with sonnets at five dollars per sonnet—" I passed up a side-street, one of those deserted ways that abound just off the big streets, resorts, apparently, for such people ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... zambo turnkey (half Indian, half negro) brought me my evening meal—a loaf of bread and a small bottle of wine—and I studied his countenance closely. It was both treacherous and truculent, and I felt that if I trusted him he would be sure to ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... forgive him!" she breathed softly, and as the fellow, half ashamed, but truculent still, and defiant, turned upon her as though he would have repeated either his insult or his blasphemy, she held up her hand and spoke aloud, so that all who stood by ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... council of seventeen was nominated, including eight bishops, four earls, four barons, and one banneret. The earls were Pembroke, Arundel, Richmond, and Hereford. Of these the Breton Earl of Richmond was the most friendly to the king, but it was significant to find so truculent a politician as Hereford making common cause with Pembroke. The most important of the four barons was Roger Mortimer of Wigmore. Lancaster though not paramount was still powerful, but his habit of absenting ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... piano-forte, proceeded to wake the clangorous echoes of the Empyrean. They bade the prolyx Caucasian gentlemen not to misconstrue their inexorable demands, while they dined on acclimated anchovies and apricot truffles, and had for dessert a wiseacre's pharmacopoeia. Thus the truculent Pythagoreans had a novel repast fit for ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... part of the evening. As to what we learned, that may be dismissed in a few words: but the news was more satisfactory than it had been for a long time. The half-breeds were comparatively quiet, presumably because of a warning hint from headquarters. And the truculent officials of the rival company had taken no steps to call our people to account for the attack on Lagarde's store, nor did they appear to have any intention of demanding the person of Captain Rudstone. Doubtless they thought it best to let sleeping dogs lie. Of ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... whistle was anything but truculent and anything but apologetic. It had the unconscious and spontaneous quality of the delight of the collector who finds a ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... of Christianity. These things being so, I can pity and forgive a great deal of what appears to be, and is, so opposite to the true Christian temper, on account of its origin and cause. Especially as these very persons, who are so impetuous, and truculent almost, as partizans and advocates, are, as private Christians, examples perhaps of extraordinary virtue. We certainly know this to be the case with Macer. An apostle was never more conscientious nor more pure. Yet would he, had he power equal to his will, drive from the church all who bowed not ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... quite a few Y secretaries scattered over Italy who vehemently disclaimed that John Calhoun spoke for them or their sentiments. Among this number was his brother-in-law, John Cornwall, and two truculent and undiplomatic secretaries who had charge of the work with the Twenty-seventh ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... to his heroism, and who, with the Spirit of God upon him, stands up and pointing out his wickedness, rebukes the fallen monarch for his apostasy. Joash, doubtless stung to the quick by Zechariah's just reproaches, allowed the truculent princes to slay him in the court of the Temple, even between the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... his bow he was compelled to defend himself against wild beasts and huge men.... "Yes!" throws in Kundry eagerly, as if at the recollection of splendid fights witnessed, "he made his strength felt upon miscreants and giants. They were all afraid of the truculent boy!" He turns upon her a vaguely pleased wonder: "Who is afraid of me? ... Tell me!" "The wicked!" He seems trying to grasp a wholly new idea presented to him. "Those who threatened me were wicked? Who is good?" Gurnemanz ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... was washed out in one year. Every one had gold, sacks and cans of it. The wild license of the place was unspeakably vitiating. Fights with weapons were incessant. Rude dance halls and saloons were crowded with truculent, armed men in search of trouble. Churches and schools were unknown. Tents, log cabins, and brush shanties made the residences. "Hacks rattled to and fro between the several towns, freighted with drunken ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... do you want in my room for?" he demanded. The form of the words was truculent, but the words themselves slid in a sort of spiritless fashion from the corner of that crooked mouth of his, and he added in the next breath, "I'll open up for you, when ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... was high time for some other institution to shelter this touchy and truculent person, and that he would lay the case before the next weekly Visitor and ask for it to be submitted to the Committee at their ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... at her grandmother expectantly, but there was no answering glance. The old lady was evidently in one of her truculent moods ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... joyous lad of yesterday, was nursing a blistered hand and arm and stalking about the car in stocking feet and a pair of trousers two sizes too big for him. Murray, now that the corporal was no longer able to retain active command, had resumed his truculent and swaggering manner. Almost the first thing he did was to demand more money of Foster, and call him a liar when told that every dollar was burned. Then he sought to pick a fight with Hunt, who had, as he expressed it, "roped him like a steer," but the carload by this time ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... invariably are. He had faith in nothing but armies and forts, but his faith in them was of the firmest. He despised the Bourbons and the bourgeoisie alike, and would be satisfied with nothing short of a national chief as irresponsible as Tamerlane; and if he should be as truculent as Tamerlane, it was not difficult to see that M. Romieu would like him all the better for it. Your true fanatic loves blood, and is provokingly ingenious in showing how necessary it is that you should submit calmly to have your throat ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... and so strong and so brutal by the side of our friend that I was ill at ease, for I knew well what a truculent ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... I'm safe when I'm handled right, but if I'm handled wrong—" Stickney did not finish his sentence; but his truculent air was pregnant ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... short consultation took place between my friend and their host, who agreed that no resistance could be offered, that the door should be opened, and they must all submit to their fate. Then the banditti rushed in with fierce gestures; truculent men, with shaggy hair and beards, wrapped in dark capotes, with long guns in their hands, and daggers in their belts and bosoms. “Spare our lives, and take our money, and all that we have,” was the cry of some of the travellers. Nor were the bandits slow in falling upon the sacs and malles, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... Philadelphia record, rendered the sensitive cohorts of the ultra-conservative exceedingly fearful. In Schryhart's Chronicle appeared a news column which was headed, "Plain Grab of City Tunnel Proposed." It was a very truculent statement, and irritated Cowperwood greatly. The Press (Mr. Haguenin's paper), on the other hand, was most cordial to the idea of the loop, while appearing to be a little uncertain as to whether ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... sounding boasts that he had "only seen the backs of his enemies," and that he had "gone to look for the rebel, Jackson"—were really taken to mean what they said. When Pope did at last "find the rebel, Jackson," the hopeful public over the Potomac began to believe that their truculent pet might have simply paraphrased ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... much as named him in an invective, he would first run him through the body, and then throw himself—not out of the window, as one was charitably hoping—but on a much softer place—the consideration of their Lordship's House. Some persons of quality, of less truculent aspect than McCallum More, thought to enlist the poet's services, and the Duchess of Buckingham got him to write an epitaph on her deceased son—a feeble lad—to which transaction the poet is thought to ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... picture of the small, truculent Mike in frenzied revolt with a club against the idea of being decked with jewelry.... Mike turned to the two big men and shoved ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... battle was very bloody, and by Mackay's third fire, Claverhouse fell, of whom historians give little account; but it has been said for certain, that his own waiting-servant, taking a resolution to rid the world of this truculent bloody monster, and knowing he had proof of lead, shot him with a silver button he had before taken off his own coat for that purpose. However, he fell, and with him Popery, and King James's interest in Scotland."—God's ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Mr. Billy Warner of Ponape with his entourage of sixteen truculent, evil-faced Solomon Islanders was not regarded with enthusiasm by the chief officer and the ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... no less famous than these two worthies was Roch Braziliano, the truculent Dutchman who came up from the coast of Brazil to the Spanish Main with a name ready-made for him. Upon the very first adventure which he undertook he captured a plate ship of fabulous value, and brought her safely ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... torture, which I doubted not he would inflict, and so I took up a posture of defence, with one eye on the mate; despite the kind offices of the latter below I knew not whether he were disposed to befriend me before the captain. What was my astonishment, therefore, to behold Griggs's truculent manner change. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a bit of a boaster himself, on the care he had taken to choose the time for the war when king Conor was away, with a modest implication that he himself was a poor substitute for the king. Cuchulain's first two stanzas in the opening dialogue between himself and Ferdia show a spirit quite as truculent as that of his opponent; the reason of this being, as indicated in the first of these stanzas and more explicitly stated in the preceding prose, that his anxiety for his country is outweighing his feeling for his friend; but in the third ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... countenance grief and infirmities had graven many a furrow, could not only command but compel submission was legible alike in his thin, firmly-closed lips and in the zeal with which his following of truculent and bearded fighting men, armed to the teeth, obeyed his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... been scouring the streets in chase of his brother-in-law; but so soon as he caught a glimpse of the delinquent secretary, his purpose changed, his anger flowed into a new channel, and he turned on his heel and came tearing up the lane with truculent gestures ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... handkerchiefs fastened to the end of rulers. A band, equipped with combs covered with tissue-paper torn from their drawing-books, played the strains of the "Marseillaise." They advanced towards the seniors in a very truculent fashion. ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... ere the journey's end was reached. Could stout hearted Phil have had a fleeting vision of what lay before them, even he might have hesitated about going on. But he fully believed that he was carrying an olive branch of peace that could not fail to subdue the truculent nature of the dreaded McGee. And it was in that confident spirit ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... probable affinity to the noises which deranged the workmen of Babel. It appeared, by parts of sentences and broken remonstrances, equally addressed to the patron, whose name was Baptiste, and to the guardian of the Genevese laws, a rumor was rife among these truculent travellers, that Balthazar, the headsman, or executioner, of the powerful and aristocratical canton of Berne, was about to be smuggled into their company by the cupidity of the former, contrary, not only to what was due to the feelings and rights of men of more creditable callings, but, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... very much disappointed by this lack of feeling, and said to her husband at night that she had expected better things from Archibald; but if she had gone suddenly into Bauldie's room—for that was his real name, Archibald being only the thing given in baptism—she would have found that truculent worthy sobbing aloud and covering his head with the blankets, lest his elder brother, who slept in the same room, should hear him. You have no reason to believe me, and his mother would not have ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... it in if their persons or property are threatened; many of them, to their infinite credit, actually join the fighting forces when they feel that great moral issues are at stake. George Fox himself, the founder of the Society, was an extremely belligerent and even truculent individual. He supported the militant Cromwellian regime, and it was only after the collapse of the Puritan Commonwealth, which was based on the force of the New Model army, that he abjured all weapons of offence, except his tongue. Isaac Pennington, ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... accepted it all, and philosophized about it in his grave way, and read his Bible, and loved Mrs. Avory. No one but Toffy would have loved her; she was quite plain and she was separated from her husband—a truculent gentleman who employed his leisure moments in making his wife miserable. And she had a daughter of ten years old towards whose maintenance Mrs. Avory made blouses and trimmed parasols for which her friends ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... especially to win—that he might have the satisfaction of vexing the Sheriff of Nottingham. Will had intended to send back this prize—a golden arrow—from his stronghold of Sherwood, snapped into twenty pieces, with a letter of truculent defiance wrapped about the scraps. He wished to make it plain to Master Monceux that the free archers of Sherwood were better men than any he might bring against them, and that they despised him very heartily. Now that he saw a likelihood of his ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... gesture Daman had parted the ranks of Belarab's young followers with the red skullcaps and was seen advancing toward the whites striking into an astonished silence all the scattered groups in the courtyard. But the broken ranks had closed behind him. The Illanun chiefs, for all their truculent aspect, were much too prudent to attempt to move. They had not needed for that the faint warning murmur from Daman. He advanced alone. The plain hilt of a sword protruded from the open edges of his cloak. The parted edges disclosed also ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... are many Hiram Yorkes in the world, it is well that the true poet, quiet externally though he may be, has often a truculent spirit under his placidity, and is full of shrewdness in his meekness, and can measure the whole stature of those who look down on him, and correctly ascertain the weight and value of the pursuits they disdain ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... understand, in the receipt of an easy income, and was a welcome guest in pleasant houses; but living in a careless, shiftless, extravagant way, he was presently poor, and, instead of giving his memoirs the motto, peccavi, and inditing a warning, he dashes off a truculent defiance. Practical publishers and practical men of all sorts invest their earnings in Michigan Central or Cincinnati and Dayton instead, in steady works and devoted days, and reap a pleasant harvest of dividends. Our ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... town frequently, and Nan at first painfully apprehended hearing some time of a deadly duel between her truculent Gap admirer and her persistent town courtier—who was more considerate and better-mannered, but no less dogged and, in fact, a good deal more difficult ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... feeding habits. The behaviour of these people appeared to intensify the amusement of their child. The two solemn young men who remained continued to chat before Percival as they would have chatted before the valet of either. He began to sound the spiritual anguish of a pariah. Also to feel truculent and, in his own phrase, "Westy." With him "Westy" meant that you were as good as any one else "and a shade better than a whole lot if it came to a show-down." He was not a little mortified to find how easy it was for him to fall back upon ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... Lady (whose dog, a powerful and truculent Airedale, seems to have conceived a sudden and violent dislike for the nondescript). Yours must have done something to irritate him—he's generally such a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... window is the least annoyance to you, by all means let it be shut. To me it is a matter of perfect indifference." As he spoke he pulled the window up, and then he turned on the stranger with a look that seemed to imply: "Although I seemed so truculent a few minutes ago, you see what a good-natured fellow I am at heart." In most of Captain Ducie's actions there was some ulterior motive at work, however trivial many of his actions might appear to an outsider, and in the present case it was not likely that ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... affairs, a steady course to be followed between an assertion of strength that is truculent and a confession of helplessness that ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... well. Not a word leaked out as to the true nature of the programme. Meta, indeed, went about with rather mincing steps, while Veronica seemed to affect a truculent attitude; but whether this was the result of learning parts, or was put on with deliberate intention to deceive, the wide-awake members of ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... the voices of men, raised in anger. A louder word now and then brought him recognition of Ruiz Rios's voice; a sharp answer might have been from Escobar. He stopped and considered. If these men quarreled, how would it affect him? Quarrel they would, soon or late, he knew. For both were truculent and in the looks he had seen pass between them there was no friendship. Two rebellious spirits held in check by the will of Zoraida Castelmar. But now Zoraida ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... journey I went home to The Hague with the clear conviction that one nation in Europe was ready for war, and wanted war, and intended war on the first convenient opportunity. But when would that be? Not even the most truculent government could well venture a bald declaration of hostilities without some plausible pretext, some ostensible ground of quarrel. Where was it? There was none in sight. Of course the danger of a homicidal crisis ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... out of the way of the miniature avalanche that followed, and for some minutes stood reviewing with a truculent eye the face of the hillside. But nothing moved thereon, it was quite bare of good cover, little more than a slant of naked earth and shale, dotted manywhere with boulders, cousins to that which sought his life—none, however, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... and forks, spoons, and sugar-tongs, filled the salt-cellars, replenished the pepper-boxes and other paraphernalia of the dining art. The gabble in this close apartment was terrific. Joseph, the maitre d'hotel, rapped in vain a dozen times for silence. The chef poked his head of a truculent Gascon through the door and indulged in a war of wit with a long fellow from Marseilles,—called the "mast" because he was very tall and thin, and had cooked in the galley of a Mediterranean trading brig. From time to time one of the piccolos, a fat little boy from the South, carried in pitchers ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... stuff of the Malakoff-takers, Such were the soldiers that scaled the Redan; Truculent housemaids and bloodthirsty Quakers, Brave not the wrath of the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... more truculent methods are represented by the story-tellers as resorted to free the afflicted household. Nothing short of fire is often deemed sufficient for the purpose. There were various methods of applying it. Sometimes we are told of a shovel being made red-hot ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... Jernyngham had driven a truculent rabble out of Sebastian, he could imagine the scene in the shed; but it was evident that the boiler-makers bore ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... pleasant dreams of a whitewashed Wharton, comfortably settled at last below the gangway on the Conservative side, using all the old catch-words in slightly different connections, and living gaily on his Lady Selina. Fragments from the talk of Nehemiah—Nehemiah the happy and truculent, that new "scourge of God" upon the parasites of Labour—of poor Bennett, of Molloy, and of various others who had found time to drop in upon him since the Labour smash, kept whirling in his mind. The same prediction ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... steamer reached the place indicated by the mandarin the engines were stopped. The boat, which was towing astern, was hauled alongside, and the thirty truculent "braves," with a Chinese pilot and the ever-smiling mandarin, got into her and pushed off for the shore. That they were all picked men, who could handle an oar as well as a rifle, was very evident from the manner in which they sent the ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... truculent but equally remorseless brother in villany, the brandied egotist, Falcon, could read that poor husband's letter without blenching; the love and the anticipations of rapture, these made him writhe a little with jealousy, but they roused not a grain of pity. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... their own grew moody and downcast because they could not hope to marry her, while the bachelors of the Fianna stared at each other with truculent, bloodshot eyes, and then they gazed on Tuiren so gently that she may have imagined she was being beamed on by the ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... a secret, ain't it? An' we gotta know how it works before we can work it. An' lissen here, you swamp bum, you keep outta my way—see? I don't care if you were one of Mike Flanigan's boys; that don't cut no ice with me." This truculent warning must have been addressed to an unseen companion on the same stair level. The listeners below heard a faint sound which might have marked a collision and then the hiss of swamp French spoken ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... saw that he had a mouth which seemed to have a bitt in it; several hairs on a finely rounded head; and an air of efficient and truculent bonhomie tanned and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... endured he was again going to let her live at the old family house, and all those doubts about Popenjoy had, she thought, been fully satisfied. The Marquis to her thinking was now almost a model Marquis, and this dear son, this excellent head of the family, had been nearly murdered by the truculent Dean. Of course the Dean was spoken of at Cross Hall in very bitter terms, and of course those terms made impression on Lord George. In the first moments of his paternal anxiety he had been willing to encounter the Dean in order that he might see his wife; but ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... might have been considered as ex officio the guardian. This vile malefactor had been ordered for execution, and the noose was already coiled for his caitiff neck, when a neighbor of his master's—a great raiser of sheep—begged for him a reprieve, kindly volunteering the use of a truculent, but valuable ram belonging to him, for the purpose of illustrating the homaeopathic theory above alluded to. At nightfall the ram was brought and turned into a paddock, where he was left fettered to the dog with a couple of yards of chain. At the dawn of morning the ram's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... tropika. Trot troti. Trot troto—ado. Trouble konfuzi, cxagreni. Troublesome malfacila. Trough trogo. Trousers pantalono. Trousseau vestaro. Trout truto. Trowel trulo. Truant kusxemulo, forkuranteto. Truce interpaco. Truck manveturilo. Truculent kruelega. True vera. Truffle trufo. Truly vere. Trump (cards) atuto. Trumpery cxifajxo senvalora. Trumpet trumpetadi. Trumpet trumpeto. Trumpeter trumpetisto. Trunk (animal or insect) rostro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... as well as any one the value of the slapstick as a mirth-provoking instrument. (All hail to the slapstick! it was well known at the Mermaid Tavern, we'll warrant.) But he prefers the rapier. Probably his Savage Portraits, splendidly truculent and slashing sonnets, are among the finest pieces ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... residence at Cedar Lodge, a pair of stout mauve-brown wood-pigeons—migrants from the pleasant elms of Holland Park—had haunted the tree. But they being, for all their dolorous cooings, birds of a lusty, not to say truculent, habit, grew weary of its persistent solemnity of aspect. So, at least, Dominic judged. He had been an interested spectator of the love-makings, quarrels, and reconciliations of these comely neighbours from his bedroom window daily while dressing. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... influenced by Caravaggio, in turn influencing Ribera—Juan de las Roelas (el Clerigo), Del Mazo—son-in-law of Velasquez, and responsible for dozens of false attributions—Carreno de Miranda, Jose Leonardo, Juan Rizi V. Iriarte, the two Herreras, the elder a truculent charlatan, the younger a nonentity, and others of the Spanish school may be ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... was on this occasion enlivened by a long, baize-covered table, at the head of which sat the coroner, while one side was occupied by the jury; and I was glad to observe that the latter consisted, for the most part, of genuine working men, instead of the stolid-faced, truculent "professional jurymen" who so often grace ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... Minister of War permitted this exhortation to sink in. Then, apparently reassured, he sat up in bed and eyed his untimely visitor with a glare little short of truculent. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... the ground and ready by ten o'clock, but it was three before Don Guzman appeared, and then he came armed with an axe so portentously long in the handle that the Spanish umpires themselves, anxious as they were for his success, forbade its use. Yet the truculent Don gave them no small trouble before he would consent to choose another. This done, the knights were conducted to their tents, which they were not to leave till the clarions had thrice ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... area, robbed of every other favorable geographical circumstance, has contributed to the survival of the 230,000 natives in Australia. Similarly the Arawaks were early wiped out on the island of Cuba and the Caribs on San Domingo and the smaller Antilles by the truculent methods of the Spanish conquerors, while both stocks survive on the continent of South America. Even the truculent methods of the Spanish conquerors could make little impression upon the relatively massive populations of Mexico and Peru, whose survival and latter-day recovery of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... go, on those terms; and Pollnitz, making for his Majesty's apartment next morning as usual, was twitched by a Gens-d'arme, 'No admittance!' And it was days before the matter would come round again, under earnest protestations from the one side, and truculent rebukes from the other." [Pollnitz (abridged), ii. 50.] Figure the Crown-Prince, figure the poor sick Majesty; and what a time in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... man, well built and well set up. In court he presented rather a formidable appearance with his truculent chin, his straight, firm mouth, and his commanding presence. Yet there was nothing about him now which would have inspired fear in the most nervous of witnesses. He looked like a man all broken up by ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with the destroyers Termagant, Truculent and Manly, were stationed at a position suitable for the long range bombardment of Zeebrugge in co-operation with ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... 'bout him 'putting out' Tom Cragg, in three?" At this there was a sudden silence and all eyes were turned towards the speaker, a small, red-headed fellow, with a truculent eye. "Come," said he, blowing out a cloud of tobacco smoke, "in three rounds! What d'ye say to that ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... prospects of early victory, Italy took her place in arms by the side of the Allies. And now the heart of old Rome, so long perturbed, is tranquil. With heroic confidence she relies on her brave sons, led by her dauntless King, to justify her. And when she hears the truculent boast of our enemy that after he has disposed of Russia, he will destroy Italy as a power in Europe, she answers calmly, "Yes, when the last Roman capable of bearing arms lies dead in Roman soil—perhaps then, ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... bachelor. All Rick could see for the moment was a bald head. It was completely bald, not even a fringe of hair remaining. It gleamed in the light of the desk lamp. Presently the bald pate revolved back and a truculent face stared up ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... of the New Asiatic Bank, had spent a number of years with a firm in the Far East, where he had acquired a liver and a habit of addressing those under him in a way that suggested the mate of a tramp steamer. Even on the days when his liver was not troubling him, he was truculent. And when, as usually happened, it did trouble him, he was a perfect fountain of abuse. Mike and he hated each other from the first. The work in the Fixed Deposits was not really difficult, when you got the hang of it, but there was a certain amount of confusion ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... of, if I recollect right, in times of war. If there was any dispute going—especially on a religious point—Stephen Fountain would rush into it with broad-sheets. Oh, yes, I remember him perfectly—a great untidy, fair-haired, truculent fellow, to whom anybody that took any thought for his soul was either fool or knave. How much of him does ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and one loves him all the more for it, but it was exasperating too, with such tremendous issues at stake in the world of living thought, to see him pounding away at those truculent old Red Indians in their barbarian original tongue. Yet I would not for much forget those days when we saw him escaping utterly from all worries and troubles and perfectly happy before a blackboard ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... bring together no reasons for the mind inclining to the thought that between the two young men there had risen an antagonism of some sort, nothing serious but still armed with spikes of light in the eyes and a semi-truculent angle to the chin. Fitzgerald was also aware of this apparency, and it annoyed him. Still, sometimes instinct guides more surely than logic. After all, he and Breitmann were only casual acquaintances. There had never been any real basis ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... society is imperfect it is the right and duty of individuals to experiment. The fact is, Morris was at once a practical craftsman and an idealist. In practical affairs and private prejudices he could be as truculent and wrong-headed as the rest of us; but he was always conscious of something much more important than practical affairs and private prejudices. He cared nothing for his own reputation and little for immediate success because he cared for something greater. For that ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... State swung off into the strongly-sweeping current of secessionism. The city of St. Louis remained firm a while, and returned Benton twice to the House; but his energies were exhausted now in defensive war; and the truculent and triumphant slave power dominating, the State at last succeeded, through the coercion of commercial interests, in defeating him even in the citadel of loyalty. He tried once more to breast the tide that had borne down his fortunes. He ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... practical purposes, Queen Elizabeth may be regarded as the first distinguished femme bibliophile. Of this truculent and strong-minded personage much has been written, and it is scarcely likely that there is much unpublished material respecting her library. It is not necessary nor desirable to enter exhaustively into ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... we were worth we descried a horse flying along the road at break-neck pace towards us. As it approached we saw it was carrying Dr. Ascher. When he drew up to us he stopped. The guards were holding forth in their most truculent manner at the moment. The doctor rapped out a few words, and the guards instantly dropped their hostility and arrogance to become as meek as lambs. Turning to us the doctor ordered every man to drop the ropes. We did so and fell into ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... five of them, great, truculent-looking fellows of a surprising blackness, unarmed, for they had not been allowed to bring their weapons in to the town, but adorned with the usual silver chains across their breasts to show their rank, and other savage finery. In the man who was their leader ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... 2nd September 1898, may be reckoned the creation of a vast Soudan empire. At so early a stage, it is idle to speculate whether the country will be held as a British possession, or as a province of Egypt. "The land of the blacks," and their truculent Arab despoilers, has the intrinsic qualities that secure distinction. Given peace, it may be expected that the mixed negroid races of the Upper Nile will prove themselves as orderly and industrious as they are conspicuously ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... lowed at the manger of Christ born in Bethlehem.... And stupid, suspicious sheep, that had once been white gamboling lambs, playful as pups, and so ridiculously innocent looking!—didn't they call their Lord Agnus Dei, Lamb of God?—and gentle ewes and young truculent rams, like red-headed schoolboys, eager for a fray, and shamefaced wethers.... And by their thousands and their tens of thousands they drove them into Buenos Aires, and slew ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... great truths of rotation in office, and the spoils to the victors, and partly to the slavery agitation which was then beginning to make itself felt. The rise of the irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery made the South overbearing and truculent; it produced that class of politicians known as "Northern men with Southern principles," or, in the slang of the day, as "doughfaces;" and it had not yet built up a strong, vigorous, and aggressive party in the North. The lack of proper social opportunities, ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... as the next illustration, it will be remembered by all students of GOLDSMITH'S Animated Nature, that this amiable quadruped invariably exercises his risibles when he is crunching the bones of some other less truculent quadruped. It is "solitary, cruel, and untamable, digs its food out of graves," cachinnating the while like a thousand or fifteen hundred of brick. There are other ravenous beasts in the world; but this one is peculiar in that ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... cock-pheasant was crowing somewhere on a wheat-field's edge. A barnyard chanticleer replied. Clear and truculent rang out the challenge of the Gallic cock in the dawn, warning his wild neighbour to keep to the wilds. So the French trumpets challenge the shrill, barbaric fanfares of the Hun, warning him back into the dull and shadowy wilderness ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... said shortly. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him then and there that she was through,—like Matt, the cook, that memorable afternoon, "completely an' ab-sho-lutely through." She refrained. There was no use in being truculent. But that drunken ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... chastened and truculent. "How'd you know Major Pangalos for what he was? He was accepted ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins |
