"Bluntness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... occasion for the army, and does not wish to tamper with the service or play any tricks with it. It is curious to see the working and counterworking of his real opinions and principles with his false position, and the mixture of bluntness, facility and shrewdness, discretion, levity and seriousness, which, colouring his mind and character by turns, make up the strange compound of his thoughts ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... Mr. Bashwood's constitutional timidity seemed to be filled to the brim by the loudness of Allan's voice and the bluntness of Allan's request. He ran over in the same feeble flow of words with which he had deluged Midwinter on the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... morning spoken out with a pitiless bluntness, which had made Philip unusually thoughtful. The very words the Queen had used haunted him—'tale-bearers, who had neither ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... dragged unwillingly to the consulting-room of a Cavendish Square physician by her father, who had insisted on having "a tonic or something" prescribed for her. The physician was one of those men who achieve a fashionable practice by an outrageous bluntness—a calculatedly outrageous bluntness. He had found that women like to be ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... host during the course of the story had not quite prepared him against the bluntness of this announcement, and his surprise vented itself in a sudden start. But immediately recovering his poise, he spoke coldly. He ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Nan like the way her uncle acted while he listened—and afterward. He talked a good deal about Gale and the way she was treating her cousin. When Nan declared she never would have anything to do with him, her uncle told her with disconcerting bluntness to get all that out of her head, for she was going to marry him. When she protested she never would, Duke told her, with many harsh oaths, that she should never marry de Spain even if he had to kill him or get killed to stop it, and that if she had any sense she would ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... remarkable feature about the sperm whale is the bluntness of its clumsy head, which looks somewhat like a big log with the end sawn square off, and this head is about ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... Dr. Abernethy, was famous for the brevity and bluntness of his answers; he never used a word more than was necessary. One day a lady who knew his peculiarity came to him and held out her ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... said Achilles; "that you came to take the parting orders of him who now acts the sovereign. Surely, had I seen you there, with that steadfast, open, seemingly honest countenance, cheating the wily Greek by very dint of bluntness, I had not forborne laughing at the contrast between that and the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... character there was nothing subtle, secret nor untrue. He was simplicity itself, and his undiplomatic bluntness bears witness to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... insanity, and Tammeo has shown (La Prostituzione, p. 76) that the frequency of prostitutes in the various Italian provinces is in inverse ratio to the frequency of insane persons; as insanity increases, prostitution decreases. But if we mean a minor degree of moral imbecility—that is to say, a bluntness of perception for the ordinary moral considerations of civilization which, while it is largely due to the hardening influence of an unfavorable early environment, may also rest on a congenital predisposition—there can be no doubt that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... apprehensions respecting the consequences of the event had subsided. This M. de Landsmath was an old soldier, who had given proofs of extraordinary valour; nothing had been able to soften his manners or subdue his excessive bluntness to the respectful customs of the Court. The King was very fond of him. He possessed prodigious strength, and had often contended with Marechal Saxe, renowned for his great bodily power, in trying the strength of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... friends, however lowly, and had already found time to seek an interview with Cecco del Vecchio. But that stern Republican had received him with coldness. His foreign mercenaries, and his title of Senator, were things that the artisan could not digest. With his usual bluntness, he ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... had dispatched a publisher named Bland to Esterhaz to endeavour to persuade Haydn to alter his mind. Bland was shown into a room adjoining that in which Haydn happened to be shaving, and whilst seated there he overheard the composer growling to himself over the bluntness of his razors. At length Bland caught the exclamation, 'Ach! I would give my best quartet for a good razor!' and without more ado, he rushed off to his lodgings and returned in a few minutes with a pair of razors, which he presented to ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... bring me the weekly bills?" he said, with masculine bluntness, after he had been at Chiswick ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... what they say, my lord," said the unmerciful Richie, whose natural love of lecturing, as well as his bluntness of feeling, prevented him from having any idea of the pain which he was inflicting on his master; "these are even their own very words. It was but yesterday your lordship was pleased, at that same ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... I expect you hear about all they is goin' on in this neighborhood," replied Mrs. Ripley with crushing bluntness; but the gossip ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... "Greaser," or Mexican—his index finger steeped in cigarette stains; his velvet jacket and his crimson sash; the many-flounced skirt and lace manta of his women, and their caressing intonations—the one musical utterance of the whole hard-voiced city. I suppose I had a boy's digestion and bluntness of taste in those days, for the combined odor of tobacco, burned paper, and garlic, which marked that melodious breath, did not ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... for, as she explained to Ferris, she could not endure to have him feel that it was a mere mercenary transaction, and there was no limit fixed for the lessons on these days. When she could, she had Ferris come, too, and she missed him when he did not come. "I like that bluntness of his," she professed to her daughter, "and I don't mind his making light of me. You are so apt to be heavy if you're not made light of occasionally. I certainly shouldn't want a son to be so respectful and obedient as ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... my hand, and sat down: 'I want to speak to you, monsieur,' I said. 'Please listen to me.' He did not stir and did not utter a single syllable. So I spoke. And straightway, crudely, without any previous explanations which might have softened the bluntness of my proposal, I spoke the few words which I had prepared beforehand: 'I have spent some months, monsieur,' I said, 'in making careful enquiries into your financial position. You have mortgaged every foot of your land. You have signed bills which will shortly be falling ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... innocent: the longing for the enjoyment of domestic joys, so often interrupted by the absence of the husbands, is to be the means of putting an end to the calamitous war by which Greece had so long been torn in pieces. In particular, the honest bluntness of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... "must pardon my bluntness. I am unable to hide what I know. For some time back I have suspected Major Hammersmith, but Mr. Godall is unmistakable. To seek two men in London unacquainted with Prince Florizel of Bohemia was to ask too ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... damned and the virtuous go to heaven. Obedience to the law enforced by these sanctions is obviously prudent, and constitutes the true differentia of moral conduct. Virtue, according to the famous definition, is doing good 'for the sake of everlasting happiness.' The downright bluntness with which Paley announced these conclusions startled contemporaries, and yet it must be admitted that they were a natural outcome ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... resignedly and as a matter of course. Naturally slow in capacity, he had the bluntness of sensibility and phlegmatic patience of disposition which frequently distinguish men with sluggishly-working mental powers. He thanked the gentleman's steward with his usual quiet civility for granting him an interview, and took his departure with no appearance of unusual depression ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... could not see her expression, but he had always been confident of his ability to talk himself out of trouble, so he rambled on in pretence of camaraderie, currying favour, as he believed, ingratiating himself with the coarse bluntness that served him among some ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... on his chair, but at last, with his characteristic bluntness said, "Hanged if I know! They say that them that gits down doesn't very often git up again. Yet ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... do you all mean?" asked Tom Reed, and there was a bluntness, almost a brutality, in his voice ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... with one of her young friends. A man well known for his bluntness, whose acquaintance she is to make later in life, but whom she now sees for the first time, Monsieur Foullepointe, has commenced a conversation with Caroline's friend. According to the custom of society, Caroline listens to this conversation without ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... With great bluntness, and not to a limited circle of associates like Hoffman, the monks poured out their wrath from the convent-pulpits. The more tasteless, silly, and ridiculous their revilings were, the more did they expose themselves to the edge of Zwingli's keen argument and wit. Without mercy ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... for a man of your calibre!" the other answered with good-humoured bluntness. "You could never be bothered to ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... banker in Madrid. I was told, however, that he was taking his siesta. "Then I had better take my own," said I, and returned to the posada. In the evening I went again, when I saw him. He was a short bulky man about thirty, and received me at first with some degree of bluntness; his manner, however, presently became more kind, and at last he scarcely appeared to know how to show me sufficient civility. His brother had just arrived from Santander, and to him he introduced me. This last was a highly-intelligent person, and had passed many years of his ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Goodwin, 79 et seq.; Hanbury's Memorials, III. 78, note.— Burton, I believe, migrated to Stepney.]——Burton and Goodwin having been called to account, the next blow was at John Lilburne. With characteristic bluntness Lilburne had been for some months pressing the business of his own petition for arrears of pay upon the House of Commons, going to the House personally, waiting on the Speaker, circulating printed copies of his petition among the members, and always with outspoken comments on affairs, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... With a bluntness not unkind he asked O'Reilly what had brought him to Cuba, Then before the young man could answer he gestured with a letter ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... first sharpness which the fair hand of Nature has given them; they are not so pleasant to feel, but, in return, the legend is so visible, that, at the first look, you can see whose image and superscription they bear." This is a delicate way of setting forth the superior honesty and bluntness and the inferior smoothness and assimilating instinct of the Anglo-Saxon,—a vital difference, which no alliance or intercourse with his Gallic neighbors ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... dethronement was decreed, not because it was lawful, but because France required it, and England, for good reasons, could not let France bring it about alone: what Russia thought of the transaction, she soon let the whole world know with disconcerting bluntness. Petrograd not only withdrew her troops from the performance, but made short work of the "guarantee" and "protection" quibbles by roundly declaring that "the choice of the form of government in Greece, as well as its administrative ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... afraid," continued Christian, "that foreigners find our bluntness very disagreeable and difficult to meet; but I know that they frequently misjudge us on the same account. It is to our benefit, so ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... don't weigh very heavy," said Jerry, in a shamefaced bluntness, as if he wronged the absent goddess through such crudities. "You can't seem to see anybody that's had the thoughts she has and the way she's got of putting 'em—you can't see 'em very big-framed or heavy, can you? ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... to you if my hair lacks the shears? If you will forgive me what may seem to you a piece of rudeness, I declare that the poor man is ashamed of such things with the sensitiveness of a young girl. YOU, for instance, would not care (pray pardon my bluntness) to unrobe yourself before the public eye; and in the same way, the poor man does not like to be pried at or questioned concerning his family relations, and so forth. A man of honour and self-respect such as I am finds it painful and grievous to have to consort ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... William thought him a busybody who had been properly punished for running into danger without any call of duty, and expressed that feeling, with characteristic bluntness, on the field of battle. "Sir," said an attendant, "the Bishop of Derry has been killed by a shot at the ford." "What took him ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... tumultuous rush was made by the inhabitants to precede them into the yard, and notwithstanding the presence of their chief, they so surrounded the travelling party as to prevent a particle of fresh air from reaching them. The governor received them with bluntness, but not unkindly, though without much demonstration of good-will. While in his yard, he regaled them with water, and afterwards sent them a large calabash of foorah sweetened with honey to their lodgings, which did not taste unlike thick gruel or burgoo, as it ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... thought Christ's kingdom in this town would be advanced by it?" asked Philip, turning to this man with a directness that was almost bluntness. ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... unworthy so as it can but do service where it owes an obligation! In the disguise of a serving-man, all his greatness and pomp laid aside, this good earl proffered his services to the king, who not knowing him to be Kent in that disguise, but pleased with a certain plainness, or rather bluntness in his answers which the earl put on (so different from that smooth oily flattery which he had so much reason to be sick of, having found the effects not answerable in his daughter), a bargain ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... interested in you, even if I don't care a fig for your music," Phebe answered, with a bluntness that should have ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... tell any one of his marriage." The bluntness of the speech was relieved by the confidential manner in which Miss Hitchcock leaned forward to the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... disreputable propensities. In dress and manner he affected the plain bluff Englishman, wore a blue coat, beaver gloves (or none at all), and a hat broad in the brim, spoke of all foreigners with supreme contempt, and of himself as honest Tom Ringwood. This lip honesty and assumed bluntness were a standing joke with those who knew his real character, but passed muster as perfectly genuine with ingenious and newly imported youngsters like myself, who took him for a wealthy and respectable English gentleman, the champion of fair play, just as at a race, or fair, boobies ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... himself a counterbalance of dry philosophy, a defiant humor, an enforced medium temperature of soul. The Englishman is no more given to extremes than is his climate; against its damp and perpetual changes he has become coated with a sort of bluntness. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... an answer, even to himself. Her bluntness was disconcerting. "I don't know," he replied. "It doesn't matter. The main thing is to make your father get out of the way of the tree, for it's going to fall right where he's standing. He can't dodge once it starts. And what hits him ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... resembled Professor Child in character,—frank without bluntness; sincere both formally and intellectually,—full to the brim of moral courage. He was not only kind-hearted, but very tender-hearted, so that his lips would quiver on occasions and his eyes fill with tears,—what doctors ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... resulting from timidity, or actual imperfection of body. Northern hands and eyes are, of course, never so subtle as Southern; and in very cold countries, artistic execution is palsied. The effort to break through this timidity, or to refine the bluntness, may lead to a licentious impetuosity, or an ostentatious minuteness. Every man's manner has this kind of relation to some defect in his physical powers or modes of thought; so that in the greatest work there is no manner visible. ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... serving man, all his greatness and pomp laid aside, this good earl proffered his services to the king, who, not knowing him to be Kent in that disguise, but pleased with a certain plainness, or rather bluntness in his answers, which the earl put on (so different from that smooth oily flattery which he had so much reason to be sick of, having found the effects not answerable in his daughter), a bargain was quickly struck, and Lear took Kent into his service by ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... so?" she asked, delighted at my bluntness. "And you, too, Carus—why, you are like a radiant one from the sky! I have ever thought you handsome, but not as flawless as you now reveal yourself. Lord! we should cut a swathe to-night, you and I, sir, blinding all eyes in our proper ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... your grandfather was, Mr. Glenarm. You’ll excuse my bluntness, but I take it that you’re a frank man. He was a very keen person, and, I’m afraid,”—he chuckled with evident satisfaction to himself,—”I’m really afraid, Mr. Glenarm, that ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... the direct attack had not come sooner. Its bluntness hardly surprised him. He felt himself leap forward to accept it. A sudden subsidence had ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... Stuarts, when the king's favour ceased to be the means of making one's fortune, a courtly education was no longer profitable. High offices under the Georges were as often as not filled by unpolished Englishmen extolled for their native flavour of bluntness and bluffness. Foreign graces were a superfluous ornament, more or less ridiculous. The majority of Englishmen were wont to prize, as Sam Johnson did, "their rustic grandeur and their surly grace," and to join in ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... the question entirely. The bluntness of it took her by surprise. Frank speech was not a ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... excuse Claude's bluntness. "See here," he said persuasively, "don't you go encouraging her into thinking she can't change her ways. Mother's entitled to all the labour-saving devices we can ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... that, though he was still troubled by this man's difference from the men of his own race. Yet if back of that honest bluntness there was a heart which would enshrine her—well, that was all he would ask ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... attachment, are transferred to the Low Countries in general. 'In my youth', he says in 1535, repeating himself, 'I did not write for Italians but for Hollanders, the people of Brabant and Flemings.' So they now all share the reputation of bluntness. To Louvain is applied what formerly was said of Holland: there are too many compotations; nothing can be done without a drinking bout. Nowhere, he repeatedly complains, is there so little sense of the bonae literae, nowhere is study ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... himself warranted in attributing vices and corruptions to a clouded understanding—so to Dulness. At least, the darkness and weakness of the moral reason came under the protection of the mighty mother—the daughter of Chaos and of Night. She fosters the disorder and the darkness of the soul. Mere bluntness and inertness of intellect, which the name would suggest, he never confines himself to. Of sharp misused power of mind, too, she is the tutelary goddess. Errors which mind arrives at by too much subtlety, by self-blinding activity, serve her purpose and the poet's; and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... that conscious struggle against law, by which law is discovered, may easily enough be confounded with the utter repudiation of it. Both forms of mind will discuss the same questions; both will discuss them freely, with a certain plainness and daring, which may range through all grades, from the bluntness of Socrates down to reckless immodesty and profaneness. The world will hardly distinguish between the two; it did not in Socrates' case, mistaking his reverent irreverence for Atheism, and martyred him accordingly, as it has since martyred Luther's memory. Probably, too, if a living struggle ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... supposed to deal in justice here, are you not, Miss Tescheron?" I continued, not heeding her frigid, uninviting air. I had planned to deal tenderly with her wound, but soon realized that my sympathetic beginning had proved more irritating than bluntness; accordingly I introduced the spice of severity in tone in equivalent degree as an experiment, and as I proceeded I noted the interest of John MacDonald increasingly reflected in the ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... an avoidance of unnecessary or trifling "orders," and a singular patience in awaiting their execution when given; a vague hovering between sympathetic respect and the other extreme of indifferent bluntness in our requests, tended, I think, to make that meal far from exhilarating. Indeed, the unusual depression affected the unfortunate cause of it, who added to our confusion by increased solicitude of service and—as if fearful of some fault, or having incurred our disfavor—by ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... his troubles anyhow," said Miss Adams, with that bluntness which the years bring ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... great qualities. What we might expect from his size, his sense of mass and multitude, would be an occasional cumbrousness, turgidity, unwieldiness, ineffectualness: what we might expect from his vivid realism would be an occasional over-rankness or grossness; from his bluntness, a rudeness; from his passion for country, a little spread-eagleism; from his masterly use of indirection, occasional obscurity; from his mystic identification of himself with what is commonest, cheapest, nearest, a touch at times of the vulgar and unworthy; ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... said to have died of one of the King's good dinners, and the joke was, 'Hier sa Majeste a eu une indigestion, dont M. le Duc d'Escars est mort.' Madame du Cayla[23] is come over to prosecute some claim upon this Government, which the Duke has discovered to be unfounded, and he had the bluntness to tell her so as they were going to dinner. She must have been good-looking in her youth; her countenance is lively, her eyes are piercing, clear complexion, and very handsome hands and arms; but the best part about her seemed to be the magnificent pearls she wore, though these are not so fine as ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... day by going to Reno. But me and the bicycle he cannot "size up" so readily. He never saw the like of us before, and we are beyond his Teutonic frontier-like comprehension. He gives us up; he fails to solve the puzzle; he knows not how to unravel the mystery; and, with characteristic Teutonic bluntness, he advises us to push on through fifteen miles of rocks, sand, and darkness, to Wadsworth. The prospect of worrying my way, hungry and weary, through fifteen miles of rough, unknown country, after dark, looms up as rather a formidable task. So summoning my reserve stock ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... surgeons, two of them departed aboard the tug, the third remaining to care for the patient. Hank, despite all his bluntness of manner, was proving himself valuable in the sick-room, while Joe spent most of his time in the wireless room of the bungalow, waiting to receive or send any word. So, as evening came, Tom Halstead bestirred himself with the preparation of ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... black eyelashes. All seemed well with me when I met their look. The straight, rather salient nose had a perceptible cleft at the tip, which, I was told, was a sign of good lineage; muddy-mettled rascals lacked it; so that I was much distressed by the smooth, plebeian bluntness, at that time, of my own little snub. The mouth, then unshaded by a mustache, had a slight upward turn at the corners, indicative of vitality and good-humor; the chin rounded out sharply convex from the lip. The round, strong column ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... drinking-songs are some comic ditties which may have been sung at wine-parties. Of these I have thought it worth while to present a few specimens, though their medieval bluntness of humour does not render them particularly entertaining to ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... clearing lands, or chopping jobs, was of great stature, and carried in his very air the index of his character. He was a noisy, boisterous, reckless lad, whose good-natured eye contradicted the bluntness and bullying tenor of his speech. For weeks he would lounge around the taverns of the county, in a state of perfect idleness, or doing small jobs for his liquor and his meals, and cavilling with applicants ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... established intimacies, she had turned before his very eyes into an alien, almost an enemy, more beautiful than ever, to be true, but perverse, mocking, impish. She flouted him for his youth, his bluntness, his guileless transparency. But hardest of all to bear was the delicate derision with which she treated his awkward attempts to express his passion for her, to speak of the fever which had taken possession ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... at his country bluntness, but did not take the tribute amiss. "Not so rich—not so mighty rich. But enough, enough! If Ian here behaves himself he'll have enough!" A master workman called him away. He went with a large wave of the hand. "Make yourself at home, Alexander! Take him, Ian, to see your aunt Alison." He was ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... Every fresh flower was greeted by the little girls with shrieks of delight, even of awe, as though the flower had dropped straight from heaven; their father was in ecstasies too, and every now and then he threw the scissors on the floor, in vexation at their bluntness. Their mother kept running into the nursery with an ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... book even in his thinking. The early volumes of the "Millennial Star" contained some interesting reading. Very likely, the doctrinal articles of these first elders were no better than those of more recent writers, but their plain bluntness and their very age seemed to give ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... to me," he said, turning and speaking with the bluntness of a boy without subtlety of speech. "I never'll speak to ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... stranger, without a word of warning, direct into his attic! However, when he rose he saw the visitor's nose (whose nostrils were delicately expanding and contracting in the fumes of the oil-stove), and he was at once reassured. He knew that he would have to face neither rudeness, nor bluntness, nor lack of imagination, nor lack of quick sympathy. Besides, the visitor, with practical assurance, set the tone ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... with the bluntness of his age, asked him if it was true he had been with Garibaldi. The old man did not seem to attach any importance to the question. He answered quite quietly in as low a ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... 1908, a few months before his death, is valuable. He knew he was a dying man, and not only wished to collect these fugitive bits of verse, but wished to leave behind him his theory of poetry. With characteristic bluntness, he says that the poems which follow the Preface were mostly written "before the views just stated, with which they have little to do, had come ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... the same note of bluntness. But of a sudden he felt the influence of Sidwell's smile. His voice sank into a murmur, his heart leapt, a thrill went ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... with his poor human lips he may declare it, far beyond all these, he proclaims that "heaven is bright." But Gaspar, and such other landscapists, painting all Nature's flowery ground as one barrenness, and all her fair foliage as one blackness, and all her exquisite forms as one bluntness; when, in this sluggard gloom and sullen treachery of heart, they mutter their miserable attestation to what others had long ago discerned for them,—the sky's brightness,—we do not thank them; or thank them only in so far as, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... angry spirits which then roamed about Paris unemployed begins to recover its old channels, though worn deeper by recent torrents. The natural urbanity of the French begins to find its way, like oil, to the surface, though there still remains a degree of roughness and bluntness of manner, partly real, and partly affected, by such as imagine it to indicate force and frankness. The events of the last thirty years have rendered the French a more reflecting people. They have acquired greater independence of mind and strength of judgment, together with ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... peculiar Chinese name. The military attache is somewhat irate, because the spectacle of the Weihaiwei regiment, six hundred yellow men under twelve white Englishmen, chasing malcontents in Shantung, is derogatory to Teutonic aspirations. Germany has earmarked Shantung, and it is just like English bluntness to remind the would-be dominant Power that there is a British sphere and a British colony in the Chinese province, as well as a German sphere and a German colony. But the German Minister, a beau garcon with blue eyes and a handsome moustache, says nothing, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... of the human body, its comparative slowness of foot; the absence of teeth adapted for prehension or for defence; the same want of power for similar purposes in the hands and fingers; the bluntness of the sense of smell, so as to render it useless for the detection of prey which is concealed;—all these are features which stand in fixed and harmonious relation to the mental powers of man. But, apart from these, they would place him at an immense disadvantage in the struggle for existence. ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... gives so great a promise of something different in the future, that it attracts us more than many forms of beauty. They have something of the merit of a rough sketch by a master, in which we pardon what is wanting or excessive for the sake of the very bluntness and directness of the thing. It gives us pleasure to see the beginning of gracious impulses and the springs of harmonious movement laid bare ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... himself. Harvey D. and Gideon, however, agreed upon the more tactful summons. They discussed, indeed, the propriety of admitting Sharon to the conference. Each felt that he might heedlessly offend the young intellectual by putting things with a bluntness for which he had often been conspicuous. Yet they agreed at last that he might be present, for each secretly distrusted his own firmness in the presence of one with so strong an appeal as their boy. They admonished Sharon to be gentle. But each hoped that if the need rose ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... two striking figures which were absolutely contrasted in their character. One was Octavian, the adopted son of Caesar, a man who, though still quite young and possessed of great ability, was cunning, cold-blooded, and deceitful. The other was Antony, a soldier by training, and with all a soldier's bluntness, courage, and lawlessness. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... and got on so finely that we have let him alone, though his mother groans over his manners. Polish him up a bit, I beg of you, for it is high time he mended his odd ways and did justice to the fine gifts he hides behind them," said Uncle Mac, scandalized at the bluntness of his son. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... or if he had had a wider experience with women, Mrs. Clarke's remarkable ingenuity in hypocrisy would almost certainly have suggested to him that she was no novice in the life of deception. Her appearance of frankness, even of bluntness, was admirable. To every one she presented herself as a woman of strong will and unconventional temperament who took her own way openly, having nothing to conceal, and therefore nothing to fear. She made a feature of her ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... behind to hear them. Lisle looked at his companion steadily. The man was engaged in a business that was regarded with general disfavor, but there was something he liked about him and he did not resent his bluntness. ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... the griffin, a little piqued at the dog's bluntness, "do as you please; I wish you all ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... whom Hamilton has drawn so striking a picture, is said to have been of the house of Bourdeille, which had the honour to produce Brautome and Montresor. The combination of indolence and talent, of wit and simplicity, of bluntness and irony, with which he is represented, may have been derived from tradition, but could only have been united into the inimitable whole by the pen of Hamilton. Several of his bons-mots have been preserved; but the spirit evaporates in translation. "Where could I get this nose," said Madame ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... severity and bluntness, not hitherto used in American communications with the belligerents, marked this note of protest to Austria-Hungary. Demands were made for a denunciation of the submarine commander's act as "illegal ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... frankly consulting his watch with Neale's bluntness in such matters. "Train's due in a minute or two," ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... by continuing the force and fulness of the radical stress throughout the whole concrete. Used as a current mode, which should be but rarely, it is expressive of bluntness, arrogance, bravado; and, with short quantities, of ignorant coarseness. Occasionally it may be used instead of final stress to give emphasis to a syllable whose vanishing movement is but little capable of receiving ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... my bluntness will be pardoned: You preserve A race of idle people here about you, Eaters, and talkers, to defame the worth Of those that do things worthy; the man that uttered this Had perisht without food, be't who it will, But ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the smithy churl under whose blow you have suffered has often done me despite and injury. He has thwarted me in counsel and despised me in action. His brutal and unhesitating bluntness is a living reproach to the subtlety of my natural disposition. I fear ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... "your trans-Atlantic bluntness is somewhat disconcerting. However, you must admit that we have heard you patiently. Let us now, if you are willing, discuss for a minute or two the real object ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... she would take it. There was not the first twinkle of a simper about eye or lip. Surprised, but quite gravely, she looked up, and met his odd bluntness with as quaint an honesty of her own. "I was pretty sure of it a while ago," she said. "And perhaps I was, in a demoralized sort of a way. But I've come down, Mr. Wharne,—like the coon. I'll tell you presently," she went on,—and she spoke now with warmth,—"who is the real belle,—the beautiful ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... she went on, "your little bit of love is the best there is about you men. No, it is the only good thing, the only thing that makes your bluntness, your selfishness, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... flattery, is to believe that the man is sincere who gives it us. It is by this one accident that absurd creatures often outrun the most skilful in this art. Their want of ability is here an advantage, and their bluntness, as it is the seeming effect of sincerity, is the best cover ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... I meant by a "vulgar" person? What do you yourselves mean by "vulgarity"? You will find it a fruitful subject of thought; but, briefly, the essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation. Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an untrained and undeveloped bluntness of body and mind; but in true inbred vulgarity, there is a deathful callousness, which, in extremity, becomes capable of every sort of bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, and without pity. It is in the blunt hand and the dead heart, in the diseased habit, in ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... love and marriage, and I have no inclination that way. I am willing to be friends with everybody, and nothing more with anybody." The sentences came with the cruel detachment of bullets; but, "Not again, not twice," was his uppermost thought. Any bluntness, any ruggedness, rather than another month like that of the past ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... the serving-woman with unusual bluntness. "But I daresay the master will find something for him to do. He is ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... the plausible lip service which anticipates a tip. But in the Irishman there is a natural delicacy of feeling which expresses itself in lofty kinds of courtesy. An Englishman, compelled by a sense of duty to see the ticket of a passenger, would have asked for it with callous bluntness. The Irishman, knowing that his victim was in pain, approached the subject of tickets obliquely, hinting by means of an anecdote of great interest, that people have from time to time been known ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... great American family to which they belong; but their physiognomy seemed to me to be slightly different from that of any other tribe which I had before seen. Their expression is generally grave, and even austere, and possesses much character: this may pass either for honest bluntness or fierce determination. The long black hair, the grave and much-lined features, and the dark complexion, called to my mind old portraits of James I. On the road we met with none of that humble politeness so universal in Chiloe. Some gave their "mari-mari" (good morning) with promptness, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... and convincingly as to leave little to be said for the unfortunate Graydon. He expressed himself as "eager to be carefully and categorically questioned." This Report appears subsequently to have been withdrawn, probably on the advice of Borrow's friends, who saw that its uncompromising bluntness of expression would make it unacceptable to the General Committee. It was certainly presented to and considered by the Sub-Committee. Another document was drawn up entitled, "Report of Mr Geo. Borrow on Past and Future Operations in Spain." This reached Earl Street ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... no doubt that personal odor tends to play a not inconsiderable part in sexual attractions and sexual repulsions. As a sexual excitant, indeed, it comes far behind the stimuli received through the sense of sight. The comparative bluntness of the sense of smell in man makes it difficult for olfactory influence to be felt, as a rule, until the preliminaries of courtship are already over; so that it is impossible for smell ever to possess ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and acquaintances, Monseigneur le Duc de Bourgogne sought to please her, was respectful to her, attentive to her friends, not always with success. She acted towards Monseigneur le Duc de Bourgogne like a mother-in-law, and sometimes spoke with such authority and bluntness to Madame de Bourgogne as ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... such an occupation as that of the 'interviewer' open to you. I can scarcely imagine such work to be congenial to a lady's feelings, as, in the case of really distinguished personages, she must assuredly meet with many a rebuff! I hope I have not offended you by my bluntness, ... "— here he trailed off into inaudible polite murmurs, while the "Tiger-Lily" marched steadily toward ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... to the sale of meat did not apply to the more intimate organs of the butchered animal, such as the liver and the heart, and, in the case of a cow, the tripe. But the English, with characteristic bluntness, choose to call one of these in its cooked state an offal dish—pronounced as spelled and frequently tasting ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... feelings, and to taking them into account, and as an ordinary guide of conduct this includes a great deal and requires training and watchfulness to establish it, even where there is no exceptional selfishness or bluntness of sense to be overcome. The nature of an ordinary healthy energetic child, high-spirited and boisterous, full of a hundred interests of its own, finds the mere attention to these things a heavy ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... private passages, as you perceive, without correction; thanks to you, the public has them in their bluntness. They are almost a list of the man's faults, for it is rather these that I was seeking: with his virtues, with the heroic profile of his life, I and the world were already sufficiently acquainted. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with passion, and Mr. Tasker speaking as a man with a grievance. Despite the confusion, Mr. Vickers soon learned that it was a case of "two's company and three's none," and that Mr. Russell, after turning a deaf ear to hints to retire which had gradually increased in bluntness, had suddenly turned restive and called Mr. Tasker a "mouldy image," a "wall-eyed rabbit," and divers other obscure and contradictory things. Not content with that, he had, without any warning, kissed Miss ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... it. In the five years that he had spent in the celebrated University of Lugenmaulberg, the medical theory had changed twenty-five times, and, thanks to this solid education, the doctor had a firmness of principle which nothing could shake. He had the frankness and bluntness of a soldier, it was said; he swore at times, even with ladies, a rudeness which left him at liberty always to be of the same mind with the stronger, and to demand a fee for having no opinion. The queen had ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... wert thou, child," said Joan, with her usual bluntness, "to send to thy lord concerning this matter! Well, what is done, is done. I had looked for no better ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... optimistic delusion regarding "the people" for which the eighteenth century paid so dearly. The painters likewise caught the tendency, and with the same thorough-going conscientiousness as their brethren of the quill, disguised coarseness as strength, bluntness as honesty, churlishness as dignity. What an idyllic sweetness there is, for instance, in Tidemand's scenes of Norwegian peasant life! What a spirituelle and movingly sentimental note in the corresponding ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... certain vulgar admiration which follows whatever is momentarily conspicuous, and which is attained even by crime. Such admiration, however, has nothing aesthetic about it, and is only made possible by the bluntness of our ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... amused than otherwise with the landlady's bluntness. "I know I'm in the way just now; so I'll step out for half an hour or so. I am sorry I frightened you, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... Fred demanded with brotherly bluntness. "It takes a woman, by thunder, to knife her friends in the back. What are you trying to build up anyway? Take it from me, old girl, you want to cut out this picking away at Marion behind her back—or to her face, either, for that matter. ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... is some fellow Who, having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affect A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb Quite from his nature: he cannot flatter, he,— An honest mind and plain,—he must speak truth! An they will take it, so; if not, he's plain. These kind of knaves ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... gone against them without waiting for the Nabob's leave, but Admiral Watson was more scrupulous, considering that to do so would be a violation of our recent treaty. Yet he did not shrink from upbraiding the Nabob in round terms, and sent him one letter in which he threatened, with the bluntness of a seaman, to kindle such a fire in his country as all the water in the Ganges should not ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... Otway at the embarrassment he could not wholly hide, and which delayed his answer, that he spoke the truth with excessive bluntness. ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... thousands had been made to believe that Mr. Seward made the existence of the Union depend on the abolition of slavery. Mr Lincoln had announced the same doctrine in advance of Mr. Seward, with a directness and bluntness which could not be found in the more polished phrase of the New-York senator. Despite these facts, a large number of delegates from doubtful States—delegates who held the control of the convention —supported Mr. Lincoln, on the distinct ground that the anti- slavery ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... wonder at little Elizabeth for her discomfort under the rude homeliness of Stokesley, where the children made a bad copy of their father's sailor bluntness, and the difficulties of money matters kept down all indulgences. She knew that Captain Merrifield was as poor a man for an esquire as her father was for a surgeon, and that if he were to give his sons an education fit for their station, he must make his household ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cried out to the guards, "Take me back to the quarries." Dionysius, took the joke and pardoned him. He afterwards left the Syracusan Court, and went to his native place, Cythera; and it was characteristic of his bluntness and wit, that, on being invited by the tyrant to return, he replied by only one letter of the alphabet ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... me not of Jehosaphat, Pearson," said Cromwell. "These words are good for others, but not for thee. Speak plainly, and like a blunt soldier as thou art. Each man hath his own mode of speech; and bluntness, not ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... a second Doctor Desprez. And it was her indefeasible belief that Jean-Marie was dull. "Poor dear boy," she had said once, "how sad it is that he should be so stupid!" She had never repeated that remark, for the Doctor had raged like a wild bull, denouncing the brutal bluntness of her mind, bemoaning his own fate to be so unequally mated with an ass, and, what touched Anastasie more nearly, menacing the table china by the fury of his gesticulations. But she adhered silently to her opinion; and when Jean-Marie was sitting, stolid, blank, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to make the matter as clear as the sun at noonday, there would still be sceptics. On shewing the above arithmetical calculation, for example, to an English lady, who has for a number of years studied Scotch character and manners, she, with a degree of bluntness that was exceedingly startling, gave it as her unqualified opinion, that the whole thing was a piece of nonsense; and that the only reason, as far as she could observe, why the Scotch do not shut the door, is that they have never been taught that it is consistent with good-manners to do so. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... brutal bluntness unworthy of a Celt. He can be very irritating sometimes; but at this moment he was looking so extremely handsome and devil-may-care, that my desire to punch his head dissolved as I glared at him. Could any woman in her senses throw over even a titleless Terry and twelve horses ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... thing said, is chilling and repulsive, the opposite habit of assenting to, and sympathizing with, every statement made, or emotion expressed, is almost equally disagreeable. It is unmanly, and is felt to be dishonest. "It may seem difficult," says Richard Sharp, "to steer always between bluntness and plain dealing, between merited praises and lavishing indiscriminate flattery; but it is very easy—good humor, kindheartedness, and perfect simplicity, being all that are requisite to do what ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... blesses our terrestrial globe with its warm and luminous rays sank to its nocturnal repose behind the western horizon." Great writers—the true masters—have often held "fine writing" and pretentious speaking up to ridicule. Thus Shakespeare has Kent, who has been rebuked for his bluntness, indulge in a ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... evasion, but not bluntness. He knew well enough that the girl did not love him, but he had believed that he could persuade her to marry him. Now her pointblank ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... no notice of her. Walking on as though she were not there, he came straight up to me. He spoke in tones of intense emotion, and with the bluntness that excitement brings. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... defendant in a suit, having first communicated this very purpose to the senate: he saved the friend but was so far from being angry at his accuser, although the latter spoke most bluntly, that when he had to undergo a scrutiny regarding his morals the emperor acquitted him, saying that his bluntness was a necessary thing on account of the out-and-out baseness of the mass of mankind. Augustus, indeed, punished others who were reported to be conspiring against their sovereign. He had quaestors hold office in the coast districts near the City and in certain ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... or woman. He was gentle, soft, if you please, childlike with those he loved, but there was dangerous mettle in him not to be tampered with by trickery or guile. Christopher had shown me with his uncompromising bluntness what I had merely suspected; the girl loved danger and saw it in Jerry's eyes, fascinated by the imminence of peril that lurked in his innocence. A strange passion, calculating, cold, abnormal. And Jerry loved this girl—adored her, as though she were a sacred vessel, a fragile ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... heard much of you, Mr. Hugo,' said the other. 'And, if I may be excused a certain bluntness, it is very obvious that, though you say little, you are no ordinary man. Can it be possible that you have lived so long and so fully and are yet capable of pitying the dead? Have you not learnt that it is only they who are happy?' ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... my bluntness, but it is one of the privileges of a soldier—moreover, Miss Dent, I shall ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... said the minister, with a certain affected bluntness, so successful when it was a question of flattering Louis's self-esteem, "what use is there in being agreeable to your majesty, if one can no longer be ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the intrepid spirit of the old Parliaments of France, nor the serene dignity of the present National Assembly; neither do we see in them anything of the style of English manners, which border somewhat on bluntness. Since then they are neither of foreign extraction, nor naturally of English production, their origin must be sought for elsewhere, and that origin is the Norman Conquest. They are evidently of the vassalage class of manners, and ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... I could with great ease raise a number of plants in relation to your merit of this plauditory nature; yet for fear of an author's general vice, and that the plain justice I have done you should, by my proceeding and others' mistaken judgment, be imagined flattery, a thing the bluntness of my nature does not care to be concerned with, and which ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... saw you last?" To which she replied with the greatest good humor, "No, Mr. Dean; I will sing for you now, if you please." From this time he conceived the greatest esteem for her, and always behaved with the utmost respect. Those who knew Swift, took no offence at his bluntness of behavior. It seems Queen Caroline did not, if we may credit his words in the verses on his ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... hyperbole, in a startling metaphor, in a plausible reconciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense: sometimes a scenical representation of persons or things, a counterfeit speech, a mimical look or gesture passeth for it: sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous bluntness giveth it being; sometimes it riseth from a lucky hitting upon what is strange, sometimes from a crafty wresting obvious matter to the purpose: often it consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... the San Reve, with a chill bluntness that promised the disagreeable while it lost no time, "why do you visit ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... dexterity of phrase: "It is the art of saying everything without being clapt in the Bastile, in a country where it is forbidden to say anything." Wit must also have the quality of unexpectedness. "Sometimes," says Barrow, "an affected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous bluntness, gives it being. Sometimes it rises only from a lucky hitting upon what is strange, sometimes from a crafty wresting of obvious matter to the purpose. Often it consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... your usual bluntness, and some of your expressions were rather strong, I must confess; but I don't think any harm will come of it. We are of too little consequence for our criticisms or opinions to annoy him," said Mrs. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... Miss Harrow." answered Tom, with his usual bluntness. "Miss Laning and I have been friends for a great many years. The fact is, we hope— that is, I hope"— and now Tom looked a bit confused— "we'll be married before a great while. I have been told about the diamond ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... know he has rather a blunt way of saying things, but that very bluntness often places thoughts much more distinctly before us—Paul was speaking of her; he did not suspect anything; if he had, he is good-natured, he would not have spoken thus—well, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Hush! Bell Flower (White) Gratitude Betony, Surprise Bilberry, Treachery Bindweed, Great Insinuation Bindweed, Small, Humility Birch, Meekness Bittersweet, Truth Blackthorn, Difficulty Bladder Nut Tree, Amusement Bluebell, Sorrowful Regret Bonus Henricus, Goodness Borage, Bluntness Box Tree, Stoicism Bramble, Lowliness Broom, Neatness Buckbean, Calm repose Buglos, Falsehood Bulrush, Indiscretion Bundle of Reeds, Music Burdock, Touch me not Bur, You weary me Buttercup, Childishness Butterfly Orchis, Gaiety Butterfly Weed, Let me go Cabbage, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole |
