"Harshness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the actions that followed, after she had been exhausted by her first successful efforts at self-control—the withdrawal to the window to conceal her face; the clutch at the curtain when she felt herself sinking; the harshness of manner under which she concealed her emotions when she ventured to speak to him; the reiterated inconsistencies and vacillations of conduct that followed, all alike due to the protest of Nature, desperately ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... weeping; it seemed as if she would pour out her very heart in tears; and she clung to her mother with a force that made it a difficult task for her father to remove her. He could not do it at first; and Ellen seemed not to hear any thing that was said to her. He was very unwilling to use harshness; and after a little, though she had paid no attention to his entreaties or commands, yet, sensible of the necessity of the case, she gradually relaxed her hold and suffered him to draw her away from her mother's arms. He carried her down stairs, and ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... than elegant, and the shrill harshness of the girl's voice jarred upon Hawtrey, though he was getting accustomed to Sally's phraseology. He, however, recognised that she would not have his help, even if it would have been of much avail, which was doubtful, and he reluctantly moved back towards the group of loungers ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... seen this unpopularity increase during the first six years of his rule, despite all the efforts he had put forth to govern well. His solicitude about maintaining a certain order within the state was described as haughtiness and harshness, his preoccupation lest the precarious resources of the government be dissipated in useless expenditures was dubbed avarice, and the prudence which had impelled him to restrain the rash policy of expansion and aggression which Germanicus ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... Liberty run onward with the years, And circle with the seasons; let her break The tyrant's harshness, the oppressor's spears; Bring ripened recompenses that shall make Supreme amends for sorrow's long arrears; Drop holy benison on hearts that ache; Put clearer radiance into human eyes, And set the glad earth singing to ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... much what she had expected—a good-natured, sensible supervisor. Her position, too, was not an easy one. She had to submit her sense to the orders of folly, and to sink her good-nature in submission to harshness. But she did her best, steered as delicately as she could between her Scylla and Charybdis, and always gave her girls the benefit ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... been in command of one division of the Nabob's army, the remainder having before been taken from him and given to Roy Dullub. It was reported that Surajah Dowlah had received his uncle very scurvily, and spoken to him with so much harshness that Meer Jaffier had at once retired to his palace, at the other end of the city, and surrounded himself with his guards. This palace resembled a fortress, having regular walls and towers, and being provided with cannons and ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... against obstacles, nor in resource to repair his losses; but he knew not how to make himself loved, nor how to manage those of whom he stood in need, and when he had attained authority, he exercised it with harshness and arrogance. With such defects he could not be happy, and in fact he ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... been fairy-land. Here, too, she invariably came when anything had gone wrong, when the endless troubles about money which had weighed upon her all her life became a little less bearable than usual, or when some act of discourtesy or harshness to her father had roused in her a tingling, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... could see his eyes more distinctly, too, than she had seen them in the evening, and she liked their expression better, for he did not look at all bored now. She liked his voice, too, for the slight harshness that seemed always ready to command. She liked the man altogether, and was conscious of the fact, and wished she could talk with him again, as she had talked that evening on the sofa in the corner, without ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... with Cimon to the war, he took notice that Pausanias and the other Spartan captains made themselves offensive by imperiousness and harshness to the confederates; and by being himself gentle and considerate with them and by the courtesy and disinterested temper which Cimon, after his example, manifested in the expeditions, he stole away the chief command from the Lacedaemonians, neither ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... and half-forgotten impression of continual music; they render its air sacred and fill it with something so akin to an uplifted silence as to leave one—when one has passed from their influence—asking what balm that was which soothed all the harshness of sound ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... had been, during some time, treated with great harshness by her sister; and many studied instances of discouragement and disrespect had been practised against her. She was ordered to take place at court after the countess of Lenox and the duchess of Suffolk, as if she ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... doctrine. Passing through Constantinople in 1843 he accepts a post as schoolmaster at Trnovo, but is immediately at loggerheads with the Greek bishop and departs. Returning to his birthplace he is irritated by the pride and harshness of the upper class, and he attempts to make the people rise against them. They charge him with being a disturber of the peace. "He has travelled through Europe," says their complaint to the Government, "and now in this town he bestrides a horse, brandishes his ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... effect of power. I do not mean to say that we must not play with all the force we have at times; we even have to pound and bang occasionally to produce the needed effects. This only proves again that a tone may be beautiful, though in itself harsh, if this harshness comes in the right time ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... for none of them knew what the morrow might bring forth. While residing in the pleasant quarters in the Logur valley the captives of the passes were joined by nine officers, who were the captives of Ghuznee. After the capitulation the latter had been treated with cruel harshness, shut up in one small room, and debarred from fresh air and exercise. Colonel Palmer, indeed, had undergone the barbarity of torture in the endeavour to force him to disclose the whereabouts of treasure which he was suspected ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... domestic industry, they were not severely felt among a people devoted, in the country to agriculture, and in the towns to local traffic and shipping, and the American farmer who wore homespun attire, did not realize the harshness or appreciate the purpose of the statute which prohibited the export of wool, or woolen manufactures. As for the Southern planter, the question of fostering domestic manufactures never entered his thoughts. ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... said Frank, "all went to confusion. Potts lorded it with a higher hand than ever, and my father was more than ever infatuated, and seemed to feel that it was necessary to justify his harshness toward you by publicly exhibiting a greater confidence in Potts. Like a thoroughly vulgar and base nature, this man could not be content with having the power, but loved to exhibit that power to us. Life to ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... embroiled with the Roman Pontiff, and estranged from his own Patriarch of Constantinople. Opposition and the weariness of age soured a naturally sweet temper, and he was guilty of some harsh proceedings towards his ecclesiastical opponents. Even worse than his harshness (which did not, even on the representations of his enemies, amount to cruelty) was a certain want of absolute truthfulness, which made it difficult for a beaten foe to trust his promises of forgiveness, and thus caused the fire of civil discord, once ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... please; the images are magnified by affectation; the language is laboured into harshness. The mind of the writer seems to work with unnatural violence. Double, double, toil and trouble! There is too little appearance ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... very asperity of the man's outside becomes endeared to us by the association. His irritability never vented itself against the helpless, and his rough impatience of fanciful troubles implied no want of sympathy for real sorrow. One of Mrs. Thrale's anecdotes is intended to show Johnson's harshness:—"When I one day lamented the loss of a first cousin killed in America, 'Pr'ythee, my dear,' said he, 'have done with canting; how would the world be the worse for it, I may ask, if all your relations ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... social decrees would assuredly call forth redoubled discussion and increased vituperation. The misery caused by her late experience was still vivid in her memory. She was no less sensitive than she had been then, and she shrank from a second scandal. She dreaded the world's harshness, much as a Tennyson might that of critics whom he knows to ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... be used with far better effect, if its principles are employed in softening the harshness and mitigating the rigour of the great style, than if in attempt to stand forward with any pretensions of its own to ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... agonies of a distracted mind were but too faithfully pourtrayed!—What more then had I to say?—The negative was to come from you.—You had perpetually recurred to your promise of meeting me in the autumn—Was it extraordinary that I should demand a yes, or no?—Your letter is written with extreme harshness, coldness I am accustomed to, in it I find not a trace of the tenderness of humanity, much less of friendship.—I only see a desire to heave a ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... continues; though dead, both love me—me, whose harshness so ill received their vows. 'Tis not thus thou actest—thou, who alone hast seized my heart; lover whom I still prize a thousand times more than my life, and who breakest such charming ties. Shun me no longer, and leave me to hope that one day thou ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... told us that Kouaga, a favourite of the Naya, had been approached secretly by her as to the advisability of Omar's assassination. The old councillor had actually overheard this dastardly plot formed by the queen against her son, for she feared that owing to the harshness of her rule popular opinion might be diverted in his favour, and that she might be overthrown, and he set upon the Emerald Throne in her stead. The Naya had regretted sending Omar away for safety, so giving Kouaga a large sum of ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... then the evening, at last the night came. I did nothing; I even tried not to move: one thought was stuck in my head like a nail. At dinner my father, who was, as I have said, naturally gentle, and who was a little ashamed of his harshness—boys of sixteen are not slapped in the face—tried to be affectionate to me; but I rejected his overtures, not from slowness to forgive, as he imagined at the time, but simply that I was afraid of my feelings getting ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... perturbation and impulsive injustice were alike unknown. There seems to have been in his bearing something of that stern, impassive gravity that marked Washington, and imposed a constraint upon bystanders; but whatever apparent harshness there was in the face only concealed a genuine warmth of heart, which at times broke with an illumining smile through the mask that covered it, and was always ready to respond to the appeals of benevolence. If, as an officer, he had a fault conspicuously characteristic, it was a reluctance ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... his awful news; she is still in bridal attire and in her demented condition believes that Arthur will presently appear for the nuptial ceremony. Everybody is full of pity for her, and her brother repents his harshness, too late, alas!—Lucia is fast dying and Eliza leads her away amid ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... her meekly enough but at the street entrance Miss Greatorex rebelled. Her anxiety gave a more than ordinary irritation to her temper and harshness to her voice, and her habitually ungracious manner became more repellent than ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... masters of the situation, and could afford to be generous, showed some kindliness of feeing at the last. They allowed the poor lovers an uninterrupted half-hour in which to bid each other adieu forever, and abstained from any needless harshness in making their decision known. When the time was up, two travelling-carriages were seen waiting at the door. Count von Rosenau pushed his son before him into the first; the marchese assisted the half-fainting Bianca into the second; the vetturini cracked their ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... stay; the opportunity was seized for proselytizing in the interests of the Orthodox Church, and Sczeptycki the Archbishop of Lemberg, a member of the Uniate Church which had made terms with Roman Catholicism, was treated with a harshness compared with which the indignities inflicted by the Germans upon Cardinal Mercier of Malines were trivial; he was interned in a Russian monastery and deprived of all religious rites save those which were ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... the lands bequeathed for the benefit of the poor were reapplied, under altered forms, to their real intention. The antithesis which we sometimes hear between the charity of the monasteries—which relieved poverty for the love of God—and the worldly harshness of a poor-law, will not endure inspection. The monasteries, which had been the support of "valiant beggary," had long before transferred to the nation the maintenance of the impotent and the deserving; and the resumption of an abused trust was no more than the natural ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... should be carefully nursed: more depends on this than many persons seem to be aware. A warm and comfortable bed is of a great deal more consequence than many persons who are fond of their dogs imagine. Cleanliness is also an essential point. Harshness of manner and unkind treatment will evidently aggravate many of their complaints. I have sometimes witnessed an angry word spoken to a healthy dog produce instant convulsions in a distempered one that happened to ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... heeded. He was taken deep into the dungeons of Sanderberg Castle, and locked up in a dark and narrow prison vault destitute of every convenience, his only companion being a half-witted dwarf who had long been in his service. With the harshness common in those days, and which in his case was well deserved, the door of the cell was walled up, only one small opening being left through which he could receive the scanty allowance of food brought him, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... than then when she went in search of it, but she would seek it no more from her! For, the more she thought, the surer she felt that Mary would insist on her making a disclosure of the whole foolish business to Mrs. Wardour, and would admit neither her own fear nor her aunt's harshness as reason sufficient to the contrary. "More than that," thought Letty, "I can't be sure she wouldn't go, in spite of me, and tell her all about it! and what would become of me then? I should be worse off a hundred times than if ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... needed no more to explain the mystery. It was Carina, who, repenting of her unkindness to him, had stolen into his study, while he sat in the dark, and there she had heard Atle Pilot's message. Even if this boy was sick unto death, she might perhaps cure him, and make up for her father's harshness. Thus reasoned the sage Carina; and she had gone secretly and prepared for the voyage, and battled with the storm, which again and again threw her down on her road to the pier. It was a miracle that she got safely into the boat, ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Hilda with the same expression of vacant composure that she had noticed on a previous occasion. The accent with which Signer Bruno had spoken the few words of French was of the purest Parisian, entirely free from the harshness which ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... Inspector Ratcliffe," he said, with a sort of haste that verged on harshness. "My name is pretty well known to the police, and I can see well enough that you belong to them. But if there is any doubt about my position, I have a card," and he began to pull a blue ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... Cotton or any other male pastor of the settlements. Moreover, the theory of "inner light" or the "covenant of grace" undoubtedly appealed as something novel and refreshing after the prolonged soul fast under the harshness and intolerance of the Calvinistic creed. The women told their women friends of the new theories, and wives and mothers talked of the matter to husbands and fathers until gradually a great number of men became interested. The churches of Massachusetts Bay Colony ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... fearless and independent nature and her queenly bearing. She dreams of a distinguished professional career; but the course of her life is changed suddenly by pity for her timid little brother Adrian, the victim of his guardian-uncle's harshness. The story describes the daring means adopted by Augusta ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... hers. So that the more he loved her, the more set, the more rigid became all the habits and purposes of religion. Again and again he was tempted to soften them—to spend time with her that he had been accustomed to give to Catholic practice—to slacken or modify the harshness of that life of self-renouncement, solitude, unpopularity, to which he had vowed himself for years—to conceal from her the more startling and difficult of his convictions. But he crushed the temptation, guided, inflamed ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cronies from boyhood sparred along in give-and-take repartee for some time, finally drifting back to boyhood days, while the harshness that pervaded their conversation before ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... Energy — N. energy, physical energy, force, power &c 157; keenness &c adj.; intensity, vigor, strength, elasticity; go; high pressure; fire; rush. acrimony, acritude^; causiticity^, virulence; poignancy; harshness &c adj.; severity, edge, point; pungency &c 392. cantharides; seasoning &c (condiment) 393. activity, agitation, effervescence; ferment, fermentation; ebullition, splutter, perturbation, stir, bustle; voluntary energy &c 682; quicksilver. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... at Les Touches and found Beatrix up and dressed, but pale, feeble, and languid. No longer was there any harshness in her words or any coldness in her looks. After this evening, filled with music by Camille, who went to her piano to leave Calyste free to take and press the hands of Beatrix (though both were unable to speak), no storms occurred at Les Touches. Felicite ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... offspring of a sister, and they were for ever gone! Mause only had the privilege of addressing her without a special interrogation. The appearance, or it might be, the apparition of her beloved nephew, seemed again to open the sluices of feeling and affection; to soften and subdue the harshness that encrusted her disposition; but it was only the forerunner of an eternal change—the herald of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... respectful, but for all this I possessed a high spirit. I could easily be controlled by kindness and mild persuasion, but never by harsh and unkind treatment, and this act of Mr. Judson's enraged me beyond all control, and in a moment all the smouldering anger occasioned by his past harshness shot up as it were in a sudden blaze. I have often heard it said, and I believe with truth, that there is something almost appalling in the roused anger of one of those usually quiet and submissive natures. I have often since thought that passion rendered me partially insane for the time being; ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... saw for the first time—or, perhaps, by the spectacle of this beauty devoting its first hours of health to an attempt to save a brother, of whose precarious position before the law she had been ignorant up to this time—or more possibly yet, by a fear that it might be bad tactics to show harshness to so interesting a personality before she had uttered a word of testimony, he expressed in warmer tones than usual, his deep desire ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... harshness on your side, implicit obedience without fear on theirs is what Joanna aims at I believe," said Mrs. Danvers cheerfully, "and it certainly sounds a delightful method. By the way, if you get on with the children, Joanna has an idea of asking you to stay with her permanently. She is going ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... it with the feeling of a man who had himself known what it was to be very near the brink of despair. Never had Theresa seen a human countenance with an expression such as Mansana's then wore. Its ordinary stern composure was exaggerated to an almost repulsive harshness; but she could see tear after tear swiftly welling over his cheeks. All the energy of his resolute will seemed concentrated in the effort to retain his self-command, and yet it appeared that in spite of his desperate efforts the tears would come. ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... descended to me, while unfortunately the effects of his physical infirmities had. I sometimes used to reflect bitterly enough on the truth of Herbert Spencer's teaching as to heredity, so clearly shown in my own case. In the year 1683, through the abominable cruelty and harshness of his brother Randolph, this Hugo Wharncliffe, my great-great-great-great-great grandfather, was immured in Newgate, and his constitution was thereby so much impaired and enfeebled that, two hundred years after, my constitution is paying the penalty, and my whole life ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... weak, widowed, and like to die. Strip yourselves, that other men strip you not. Love your enemies, that they become your friends. Forgive, that ye may be forgiven. Say not, 'Gentleness is a bane to the shepherds of the peoples.' For how can you know, seeing these have never tried? They profess by harshness to have lessened the evil of the world. Yet is evil still rampant among men, and there is never a sign ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... on the whole, simpler to understand this of actual victories obtained by Lollius as a commander, than of moral victories obtained by him as a judge. There is harshness in passing abruptly from the judgment-seat to the battle-field; but to speak of the judgment-seat as itself the battle-field would, I ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... father, and I must not complain. Nay, if Heaven shuts my father's heart against me, it overpays my little merit in the tenderness of my mother—O that dear mother! yes, Bianca, 'tis there I feel the rugged temper of Manfred. I can support his harshness to me with patience; but it wounds my soul when I am witness to his causeless severity ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... died. His widow married another mason, who advertised that he would pay all claims against his forerunner. Thereupon Washington put in a claim for fifteen shillings, which was paid. Washington's detractors used this as a strong proof of his harshness. But they do not inform us whether the man was unable to pay, or whether the claim was dishonest. Since the man paid voluntarily and did not question the lightness of the amount, may we not at least infer that he had no quarrel? ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... had been snatched in a moment from parents, or those whom she regarded as such, and from a comfortable and happy, though humble home, to this dismal place. In place of the kindness and indulgence to which she had been accustomed, she was now treated with harshness and cruelty. ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... history of the male dingo is not altogether free from blame in the matter of infanticide), Warrigal raised her nose in friendly fashion to the Wolfhound and permitted him to lick her, which he did in the most affectionate manner, and with no further thought of her previous harshness. Then she gave a little whine and glanced round the walls of the den. Finn barked quietly, bidding his mate rest assured that all would be well, and ten minutes later he was descending upon a rabbit-earth that he knew of, a ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... there would be no need of the expense of police and prisons. The thing is so simple and self- evident, that it seems almost childish to mention it. And yet, my friends, we forget it daily. We complain of the laws and their harshness, of taxes and their expensiveness, and we forget all the while that it is our own selfishness and sinfulness which brings this expense upon us, which makes it necessary for the law to interfere and protect us against others, and others ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... stated his business with an airy lightness and humor that seemed to justify his late companion's estimate of his powers. But even in his cynical attitude he was unprepared for the girl's reception of his news. He had expected some indignation or even harshness towards this man whom he was beginning to consider as a kind of detrimental outcast or prodigal, but he was astounded at the complete and utter indifference—the frank and heartless unconcern—with which she heard of his return. When she had followed the narrator rather than his story ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... not in Aram any thing that savoured of the harshness of pedantry, or the petty vanities of dogmatism: his voice was soft and low, and his manner always remarkable for its singular gentleness, and a certain dignified humility. His language did indeed, at times, assume a tone of calm and patriarchal command; but it was only the command arising from ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... quarrel with her people, but herself perished by some miscalculation. There were no more girls born for another while after that. Not until my father's time. He had a sister who resembled the two Desires of the past. My grandfather brought her up in harshness and austerity, holding always before her the wickedness to which she was born. Yet it was no use. She fled from his house with a man no one knew, and died in Paris after a life of great splendor and heartlessness. Everyone who ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... offers constant opportunity for the humor of incongruity and the humor arising from a sense of superiority, it likewise affords a daily stimulus to the use of satire. That moralizing Puritan strain of censure which lost none of its harshness in crossing the Atlantic Ocean found full play in the colonial satire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As the topics for satire grew wider and more political in their scope, the audiences ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... hurt you as much?" he said, with a curious harshness. "That's quite impossible. The hardest, bitterest thing I could ever have to face would be to go ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... leg, and telling me this, with his eyes wide open and a surprised smile, that I am sorry to say I was provoked into explaining to him that ruin meant distress, want, and starvation; but I was soon bitterly reproved for this harshness, by seeing his face turn pale, and tears course down his lengthened cheeks, while he fixed upon me a look of such unutterable woe, that it might have softened a far harder heart than mine. I took infinitely greater pains to cheer him up again than I had taken to depress him; ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the master,' says the Judge, 'must be absolute to render the submission, of the slave perfect. I most freely confess my sense of the harshness of this proposition. I feel it as deeply as any man can. And as a principle of moral right, every person in his retirement must repudiate it. But in the actual condition of things it must be so. There is no remedy. This discipline ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... parents, and brought up with extreme severity by a stern father, had himself known the condition in which Oscar now was. Accordingly, he felt an interest in him, but the sort of interest which alone he could take, checked by the apparent harshness that characterized him. The aspect of this gaunt young man, with a muddy skin and hair cropped like a clothes-brush, who was curt of speech and possessed a piercing eye and a gloomy vivaciousness, ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... saw, or thought he saw, that remonstrances might make Phillida more unhappy, but that it would be perfectly useless. It was better to accept his fate, and forbear. He tried to say something to soften the harshness of parting, but his powers of thought and speech deserted him, and he knew that whatever he would say must be put into one or two words. He looked up, hesitatingly stretched out ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... unusual face for years, though it be but a chance one seen in a crowd. A voice markedly individual, not merely because it was somewhat high-pitched for a man's, but rather for a quality not easily defined, which gave to it a certain vibrant, unpleasant harshness, sounding metallic almost, rasping, as though with the hiss of steel surfaces rubbing. Altogether impossible to describe adequately, yet, as Judith ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... the new generation, have made much progress and have prospered in establishing some useful industries. But for several years they were a source of a good deal of anxiety to the red-coated riders, who wished to guide them to better conditions without harshness. Events have justified ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... 11 And it came to pass that Laman and Lemuel did take me and bind me with cords, and they did treat me with much harshness; nevertheless, the Lord did suffer it that he might show forth his power, unto the fulfilling of his word which he had spoken concerning ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... heard of the harshness with which English prisoners were treated; thus, when he found himself regarded rather as an honoured guest than as a prisoner of war, his astonishment ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... development of his nobler self, the perfect abandonment of all that might have been ungenerous and intemperate in one even less conscious of the weakness of mortality. He would say when chided for public expression of kind words to those not wholly deserving, that he had felt the sting of harshness and ungraciousness, and never again would he use his power to inflict suffering or wound the feelings of man or child. Who is there to wonder, then, that the love of all went out to him, and that the other triumphs ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... assumed, you need not deal with it as if it were characteristic. It indicates no more than the habit of wariness. You should proceed confidently with your selling process, undeterred by the bearing of your prospect. Do not attempt to mollify his assumed harshness. It will take but a few moments for you to sell him the idea that you have brought him something he really needs. When he first glimpses your service purpose, his icy pose will begin to melt and his rough tones will ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... particular, whose daughter had recently entered upon a brilliant theatrical career, I was treated in much the same way as one treats an invalid by whom one dreads to become infected. In contrast to their harshness I was deeply touched by the devotion of the Ritter family, who had remained in Dresden; for, apart from my acquaintance with young Karl, I scarcely knew these people at all. Through the kindness of my old friend ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... was so beautifully tempered by the benevolence of her heart, the equanimity of her mind, and the engaging sweetness of her demeanor, that it never seemed to impart the least tinge of arrogance to her character, or harshness to her manners. On the contrary, she was all gentleness and devotion, and ever ready to comply with the wishes of others, when a compliance did not contravene, in her opinion, any of the principles of even-handed justice; and, in case she felt bound to refuse ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... time when she was uttering words which conveyed what was frequently a harsh judgment, the accents of those very words were tender and caressing, and her eyes expressed—What those charming eyes expressed it would be hard to say, but it was something which had no harshness about it, rather a mysterious sweetness. Panshine tried to make out their hidden meaning, tried to make his own eyes eloquent, but he was conscious that he failed. He acknowledged that Varvara Pavlovna, in her capacity as a real lioness from abroad, stood ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... view of enabling the police to capture certain persons for stealing certain jewels, while she knew that the jewels were actually in her own possession?" Lizzie, confounded by the softness of his voice as joined to the harshness of the question, could hardly understand him, and he repeated it thrice, becoming every time more and more mellifluous. "Yes," said Lizzie at last. "Yes?" he asked. "Yes," said Lizzie. "Your ladyship did send the Cumberland police after men for stealing jewels which were in your ladyship's own hands ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... be not displeased at the harshness I showed towards you. It rose from a father's love, and therefore you ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... vain attempts to be friendly. Old Hughie Cameron visited the mill several evenings, and Silas Long carried his telescope down to the engine-room door, and strove to introduce the strange man to the joys of star-gazing. Even the minister, grieved at his former harshness, paid him a second visit. But all alike were repulsed. John McIntyre would accept kindness from no man, and one by one they were forced to leave him to himself. Some of the women, too, tried to pierce his reserve, with as little effect. The Longs lived near the mill-pond, and Mrs. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... contrary, occasion frequently to abuse it by running from one dancing bout and merry-making to another, without the least care of his master's business, who out of downright affection forbore to restrain his follies with that harshness which they deserved, and which any ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... still looking at her, carried away in spite of her harshness, and he felt seized with a brutal desire, the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... employments; but the fine arts, as being at that time productive of little honor or emolument, he held in no esteem, and treated these tastes of his eldest son sometimes with contempt and sometimes even with harshness. Michael Angelo, however, had formed some friendships among the young painters, and particularly with Francesco Granacci, one of the best pupils of Ghirlandajo; he contrived to borrow models and drawings, and studied them ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... were entertained at a time of life when, for the most part, the heart is too little capable of expansion to open to new attachments. The whole tone of these letters must prove the unimpaired warmth of his feelings, and form a striking contrast to the cold harshness of which he has been accused, in his intercourse with Madame du Deffand, at an earlier period of his life. This harshness, as was noticed by the editor of Madame du Deffand's letters, in the preface to that publication, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... language, however, had given her clues enough to the workings of the chief's mind. She had always been a favored member of the gang, and the men had whistled attendance on her hardly less than upon Ruth Tolliver herself. This sudden harshness in the language of Harry Morgan told her that too much was ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... In the Kalevala, Runo 33, Kullervo revenges himself in the same manner upon the wife of Ilmarinen, whom he has been serving as herd-boy, and who has treated him with great cruelty and harshness.] ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... Halstow, with a warrant for the arrest of any person who may be found detaining her. It is, however, my wish to do all things quietly, if you will allow me. The Duke, her father, does not desire the business to be conducted with harshness—" ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... cheek-bones, the thin lips, were those of the Priest, but the voice was different. It had lost something of its harshness—something, too, of its ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... do not explain the harshness of anti-Methodist satire. No other subject during this period received such severe condemnation. Wesley and Whitefield were accused of seducing their female converts, of fleecing all their converts of money, ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... to learning by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be the better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... of a lady whom I believe you only know by sight, and to spread the result of your inquiries broadcast in the hotel? Is that your idea of chivalry? I shall ask Sir John Sankey whether it is his," I added, as the judge joined us with genial condescension, and I recollected that his proverbial harshness toward the male offender was redeemed by an extraordinary sympathy with the women. Thereupon I laid a general case before Sir John, asking him point-blank whether he considered such conduct as Quinby's (but I did not say ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... been easy and lucid. We have not had it so easy with all modern writers, nor with all that are old. I may best perhaps explain my meaning by taking something written long ago; something very valuable, in order that I may not damage my argument by comparing the easiness of Thackeray with the harshness of some author who has in other respects failed of obtaining approbation. If you take the play of Cymbeline you will, I think, find it to be anything but easy reading. Nor is Shakespeare always lucid. For purposes of his own he will sometimes force his readers to doubt his meaning, even after ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... afterwards celebrated for his cruelties in Holland. He was convicted of treason and rebellion, and sentenced to death—a sentence which no court martial had a right to inflict on the first prince of the empire. He was treated with ignominious harshness, which he bore with great magnanimity, but finally made a treaty with the emperor, by which, for the preservation of his life, he relinquished ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... you'll stick around until it's all over," ventured O'Dowd. Barnes thought he detected a slight harshness ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... Mrs. Merriam instinctively knew that wanting furs and wanting boys spelled the same evil. But Missy, who was fifteen instead of thirty-seven and whose emotions and desires were still as hazy and uncorrelated as they were acute, stared with bewildered hurt at this unjust harshness in her usually ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... against agitation of the worst kind—convulsive civil war." "Hitherto," it continues, "no Government had come into immediate contact with the sympathies of the people. The power of the Executive has been felt in acts of harshness, seldom of beneficial or parental interference.[103] A Government which should employ itself in improving the material and social condition of the Irish people would awaken sentiments of gratitude, affection and joy, such as no people hitherto had shown to their rulers. But ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... leaves on one of the winter-stripped trees, and I as suddenly thought of the cold northern skies and earth, where the winter was still inflexibly tyrannising over you all, and, in spite of the loveliness of all that was present, and the harshness of all that I seemed to see at that moment, no first tokens of the spring's return were ever more welcome to me than those bright leaves that reminded me how soon I should leave this scene of material beauty and moral degradation, where the beauty itself is of an appropriate ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... of the British army, in the harshness of spirit which had been excited while governor of Massachusetts, not only threw all his prisoners into a common jail, but rejected every proposition for an exchange of them. When the command devolved on Sir William Howe, this absurd system was ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... the park, and she was thinking how a delicate, floating blue curtain appeared to shut her away for a little while from all the harshness of life, when a small and singularly silent automobile glided by. A lamp showed her the forms of two men in the open car, one in front, who drove, and one behind, who sat with ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... 'Young England' party was short, it succeeded by means of agitation in and out of Parliament in calling public attention to the harshness of the New Poor Law and the ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... and would have held aloof as from a kind of monster, but Madame de Selinville had been the first woman to touch his fancy, and when he heard how piteously she was weeping, and recollected where he should have been but for her, as well as all his own harshness to her as a cowardly boy, he felt himself brutally ungrateful, and spoke: 'Don't weep so, Madame; I am sorry I was rude to you, but you see, how should I ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stripped him in a lonely gorge two miles from his abode and tied him, face inward, to a sapling. They cow-hided him, then treated him to a light coat of tar and feathers and sent him home with most moral and solemn admonitions against future brutalities. There the victims of that harshness for which he had been "regulated" wept over him and swore that a better husband and father ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... age, overlooking the poet's youth and its promise, treated the volumes unmercifully. Tennyson, always sensitive to criticism, was sensible enough to see that the critics had ground for their opinions, if not for their harshness; and for ten long years, while he labored to perfect his art, his name did ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... frequently interposed to punish Mara for his harshness. On one occasion he gave him a public caning and on another he sent him to a field regiment, noted for the rigid severity of its discipline, to be enrolled as a drummer for three months, accompanying the order with ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... seat, Chesnel," said the lady, as she returned, and with womanly tact she explained away and softened the Marquis' harshness. And yet beneath that harshness Chesnel saw a great affection. The Marquis' attachment for his old servant was something of the same order as a man's affection for his dog; he will fight any one who kicks the animal, the ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... anguish at this disloyalty in himself and harshness to his darling, yet disposed to persevere in it, a horribly cruel thought crossed his mind. He would not call for her, as he had promised, at the end of a quarter of an hour! Yes, it would be a punishment she well deserved. Although the best part of ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... your sight: Your wone is between my unrest and my eyes; * Nor tears to melt you, nor sighs have might. How oft shall I sue you for justice, and you * With a pining death my dear love requite? But your harshness is duty, your farness near; * Your hate is Union, your wrath is delight: Take your fill of reproach as you will: you claim * All my heart, and I reck not ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... merriment, its coarse flavours; the real life, that of observation, imagination, dreams, fancies, had been hunted into a corner; and the sense that one might incur ridicule, enmity, severity, dislike, harshness, had filled the air with uneasy terrors. I came away selfish, able—I had won a scholarship at Eton with entire ease—innocent, childish, bewildered, wholly unambitious. The world seemed to me a big, noisy, stupid place, in which there ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... no importance, and waited with slightly unusual curiosity for the girl's answer, which somewhat astonished her. The voice was nicely modulated, and the intonation free from Western harshness ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... her dim and servile city life—brought out into the light and beauty she had mutely longed for—feeling care and kindliness about her for the long-time harshness and oppression she had borne—she was like a spirit newly entered into heaven, that needs no priestly ministration any more. Every breath drew in a life and teaching purer ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... at once be placed therein; the object should be to keep them as cool and at as even a temperature as possible. In all the operations of handling apples from picking to market, remember that carelessness and harshness always bruise the fruit, and that every bruise detracts much from its keeping and market value; and remember another thing, that "Honesty is the best policy."—J.S. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... inherited, and their superior education, a sufficient set-off to their limited means and humble station. Suddenly, riches poured in upon him: his eldest daughter, true to the faith she plighted, would marry her humble lover, and her father's subsequent harshness to her favourite child broke the mother's heart. Sarah not only had less firmness of character than her sister, but loved her father more devotedly, and gave up the affection of her young heart to please him. His narrow nature could not understand the sacrifice: ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... blood-red sin. The house was apparently empty; the tension of my passion became for the first time relaxed, and I passed into a strange mood of pathos, dreamy, but yet acute, in which Winifred's fate, and my mother's harshness, and my father's scarred breast, seemed all a mingled mystery of ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... palpitation of the heart. His ears tingled, his brain was on fire, and the cold sweat started out on his forehead. He cast fierce glances right and left; he seemed to see in his partner's eyes his past, his future, and Mlle. Moriaz life-size. Fortune made amends for the harshness she had shown him at Milan. After a night of anguish and many vicissitudes, at daybreak Count Abel had twenty thousand francs in his pocket. It was sufficient to pay his debts, which he was anxious to do, and to enable him to await without too much ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... fact that it exerts a powerful chemical influence upon the wine; as a consequence fermentation is slightly renewed if there be any grape sugar remaining. At the same time the colour of the wine is also modified, and any rawness or harshness in its taste quality is enormously increased by the development of those delicate and subtle ethers which have so much to do with the flavour and bouquet of ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... words, bathed with silent tears, fell on the night air with such an expression of superhuman suffering, that even Brother Archangias, in spite of all his harshness, felt touched. He made no reply, but shook his dusty cassock, and wiped his bleeding cheek. When they reached the Bambousses' house, he refused to go inside. He seated himself, a few yards away, on the body of an overturned cart, where he waited for ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... harshness and obduracy, by alienating from us the hearts of other men, give them an inclination to hurt us; ostentation and vanity, by wounding their self-love and jealousy, occasion us to miss the end of ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... with sympathy and forbearance. These are as necessary as courage and resolution; yet, since many often sacrifice firmness to sympathy, others will take the opposite line of riding roughshod over everyone, a harshness that confirms the weakling in his weakness. To note all this is but to note the difficulty; and if what is now written fails in its appeal, it need only be said to walk unerringly here would require the insight of a prophet and the balance of ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... menstruate, we are irresistibly led to the conclusion that the ovaries are wanting; the delicate mustache upon the upper lip, the undeveloped breasts, the coarse features, and her taste for masculine pursuits, all concur in this diagnosis. Thus we account for the harshness of the voice, fitted for command rather than to express the mellow, persuasive cadences of love. Such a malformation cannot ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... we left off; and as there has been a certain amount of unpleasantness between us, I may as well begin by saying that I, for my part, have no desire to be anything but indulgent with you. If you will behave properly and reasonably, I assure you that we shall not treat you with any unnecessary harshness." ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich |
