"Sturdiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... used to walking; she walked strongly, and with a trudging sturdiness, not without its grace. She came to the part of Fifth Avenue where the great houses begin to thin out, and vacant lots, as if ashamed of their vacancy, shrink behind boardings vivid with the news of picture-plays. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... careened and took aboard a few barrels of water as she faced a sudden puff of wind that almost put her on her beam ends. But she was a game little craft, and came back from the onslaught of the elements with a sturdiness that indicated strong timbers, and a build that was meant to cope with the sudden squalls that come out of a clear sky off the coast of Martha's Vineyard during the early ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... year. Your brother's wide culture, his singular force of character, his powerful but, at that time, rather unwieldy intellect, his Johnsonian brusqueness of speech and manner, mingled with a corresponding Johnsonian warmth of sympathy with and loyalty to friends in trouble or anxiety, his sturdiness in the assertion of his opinions, and the maintenance of his principles, disdaining the smallest concession for popularity's sake ... all these traits combined in the formation of an individuality which no one could know intimately and fail to be convinced that only time was wanting for ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... of the old stock which considered it a virtue to suffer and be silent, rather than call out and be saved. So she lay for five long hours suffering intense pain, but declaring to herself, with all the sturdiness of an old Roman warrior or an Indian chief, that she would not ask for any assistance "till it wuz time ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... objecting?" said Caleb, with a sturdiness which he was apt to show when he had an opinion. "The lad is of age and must get his bread. He has sense enough and quickness enough; he likes being on the land, and it's my belief that he could learn business well if he ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... friend whom I love as much as if I had known him for a lifetime, though he is, indeed, but of two or three years' standing. He said that my friend's bankruptcy is in to-day's Gazette. Of all men on earth, I had rather this misfortune should have happened to any other; but I hope and think he has sturdiness and buoyancy enough to rise up beneath it. I cannot conceive of his face otherwise than with a glow on it, like that of the sun ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... no signs of qualmishness; they show to me rather a healthy sturdiness as one of their ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... guiltless. And Miss Alcott is fond of working her story around, so that she can better rub in a moral precept—and the moral sometimes browbeats the story. But with all the elder Alcott's vehement, impracticable, visionary qualities, there was a sturdiness and a courage—at least, we like to think so. A Yankee boy who would cheerfully travel in those days, when distances were long and unmotored, as far from Connecticut as the Carolinas, earning his way by peddling, laying down his pack to teach school when opportunity offered, must possess ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... if the animal had resulted from its solidification. The animal, too, is a very easy fit in its compartment, and incapable, in its extreme fragility of withstanding the pressure of a finger. Now it begins to increase rapidly in bulk and sturdiness; the shell becomes hard, and as the exit widens it screws its way out of a very ragged cradle, emerging sound and whole as a bee from its cell, all its organs equipped to ply ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the cost of a standard fence post would have to be added. While this cost may appear to be rather high, it is believed that it will compare favorably with another type guard which will provide equal service. The chief advantages of this guard seem to be its apparent sturdiness ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... steady blow in the face, and the fight between these unequally-matched combatants—a boy not fifteen against a much stronger boy of seventeen—began. The result could not be dubious. Walter fought with indomitable pluck; it was splendid to see the sturdiness with which he bore up under the blows of Harpour's strong fist, which he could only return at intervals. He was tremendously punished, while Harpour was barely touched, except by one well-directed blow which flashed the ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... But slightly injured by weather in a climate singularly clear and pure, under a sky untarnished by the dismal clouds from bituminous coal fires, which enshroud less favored lands, the brave little Dutch bricks held their own with a sturdiness becoming their ancestry. Those monuments of a simpler age have almost disappeared, and the ingenuity they exhibited, and the taste of which they were the specimens, are likely soon to be remembered only as steps in ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... how much has it to answer for in the survival of the unfittest. Alas! that the wheat and tares must grow together till the harvest. It is the syrup of phosphorus by which weakly mediocrity develops into sturdiness, a sturdy coarseness that else might have died down and been spared us. But, thanks to that or some other artificial fertiliser, it grows up with the idea that the duty which lies nearest to it is to write weary ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... which is like nothing but the clear tints of old porcelain. The features were as yet unformed, but small and delicate, and the upright Napoleon gesture had something peculiarly quaint and pretty in such a soft-looking little creature. The boy was a handsome fellow, with more solidity and sturdiness, and Honora could scarcely continue to amuse him, as she thought of the father's pain in parting with two such beings—his sole objects of affection. A moment's wish flashed across her, but was dismissed the next moment ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heroine is a strange, sweet mixture of pride, wilfulness and lovable courage. The characters are superbly drawn; the atmosphere is convincing. There is about it a sweetness, a wholesomeness and a sturdiness that commends it to earnest, ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... Moriarty Carroll, because he disliked the Carrolls, and especially Moriarty, for some slight cause not worth recording. He went to Ormond, and argued the matter with him, but in vain. Marcus resented this sturdiness, and they parted, displeased with each other. Though Marcus expressed in words much regret at his companion's adhering to the resolution of quitting his father's house, yet it might be doubted whether, at the end of ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... greatness. None of the many tricks, conjurings and miracles, which Faust performs with Mephistopheles' help, has any relation to the deeper meaning of life. From the compact on to the end hardly anything happens which brings Faust inwardly nearer either to heaven or hell. But there is a sturdiness of character and stirring intensity of action, with a happy admixture of buffoonery, through it all. And we feel something of the pathos and paradox of human passions in the fearful agony of Faust's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... played at tennis, and we perfected the game Which astonished swaggering Spaniards when the fat Armada came. And possession did he give us of our souls in sturdiness; And he gave us peace from priesthood: and he gave ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Hills and the Light, I have not attempted any character drawing, although on the easterly shore of Long Island there are many people who have retained, together with the plain old English names which they brought with them by way of Connecticut and Rhode Island, a simplicity and sturdiness of character not to be found elsewhere, I believe, so near the great cosmopolis, and which is worthy a place in ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... I mislike such sturdiness, Francis. Thou hast led me a sorry chase and we are far from the Hall. If I mistake not, we are even now in Sanborne Park and ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... analogy I can draw, being no gardener—is the gradual process of adaptation to environment, so that the plant takes on a hardier quality, at an unavoidable sacrifice in size of bloom but with a corresponding gain in sturdiness and ability to bear the chilling winds and the beating sunlight of outdoors. Great size in a flower never appealed to me anyhow. I like a blossom that stands straight and firm upon its stem, that gives forth a clean, spicy ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... that the visit was solely for our benefit. As the tinker was devoted to his poor wife, so was Anselo and his dame devoted to their child. He was, indeed, a brave little fellow, and frequently manifested the precocious pluck and sturdiness so greatly admired by the Romanys of the road; and when he would take a whip and lead the horse, or in other ways show his courage, the delight of his parents was in its turn delightful. They would look at the child as if charmed, and then at one ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland |
