"Sullenness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... certain dogged sullenness about my companions, which proceeded from their belief, that we and all who remained at Strasbourg, were merely left to occupy the enemy's attention, while greater operations were ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... gloriously brilliant winter days by which Boston weather atones in an hour for a week of sullenness. Snow lay in a thin sheet over the Common, and here and there a bit of ice among the tree- branches caught the light like a glittering jewel. The streets were dotted with briskly gliding sleighs, the jingle of whose bells rang out ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... me," answered Dominique, still with an awkward sullenness. "But it is merely my dismissal that I beg. I wish to return early to-morrow to Boisveyrac; the harvest there is gathered, to be sure, but no one can be trusted to finish the stacks. With so many dancing attendance ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and the beginning of the engagement, which subsequently opened at Miner's Theatre, was spent by the girl in coaching her protege. He was a year younger than she, a fact which tended to increase the influence that she promptly obtained over him. His sullenness having been overcome, he became a devoted and apt pupil. Having beheld himself in neat clothes and acquired habits of cleanliness, he speedily developed into a handsome youth of soft disposition ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... his companion in silence. It was a test—this wind—to see how much of a man had been made from the flabby, drunken wreck he had dragged to the Glade Farm weeks ago with a masterful command. It had been a bitter fight, with days of heavy sullenness on Wherry's part and swift apology when the mood was gone, days of hard riding and walking, of icy plunges after a racking grind of exercise for which Carl himself with his splendid strength inexorably set the pace, days of fierce rebellion when he had ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... both came and kissed Emily, and began to do the honours of their father's table. There was something very touching to her in that instinct of good breeding which kept them attentive to Miss Fairbairn, while a sort of wistful sullenness made the rosy lips pout, and their soft grey eyes twinkle now and ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... place in Mr. O'Rourke, it showed itself in occasional fits of sullenness towards Margaret. It was in one of these moods that he slouched his hat over his brows, and told her she need not wait dinner ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... mystery, the probability being that they had been loitering about Dyea for a long time, waiting for the season to advance sufficiently to allow them to start for the Yukon. They seemed reserved to the point of sullenness, keeping by themselves and showing so much antipathy to any approach that ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... of a busy and adventurous world would not see it, for they would not be there. Its dog Ching was asleep on the mat of the portico to the saloon bar; a Chinese animal, in colour and mane resembling a lion whose dignity has become sullenness through diminution. He could doze there all day, and never scare away a chance customer. None would come. But men who had learned to find him there through continuing to trade to the opposite dock, would ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... good-will is, having it yourself. The adversary of this orator at that time was AEschines, a man of wily arts and skill in the world, who could, as occasion served, fall in with a national start of passion, or sullenness of humor, which a whole nation is sometimes taken with as well as a private man; and by that means divert them from their common sense, into an aversion for receiving anything in its true light. But when Demosthenes had awakened his audience with that one ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... Theona was silent for thirty years together. Johannes, surnamed Silentarius, was silent for forty-seven years. I do not mention these as examples for your imitation, and would not have you become such a recluse. These are cases of an extreme kind,—cases of moroseness and sullenness which neither reason nor Scripture justify. "This was," as Taylor observes, "to make amends for committing many sins by omitting many duties; and, instead of digging out the offending eye, to pluck out both, that they might neither see the scandal nor the duty; for fear of seeing ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... By Doyle's increasing sullenness she knew things were not going well with him, and she found a certain courage in that, but she knew him too well to believe that he would give up easily. And she drew certain deductions from the newspapers she studied so tirelessly. She saw the ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... harangue, when we heard the voice of one speaking very importunately, and repeating these words, "What, not one smile?" We followed the sound till we came to a close thicket, on the other side of which we saw a young woman sitting as it were in a personated sullenness[127], just over a transparent fountain. Opposite to her stood Mr. William, Sir Roger's master of the game[128]. The Knight whispered me, "Hist! these are lovers." The huntsman looking earnestly at the shadow of the young maiden in the stream, "Oh thou dear ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... just calling for Absalom's synonyms when Tillie carried her composition to the desk, and Absalom was replying with his customary half-defiant sullenness. ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... to asking Bruce, though he listened to Brogten's hints, (which he instantly understood), with a sullenness which but a short time before had no existence, not even a prototype, in his bright and genial character. But when it came to asking De Vayne, he simply replied to Brogten's ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... with any other nation, hatred to the individual who seeks to humiliate them or their country is instantly engendered, and in all their transactions and communications with their soi-disant superior, they will either take some advantage, behave with sullenness, or avail themselves of some opportunity of displaying the ascerbid feeling which has been created: not that I would wish an Englishman to subdue that just and natural pride which he must ever feel when he reflects on the pinnacle of greatness which his country has ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... towards man is very often, even consciously, a hard temper towards God? Does it never happen, that if conscience presents to us the thought of God, whether as a God of judgment to terrify us, or as a God of love to melt us, we repel it with impatience, or with sullenness? Does not the heart sometimes almost speak aloud the language of blasphemy: Who is God, that I should mind him? I do not care what may happen, I will not be softened. Do not all sorts of unbelieving thoughts pass rapidly through the mind at such moments; first ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... the Irish objected to this thorough mode of effecting the work of Irish regeneration, Colonel Lawrence 'doubted not but God would enable that authority yet in being to let out that dram of rebellious bloud, and cure that fit of sullenness ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... these circumstances that, with all brevity of speech and a certain boyish sullenness of manner, looking the while upon the floor, I informed my relatives of my financial situation: the amount I owed Pinkerton; the hopelessness of any maintenance from sculpture; the career offered me in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gradually, after we left Biloxi and the regions where stimulants could be obtained, became nervous, lost his appetite, and was now suffering from chills and fever. He was much depressed after leaving St. Marks, and had long fits of sullenness, so that he would row for hours without speaking. I tried to cheer him, and on one occasion penetrated the forest a long distance to obtain some panacea with which to brace ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... how to get through time becomes sometimes the question,—unavoidably; though it strikes me as a thing unspeakably sad in a life so short as ours. The sullenness of a long wet day is yielding just now to an outburst of watery sunset, which strikes from the far horizon of this quiet world of ours, over fields and willow-woods, upon the shifty weather-vanes and long-pointed windows of the tower on the square—from which the ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... tryin' to kiss her," growled Lem. "A man can kiss his own woman, can't he? And that dog bit me. Look at them fingers!" Through the dim candlelight Lem's sullenness answered the dark look that Lon threw ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... quoting the wrong person, talking on the wrong subject, teasing with notice, excruciating with attentions, disturbing a tete-a-tete in order to make up a dance; wasting eloquence in persuading a man to participate in amusement whose reputation depends on his social sullenness; exacting homage with a restless eye, and not permitting the least worthy knot to be untwined without their divinityships' interference; patronizing the meek, anticipating the slow, intoxicating with compliment, plastering ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... impression was made upon Oscar's heart. The feeling of sullenness with which he awoke, had subsided into something resembling "low spirits." Nor was this all the effect his mother's conversation had upon him. As he lay awake in the morning, he had planned the ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... smile touched lips now guiltless of any hint of sullenness; she hummed softly to herself, whose heart had almost forgotten its birthright of song and laughter; never the least pang of conscience flawed the ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... to alienate the affections of the people from the only king, who, for almost a century, has much appeared to desire, or much endeavoured to deserve them. They have insulted him with rudeness, and with menaces, which were never excited by the gloomy sullenness of William, even when half the nation denied him their allegiance; nor by the dangerous bigotry of James, unless, when he was finally driven from his palace; and with which scarcely the open hostilities of rebellion ventured to vilify the unhappy Charles, even in the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... had bought two Arab stallions, Mohammed and Zarif whose prowess soon surpassed that of the pioneer. The whole question was reopened, events took a vigorous and decisive turn and, instead of a weary, eccentric old man, discouraged almost to sullenness and with no weapons for the struggle, the critics of the miracle found themselves faced by a new adversary, young and high-spirited, endowed with remarkable scientific instinct, quick-witted, scholarly and ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... withdrawn Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom, And glorious ages gone Lie deep within the shadows of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... you have been very good of late. I have rejoiced to see that you were really trying to rule your own spirit. So far as I know, you have been entirely and cheerfully obedient to me, and have not indulged in a single fit of passion or sullenness." ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... the money my father gave you?" came the words at last, rolling from his lips in a tone of muffled sullenness. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the proper judge; to despise its sentence, if it were possible, is not just; and if it were just, is not possible. Pope was far enough from this unreasonable temper: he was sufficiently "a fool to fame," and his fault was, that he pretended to neglect it. His levity and his sullenness were only in his letters; he passed through common life, sometimes vexed, and sometimes pleased, with the natural emotions ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... listened to with attention. There was a benevolence and mildness in the tones of his voice that rendered it quite musical, and never failed to prepossess in his favour all those who heard him, and to make them forget the usual sullenness of his manner. During the whole time he had sailed for the Baltimore house, he had shown himself a model of trustworthiness and seamanship, and enjoyed the full confidence of his employers. It was said, however, that his early life had not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... my dear:" (speaking with quickness,)—"I thought the occasion of your sullenness and reserve ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... hour for Higgins to make his request. But he had promised Margaret to do it at any cost. So, though every moment added to his repugnance, his pride, and his sullenness of temper, he stood leaning against the dead wall, hour after hour, first on one leg, then on the other. At last the latch was sharply lifted, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... dare say you know two types of natives, which may be called the obsequious and the sullen? Well, one had them, the types themselves, detected in the fact; and one had them together. Obsequiousness ran out of the first like wine out of a bottle, sullenness congested in the second. Obsequiousness was all smiles; he ran to catch your eye, he loved to gabble; and he had about a dozen words of beach English, and an eighth-of-an-inch veneer of Christianity. Sullens was industrious; a big down-looking ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... went on apologising, as if he had been all in the wrong and the other all in the right, and getting no word in reply, only the same scowl and uncompromising sullenness. "I'll take jolly good care not to stroke that fellow the wrong way again," said Jim, afterwards; "and if I should, I won't waste my time in ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... he whose bosom with no transport swells In vernal airs and hours commits the crime Of sullenness to Nature, 'gainst the Time, And its great RULER, he alike rebels Who seriousness and pious dread repels, And aweless gazes on the faded Clime, Dim in the gloom, and pale in the hoar rime That o'er the bleak and dreary prospect ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... gusto. The pirates, full-fed, with pipes in mouths, were inclined to be affable and jocular. "Feeding the animals," as Slinker called it, seemed to afford them much agreeable diversion. Even Magnus had lost in a degree his usual sullenness, and was wreathed in simian smiles. The intense terror and revulsion which he inspired in me kept my unwilling eyes constantly wandering in his direction. Yet under all the terror was a bedrock confidence ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... uncommunicative as he had been when the older members of the yacht's company tried to get something out of him. He appeared to be bright enough and not especially coarse grained, so that from the standpoint of quality qualifications, there seemed to be no reason for his sullenness. Hal frankly made a statement to him to this effect, but it produced no result of the kind desired and intended. They got only short, surly returns in response to their most ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... were enjoying the satisfaction resulting from the success that was due to their conduct and valour, the enemy was in a condition of discontent and sullenness which had like to have terminated fatally. The Americans could not conceal their disapprobation of the whole proceedings of Count D'Estaing, nor he the contemptuous light in which he held them. Reciprocal taunts and reproaches ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... I will go to Priscilla,' he said, with a touch of sullenness that was mere shyness and discomfort. 'Don't let me interrupt you and this young lady, Tom.' And before Mr. O'Brien could utter ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... nature, had learnt it, that young man's bearing, when presented to his father's brother, was anything but manly or engaging. Perhaps, indeed, so singular a mixture of defiance and obsequiousness, of fear and hardihood, of dogged sullenness and an attempt at enraging and propitiation, never was expressed in any one human figure as in that of Jonas, when, having raised his downcast eyes to Martin's face, he let them fall again, and uneasily closing ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... told her that her hint had not been thrown away upon me. How different did She now appear to me! What before seemed gloom and sullenness, I now found to be disgust at her Associates, and compassion for my danger. I looked up to her as to my only resource; Yet knowing her to be watched by her Husband with a suspicious eye, I could place but little reliance on ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... the sullenness which her looks had betrayed. She still forbore to look at me, and said, "I do not know how I should tell you every thing. You care so little about me that—I should only be troublesome. I am old enough to think and act for myself, and shall advise ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... words, but he could the voices, and he noted that for the first five minutes one was jovial, the other sullen; and for the next five minutes one was persuasive, the other contradictory; and for the third five minutes one was angry and the other back to its old sullenness. Then he saw that Danny O'Flannigan jerked himself to his feet and strode away, leaving Handy Mike stolidly smoking on the ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... in the intensity of his mental struggle, and his answer had that sullen ring which was not really sullenness ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... subdued to mere sullenness, almost infantile in its outward petulant expression. He attempted to meet her glance, and he ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... with little direct censure, and rather as anecdotes calculated to astonish and amuse a new-comer. While the possession of a pipe, a newspaper, a little tea, etc., or the omission of some mark of respect, a saucy look or word, or even an imputation of sullenness, were deemed unpardonable offences. They were fed more like hogs than like men; neither knives, forks, nor hardly any other conveniences were allowed at tables. They tore their food with their fingers and teeth, and drank out of water buckets. ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... birthright before they know what things mean; in the sweater's den, in the heartless side of business competition, in the drink hells, in frivolous pursuits and brainless amusements, in the insolence of wealth, and the sullenness of poverty—in every place or thing where despite is done to the Divine Humanity. Let us feel that whatever wrong is done to a single human being, throughout the world-wide family of man, is literally done to Jesus Christ, and we shall better ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... always taciturn, grave, uncommunicative, was, invested with an austere aloofness, and was hardly to be approached as he sat, silent and absent, brooding over the fire at his own home. When roused by some circumstance of the domestic routine, and it became apparent that his mood was not sullenness or anger, but simple and complete introversion, it added a dignity and suggested a remoteness that were yet less reassuring. His son, who stood in awe of him—not because of paternal severity, but because no boy could refrain from a worshipping respect ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... man, giving one the impression of sullenness, and almost entirely lacking in those qualities of comradeship which one usually seeks in the "Boss" type. From a barren little room over the "Mecca" saloon, with the help of a telephone, he managed his machine. He never obtruded himself upon ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... from the descriptions of his countenance that none but that of Mephistopheles in the celebrated picture of the Game of Life could equal its terrific malignity, after-accounts drew it a very Saint John's for sweet serenity of expression. What was then called sullenness now took the name of resignation, and stupidity was quiet contempt. Indeed, I began to fear that they would give him a public triumph, and invite me to make the flag with which to grace it. I confess that I would almost have voted ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... disadvantages increase the sullenness of the timid, who are overcome by the sense of their own physical weakness, which they know has its origin in a condition of mind that they lack the power either to change or ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... Waverley in another apartment. With a heart which beat; a little quicker, not indeed from fear, but from uncertainty and anxiety, Edward obeyed the summons. He found the two gentlemen standing together, an air of complacent dignity on the brow of the Baron, while something like sullenness, or shame, or both, blanked the bold visage of Balmawhapple. The former slipped his arm through that of the latter, and thus seeming to walk with him, while in reality he led him, advanced to meet Waverley, and, stopping in the midst of the apartment, made in great state the following ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... went again and again to the village: he had made acquaintance with some of the people, and liked them. There was one man, however, who, although, attracted by his look despite its apparent sullenness, he had tried to draw him into conversation, seemed to avoid, almost to resent his advances. But one day as he was walking home, Stephen Kennedy overtook him, and saying he was going in his direction, walked alongside of him—to ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... of Bligh was occasioned by this fatal appetite: whether from sullenness, or conviction, he discouraged the vendors of rum, and attempted to obstruct their living on the vices of the prisoners. The landing of a still, and its seizure, was followed by a series of altercations, which led to the military rebellion, and ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... when materialism, which is properly a primary or dogmatic philosophy, breathing courage and victory, appears as a destructive force and in the incongruous role of a critic. One dogmatism is not fit to criticise another; their conflict can end only in insults, sullenness, and an appeal to that physical drift and irrational selection which may ultimately consign one party to oblivion. But a philosophy does ill to boast of such borrowed triumphs. The next turn of the wheel may crush the victor, and the opinions hastily buried may ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... windows, too, were evidently contrived, in the first instance, by persons who saw how effective they would prove when a vivid sun shone through them. But in England, the interior of a cathedral, nine days out of ten, is a vast sullenness, and as chill as death and the tomb. At any rate, it was so to-day, and so thought one of the old vergers, who kept walking as briskly as he could along the width of the transepts. There were several of these ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... eggs, went on whipping all the harder for fear Ray should know she saw him. And Vivia, with one hand upon his head, took away the brown fingers, that her own cool, fragrant palm might press upon his burning lids. Such sudden tears belong to such tropical natures. For there was no anger or sullenness in Ray's grief; he was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... to salute the two women with a sharp blow apiece of the knotted rope, and thus changed their rising fury into sullenness. ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... all the rest of the way, and the few miles of feverish excitement, which were followed by the few miles of sullenness, were finally succeeded by the ordinary cheerfulness of a travelling companion. The change was very much for the better. My feverish excitement had served to increase the constraint of Marion; and now, since it had passed away, she seemed more inclined to be agreeable. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... The music was to be both vocal and instrumental; and of the various instruments the organ is named in chief. (3) Excursions. "In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with Heaven and Earth. I should not therefore be a persuader to them of studying much then, after two or three years that ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... else. To these others the silence of the cottage, the absence of the Lamberts from this gathering was simple enough of explanation, seeing that they themselves felt such bitter resentment against the dead man. They quite felt with the old woman's sullenness, her hatred of the foreigner who had disturbed the serenity ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... and re-adjusting the packs so that they would not project beyond the sides of the horses, required constant patience and untiring toil, and the struggle between our own docility and the obstacles in our way, not unfrequently resulted in fits of sullenness or explosions of wrath which bore no slight resemblance to the volcanic ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... of the three thousand and ten wore not the same aspect as his crowned brethren; a star, smaller than the rest, and less luminous. The countenance of this star was not impressed with the awful calmness of the others; but there were sullenness and discontent ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... room was resplendent one night with a fire which flamed and flickered gloriously. It set in motion many shadows which had their home in the corners of the walls, and bade them cease their sullenness and come forth to dance in the riot of the hour. And so each shadow found its partner in a ray of firelight, and there they danced. They danced about the tangled front of the big bison's head which hung ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... innate decency leads black women to choose irregular and temporary sexual relations with men they like rather than to sell themselves to strangers. To such sexual morals is added (in the nature of self-defense) that revolt against unjust labor conditions which expresses itself in "soldiering," sullenness, petty pilfering, unreliability, and fast and fruitless ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... yer know," said Bill, with regretful sullenness. His ragged great-coat, indeed, was decorated with the azure badge of avowed ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... industry in the West Mercian district, the position of the masters, the published accounts of one or two large companies in the district, and so on. But in the end he only felt his own auger rising in answer to the sullenness of the men. Their sallow faces and eyes weakened by long years of the pit expressed little—but ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... company was already at dinner. Mademoiselle had not yet returned. Sullenness presided at the table. Columbine and Madame wore anxious expressions. The fact was that relations between Binet and his troupe were ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... desired with just a trace of sullenness. I understood well enough their resentment at having a ship's officer quartered on them,—the forec'stle they considered as their only liberty when at sea, and my presence as a curtailment to the freedom of speech. I subsequently did my best to overcome this feeling, but never ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... when something younger, and have passed, twice, journeying between Carolina and Tennessee, at no great distance from this very spot. But your service to me, and your Carolina birth, deserves that I should be more free in my disclosures; and to account for the sullenness of my temper, which you may regard as something inconsistent with our relationship, let me say, that whatever my prospects might have been, and whatever my history may be, I am at this moment altogether indifferent as to the course which I shall ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... again, and another dance began, the enthusiasts forgetting Bill as quickly as they had saluted him; but the ex-watchman continued to lean against the post, a picture of sullenness, and in the box The Lily stood with knitted brows, as if ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... property, and upon his own life. Poor Corny's hopes were thus frustrated: he had nothing left to do for some days but to pity Harry Ormond, to bear with the curiosity and impatience of Mademoiselle, and with the froward sullenness of Dora, till some intelligence should arrive respecting the new claimant ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... read some sullenness in my attitude, for he repeated the words sharply, in a tone ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... something of disgust at the ruthless hypocrisy of her sisters, and some little faulty admixture of pride and sullenness in Cordelia's 'Nothing;' and her tone is well contrived, indeed, to lessen the glaring absurdity of Lear's conduct, but answers the yet more important purpose of forcing away the attention from the nursery-tale, the moment it has served ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... tried afterward to recall the details of the evening, everything was perfectly distinct in his memory. The remainder of the meal, made uncomfortable by Maria's sullenness and Paredes's sneers, his attempt to recapture the earlier gayety of the evening by continuing to drink the wine, his determination to go later to the Cedars in spite of Graham's doubt—of all these things no particular ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... replied Merton Gill, though but half respectfully. The "Oh, all right" had been tainted with a trace of sullenness. He was tired of this continual nagging and fussing over small matters; some day he would ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... herself—that pale, prim, pre-Raphaelitish dame who was represented all over the college, in all sizes and varieties of the limner's art. Arthur, who hung a little behind his sister, was different from her, being stout and square; but he, too, was not an attractive child, and there was a dormant sullenness in his under lip which showed he could be a very ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... costumes are always more sincere, if not more effective, than fashions. As I have hinted, I do not know just what costumes they were, but they took the light well from the girandole far aloof and from the thousands of little electric bulbs that beaded the roof in long lines, and dispersed the sullenness of the dull, rainy afternoon. When the knights entered the lists on the seats of their dog-carts, with their squires beside them, and their shining tandems before them, they took the light well, too, and the spectacle was so brilliant that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... position on the ground, infallibly causing every soldier who exposed himself to bite the dust. He lay there, without even changing his position, until nightfall, using up his cartridges in silence, in the dogged sullenness of his despair. The dense clouds of smoke from the Palace of the Legion of Honor were billowing upward in denser masses, the flames undistinguishable as yet in the dying daylight, and he watched the fantastic, changing forms they took as the wind whirled them downward to the street. Another ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... not convinced by his reasoning any more than she had been by Irene's about "taking her part." Both seemed to make life needlessly dangerous and complicated, under the disguise of duty. But she could not endure sullenness and bad temper in Archie. Having taken the sort of husband she had, she must make the best of life with him, even if he hazarded her fortune in doubtful enterprises. She remembered with comfort that there was a great deal of money, and ultimately would be even more when Clark's Field was ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... expression was scarcely ingratiating. To a natural sullenness was added now the nervous distaste of one who approaches ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... The united states of America were subject to the government of England. True, they have acknowledged our independence. But pride first struggled as much as she could, and sullenness held off as long as she dare. They have withdrawn their claim upon our obedience, but do you think they have forgot it? To this hour their very news-papers talk daily of dissentions between colony and colony, and the disaffection of this and of that to the continental interest. They hold ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... bite the bed clothes or scratch herself when she was approached. Mary F. (Case 3), while in a stupor, slapped at nearby patients quite aimlessly. When somewhat better, this conduct appeared in a more conscious form, as sullenness, indifference and smearing of feces (again the behavior of a naughty child). Here one might quote Laura A. once more, whose resistiveness when stuporous was intense but who in her manic spells expressed ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... of the three thousand and ten wore not the same aspect as his crowned brethren,—a star smaller than the rest, and less luminous; the countenance of this star was not impressed with the awful calmness of the others, but there were sullenness and discontent upon ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eyes, hard and restless with a continual fuming irritation. She is got up regardless in her ridiculous Sunday-best. Mary appears tall and skinny-legged in a starched, outgrown frock. The sweetness of her face has disappeared, giving way to a hang-dog sullenness, a stubborn silence, with sulky, furtive glances of rebellion ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... prattles: "My father is bigger than your father, and my sister has longer hair than yours, and my money box is larger than yours." It is neither unkindly meant nor, by Englishmen, very unkindly taken. It is less offensive than the mature, corrosive sullenness of the Englishman; but it is the same thing. "The French foot-guards are dressed in blue and all the marching regiments in white; which has a very foolish appearance. And as for blue regimentals, it is only fit for the blue horse or the Artillery," says ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... ears at this moment. That cry struck a terror to the culprit's heart, which trial, condemnation—the approach of death itself, had failed to awaken. The lips which had been compressed in dogged sullenness throughout, quivered and parted involuntarily; the face turned ashy pale as the cold perspiration broke forth from every pore; the sturdy limbs of the felon trembled, and he staggered in ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... a faint smile, and Derrick fell back abashed, an unwilling admiration struggling with the sullenness of his submission. ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... OF SUCCESS.—When the child is not conquered the punishment has been worse than wasted. Reach the point where neither wrath nor sullenness remain. By firm persistency and persuasion require an open look of recognition and peace. It is only evil to stir up the devil unless he is cast out. Ordinarily one complete victory will last a child for a lifetime. But if the child relapses, repeat ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... mankind. And they seized these men of reverend mien and mind, that bore on their faces the hall-mark of their hermit life, and haled them before the governor; but the monks showed no sign of alarm, no sign of meanness or sullenness, and spake never a word. Their leader and captain bore a wallet of hair, charged with the relics of some ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... do anything. Of course they are not perfect; they have their faults, like all soldiers, and when they chance to be commanded by an officer who is unnecessarily harsh, or who speaks roughly to them, they manifest their displeasure by passive obedience and a stubborn sullenness. English soldiers, on the other hand, under such circumstances, proceed to acts of insubordination, and it is for military judges to say which mode of ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... admission that everything seemed favorable for a crossing some time that night, and that he had selected a promising point. Beyond that the old man would say nothing. Johnnie asked himself uneasily if this reticence was not really due to apprehension rather than to sullenness. Whatever the cause, it was not particularly reassuring, and as evening came on Johnnie ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... silently and appealingly held out his hand—the hand of the good man, which it was an honour for such as Henslowe to touch. Constrained by the moral force radiating from his look, the other took it with a kind of helpless sullenness. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Light. I am therefore much delighted with Reading the Accounts of Savage Nations, and with contemplating those Virtues which are wild and uncultivated; to see Courage exerting it self in Fierceness, Resolution in Obstinacy, Wisdom in Cunning, Patience in Sullenness and Despair. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... displacency^. disrespect &c 929; procacity^, impudence: barbarism, barbarity; misbehavior, brutality, blackguardism^, conduct unbecoming a gentleman, grossierete, brusquerie^; vulgarity, &c 851. churlishness &c adj.; spinosity^, perversity; moroseness &c (sullenness) 901.1. sternness &c adj.; austerity; moodishness^, captiousness &c 901; cynicism; tartness &c adj.; acrimony, acerbity, virulence, asperity. scowl, black looks, frown; short answer, rebuff; hard words, contumely; unparliamentary language, personality. bear, bruin, brute, blackguard, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he seemed to have secluded himself from the busy multitudes which moved noisily and gaily around him, and nobody seemed to observe or to converse with him. He was fashionably dressed, but perhaps rather extravagantly; his face was full and heavy, expressive of sullenness and stupidity, and marked with the lines of strong vulgarity; his age might be somewhere between forty and fifty. Such as I have endeavoured to describe him, he remained motionless, his arms doggedly folded across his ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... three seem to coincide with the three aforesaid. For "wrath" he describes as "having beginning and movement," and the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 5) ascribes this to "choleric" persons: "ill-will" he describes as "an anger that endures and grows old," and this the Philosopher ascribes to "sullenness"; while he describes "rancour" as "reckoning the time for vengeance," which tallies with the Philosopher's description of the "ill-tempered." The same division is given by Damascene (De Fide Orth. ii, 16). ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... To put it briefly then, his son, the Hon. James Derwent, the heir to the estates and the only child, was struck down by the sun while fishing without his hat last July. His mind has never recovered from the shock, and he has been ever since in a chronic state of moody sullenness which breaks out every now and then into violent mania. His father will not allow him to be removed from Lochtully Castle, and it is his desire that a medical man should stay there in constant attendance upon his son. Your physical strength would of course be very useful in ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... the just and perfect dome to which his close lying ears were attached needed no hair to adorn it. You felt glad that nothing shaded the benevolence of his all-over forehead. By contrast he emphasized the sullenness of my father; yet when occasion had pressed there never was a readier ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... played to a happy tune. Upon fit occasion, his lips could shut in a firm fashion; but the gentle smile that played about his face showed that he was always ready to relent. His quick eye never had any sullenness: his mouth, tender and tremulous, showed that there would be nothing cruel or inflexible ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... he first came on board Barry had conceived an unfavourable impression of him and his three companions, subsequent observation of the four had made him feel that he had done Joe at least an injustice, for the man, despite his sullenness and a rather quarrelsome disposition, was a good sailor and no shirker of work. During the voyage from Sydney, Barry had scarcely had occasion to speak to this man more than half a dozen times, but whenever he had done so Joe had answered ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... had by my side Captain Metcalf, an excellent officer, and Sergeant Mclntyre, his first sergeant. We plunged presently in pine woods, whose resinous smell I can still remember. Corporal Sutton marched near me, with his captured negro guide, whose first fear and sullenness had yielded to the magic news of the President's Proclamation, then just issued, of which Governor Andrew had sent me a large printed supply;—we seldom found men who could read it, but they all seemed to feel more secure when they held it in their hands. We marched on through the woods, with no ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... conduct which is justly dishonourable, or even to any unnecessary singularities on his part, but to the false standard of estimation of a misjudging world. When his character is thus mistaken, or his conduct thus misconstrued, he will not wrap himself up in a mysterious sullenness; but will be ready, where he thinks any one will listen to him with patience and candour, to clear up what has been dubious, to explain what has been imperfectly known, and "speaking the truth in love" to correct, if it may be, the erroneous impressions which have ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... warned me," returned the other, with a touch of sullenness. "But I have been pedantically exact, as you call it. The fellow had a key; and what's more, he has it still. I saw him use ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... I undressed with some sullenness, being ill-content at the mistrust she showed; but presently she came to the chamber herself, and prayed long before she lay ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... no sign, except perhaps an added sullenness. Nevertheless he had received a hurt that would never ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Constance fancies that poor Dolores assisted in duping her. I really had to defend the girl; though I am just as angry myself when I watch her adamantine sullenness.' ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... subject to strange fluctuations, which were very objectionable while they lasted. He would be overtaken with fits of sullenness in company; at times he was violent. He took to rambling in strange places at night, and more than once he appeared at his office in a very battered condition. It is difficult not to think that he provoked the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a grumpy gateman, the presentation of his letter and he was admitted to the presence of the manager, a man exhausted with the strenuosity of night and day work. Shirley understood the antidote for his sullenness. ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... must be far from the state and condition of humanity: such a being has no name, because he is nowhere met with." This is true, because where there is question of a virtue, such as Temperance, resident in the concupiscible appetite, we are not concerned with any sullenness or moroseness of will, nor with any scrupulosity or imbecility of judgment, refusing to gratify the reasonable cravings of appetite, but with the habitual leaning and lie of the appetite itself. Now the concupiscible appetite in every man, of its ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... had left the cooperage, swearing that he would work no more. Afraid of losing him, the Jew hastened to give notice to the authorities, that he might be apprehended; but after some time, as nothing could be heard of the supposed runaway, it was imagined that he had drowned himself in a fit of sullenness, and no more was thought about him. In the meanwhile I continued to work there as before, and as I had the charge of every thing I had no doubt but that, some day or another, I should find means of quietly disposing ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... "Fingerless" Fraser seemed at a loss for words; but whether for shame or some other motive, his companion was unable to tell. His nature was so warped that his emotions expressed themselves in ways not always easy to follow, and now he merely remarked, with apparent sullenness: ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... few moments later, the girl following, and Turner could not but note the change in her face. It was not angry now, there was hardly even a trace of sullenness on it. Fear and sorrow seemed struggling with one another for the upper hand, and she was sobbing every now and then heavily, as if she ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... announced the capture. The cruel hound held the deer by the throat, and they were struggling together on the green earth. With threats and curses he lashed away the ferocious beast, who growled fiercely at being driven from her prey. With looks of sullenness and menace, she scampered off, leaving Lord William to secure the victim. He drew a silken noose from his saddle-bow, and threw it over the panting deer, who followed quietly on to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... that towered, could see No cliff beyond him in the sky, His pinions were bent droopingly— And homeward turned his softened eye. 'Twas sunset: When the sun will part There comes a sullenness of heart To him who still would look upon The glory of the summer sun. That soul will hate the ev'ning mist So often lovely, and will list To the sound of the coming darkness (known To those whose spirits hearken) as one Who, in a dream of night, would fly, But cannot, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... myself had ever seen her face. At last we caught sight of the waving of lights, and heard the tramp of men coming along the passage, and in filed the guard, and with them the survivors of our would-be murderers, to the number of twenty or more, on whose countenances a natural expression of sullenness struggled with the terror that evidently filled their savage hearts. They were ranged in front of the dais, and would have cast themselves down on the floor of the cave like the spectators, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... of the sentence a feeling of relief seemed to communicate itself to all of them. Especially was it noticeable in Dennin. All sullenness and defiance disappeared, and he talked sociably with his captors, and even with flashes of his old-time wit. Also, he found great satisfaction in Edith's reading to him from the Bible. She read from the New ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... lay a man no longer young, Wasted with fever. I had marked, none hung About his bed, as friends, with tenderness, And, when the priest went by, he spared to bless, Glancing perplexed—perhaps mere sullenness. I stopped and questioned: 'What is lost, my friend?' 'My soul is lost, and now draws near the end. My soul is surely lost. Send me no priest! They sing and solemnise the marriage feast Of man's salvation in the house of love, And I in Hell, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... to wear, during school hours, a turnip or carrot, or something, of this sort, attached to his neck as a sign of disgrace. On one occasion Poe, having violated the rules, was decorated with the promised badge, which he wore in sullenness until the dismissal of the boys, when, that the full extent of his wrong might be understood by his patron, of whose sympathy he was confident, he eluded the notice of the schoolmistress, who would have relieved him of his esculent, and made the best of his way home, with it dangling at his neck. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... seemed to mind very much. Her generally good-tempered face wore a dogged sullenness, and she began to mutter something about such a thing never having been heard of; but Miss Rodney paid no heed, renewed the appointment for the next morning, and waved ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... surprised, then recollected himself. 'I don't care,' he said, with an appearance of gruff sullenness; but his father could not content himself without continuing in a semi-teazing tone, 'Don't care—eh? 'Why this Centry Underwood once belonged to our family—that's the reason Tom is after it. If I had not scouted old Kedge, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... abandoned the Court. No one would be seen at the Queen's card-parties, once so crowded, and so much sought after. We were entirely reduced to the family circle. The King, when weary of playing with the Princesse Elizabeth and the Queen, would retire to his apartments without uttering a word, not from sullenness, but overcome by ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... pretty well over, and yours, by all accounts, are never to begin, we shall be the best friends imaginable, as far as both are concerned, and with this advantage, that we may both fall to loving right and left through all our acquaintance, without either sullenness or sorrow from that amiable passion which are ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... woman's intrusion upon him with a cublike sullenness. He even longed to be avenged upon her for his uneasiness, and would have liked to have said quite coolly, 'In the devil's name, madam, leave me to myself!' It piqued him that, after all, he had not the moral courage to do this, so he turned a forbidding shoulder, pretending interest ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... uninteresting thing which I found it. His Harold and Manfred had the same burden on them which I had; and I was not in a frame of mind to desire any comfort from the vehement sensual passion of his Giaours, or the sullenness of his Laras. But while Byron was exactly what did not suit my condition, Wordsworth was exactly what did. I had looked into the Excursion two or three years before, and found little in it; and I should probably have found as little, had I read it at this time. But the ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... disparaged by sentimentalists,—anger. The disagreeable, by balking an instinct, by obstructing a wish or purpose, may arouse anger. The anger may blaze forth in a sudden destructive fury in an effort to remove the obstacle, or it may simmer as a patient sullenness, or it may link itself with thought and become a careful plan to overcome the opposition. It may range all the way from the blow of violence to burning indignation against wrong and injustice; it is the source of the fighting spirit. Without fear, purpose would never be born; without ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... generally, his scowls and his sullenness, his deficiency in the daring and impudence that had warmed their hearts towards Dick, and, above all, his strange knack of getting them into trouble—for he seldom received what he considered an indignity without making a formal complaint—all this brought ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... we agreed among ourselves to tell them at the last moment and in such a way as to enlist them as partners with us. Unless I guess wrong, their feeling is sullenness. They think we're after booty in which ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... was still under the dominion of his passion, and eager to renew the onset; but being withheld on the one side by the peace-making Dame Heskett, and on the other, aware that Wakefield no longer meant to renew the combat, his fury sunk into gloomy sullenness. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various |
