"Thickset" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a great clanking from inside the door, as if heavy bolts and chains were being removed, and the next instant the portal swung open and Ben found himself face to face with a thickset man, who seemed, by his complexion and general appearance, to be of Spanish origin. His heavy eyebrows and thin, cruel lips gave ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... sixteen years, not tall, but very thickset and stout built, broad shouldered, deep chested, and strong limbed. His long silky locks were a rich nut-brown, and his sparkling eyes were dark and gentle as those of a fallow deer. The sun and the bracing sea air had made ruddy his fair skin, even to his firm, round throat ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... offers some interesting and instructive spectacles. It is opened at six o'clock on Sunday morning. It is presided over by Justice Joseph Dowling, a short, thickset man, with a handsome face, and a full, well-shaped head, indicating both ability and determination. Judge Dowling is still a young man, and is one of the most efficient magistrates in the city. His decisions are quickly rendered, and are usually ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... her. His curious eyes at once perceived the hideous, thickset lizard that lay flattened upon the shadowed sand as if in a torpor. The reptile's dirty orange-mottled black body was as loathsome ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... sound dies down the stream Till it only clings at the senses' edge Like a half-remembered dream. Doubtless, he in the silence lies, His fair face turned to the tender skies, Starlight touching his sleeping eyes. While his boat caught in the thickset sedge And the waters round it gurgle and sob, Or floats set free on the river's tide, ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... one another, that it was scarce possible for my uncle Toby to have dwelt in any other house in the world, or to have occupied any other garden in Christendom, but the very house and garden which join'd and laid parallel to Mrs. Wadman's; this, with the advantage of a thickset arbour in Mrs. Wadman's garden, but planted in the hedge-row of my uncle Toby's, put all the occasions into her hands which Love-militancy wanted; she could observe my uncle Toby's motions, and was mistress likewise of his councils of war; ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... the upper and lower arm the hairs are directed toward the elbow, where they meet at an obtuse angle—this striking arrangement is only found in man and the anthropoid apes, the gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and several species of gibbons. The fine short hairs on the body become developed into "thickset, long, and rather coarse dark hairs," when abnormally nourished near old-standing inflamed surfaces.[32] The fine wool-like hair or so-called lanugo with which the human foetus, during the fifth and sixth months, is thickly covered, offers ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... John Jennings by name. He was an operative of the Philippine Secret Service, being engaged at the time in breaking up the running of opium from Borneo across the Sulu Sea to the Moro islands. Jennings is a short, thickset, powerfully-built man, all nerve and no nerves. Adventure is his middle name. He has lived more stories than I could invent. Shortly before our arrival at Jolo Jennings had learned from a native in his ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... absolute Nicholas, the frank, hospitable, and brave, but sometimes overconfident American, to this green sward of Runnymead and tell them that here was secured to the Englishman a liberty which other nations have never enjoyed! Here in the thickset beauty of yon little island, was our ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... to drive a' the shoon in the world aff his feet." When, therefore, William Sim made his debut behind the counter of Mr. Carnaby, the rich grocer of Carlisle, and as he ran on a message through the streets, with his bendy cap, grey jacket, thickset trousers, and ironed shoes, striking fire behind him as he ran, and making a noise like a troop of cavalry, the sprucer youngsters of the city said he was "new caught." But William Sim had not been two years in Carlisle when he began to show his shirt collar; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... who, weeping and terrorstricken by the prospect of death and of subsequent torments for which he is conscious of having eminently qualified himself, has his coat off and a bandage round his chest. One of his supporters is a blackbearded, thickset, slow, middle-aged man with an air of damaged respectability, named—as it afterwards appears—Johnson. Lady Cicely walks beside Marzo. Redbrook, a little shamefaced, crosses the room to the opposite wall as far away as possible from the visitors. Drinkwater turns ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... came out of the place, some of them staggering. With the new arrivals came one whom Dick and his friends rightly guessed to be Miller—-a thickset man, with swaggering manner, insolent expression ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... manned by natives of the island of Gueby. These people have an olive complexion, broad flat noses, and thick lips; some are strong, looking robust and athletic, others are slender and weakly in appearance; and others, again, thickset and repulsive-looking. The only clothing worn by the majority at this time was a pair of drawers fastened with ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... above conversation, two respectable individuals called upon me at Mr Clayton's house—the accredited messengers of the church in which my eternal safety was about to be secured. One was a thickset man, with large black whiskers and corresponding eyebrows. His countenance had a stern expression—the eye especially, which lay couched like a tiger beneath its rugged overhanging brow. You did not like to look at it, and you could not meet it without unpleasantness and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... who called at the office at this time did nothing to remove this sensation of being outside everything that made life worth living. Betty, returning to the office one afternoon, found Smith in the doorway, just parting from a thickset young man. There was a rather gloomy expression on the thickset ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the fair beard made some inaudible remark, and Graham looking over his shoulder saw approaching a very short, fat, and thickset beardless man, with aquiline nose and heavy neck and chin. Very thick black and slightly sloping eyebrows that almost met over his nose and overhung deep grey eyes, gave his face an oddly formidable expression. He scowled momentarily at Graham ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... were the guides of Grindelwald. I uttered a cry of joy when Pierre Bohren appeared, a man of low stature but thickset limbs, and Jean Almer, who was tall and robust. Both were chamois hunters, renowned for their intrepidity. They looked at me with curious attentiveness. They confessed, with the frank cordiality peculiar to these brave mountaineers, that their experience would ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... gold medal granted at the exposition of 1825). Madame Baudoyer, whose only daughter was treading—to use an expression of old Saillard's—on the tail of her twelve years, laid claim to Falleix, a thickset, swarthy, active young fellow, of shrewd principles, whose education she was superintending. The said education, according to her ideas, consisted in teaching him to play boston, to hold his cards properly, and not to let others see his game; to shave himself regularly before he came ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... beard made some inaudible remark, and Graham looking over his shoulder saw approaching a short, fat, and thickset beardless man, with aquiline nose and heavy neck and chin. Very thick black and slightly sloping eyebrows that almost met over his nose and overhung deep grey eyes, gave his face an oddly formidable expression. He scowled momentarily at Graham and then his regard ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... took out his eyeglasses and began cleaning them with his handkerchief. Vaviloff looked at him sadly and respectfully. The calm face of Petunikoff, his gray eyes and clear complexion, every line of his thickset body betokened self-confidence and a well-balanced mind. Vaviloff also liked Petunikoff's straightforward manner of addressing him without any pretensions, as if he were his own brother, though Vaviloff understood well enough that he was ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... Bahama Bill presented himself. The boys had been told how he looked, yet they had all they could do to keep from smiling when he presented himself. He was a short, thickset man, with broad shoulders, and legs which were very much bowed. He wore his reddish hair long and also sported a thick beard. He had a squint in one eye which, as Sam said, "gave him the appearance of looking continually over his shoulder. When he talked ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... to leave the place, two men confronted them at the door. One was Mr. Scully, he of the ground-floor apartment, the other a short, thickset man, who at once announced himself as the janitor of ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... set in the outside of his jaw, just underneath his chin; no wonder he played so long, with his mouth shut! Bring the spring-balance and test his weight. Forty-eight pounds, full measure, the record salmon of the river—a deep thickset fish, whose gleaming silver sides and sharp teeth proved him fresh-run from the sea! It was a signal victory for an angler to land such a fish under such conditions, and Chichester felt that fortune ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... rose a stately row; Here, of munificence a thickset grove; There, of wise industry a quickset grew; Here, flourished a dainty copse of love; There, sprang up pleasant twigs of ready wit; Here, larger trees of ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Edmundson made a dive into the throng, and disappeared behind a quantity of silk brocade and Brussels lace. Phoebe ventured to steal a glance at him as he departed. She found that the person to whom she had been so unceremoniously handed over, alike by Madam, Lady Delawarr, and Molly, was a thickset man of fifty years, partially bald, with small, expressionless features. He was not more fascinating to look at than to talk to, and Phoebe could only entertain a faint hope that his preaching might be an improvement upon ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... battlefield, the fortunate champion of Freedom, in Europe and America. No martial music would have welcomed him in notes of rapture, as they rolled along the Atlantic, and echoed through the valley of the Mississippi. No military procession would have heralded his way through crowded streets, thickset with the banner and the plume, the glittering saber and the polished bayonet. No cities would have called forth beauty and fashion, wealth and rank, to honor him in the ballroom and theater. No states would have escorted him from ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the door of the paternal home. In vain he has scanned the windows, seeking for some familiar face. Now a thickset man in a black coat comes rushing out. He dashes out so hastily, embraces him so wildly, presses him so close to his white waistcoat, lays his cheek so near his cheek and keeps it there so long that one must choose to believe either ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... marsh!" said Isabel offended: "and you're not used to mud, are you? You don't look as if you were." She pointed down the glen, and Lawrence saw that some high spring, dammed at its exit and turned back on itself, had filled the wide bottom with a sponge of moss thickset with flowering rush and silken fluff of cotton grass. "There's no danger in summertime, the shepherds often cross it and so do I. Still ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... an Oregonian to me, as we contemplated a company of squaws—"ugly is too mild a word to apply to such faces;" and he was right. Broad-faced, flat-nosed, small-eyed, unkempt, frowzy, undersized, thickset, clumsy, they have not a trace of beauty about them, either young or old. They are just useful, nothing more; and as you look at them and at the burdens they bear, you wonder whether, when the Woman's ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... men and horses broke up at length, scattered in all directions, and within five minutes she looked up to find her husband in the doorway—a thickset man, with more of force than perception in his blunt features ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... again, he struck into a well-worn trail, where, in the distance, a light faintly twinkled. Following this beacon, he kept on, and at last flung himself heavily against the door of the little cabin from whose window the light had shone. As he did so, it opened upon the figure of a square, thickset man, who, in the impetuosity of Catron's onset, received him, literally, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... appeared in answer to this summons was a thickset sturdy Norfolk man, with an intelligent face and shrewd dark eyes. On the chief constable informing him that he was to give the gentlemen the details of the Golden Anchor murder, he produced a notebook from his tunic, and commenced the story ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... foot—he was surrounded by the officers of his household, dressed in a plain, dark-green frock, with a star on his breast. On his head was a small, round, gray hat, full of days, or mayhap years, and of services. His breeches were of the homeliest thickset; and he also wore a pair of large leather gaiters—such as are very common among farmers and peasants in Kent and Sussex. Though the conformation of his figure was not powerful, yet it was muscular and wiry, and he appeared ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... me that, Fandor?" continued Juve, who was getting excited at last.... "I grant you that we have seen, in the course of our chequered existence, an old gentleman, like Etienne Rambert, a thickset Englishman like Gurn, a robust fellow like Loupart, a weak and sickly individual like Chaleck. We have identified each one of them, in turn, as Fantomas—and ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... very tall, thin; strong, wiry, and black-bearded. The lieutenant was very short, thickset, deep-chested, and powerful. Tom himself was burly, ruddy, broad, and rather above ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... out of you, and you get a bullet out of your own gun!" I warned him; and then I got speech with the driver, a squat, thickset Irishman, whose face and brogue were both strange ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... like a singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these Because my love is ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... jock into the fray. He was a broad, thickset fellow, of the adorable bandy-legged stocky type that I had seen go through the Railway Triangle at Arras as though it were blotting-paper. He had some notion of fighting, too, and gave me a rough time, for I had to keep edging the other fellow ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... driven rapidly round the corner, drew up at the gate. Elvin Drew jumped down, and helped out his companion, a short, rather thickset girl, with smooth, dark hair, honest eyes, and a sensitive mouth. She came quickly up the path, after an embarrassed word of ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... Joe Dumsby, a short, thickset, little Englishman, who, having been born and partly bred in London, was rather addicted to what is styled chaffing. "Was you ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... is small, like a dwarf, and yet thickset, like one of the Cabiri, distorted, and with a miserable aspect. White hair covers his prodigiously large head, and he shivers under a sorry tunic, while he grasps in his hand a roll of papyrus. The light of the moon, across which a cloud ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... carbine in hand, for from out the thickset jungle there emerged a thing of horror ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Issoudun during the Restoration. House of the "Knights of Idlesse" captained by Maxence Gilet. A former groom; born about 1767; short, thickset, wife-led, one-eyed. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... a strong thickset collier, not an easy man to tackle; but without more ado George flung himself at the bully, and toppled him over, the side of his head coming into violent collision with the rough planks ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... seen pines six feet in diameter bending like grasses before a mountain gale, and ever and anon some giant falling with a crash that shakes the hills, it seems astonishing that any, save the lowest thickset trees, could ever have found a period sufficiently stormless to establish themselves; or, once established, that they should not, sooner or later, have been blown down. But when the storm is over, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... usual, however, and his thin grey clothes became his spare though thickset figure. He was smiling humorously into Betty's eyes, but his own were impenetrable. They might harbour the delight of a lover at a precious opportunity, or the amusement of a man of the world. But there was no doubt that he was glad to ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... Windsor Castle was an original. His figure was short and thickset, his face broad, and deeply pitted with the small-pox, his nose an apology for a nose, being a small tubercle arising mid-way between his eyes and mouth, the former of which were small, the latter wide, and displaying a magnificent row of white teeth. On the whole, it was ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the office of Scott & Rand he came face to face with a thickset, florid-faced man and a slender, dark-eyed youth, who had just stepped ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... singularly white and delicate. Very tall and spare, and both face and figure were of that exalted kind which make ordinary beauty seem dross. In short, he was one of those ethereal priests the Roman Catholic Church produces every now and then by way of incredible contrast to the thickset peasants in black that form her staple. This Brother Leonard looked and moved like a being who had come down from some higher sphere to pay the world a very little visit, and be very kind and patient ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Italian trip as we moved cautiously among the briers. But when we came once more to the veteran pines, they seemed more glamorous than ever in the moonlight, especially one that stood near a large holly, apart from the rest—a three-prong lyrical fellow—and his opposite, a burly, thickset archer, bending his long-bow into a most exquisite curve. The fragrant pine needles whispered. The ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... pretty well, thank God. Mary is weak, but I think better; did not wander last night. Clement, with strong typhoid symptoms, yet, at all events, not worse. But he is a very powerful, thickset fellow, not a good subject for fever. I feel that I am beginning to recover my interest in things in general, books, &c. For two months I was entirely occupied with hospital work, and with visiting daily ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... infamy; [for] neither does the wool once stained by the dye of the sea-weed ever resume its lost color; nor does genuine valor, when once it has failed, care to resume its place in those who have degenerated through cowardice. If the hind, disentangled from the thickset toils, ever fights, then indeed shall he be valorous, who has intrusted himself to faithless foes; and he shall trample upon the Carthaginians in a second war, who dastardly has felt the thongs with his arms tied behind him, and has been afraid of death. He, knowing no other ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... to be seen moving amongst his guests while the entertainment is going on. He is a short, thickset man, with a resolute, self-possessed air, and is about fifty years old. He is very decided in his manner, and is fully equal to the task of enforcing his orders. The "fancy" stand in awe of him, as they know he will follow up any command with a ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... in devotion. All our splendid projects were thickset with the first personal pronoun. We both could write, and all that we said in general terms was reflected in the particular in our minds; it was ourselves we saw, and no others, writing and speaking that moving word. We had already produced manuscript and passed the ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... very name indicates, was one of a long line of similar boats. As compared with other experimental submarine boats she was small. She was only fifty-three feet ten inches long, and ten feet seven inches deep. Although these proportions made her look rather thickset, they were the result of experimental work done by the builder during a period of twenty-five years. She was equipped both with a gasoline engine of fifty horse-power and an electric motor run by storage batteries. The ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... easy one, for a quarter of a mile, and came to a valley thickset with bushes and blackberry ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... her deck-house smashed. Around her hull the waves gnashed and fought like white wolves, leaping high, flinging themselves upon her. In the recoil Captain Holt's quick eye got a glimpse of the crew; two were lashed to the rigging and one held the tiller—a short, thickset man, wearing what appeared to be a slouch hat tied over his ears by a ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... themselves. Their natures were essentially low; and this low nature betrayed itself in their very faces, forms, and manners. They were short and thickset, with bull necks, bullet heads, shocks of thick black hair, low foreheads, large mouths, dark complexions, and sullen expressions. They were very much alike in person and in character. The only difference being that Alf was the bigger and the wickeder and Ben the smaller ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... gleamed several dripping pots of wine and beer, and round these pots were grouped many bacchic visages, purple with the fire and the wine. There was a man with a huge belly and a jovial face, noisily kissing a woman of the town, thickset and brawny. There was a sort of sham soldier, a "naquois," as the slang expression runs, who was whistling as he undid the bandages from his fictitious wound, and removing the numbness from his sound and vigorous knee, which had been swathed since morning in a thousand ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... spire; a cypress avenue recedes from it towards Florence—a stony path, leading to the ancient Badia of Fiesole, descends in front of the three-arched loggia which protects the entrance to the church. No extended prospect is open to it; though over the low wall, and through the sharp, thickset olive leaves, may be seen one silver gleam of the Arno, and, at evening, the peaks of the Carrara mountains, purple against the twilight, dark and calm, while the fire-flies glance beneath, silent and intermittent, like stars upon the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... he came into the school drawing-room was a thing to remember. He was a tall boy, and he looked like his father. Very olive he was—and is—and his blue eyes shone out of the dark face from under the same thickset and long lashes. His father's charm and beauty halted me, but I judged, before I let myself go, that he had also his mother's stability. I have seen no reason since to doubt my judgment. I never had so fine a fishing trip to Canada as that summer, in spite of the fact that ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... order to gain a little patience, Angelique and Hubertine walked round the edifice. Low down, it seemed as if crushed, thickset columns supported the semicircular arches of the side-aisles. They walked the whole length of the dark chapels, which were buried almost as if they were crypts. Then, when they crossed over, before the great entrance portal, under the triforium of the organ, ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... mentioned, but one much smaller, and considerably higher up the valley. The cottage had several dusky outbuildings attached to it, and a paling before it. Leaning over the paling in his shirt-sleeves was a dark-faced, short, thickset man, who saluted me in English. I returned his salutation, stopped, and was soon in conversation with him. I praised the beauty of the river and its banks: he said that both were beautiful and delightful in summer, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... sat a little apart from the other, a thickset grey figure of a man, with eyes reddened as though by excessive reading, and usually protected by glasses, which just then he had removed in order to polish them with his handkerchief. In age he was sixty or more. His thick grey beard was mingled with white, and the heavy moustache which ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the entrance stood Marie Delhasse; opposite her was a thickset fellow, neatly dressed and wearing mutton-chop whiskers. As I came out I raised my hat. The man appeared not to notice me, though his eyes fell on me for a moment. I passed quickly by—in fact, as quickly as I could—for it struck me at once that this man must be Lafleur, and ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... shadows a fourth form had materialized, a thickset man who approached us with a firm stride. He patted my friend ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various |
