"Brusqueness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no attention to this argument. "Anyhow, I don't want the doctors to examine your breast daily," he said with an air of mixed sentimentality and brusqueness. ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... said the man, with professional brusqueness; "it has nothing to do with the body except to dominate it at times. If you pass your examination you may live to ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... our church officers who took an active part in the first year's meetings were somewhat alarmed at the brusqueness of these men and women, and undertook to ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... to Loden for a cure, unless I receive the subvention I had hoped for. On the other hand, I must despair of ever prospering if, compelled by necessity, I have to yield on every occasion. I have explained my view of the question of honorarium to D. quite openly and without any brusqueness, and have finally insisted upon ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... handsomely equipped with "conditions," but otherwise he was not an object of distinction there. He remained at Yale two years, and then threw up the struggle. He came home with his manners a good deal improved; he had lost his surliness and brusqueness, and was rather pleasantly soft and smooth, now; he was furtively, and sometimes openly, ironical of speech, and given to gently touching people on the raw, but he did it with a good-natured semiconscious air that carried it off safely, and kept him from getting into ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... have warned Kate that this was to be only the first of more than one serious encounter with the eyes steadily regarding her, her astonishment and indignation might have been restrained. As it was, forgetting her own position and descending to Western brusqueness, she retorted icily: "I can't see how that ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... had been rather afraid of her silent father-in-law, whose very name made hundreds tremble and thousands curse, but she soon discovered that the old man actually stood in awe of her, and that his apparent brusqueness was the mere awkwardness he felt when in her presence. He was anxious to please her, and worried himself wondering whether ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... nations. The ordinary Englishman, when he travels abroad, carries his shyness with him. He is stiff, awkward, ungraceful, undemonstrative, and apparently unsympathetic; and though he may assume a brusqueness of manner, the shyness is there, and cannot be wholly concealed. The naturally graceful and intensely social French cannot understand such a character; and the Englishman is their standing joke—the subject of their most ludicrous ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... eyry. Haguna of course was there,—as unconsciously lovely as if the disappearance of the unfortunate Anthrops were as much a mystery to her as to the rest of the wondering citizens. The philosopher, laying aside the brusqueness acquired in his solitude, devoted himself with the utmost courtesy to the amusement of his guests, —opened for them dusty cases of butterflies, shells, and rare stones, which he had collected in his pursuit of the various sciences that made them a specialty,—placed ponderous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... when the so-called "new" woman's assumed masculine brusqueness is a trifle jarring, as well as often missing the point. But with Clare Kendall one did not feel that she was eternally trying to assert that she was the equal or the superior of someone else, although she was, as far as the ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... "you must forgive my brusqueness—your breakfast will be brought to you in a moment; when it is, don't eat it. Make any excuse you ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... her a moment in astonishment, and then a twinkle crept into his eyes. Her matter-of-fact brusqueness, which made it perfectly plain that his views in the matter did not count, might have roused a sense of opposition in some men, but he had acquired a wide ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... her, a thought flashed across Hugo's mind, and matured itself later in the day into a complete plan of action. He remembered the will that Mrs. Luttrell had made in his favour. Had that will ever been signed? By the curious brusqueness with which Mr. Colquhoun had lately treated him, he fancied that it had. If it was signed, he was the heir; he would be the master ultimately of Netherglen. Why should he go away? Dino Vasari had ordered him never to come again into Mrs. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... suavity of this new comer with the cat-like movements and brusqueness of his predecessor, Constance, who began to realize the ludicrousness of the situation, in fact seemed to have some special private reason for finding it exceedingly absurd, replied that Mr. Lamotte's chosen officer must of course be acceptable to her, and that she only awaited his commands, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... morrow with its inevitable moment of farewell. As for Virginie, she had done little else but weep for the last three days, and although Lady Arabella had said very little, she had kissed her god-daughter good-bye with a brusqueness that veiled an inexpressible grief and tenderness. Gillian foresaw that betwixt administering comfort to Lady Arabella and Virginie, and setting Magda's personal affairs in order after her departure, she would have little ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... his mother, "I wish you wouldn't be so rough. There, daughter, that will do. Just coil it. That's it; thank you. Major, I do wish you wouldn't laugh at the brusqueness of your son; you ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... were those who seem to have known an inner and superior personality beneath the brusqueness, conceit, and policy, beyond the nerves and fears; and they valued it greatly, at least on the intellectual side. A wealthy and amiable young Londoner, Jeremiah Dyson, remained a friend so enduring and admiring as to give the poet a house in Bloomsbury Square, with ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... had established it as a principle to their own satisfaction, that feminine weaknesses were to be sternly discouraged as the main cause of the position held relatively to men. Thus they cultivated a certain brusqueness of speech, expressed their opinion uncompromisingly, and were distinguished by a certain plainness in the fashion of their gowns, and by the absence of trimmings, frillings, ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... of the colonel (who now displayed to Sylvie the graces of a courtier, in marked contradiction to his usual military brusqueness), together with that of the astute Vinet, was soon to harm the Breton child. Shut up in the house, no longer allowed to go out except in company with her old cousin, Pierrette, that pretty little squirrel, was at the mercy of the incessant ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac |
