"Downright" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ears. Ask, my dear boy, ask! Look, There is young Hexarly with six years' service and half your talents. He asked for what he wanted, and he got it. See, down by the Convent! There's McArthurson who has come to his present position by asking—sheer, downright asking—after he had pushed himself out of the rank and file. One man is as good as another in your service—believe me. I've seen Simla for more seasons than I care to think about. Do you suppose men are ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... like those which Sheridan puts forward (unconsciously, most likely), for those brilliant blackguards who are the chief characters of his comedies. Vice is never to be mistaken for virtue in Fielding's honest downright books; it goes by its name, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... But—give you my word—a cadaverous spectacle like that poor chap, bones stickin' out of his hide, and breathin' as if he was stuffed with dry shavin's, or husks like the Prodigal Son, gives me the downright horrors!" ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... said Cutler, "it's the most indecent thing I ever beard of. It is downright profanity; it ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... joke in this campaign was had at the expense of Captain Nance, of the Third. It must be remembered that the privates played many practical jokes upon their officers in camps, when at other times and on other occasions such would be no joke at all, but a bit of downright rascality and meanness—but in the army such was called fun. A nice chicken, but too old to fry, so it must be stewed. As the wagons were not up, cooking utensils were scarce—about one oven to twenty-five men. Captain Nance ordered Jess to bake ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... musket shot through the right arm and lungs, of which he died in a few hours, having been carried off the field by the bravery of lieutenant-colonel Gage, another of his officers. When he dropped, the confusion of the few that remained turned it into a downright and very disorderly flight across a river which they had just passed, though no enemy appeared, or attempted to attack them. All the artillery, ammunition, and baggage of the army were left to the enemy, and, among the rest, the general's cabinet, with all his letters and instructions, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... round on the grass. Outside the villa walls, beneath the over-crowding orange-boughs, straggled old Italy as well—but not in Boccaccio's velvet: a row of ragged and livid contadini, some simply stupid in their squalor, but some downright brigands of romance, or of reality, with matted ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... marry a second wife without repudiating the first. And when the Landgrave Philip asked for leave to do the same thing, Luther gave it on condition that it was denied. He insisted on what he called a downright lie. The great fact which we have to recognise is that with all the intensity of his passion for authority he did more than any single man to make modern ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... adventures, with the detail of which he amused me during our voyage. His character, however, deserves some mention. If there is an honest man under the canopy of Heaven, it was Captain Eliab; but his honesty was so plain and downright, so simple and unqualified, that I know not how to describe it than by the plain terms, that he was a strictly just and upright man. He had a sense of honour—a natural feeling of what was right—which seemed extraordinary, when compared with the irregular course of his life. ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... accompts, Weights, measures, larder, cellar, buttery, Where all men take their prey; as also in Postage of letters, gathering of rents, Purveying feasts, and understanding with The honest trades who furnish noble masters[cq]; But for your petty, picking, downright thievery, We scorn it as we do board wages. Then 50 Had one of our folks done it, he would not Have been so poor a spirit as to hazard His neck for one rouleau, but have swooped all; Also ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... what's here? as I live, [Takes it. Nothing but downright bawdry: Sirrah, rascal, Is this an age for ribaldry in verse; When every gentleman in town speaks it With so much better grace, than thou canst write it? I'll beat thee with a stave ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... interested in the outlaw. Miss Terry," he observed, as if by chance the thought had just occurred to him, when, in reality, he was downright jealous. ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... unless Krasnojabkin were promptly released, there would be no bribing whatever next year. The judge, with his usual legal acumen, perceived the cogency of his friend's argument. He met Mr. Keith's wishes more than half-way. On an impulse of downright good-nature—there was no other interpretation to be put on it—he released all the Russians, including the Messiah. They were excarcerated then and there on a decree of "provisional liberty," which looked well in the records of the Court and, being ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... heart to your best Friend ye have by takin' his dear name in vain,' and then he said a little more about it. I was so taken aback, Grace, I could hardly believe my own ears. It must have required a lot of downright courage to speak like that; there isn't a mid in all our crew who would have ventured to do so. And yet I dare say I'm in for something of the same kind when I go back again to the ship. For you know I must be a 'good soldier,' Grace," added Walter, with a gentle, fearless look in his eyes that ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... should be the marble image of death or weariness. So the concomitants should be distinctly marble, severe and monumental in their lines, not shroud, not bedclothes, not actual armor nor brocade, not a real soft pillow, not a downright hard stuffed mattress, but the mere type and suggestion of these: a certain rudeness and incompletion of finish is very noble in all. Not that they are to be unnatural, such lines as are given should be pure and true, and clear of the hardness and mannered rigidity of the strictly ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... making a round voyage from Cardiff to Hong Kong and the Philippines, back to London, in ten months, and during the whole of that time we did not have a downright gale. The worst weather we encountered was between Beachy Head and Portland, going round from London ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Atryahnamaskarta is Durvasas who was the son of Atri's wife, got by the lady through a boon of Mahadeva. Daksha's Sacrifice sought to fly away from Siva, but the latter pursued it and shot his arrow at it for destroying it downright. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... scene. How much less romantic the town looked now than when I saw it floating, as it seemed, upon the sky-blue water in a haze of gold-dust fired by the slanting rays! It was then like the Castillon of some troubadour's song; now it was a mean-looking little sun-baked town modernized to downright plainness, with no remnant of its ramparts remaining save a sombre old Gothic gateway near the river, and no ecclesiastical architecture deserving notice. Its site, however, is the same as that which it occupied in the Middle Ages, namely, close to the Dordogne, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... incidents of lawlessness with which I had to deal affected an entire State. The State of Nevada in the year 1907 was gradually drifting into utter governmental impotence and downright anarchy. The people were at heart all right; but the forces of evil had been permitted to get the upper hand, and for the time being the decent citizens had become helpless to assert themselves either by ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... of this noble youth there was nothing false—there could be nothing false! And she, who was accustomed never to hear a word from the men who surrounded her without asking herself with what aim it was spoken, and how much of it was dissimulation or downright falsehood, trusted the Roman, and was so happy in her trust that, full of gracious gaiety, she herself invited Publius to give her the recluse's petition to read. The Roman at once gave her the roll, saying that since it contained so much that was sad, much as he hoped she would make herself ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... brought the two girls nearer and nearer together; and Peggy found herself yielding more and more—often against her own judgment—to the fascination of the lawless girl, who on her part seemed curiously drawn to the simple, downright, law-abiding freshman. ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... expectations among the people, which no party could satisfy; while their measures has reduced the people to a state in which the disappointment of those expectations seemed to excuse, if not justify, even downright rebellion. They arrayed the agricultural and manufacturing interests in deadly hostility against each other; they sought to make the one responsible for the consequences springing only from the reckless misconduct of the other. The farmers must be run down and ruined in order to repair ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... it. The whole tendency of his mind and disposition was opposed to any contra-assumption of grandeur on his own part, and he hadn't the worldly spirit or quickness necessary to put down insolent pretensions by downright and open rebuke, as the archdeacon would have done. There was nothing for Mr. Harding but to submit, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... meeting of the Apostles." Now it appears to me that a little child, with the simple rules of addition and subtraction, could have refuted this man. I feel astonished that men who profess to be ambassadors for God do not expose such downright perversions of scripture, but it may look clear to those who want to have it so. Not many months since, in conversation with the Second Advent lecturer in New Bedford, I brought up this subject. He told me I did not understand ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign - 1847 edition • Joseph Bates
... to hear her cousins talk in this cool and hardened manner. To her mind a lie was of all things the most mean and wicked. She had just shown her hatred of it, by her penitence for merely acting a lie in fun. But this proposal to tell a downright lie, for the purpose of escaping the consequences of an unlucky accident, looked like asking her to commit a very shocking crime. She felt a shudder creep over her, and shrinking from her cousins, as if they had been deadly serpents, she pushed her ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... true, which I do not doubt, would go far to prove my theory correct; but it is not easy to arrive at absolute certainty, for if I am right, during that period birds are to be found no where in abundance, and a man must be a downright Audubon to be willing to go mountain-stalking—the hardest walking in the world, by the way—purely for the sake of learning the habits of friend Scolopax, with no hope of getting a good bag ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... glad to see you. We never forget old friends.' Then again there was silence. 'Never,' she repeated, as she rose from her chair slowly and went out of the room. Though he had fluttered flamewards now and again, though he had shown some moth-like aptitudes, he had not shown himself to be a downright, foolish, blind-eyed moth, determined to burn himself to a cinder as a moth should do. And she;—she was weak. Having her opportunity at command, she went away and left him, because she did not know what more to say. She went away to her own bedroom, and cried, and had a headache, during ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... as Dulcie expressed it, "rather a dear, quaint thing." But she was more than that, I thought. She had such a pungent wit, her sayings were at times so downright—not to say acrid—that many stood in terror of her and positively dreaded her quick tongue. I rather liked Aunt Hannah myself, perhaps because, by the greatest of good luck, I happened not to have done anything so ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... but nobody answered. After knocking three or four times, I tried kicking, and the second kick raised, from somewheres inside, a groan that was as lonesome a sound as ever I heard. No human noise in my experience come within a mile of it for dead, downright misery—unless, maybe, it's Cap'n Jonadab trying ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... compunction, 'I'm downright sorry for that, Lady Bridget. I'd have gone away if I'd only guessed your ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... the northern cause. In 1887 it even became necessary for him to withdraw his acceptance of an invitation to attend a meeting of the Grand Army in St. Louis, because of danger that he might be subjected to downright insult.[4] ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... on every second page. This fact constitutes one of the counts in the orthodox indictment of him: it is cited as proof that his capacity for consecutive thought was limited, and that he was thus deficient mentally, and perhaps a downright moron. The argument, it must be obvious, is fundamentally nonsensical. What deceives the professors is the traditional prolixity of philosophers. Because the average philosophical writer, when he essays to ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... with downright Duplicity I wronged you, nor do I hesitate to atone for an Injury which I feel I have committed, or add to my Fault by the Vindication of an expression dictated by Resentment, an expression which deserves Censure, and demands the apology I now ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... was fifteen that Kathleen's aunt, a maiden lady from Dublin, who rejoiced in the truly Irish name of O'Flynn, came to see them, remarked on Kathleen's wild, unkempt appearance, declared that the girl would be a downright beauty when she was eighteen, said that no one would tolerate such a want of knowledge in the present day, and advised that she should go to school. Mrs. O'Hara took Miss O'Flynn's hint very much to heart. Kathleen ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... or fencing-master could have parried a blow more neatly. Then the one-eyed hostler began to thrust and strike with the bar as if in downright earnest. ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... in other people since the time when it so puzzled and troubled me in Jenny. It marred the pleasure of the visit most miserably. I was continually fearing the displeasure of my father and the discomfort of my mother. The whole household were disturbed by what seemed to them downright rudeness. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Opinions gave, but gave his reasons too. Our great Dictators take a shorter way— Who shall dispute what the Reviewers say? Their word's sufficient; and to ask a reason, In such a state as theirs, is downright treason. True judgment now with them alone can dwell; Like Church of Rome, they're grown infallible. Dull superstitious readers they deceive, Who pin their easy faith on critic's sleeve, 100 And knowing nothing, everything ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... see that you do not have so much work—man's work, to do. Yes, regular downright drudgery it was. Why, I hardly blame you for running away, that is, taking a brief vacation." He went on talking, she looking silently into the fire. "But now," he said finally, "you have had a good rest, and you are ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... I'm only afraid of being late home,' and came up after us. And perhaps, though not downright manly truthfulness, this was as much as you could expect ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... accounting for certain stories, not very creditable to the priesthood, that had too inconvenient a basis of evidence to be dismissed as fabricatious. But the honest lay public seem to have thought, with downright old Chaucer, that there was more in the matter than the priests chose to admit. This feeling we, as usual, find reflected in the dramatic literature of our period. In "The Troublesome Raigne of King John," an old play upon the basis of which Shakspere constructed ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... other servants of the Crown. The openly avowed design of these letters was, that they should be exhibited to the Ministry, to excite them to prompt, vigorous and hostile measures. They teemed with misrepresentations, and often with downright falsehoods. The perusal of these infamous productions elicited from Franklin first a burst of indignation. The second effect was greatly to mitigate his resentment against the British government. The ministry, it seemed, were acting in accordance ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... sometimes, or whether he would lie, which he never did. Holt instructing the boy on this point, however, that if to keep silence is not to lie, as it certainly is not, yet silence is, after all, equivalent to a negation—and therefore a downright No, in the interest of justice or your friend, and in reply to a question that may be prejudicial to either, is not criminal, but, on the contrary, praiseworthy; and as lawful a way as the other of eluding a wrongful demand. For instance (says he), suppose a good citizen, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... what had happened this morning left an aftermath of bitterness in Mrs. Otway's kind heart. It was only too true that it would sometimes be awkward; in saying so downright Miss Forsyth had been right! She told herself, however, that after a few days they surely would all get accustomed to this strange, unpleasant, new state of things. Why, during the long Napoleonic wars Witanbury had always been on the qui vive, expecting a French landing on the coast—that ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... a downright good pard," declared Stevens, in admiration, as he took the money. "I give my word, Buck, an' I'm here to say I never broke it yet. Lay low, an' ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... plyed me hotly: But Tryphoena having my heart, I could not lend him an ear. The refusal set him the sharper; he follow'd me where-ever I went, and getting into my chamber at night, when entreaty did no good, he fell to downright violence; but I rais'd such an outcry that I wak'd the whole house, and, by the help of Lycurgus, got rid of ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... always act so—though he will in five cases out of six, or oftener. Hence very erroneous views are held in relation to the courage of this animal. Some naturalists, led away by what appears to be a feeling of envy or anger, accuse the lion of downright cowardice, denying him a single noble quality of all those that have from earliest times been ascribed to him! Others, on the contrary, assert that he knows no fear, either of man or beast; and these ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... water, cooking, or else picking cotton. All the males, I imagine, at some seasons of the year, find occupation, when the ghaseb is sown and when reaped. But, nevertheless, what powerfully solicits the observation of the European in looking into these villages is the downright livelong idleness ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... fond of her that it's making me downright silly," she said to her mother; "but it seems as if I can't help it. I feel as if I'd like to know everything she does, and go over the ground to make sure of it before she goes anywhere. I'm so proud of her, mother; I'm just as proud ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... which he bore with exemplary patience, only snatching the very earliest opportunity to take to his heels. Where a sharp tongue will not serve the purpose, they trust to the sharpness of their finger-nails, or incarnate a whole vocabulary of vituperative words in a resounding slap, or the downright blow of a doubled fist. All English people, I imagine, are influenced in a far greater degree than ourselves by this simple and honest tendency, in cases of disagreement, to batter one another's persons; and whoever has seen a crowd of English ladies (for instance, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... upon any pretence whatever, and are so ready to usurp upon dominion, every one does so naturally aspire to liberty and power, that no utility whatever derived from the wit or valour of those he employs ought to be so dear to a superior as a downright and sincere obedience. To obey more upon the account of understanding than of subjection, is to corrupt the office of command —[Taken from Aulus Gellius, i. 13.]—; insomuch that P. Crassus, the same whom the Romans reputed five times happy, at ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the very thing I complain of. You do degrade yourself. Your economy, my life, is downright parsimony: your vigilance is suspicion; your management is meanness; and you fidget your servants till you make them fretful, and then prudently discharge them because they will live with you no longer. Hey! ods life, I must sooth her: for if company comes, and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... heart. Her joy at finding the child safe and sound was drowned out in the pain caused by Davy's behavior. The freak of shutting Dora up might easily have been pardoned. But Davy had told falsehoods . . . downright coldblooded falsehoods about it. That was the ugly fact and Anne could not shut her eyes to it. She could have sat down and cried with sheer disappointment. She had grown to love Davy dearly . . . how dearly she had not known until this minute . . . and it hurt her unbearably ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... every upright and honourable mind in the kingdom." If Mr. Bowles limits the perusal of his defence to the "upright and honourable" only, I greatly fear that it will not be extensively circulated. I should rather hope that some of the downright and dishonest will read and be converted, or convicted. But the whole of his reasoning is here superfluous—"an author is justified in appealing," &c. when and why he pleases. Let him make out a tolerable case, and few of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... with the modest precaution of wearing her under petticoat, which is always fastened at the bottom—not unfrequently, I am told, by a sliding knot. It may astonish a London gallant to be told that this extraordinary experiment often ends in downright wedlock—the knot which cannot slide. A gentleman of respectability also assured me that he was obliged to indulge his female servants in these nocturnal interviews, and that too at all hours of the night, otherwise his whole family would be thrown into disorder ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... compensating quality, a truer source of household wealth than beauty."—"Well spoken! Deign to keep it in heart, for the neighbours' tongues wag as to Iemon and O'Hana. Malice can cause as much unhappiness as downright wickedness. Besides, Kwaiba is no man to trifle with." Iemon was a little put out and alarmed at the directness of Kondo[u]'s reference. "Be sure there is nothing in such talk. A slight service, rendered in earlier days, makes O'Hana San ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... sets, the earth doth drizzle deaw But for the Sunset of my Brothers Sonne, It raines downright. How now? A Conduit Gyrle, what still in teares? Euermore showring in one little body? Thou counterfaits a Barke, a Sea, a Wind: For still thy eyes, which I may call the Sea, Do ebbe and flow with teares, the ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the largest town in Worcester County, the royalist party was an eminently respectable minority. At first, indeed, not only those naturally conservative by reason of wealth, or pride of birthright, but nearly all the intellectual leaders, both ecclesiastic and civilian, deprecated revolt as downright suicide. They denounced the Stamp Act as earnestly, they loved their country in which their all was at stake as sincerely, as did their radical neighbors. Some of them, after the bloody nineteenth of April, acquiesced with such grace as they could in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... may end in it. But if he gave Violet a home of her own that was a home at the very start, she'd soon settle down in it. He needn't worry about the hard work it meant. The only thing that would keep Violet steadylike was downright hard work. No; she didn't mean anything cruel. They could have a char once a fortnight for a scrub-down and ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... way to God the Father. But forasmuch as the passage was wonderful narrow, even so narrow that I could not but with great difficulty enter in thereat, it showed me that none could enter into life but those that were in downright earnest, and unless also they left that wicked world behind them; for here was only room for body and soul, but not for body ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... also respected when he is either a true friend or a downright enemy, that is to say, when, without any reservation, he declares himself in favour of one party against the other; which course will always be more advantageous than standing neutral; because if two of your powerful neighbours ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... bad enemy, and often a downright unscrupulous one. If it's only politics, I'll have a chat with him myself. You pump the newspapers. You leave it to me to swing the boys into ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... wouldn't hev ennythin' else but a real marriage, an' so he giv in, an' we hed a couple o' rooms in a real respectable house an' hed it fine till he had to go away on business, he said. I never 'b'leeved that. Why he was downright rich. He's a real swell, you know. What kind o' business cud he have?" Lizzie straightened herself proudly and held her ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... soul up yonder could not know how it hurt. How could she understand, for instance, what it meant to go back and face the deadly dull routine of a life from which all zest, all interest, had fled? A routine broken only by moments of downright torture. Yes, and the effort it would take to smile! God! If there were only some way to break his fetters, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... come next week," says the professor, troubled in somewise by the meaning in her eyes. What is it? Simple loneliness, or misery downright? How young she looks—what a child! That tragic air does not belong to her of right. She should be all laughter, and ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... intellect as any of those opposite so called heroisms which we are generally so unthinking as to allow to monopolise the name. Cunning is the only resource of the feeble; and why may we not feel for victorious cunning as strong a sympathy as for the bold, downright, open bearing of the strong? That there may be no mistake in the essayist's meaning, that he may drive the nail home into the English understanding, he takes an illustration which shall be familiar to all of us in the characters of Iago ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... a member from Maine) that the policy was contrary to the constitution. The discovery was soon welcomed by many of the politicians of the South, and it has since been so cordially embraced by them, that the opposite opinion is now looked upon as downright ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... bound with iron bands, and delivered them to sixty knights, who were good in fight, fast to hold over the weald. And he himself drove him forth, and made much din, and Gorlois the fair, forth on the other side, and all their knights ever forth-right slew downright all that they came nigh. Some they crept to the wood on their bare knees, and they were on the morrow most miserable of all folk. Octa was bound, and led to London, and Ebissa, and Ossa—was never to them ...
— Brut • Layamon
... widowed duchess, born a princess of Aragon, her brothers murdered her and her children and caused the physician to be assassinated by hired bravos.[2275] In the comedies marriage was derided and marital honor treated with contempt. Downright obscenity was not rare. Some of the comedies would not now be tolerated anywhere before an audience of men only.[2276] It seems trifling that objection was made to the nakedness of some figures in Michael Angelo's "Last Judgment." "As society ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... to his girdle, and the soil of the ford was crimson with the blood that fell from the body of that warrior so valiant in fight. And Cuchulain's endurance was at an end, for Ferdia continually struck at him, not attempting to guard, and his downright blows, and quick thrusts, and crushing strokes fell constantly upon him, till Cuchulain demanded of Laeg the son of Riangabra to deliver to him the Gae-Bulg. Now the manner of using the Gae-Bulg was this: ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... late that night, and when he left, the kisses of the two girls moist on his cheeks, he had no doubt of his life-work. But next day, Saturday—the last day—was downright black. Things went wrong, and the men steered ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... hundred men. This war raged with great fierceness, and with almost uninterrupted success for the knights, till the final battle which took place near Pillerent, in 1456. A Nuremberg painter, Hans Rosenpluel, celebrated this in verses like Veit Weber's, with equal vigor, but downright prosaic street-touches. Another poem describes the rout of the Archbishop of Cologne, who attempted to get possession of the city, in 1444. All these Low-German poems are full of popular scorn and satire: they do not hate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... tried bringing in Bertha as entertainment for both, but it was a downright failure. Bertha was far too sharp and pert for an elder brother devoid both of wit and temper, and the only consequence was that she fathomed his shallow acquirements in literature and the natural sciences, and he pronounced her to be eaten up with conceit, and the ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... groans, and a very few motions of head and hands, make up the sum of its variety: but an excess of joy, a surprise of joy, has a thousand extravagances in it; there were some in tears, some raging and tearing themselves, as if they had been in the greatest agonies of sorrow; some stark raving and downright lunatic; some ran about the ship stamping with their feet, others wringing their hands; some were dancing, several singing, some laughing, more crying; many quite dumb, not able to speak a word; others sick and vomiting, several swooning, and ready to faint; ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... for pike what the artificial fly is for salmon, the most scientific method, and followed perseveringly it is downright hard work, bringing, as the use of the salmon rod does, all the muscles of the body into play. The degree of exercise depends upon the style adopted. Casting direct from the Nottingham winch is less trying than the ordinary ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... have disbursed, To be with peace and too much plenty cursed: Who their old monarch eagerly undo, And yet uneasily obey the new? Search, satire, search; a deep incision make; The poison's strong, the antidote's too weak. 'Tis pointed truth must manage this dispute, And downright English, Englishmen confute. Whet thy just anger at the nation's pride, And with keen phrase repel the vicious tide; To Englishmen their own beginnings show, And ask them why they slight their neighbours so. Go back to elder times and ages past, And nations ...
— English Satires • Various
... of clothing, belonging to our old mistress; they were presented to her in years gone by, by members of our family on her birthdays and various festivals; her ladyship never wears anything made by people outside; yet to hoard these would be a downright pity! Indeed, she hasn't worn them even once. It was yesterday that she told me to get out two costumes and hand them to you to take along with you, either to give as presents, or to be worn by some one in your ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... that the gods themselves depend upon the fruits of action.[20] The Pitris, that support (by rain) the lives of even all disbelievers, observing the ordinances (of the Creator as declared in the Vedas), are, O king, engaged in action.[21] Know them for downright atheists that reject the declaration of the Vedas (which inculcate action). The person that is learned in the Vedas, by following their declarations in all his acts, attains, O Bharata, to the highest region of heaven by the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... from those which are suitable to them, and it will be quite hopeless to attempt to induce the general body of a purely artistic class to make louder and more fussy professions of virtue and religion than other people. In fact, it is a downright insult to the dramatic profession to exact or to expect any such thing. Equally objectionable, and equally impracticable, are the attempts of Quixotic "dramatic reformers" to exercise a sort of goody-goody censorship ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... year together in India it was evident that downright antagonism had existed between Hugo Tancred and his little son. Tony had weighed his father and found him wanting; and it was clear that he had tried to insert his small personality as a buffer between his ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... Flirting I take to be the excitement of love, without its reality, and without its ordinary result in marriage. This playing at caring has none of the excitement, but it often leads to the result, and sometimes ends in downright affection." ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... of things," Kitty said to herself; "but on the whole I rather like it. I knew I should be good in emergencies; I felt that it was in me. I am afraid poor Elma is going to be downright ill. I suppose I did wrong to run away—perhaps I did; but I am so relieved about Laurie that nothing else seems to matter now. I will telegraph immediately to the dear old dad and ask him to come right away here at once. When I see him and know that Laurie is really saved, ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... him pause, and he almost wished he had not taken so much trouble to meet Miss Van Tuyn and her companion. For he could say nothing he wanted to say while Garstin was there. And the man was so damnably unconventional, in fact, so downright rude, and so totally devoid of all delicacy, all insight in social matters, that even if he saw that Braybrooke wanted a quiet word with Miss Van Tuyn he would probably not let him have it. However, it was too late now to avoid the steadily advancing ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... paid three shillings for my seat if I had known the thing was so poor," she said. "Why, my husband was here last week and said it was downright splendid. But I suppose that was owing to ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... that she was grown fat of a sudden; and when she lay in of a dropsy, persuaded her she was reported to be in labour. The devil's in't, if an old woman is to be flattered further, unless a man should endeavour downright personally to debauch her: and that my virtue forbade me. But for the discovery of this amour, I am indebted to your friend, or your wife's ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... A man who could propose, even playfully, to quench old McNab's thirst must have been a utopist, a pursuer of chimeras; for of downright irony Heyst was not prodigal. And, may be, this was the reason why he was generally liked. At that epoch in his life, in the fulness of his physical development, of a broad, martial presence, with his bald head and long moustaches, he resembled the portraits of Charles XII., of ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Ramblin' Kid interposed; "you don't need to have no white shirt—of course it would be better but it ain't downright necessary—women don't fall in love with shirts, it's what's inside ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... would bump the rider's leg in a way that would make him remember the difference of opinion between them. His was not a fiery, hot-headed spirit, with object or reason for its guide, but just a regular downright pig-headed sort of stupidity, that nobody could account for. He had a mouth like a bull, and would walk clean through a gate sometimes rather than be at the trouble of rising to leap it; at other times he would hop ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... the dining-room, while Frances and Mildred took hold and helped Amy and Laura finish the closet. Everybody meant mamma, Mildred, Frances, Elbert, Lawrence, Sammy and Jessie. Somehow, a downright rainy day in autumn, with a bit of a blaze on the hearth, makes you feel like dropping into talk and staying in one place, and discussing eventful things, such as Grace Wainwright's return, and what her effect would ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... vigorous, and straightforward. He had entered Harvard in the middle of the college course, and been graduated with honors. He had then studied and practiced law. He was Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard from 1806 to 1809, and was well drilled in the use of language, but was too downright in his temper and purposes to spend much labor upon artistic effects. He kept an elaborate diary during the greater part of his life,—since published in twelve volumes of "Memoirs" by his son Charles Francis Adams; a vast storehouse of material relating to the political history of the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... things in general, I guess you're goin' to maroon me, eh? Well, this here island looks a durn sight purtier than the spot that you took me off of; I won't gainsay that. And are all these here things in the boat mine? What's this here—a tent? You don't say! Well now, that's downright handsome of you, Squire, and no mistake. And here's fishin'-lines, and—" He went on to enumerate the various articles, until he had gone through ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... were in the field, surrounded by a brilliant staff. A gun was fired near them, by way of signal, I suppose, when two brigades of artillery galloped through the intervals of the line, unlimbered, and went to work as if they were in downright earnest. The cannonade continued a short time, when the infantry advanced in line, and delivered its fire by companies, or battalions, I could not discern which, in the smoke. This lasted some ten minutes, when I observed a strong column of troops, dressed in ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the ideal of chastity. The great Buffon refused to recognize chastity as an ideal and referred scornfully to "that kind of insanity which has turned a girl's virginity into a thing with a real existence," while William Morris, in his downright manner, once declared at a meeting of the Fellowship of the New Life, that asceticism is "the most disgusting vice that afflicted human nature." Blake, though he seems always to have been a strictly moral man ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Rhatore, set up a good local paper, organise a board of trade, and let the world know what is here, and we'd have a boom in six months that would shake the empire. But what's the use? They're dead. They're mummies. They're wooden images. There isn't enough real, old-fashioned, downright rustle and razzle-dazzle and 'git up and git' in Gokral Seetaram to run ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... at the head of the steps. Standing to one side, he offered his hand to assist Marta. But she seemed not to see it. Her aspect was that of downright antagonism. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... to the constable. I perform some of the duties of the town-clerk by promulgating public notices when they are posted on my front. To speak within bounds, I am the chief person of the municipality, and exhibit, moreover, an admirable pattern to my brother-officers by the cool, steady, upright, downright and impartial discharge of my business and the constancy with which I stand to my post. Summer or winter, nobody seeks me in vain, for all day long I am seen at the busiest corner, just above the market, stretching out my arms to rich and ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... but I did," flared the man. "Miss Maggie, it's a downright shame—the way they impose ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... lands lay in that direction. The parish was building a house for its new minister, when he left Virginia, those many years ago. Suddenly he recalled that the minister—who had seemed to him a bluff, downright, honest fellow—had told him of a little room looking out upon an orchard, and had said that it should ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... Bashful was I in youth, Now somewhat am I altered. Well, what I like myself ... Must know that my one delight ... Is a merry damsel,—and small, I do not ask a whale, nor a world-map to study, Nor, like a full moon, A face round and ruddy; But leanness, downright leanness, No! No! Lean women's claws oftentimes are scratchy, Their temper somewhat catchy, Full of aches, too, and mourning, As my wife ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... against their parents' consent is to puzzle him, and make him believe Carlyle's saying about Americans without having heard it. If a man who marries against his parents' wish is not a triple-dyed ingrate, he must be a downright fool. Beyond this idea the normal Japanese cannot go; and you might as well try to make a blind man understand that "celestial rosy red" was "Love's proper hue" as to convince him that a good man ever marries against his parents' wishes. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... away; his odd answer became the subject of our talk. We agreed that perhaps distance of place and time had the effect of weakening all the feelings more or less, and stifling the voice of conscience even in cases of downright crime. The assassin transported to the shores of China is too far off to perceive the corpse that he has left bleeding on the banks ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... all that have yet been presented to the public of Great Britain. The press has been prolific in fabulous writings upon these times, which have been devoured with avidity. I hope John Bull is not so devoted to gilded foreign fictions as to spurn the unadorned truth from one of his downright countrywomen: and let me advise him en passant, not to treat us beauties of native growth with indifference at home; for we readily find compensation in the regard, patronage, and admiration of every nation in Europe. I am old now, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... book, especially a novel, was translated from the English was an assurance of its receiving consideration, and many original German novels were published under the guise of English translations. Hermes roguishly avoids downright falsehood, and yet avails himself of this popular trend by describing his "Miss Fanny Wilkes" upon the title page as "So gut als aus dem Englischen bersetzt," and printing "so gut als" in very small type. Mller in a letter[3] to Gleim, dated at Cassel, May ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... a folly still to twirl, And smirk and promenade and querl About the town? I'll put this down: A man becomes downright blast Before he knows that he is either That, or what I am—call ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... a downright good fellow," said the Skeptic warmly. "The fuss and feathers of his wife's hospitality can't prevent his giving you the real thing. Even Philo likes to go there—particularly when Camellia is away. I presume Philo's ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... external voluntary actions which depend on the will, it is in some respect more improperly said, that he is unable to exert the acts of the will themselves; because it is more evidently false, with respect to these, that he cannot if he will; for to say so is a downright contradiction: it is to say he cannot will if he does will. And in this case, not only is it true, that it is easy for a man to do the thing if he will, but the very willing is the doing; when once he has willed, the thing is performed; and nothing else remains to be done. Therefore, in ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... want to seem severe, but I cannot bear a noise. I am so worn out when I come from the office. It seems each day my head aches worse than it did the day before." Miss Dorcas sighed. "And if it isn't a downright ache when I come home, it begins to pound as soon as I look at this book—" she eyed the account-book open before her—"I hoped you could have some new shoes this month. Those are downright shabby. But there isn't any money for them. I don't see how I am going ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... Tom, 'but a little time ago you were singing a Gypsy song—a downright heathen Gypsy song. I heard it about half an hour ago when I ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... arrangement; as, if a young male acquaintance of any damsel took a seat beside her, it would be certain to attract the papa or chaperon, to the spot, to see what was going on, as their most likely subject of conversation would have a strong leaning towards a flirtation, or downright love-making, at which nearly all the Spaniards are great adepts; the flowery expressions of their language being peculiarly suitable ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... that she is a small, slender woman with rather quick, decided movements and that her voice is that of a refined person. He is sure she is a young woman, but he can furnish no better description of her than this. He claims he was very nervous at the time of their meeting. I figure he was downright excited, filled as he was with guilty apprehensions, and no doubt because of his excitement he took less notice of her than he otherwise might. Besides, you must remember that the place of rendezvous was a fairly dark spot on rather a ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... and Gus are in our class at school." This from the girl who had joyfully greeted the Professor and the boys, yodeling a school yell from the hillside. Then she shot an aside at the slim youth: "You're a regular, downright simpleton, Thad, and forever looking for trouble. Don't ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... but the grande maitresse, who is generally a widow of the first quality, always very old, and is at the same time groom of the stole, and mother of the maids. The dressers are not, at all, in the figure they pretend to in England, being looked upon no otherwise than as downright chambermaids. I had an audience next day Of the empress mother, a princess of great virtue and goodness, but who picques herself too much on a violent devotion. She is perpetually performing extraordinary acts of penance, without having ever ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... Scotsman speaks of the writer as being "throughout in downright almost pathetic earnestness." While The National Reformer seems to be in doubt whether the book is a covert attack upon Christianity or a serious defence of it, but declares that both orthodox and unorthodox will find matter requiring ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... a pond look like the ocean! Well, Magnet, that from a girl who has had real seamen in her family is downright nonsense. What is there about it, pray, that has even the outline of a sea ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... announced that he was in Number Two. It was Giovanni now, and not his brother, the unhappy woman was sure of that, and every instinct in her nature bade her go to him at once. But the unconscious volition of those long trained to duty is stronger than almost any impulse except that of downright fear, and Sister Giovanna stayed where she was, for there was ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... say that before the judge! for you'll have to go before a judge. I tell you, Lizzie Greystock, or Eustace, or whatever your name is, it's downright picking and stealing. I suppose you want ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... said Mr. Prohack. "But that was neither more nor less than a downright lie. You see I was in such a state that I had to pretend, to both you and myself, that things aren't what they are.... And then, without the slightest warning, you suddenly arrive without a scratch on you. You aren't hurt. You aren't even dead. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... occupying himself chiefly with observing the effect of his dog on the various janitors. Some were frankly hostile; some covertly so. Some didn't mind dogs—but there was rules. And some defeated themselves by a display of over-enthusiasm that manifestly veiled indifference, or perhaps downright dislike. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... divine service in a church at Langley in Bucks, and hearing there a psalm sung, whose wretched expression, far from conveying the meaning of the Royal Psalmist, not only marred devotion, but turned what was excellent in the original into downright burlesque; he tried that evening if he could not easily, and with plainness suitable to the lowest understanding, deliver it from that garb which rendered it ridiculous. He finished one psalm, and then another, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... in smoking a pipe of tobacco, and a certain other proportion in looking at the sky, or the clock, or trying to recall an air, or in meditation on his own past adventures, and only the remainder in downright work such as he is paid to do, is he, because the theft is one of time and not of money,—is he any the less a thief? The one gave a bad shilling, the other an imperfect hour; but both broke the bargain, and each is a thief. In piecework, which is what most of us do, the case is none the less ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "'She's downright wasteful,' I went on. 'She fills every hour with information, and then throws on some more. It keeps coming. Your seams open, and then it's every hand to the pumps! Dora Perkins and Rebecca Ford are just as extravagant. They toss out gems of thought and chunks of knowledge as if they ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... understandings. It arises from a total want of charity, or a total want of thought. Want of one kind was never relieved by want of any other kind. Patience, labour, sobriety, frugality, and religion, should be recommended to them; all the rest is downright FRAUD. It is horrible to call them "The ONCE ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... on deck: blowing of whistles, roaring of steam, playing of bands, bumping of trunks and boxes, and finally the steady pulsation of the engines as the big ship stood out to sea. After nine days of discomfort in the stuffy steerage and thirty-six hours of downright misery while crossing the stormy North Sea, Inga found herself once more in the land of her birth. Full of humiliation and shame she met her husband at the railroad station, and prepared herself for ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... drawn or described in any of the otherwise comprehensive architectural works, which appear from time to time, is the rarest of experiences. The Hollanders are accused of mere apishness in employing the Gothic style, and of downright dulness in apprehending its import and beauty. Yet a man who has found that bit of Rotterdam which beats Venice; who has seen, from under Delft's lindens on a summer evening, the image of the Oude Kerk's leaning tower in the still canal, and has gone ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... up to his, in sudden and strong approval. "I like that," she said. "It always gives me a sense of security and safety when I meet downright honesty. In no way can you better strengthen our faith than by being perfectly true. You give me a good example of sincerity," she added slowly, "and perhaps my hymn will teach submission more than faith. While I am singing it you may find something that will not ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... he exclaimed; "what will I do? I can't lose him, an' I won't lose him! Lose him! oh God, oh God, it is to lose the best son and only child that ever man had! Wouldn't it be downright murdher in me to let him be lost if I could prevint it? Oh, if I was in his place, what wouldn't he do for me, for the ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... another well-imagined and well-executed character, with his downright impetuous honesty, his hatred of "raskills," and his disposition to see rascality everywhere; his resolution to stand on his rights, his good-natured contempt for his wife, his very justifiable dislike of her sisters, his love for his children, and his determination that they shall have a ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... sit up all night sewing clothes to wear to your school-teaching when you can buy better ones already made that have real style. It tickles me that some women have learned that it's weak-minded to massage and paraffine their wrinkles out—those things, Sylvia, strike me as downright immoral. What I've been wondering is whether I can do anything for the kind of girls we have at Elizabeth House beyond giving them a place to sleep, and I guess you've struck the idea with that word efficiency. No girl born to-day, particularly ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... with Clara. He would have been so delighted to welcome Owen as his brother-in-law. And as he strode along over the ground, and landed himself knowingly over the crabbed fences, he began to think how much pleasanter the country would be for him if he had a downright good fellow and crack sportsman as his fast friend at Castle Richmond. Sir Owen Fitzgerald of Castle Richmond! He would be the man to whom he would be delighted to give ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... few fleeting glimpses of him in the East, and also in the neighborhood of Duluth, Minnesota. In the Sunflower state his conduct was just about as inconsistent as it could have been without being downright absurd. What do I mean by that? Why, while he was as wild as a deer, he still came to town, flitting about in the bushes of a vacant lot near my house, and even visiting the fence between my yard and the adjoining one, hopping about on the ground with one eye on the lookout for nits and ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... is lost, is sufficiently apparent from a statement like the following, actually addressed to a miscellaneous audience: "If there is an eternal throne, you are on it now; there has never been a moment when you were not on it." Such downright extravagance is most suitably met with a bald contradiction: man is not on the eternal throne, and there has never been a moment when he was on it. It is this fact which makes worship so much as possible; it is, in short, the transcendent God with whom we are concerned ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... Minister Whittle, too conscientious to tell a Downright lie, though sorely tempted so to do. "But a man may promise indirectly, as well as directly. When I have a thing much at heart, and converse often about it with a person who can grant all I wish, and that person, listens as attentively as I could wish him to do, I regard that as a promise; ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Street, he went off to Mr. Moggs senior. Of the interview between Mr. Neefit and Mr. Moggs senior sufficient has already been told. Then it was, after his return to his own shop, that he so behaved as to drive the German artist into downright mutiny and unlimited beer. Through the whole afternoon he snarled at Waddle; but Waddle sat silent, bending over the ledger. One question ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... "He's downright ill!" observed Nastasya, not taking her eyes off him. The porter turned his head for a moment. "He's been in a fever ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Goodwood, ye see, the turf was very slippery and my poor Larkspur got a fall, and I broke my knee, and so of course I was of no more use there. But I could not live without horses, of course I couldn't, so I took to the hotels. And I can tell ye it is a downright pleasure to handle an animal like this, well-bred, well-mannered, well-cared-for; bless ye! I can tell how a horse is treated. Give me the handling of a horse for twenty minutes, and I'll tell you what sort ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... yer never mind, sir, when you've been laying out for some great pull, you feel as if you'd got fixed fustrate, and was sure ter win, till the minute comes; and then, all ter once, your gitting-ready seems no account somehow, and you feel downright shamed uv what, a minute before, made ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... the most forlorn dilemma. This is palpable fraud in monsieur le tems, to hold out such lures merely to draw one into jeopardy. Having neither wife nor daughter near me on whom to vent my spleen, renders the case more deplorable. It is downright desperation. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... vaudevilles twice a week, stand with their eye-glasses to their eyes, before such a play, which, without more ado, would swamp all their critical ideas and inkstands, and show them death and horror in real downright earnest. ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... saying his prayers than would a man who had taken God Almighty by the horn, patted Him on the rump, and sold Him, and let some strange boy urge Him on with a bit of strap. He felt that he was an evil man, a downright ungodly man, and he asked his wife what the devil she ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... made them a positive nuisance. She's not a happy way of inculcating a moral economic lesson, hasn't Louisa. But I own I'm fond of this boy. He's far the best of the whole lot—gentlemanlike, and a sportsman, and good-looking—unusually so for one of that family—and, my dear, he's downright honestly in love with Kathleen. I've watched him—did so when he was down at Ranelagh one day last month with her and Victoria Sokeington—and I know the real ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... attention to the fact that the original argument has been garbled but in no wise refuted, An opponent can convict the one who has "answered himself" either of unpardonable ignorance about the subject or of downright dishonesty. ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... there had been thrown Wit able enough to justify the town For three days past; wit that might warrant be For the whole city to talk foolishly Till that were cancell'd; and when that was gone, We left an air behind us, which alone Was able to make the two next companies Eight witty; though but downright fools were wise. When I remember this, * * * I needs must cry I see my days of ballading grow nigh; I can already riddle, and can sing Catches, sell bargains, and I fear shall bring Myself to speak the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... my feelings. You see, I'm not quite old enough to be serious with the big boys, and he looked so brave and handsome with that ugly scar on the edge of his forehead, and everybody was so proud of him. I was just dying to kiss him, and I thought it downright mean in him ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... indeed probable, yet if they are the right fellows for this work—a work wholly anomalous, unlike all other work that they have thought of in many respects—they will think that what I say is reasonable, and like the prospect all the better (I think) because they see that it means downright work in a cheery, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he's downright mean; and you've often enough said Mrs. Dagworthy spent more money than pleased him. I know very well I shouldn't like ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... of a comparatively small number of whites by immense masses of mounted horsemen. When their weapons were inferior, as on the first occasions when they were brought into contact with troops carrying breech-loading arms of precision, or when they tried the tactics of downright fighting, and of charging fairly in the open, they were often themselves beaten or repulsed with fearful slaughter by mere handfuls of whites. In the years 1867-68, all the horse Indians of the plains were at ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... any way you please, Mr. Moore. I have told you about all that I am able. I know this game, if you will permit me, a little, just a little better than you do, Mr. Moore. I know when fun stops and downright danger begins. The moment you put your foot in China, you are putting your foot in a trap from which you can never, never so long as you are permitted to live, extricate yourself. And, believe me, seriously, that will not be for long. A day? Perhaps. An hour? Very likely not ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts |
