"Stern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... friend has not been unnecessarily harsh: severity is not the best way, always, of effecting repentance, and I feel certain that you, my young friend, can have been guilty of no offence that does not rather require gentle than stern ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... bay the king's six longships lay at anchor, with their sails furled and their high gunwales set with shields from prow to stern. The largest vessel had at her prow the towering figure of a winged dragon ornamented with beaten gold. She was the longest ship that Olaf had ever seen, and he counted that she was fitted for twenty pairs of oars. Her hull was painted red and green above the water, ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... loathing which it excites in this country. Houses of ill-fame were, and are still, recruited not from those whose previous lapse from virtue has rendered no other mode of livelihood possible than that from immorality, but by those whom stern necessity has driven to the step as a means either of supporting themselves or of assisting parents or their near relatives. Such a sacrifice—a terrible sacrifice, I admit—has in Japan never been ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... irresolution, Miss Melvyn left her friend, but the vent she had given to her grief had greatly calmed her spirits and restored her to the power of reflection. At her entrance into the house, she met Lady Melvyn, who with a very stern countenance ordered her to go and entertain Mr Morgan, who waited for her in the parlour. She found him alone, and as he began to renew his addresses, which a repulse from her had not discouraged, since he hoped to succeed by the influence her parents had over her, ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... with so stern and determined an expression that Etienne Rambert felt a moment's fear. "I want to know first of all how you managed to save my life and make out that I was dead. Was that just chance, or was ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... stern fate has been hard, His body unfitted for labours of men, His mind, with the sensitive make of the bard, Unfitted for aught, but ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... her eyes, and bent her stern gaze on the hills once more. Presently we rode on, and, turning in my saddle, I saw her standing as we had left her, gaunt, rigid, staring steadily at the dreaded ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... be thankful, my dear, that you had a stern, cold father. So will you meet the world all the better; and, little one, you have ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... the bargain. While arguing that it is wrong to fish on Sunday, they will be brought right close to the fish, and can see better than before, that if a poor man is rowing a boat across a lake on Sunday, and his hook hangs over the stern, with a piece of liver on, and a fish that nature has made hungry tries to steal his line and pole and liver, it is a duty he owes to society to take that fish by the gills, put it in the boat and reason with it, and try to show it that ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... wail, a sharp little note, piercing the quiet evening with its suggestion of discomfort or alarm. In an instant Persis was on her feet. Again her face was luminous. Suffused with a transforming tenderness, it lost its stern lines and became radiantly youthful. Blue misty shadows veiled the ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... him, sat in the stern. He had never taken much interest in Rufus before; but now, seated facing him, with the giant muscles and grim, unresponsive countenance of the man perpetually before his eyes, the selecting genius in him awoke and began ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... and stole silently out of the room. Austin was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs, his smile of welcome changing to an expression of stern solicitude as he ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... who has charge of our wanderin's is strictly stern an' hard. An' I reckons now he's the last gent to go makin' soft allowances for any warmth of yooth, or puttin' up with any primrose paths of gentle dalliance, of any an' all who ever buckles on a set of side arms. ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... whom they were sure they should never see again, and most of the sailors were certain that they were bidding farewell forever to their native land. Even at the present day, few men would care to undertake such a voyage in such ships. The two little caravels, Nina and Pinta, were decked only at stern and prow. The Santa Maria was but little larger, her length being only about sixty feet, and all three of the vessels were old, leaky, and in need ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... before you bind yourself to me. I fear I am not so brave as other women appear to be in these times. My heart shrinks unspeakably from war and bloodshed. Although I shall not falter, I shall suffer agonies of dread. I cannot let you go to danger with stern words and dry eyes. I fear you'll find me too weak to be a ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... desolating army through our land, headed by the king, and officered by his polluted courtiers; led on with all the pomp and splendour which royalty could display. The king and his ministers well knew that the most formidable enemies to tyranny, oppression, and misgovernment, were the piety and stern morality of the Puritans, Nonconformists, and the small classes of virtuous citizens of other denominations; and therefore every effort was made by allurements and intimidation to debauch and demoralize their minds. Well does Bunyan say that 'wickedness ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sheltered under the rocky cliff, had an air of stern and unkempt loneliness; and there was something sinister about the watermill, whose dingy wheel, green with disuse, was close against the side of the building. Yet there was prosperity to be read in the large open barn stacked high with corn and hay, in the many cows that fed in the meadow below ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... whirled through Montgomery's mind pictured themselves in his face as he confronted the stern old gentlewoman opposite. The silence in the room was unbroken save by the roar of the tempest, and it seemed an age before ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... Foragers were detailed to procure food, and pending their return the wearied band sank to the earth to rest. In less than two hours the predatory platoon returned with a sybaritic store—chickens, young lamb, green corn, onions. Only the stern command of the colonel suppressed a mighty cheer. When the march was resumed the colonel led the main column south by east. Jones, with Barney and a dozen men, struck due east. In answer to Barney's surprised question, Jones informed ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... direction in which it could be applied. "You notice the trouble is that it so deep just here, and the current so strong, that it bothers a fellow amazingly. Now, if you will get overboard and push the stern you will do some good, but I don't see that you are going to amount to ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... little too stern, perhaps, about the mouth and eyes, a gypsy of greater energy and resource than when he had struck recklessly into the Glades with the music-machine he had since exchanged for an Indian wagon, Philip camped and smoked and hunted with the skill and ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... direction, and saw a man standing at the threshold; they approached him. He stepped forward, as if to place himself between them. He was tall, dark; his clothes were torn; he had a wooden leg; his countenance was stern. He surveyed Bertrande with a gloomy look: she cried aloud, and fell back insensible; . . . ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Christians. The crisis requires absolute devotion to the principles of the order, but the knights have degenerated. Two of them are quarreling over a captured Greek girl, and so forth. La Valette, the grandmaster, institutes stern measures of reform to restore the ancient morale of the order, and these provoke intrigue and opposition. The defenders of Fort St. Elmo ask to be relieved, on the ground that the place cannot be held. La ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... a man, Confessing this, why dost thou touch him than?[402] I, the pure priest of Phoebus and the Muses, At thy deaf doors in verse sing my abuses. Not what we slothful know,[403] let wise men learn, But follow trembling camps and battles stern. And for a good verse draw the first dart forth:[404] Homer without this shall be nothing worth. Jove, being admonished gold had sovereign power, To win the maid came in a golden shower. 30 Till then, rough was her father, she severe, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... what you like! I'm not trying to please you. My, how stern you are! You'd better scold your own wife, not me; I'm not under your orders; you aren't my boss. I have a good husband who can boss me, not you. I'm not to blame because your wife wanders around highways and byways, and flirts ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... themselves along their decks and in their holds; coal barges discharging from Nanaimo; busy little tugs coughing and nuzzling at the flanks of the deep-sea tramps, while hay barges and Italian whitehalls came and went at every turn. A Stockton River boat went by, her stern wheel churning along behind, like a huge net-reel; a tiny maelstrom of activity centred about an Alaska Commercial Company's steamboat that would clear for Dawson in ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... love of the young pair was no news to Bonaparte, who, however, received it with stern gravity, and contented himself with replying that he would think it over. The matter, in fact, required thinking over. Bonaparte came of a noble family, Murat was the son of an innkeeper. The alliance at such a moment might have great significance. Was the First Consul, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... hearing this, seized a rock that projected from the side of the mountain, and rending it from its bed he lifted it high in the air, then exerting all his force, hurled it in the direction of the voice. Down came the mass, just clearing the vessel's stern. The ocean, at the plunge of the huge rock, heaved the ship towards the land, so that it barely escaped being swamped by the waves. When they had with the utmost difficulty pulled off shore, Ulysses was about to hail the giant again, but his friends besought him ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... a boy in years, the many stern scenes through which he had passed and his natural instinct for the wilderness made him see far. He was thinking of the thousand miles, every one with its dangers, that they must travel before they could unload their supplies at ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... without flinching until about half-past three, when the condensed odor of a dozen different people and children became unendurable, and I staggered up on deck where Miriam and Mrs. Ivy had been wise enough to remain without venturing below. They laid me on a bench in the stern, rolled me up in shawls to keep off the heavy dew, and there I remained until daylight with them, as wide ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... attended our arms in every direction. On land and on sea, the American eagle led to victory. The combatants were worthy of each other. Of the same original stock—of the same stern, unyielding material—their contests were bloody and destructive in the extreme. But the younger nation, inspirited by a sense of wrongs endured, and of the justness of its cause, bore away the palm, and plucked from the brow of its more aged competitor many a laurel ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... have heard about the rules of Propriety. I have also heard that the superior man maintains a distant reserve towards his son [1].' I can easily believe that this distant reserve was the rule which Confucius followed generally in his treatment of his son. A stern dignity is the quality which a father has to maintain upon his system. It is not to be without the element of kindness, but that must never go beyond the line of propriety. There is too little room left for the play and development of natural affection. ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... stern reproach her angry brow Let fall on me? Am I alone the cause That gives this working humour strength? Do I Instruct the public voice to warp his actions? Justice, untaught, shall poise the impartial scales, And every curious eye ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... toward the Fort, which is one of the magnificent fortresses of India. Two and a half centuries ago, Shah Jehan was the ruling Mogul. He was not only one of the greatest rulers of the dynasty; he had also a passion for building, and was a man of rare taste as an architect. The Agra Fort, whose stern walls of red sandstone extend about a mile and a half, represents to us, at present, not strength and protection, but an enclosure within which the emperor built his great palace, which is a marvel ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... to hear the others who played before one's turn came, because one could get all kinds of hints from what Professor Auer told them. I know I always enjoyed listening to Poliakin, a very talented violinist, and Cecile Hansen, who attended the classes at the same time I did. The Professor was a stern and very exacting, but a sympathetic, teacher. If our playing was not just what it should be he always had a fund of kindly humor upon which to draw. He would anticipate our stock excuses and say: 'Well, I suppose you have just had your bow rehaired!' or 'These new strings are very trying,' ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... the almost stern look of the minister by a look full of anger. "Monsieur," he said, "I believe I have deserved to be called a man of honor? As a soldier, I have risked my life five hundred times; as a priest I have rendered still greater services, both to the state and to my friends. The ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in fulfilling his paid-for task. Himself he saw a surf-boat lowered into the water and manned by black Krooboy paddlers; himself he saw his two employers down on the thwarts, and then followed them; and himself he sat beside the head-man who straddled in the stern sheets at the steering oar, and ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... the chair recently graced by Professor Burgess and clutching his derby as if it might escape and leave him bareheaded forever. His face had a dogged expression and his glance was stern. Yet his direct words and the deep richness of his voice put him outside of ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... and crouching close behind Sing hurried below. A moment later she heard the boom of the old brass six pounder which for many years had graced the Ithaca's stern. In the bow Professor Maxon had mounted a modern machine gun, but this was quite beyond Sing's simple gunnery. The Chinaman had not taken the time to sight the ancient weapon carefully, but a gleeful smile lit his wrinkled, yellow face as he saw ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sorrow, and pass away to the spirit land. In compliance with her very urgent request, thy servants at this time stand as petitioners before their benevolent superior. We are not here to ask to be released from any demand. We patiently yield to the stern necessity that calls us away; but we are here, O most excellent Barzello! to ask a favor for another, which, if granted, will always live in our grateful memories: it is, that Perreeza, our beloved sister, be permitted to accompany us to ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... it? My hope is that our statesmen may learn from John's dignified conduct a lesson which does not appear hitherto to have occurred to them—that even the fate of a Ministry will not justify a lie. We all admire in fiction the stern uprightness of Jeanie Deans: "One word would have saved me, and she would not speak it." ... Whether that word would have saved them is a question—it was their only chance—and he would not speak it; ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... defined against the sky in all their rugged beauty. There was little here to remind one of the loveliness of the Swiss Alps. With no lower green slopes, no soft pasturage grounds leading gently up to rocky heights, the Andes, at least in this part of their range, rise arid, stern, and bold from base to crest, a fortress wall unbroken by tree or shrub, or verdure of any kind, and relieved only by the rich and varied coloring ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... we heard had passed away to the south-east of this place, taking all the crops of last year, and the chief alone has food. He gave us some, which was very acceptable, as we got none at the two villages south of this. Kanyindula came himself in the evening, an active, stern-looking man, but we got ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... my remarks will determine the question, Of why I am bony and thin as a rail; I'm off for some larks, to improve my digestion, And point the stern moral conveyed by ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... the threat too seriously; with anything approaching luck a party of four could have crossed the Atlantic in it. Innumerable cushions scattered promiscuously served to make it comfortable, and as the girl spoke Vane from his seat in the stern was helping to push the boat ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... of Eugene Aram, lately published by an apparently reliable person, our sense of the poetic is somewhat blunted; we feel that the lofty character drawn by Bulwer is in many respects a creation of the novelist, while the whole story of his love is demolished by the stern fact of his having a wife, of no reputable character, with whom he lived unhappily; but he was still a man of talent, of great mental, if not moral refinement, and of indomitable ardor in the pursuit of learning. The chief fault of his character until his one great crime was discovered, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... somewhat stern; but it was not in her nature to rebuff any one without strong provocation. She invited her visitor to enter, and led the way to the circular drawing-room, the strange decorations of which exactly accorded with Mrs. Skene's ideas ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... from Watertown and Roxbury commenced a settlement at Wethersfield in the year 1635. Some emigrants, from Dorchester, established themselves just below the colony of the Plymouth people at Windsor. This led to a stern remonstrance on the part of Governor Bradford, of ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... inseparable companions. If we educate our boys and girls, we create in them a desire, we thrust upon them a stimulus which pushes them out into the active world, and, if only with polished brain and soft hands, they wander from place to place seeking the shady side of active, stern reality. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... with Doctor Sevier, said the Doctor, "That chap's working himself to death, Anna," and gave his fair guest such a stern white look that she had ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... to be seen: a quarter of a mile ahead, now, and a thousand feet higher than our level, the shining, bird-like outlines of Hanley's hovering little Wasp. It stood like a painted image of an aero, alone on a dead-black background. Red and green signal-lights dotted it, and on its stern tip a small, spreading searchlight bathed the wings and the body with a revealing ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... wife! stern duty calls to arms— Go, fetch my lance! and cease those vain alarms! On me is cast the destiny of Troy! Astyanax, my child, the Gods will shield, Should Hector fall upon the battle-field; And in Elysium ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... splendor and devotion, was much moved at seeing him again, and placed the King of Rome in his arms, as if to reproach him for deserting the child's cause. The grandfather relented, but the monarch was stern: did he not soon say to Marie Louise: "As my daughter, everything that I have is yours, even my blood and my life; as a sovereign, I do not know you"? The Russian sentinels at the entrance of the castle of Rambouillet were relieved by Austrian grenadiers. The Empress ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... he had stood scornful and secure amid the overthrow of surrounding thrones; and the entire impact of his vast and well- organized Empire was subject to his single will; whatever he chose to do he did. Of stern and unrelenting nature, of active and widely ranging capacity for business, of gigantic stature and commanding presence, he inspired almost universal terror; and yet his friendliness had when he pleased a glow and frankness irresistible in its charm. Readers of Queen Victoria's early life will ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... at the same time three different characters; the dignity of a judge of the goddesses, the lover of Helen, and the conqueror of Achilles. A statue in which you endeavour to unite stately dignity, youthful elegance, and stern valour, must surely possess none of these to any ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... again? That was on the first of May, a long-gone first of May. They threw branches of blackthorn bloom upon her coffin. Odd, very odd! But business, lad, business—what was it? Ah! I know," and his manner changed in a second and became hard and stern. "About Maria, have you ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... stern of his great ship, saw the battle as it went this way and that way, but his heart was not at all moved with pity for the destruction wrought upon the Greeks. He saw the chariot of Nestor go dashing by, dragged by sweating horses, and he knew that a wounded man was in the chariot. When it ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... the stern frown he always assumed when he felt anger he was bound to suppress, his eyes met mine with indomitable pride, and ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... Schakael seemed so stern as on this occasion. She perched herself upon her cushioned chair behind the desk table in her inner office, while the three girls—the senior and the two freshmen—lined ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... he, with a look at once stern and disappointed, "again thou failest me? what wanton trifling! why shouldst thou thus elate a worn-out mind, only to make it feel its lingering credulity? or why, teaching me to think I had found an ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... shock. But in their haste to avoid it, they were encountered by Doria and his Genoese. Thus beset on all sides, Uluch Ali was compelled to abandon his prizes and provide for his own safety by flight. He cut adrift the Maltese Capitana, which he had lashed to his stern, and on which three hundred corpses attested the desperate character of her defence. As tidings reached him of the discomfiture of the centre and the death of his commander, he felt that nothing remained but to make the best of his way ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... no notice. The frigate then turned her stern towards the galley, as if to give the Frenchmen an opportunity of boarding her. The French commander ordered the galley at once to run at the enemy's stern, and the crew to board the frigate. The rush was made; the ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... at once, and fixed his eyes on the good dame his wife, who was weeping piteously on her knees. She softened his stern heart, for he would have been loath to vex her in the state in which she was; and he said to her, "Ha! dame, I had much rather you had been elsewhere than here; but you pray me such prayers that I dare not refuse you, and though it irks me much to do so, there! I give ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... he was going to travel with the circus, despite the fact that his home was not a happy or cheerful one—Toby was not in a pleasant frame of mind. He began to feel for the first time that he was doing wrong; and as he gazed at Uncle Daniel's stern, forbidding looking face, it seemed to have changed somewhat from its severity, and caused a great lump of something to come up in his throat as he thought that perhaps he should never see it again. Just then one or two kind words would have prevented him from running away, bright as the ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... friend had stood there, solid, leonine, gladiatorial, dominating her with his square white face, and still, shadowy eyes, quietly stretching to the flames two hands that could have torn her in pieces,—a man imposing in his stern young sadness, almost solemn ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... said, with a stern look into the judge's face, "I reckon you'll have to send me down to the pen. I let that mule git away from me and I didn't steal or sell him; that is all I got to say." And he sat down. I felt father start at my side and then ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to see them off, and Dora warned Dick again to be on guard. It was decided that Lesher and old Jerry should do the rowing. Baxter sat in the bow of the boat, and Dick in the stern. ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... revolution, though by no means deficient in the graces, were mainly distinguished for quite other qualities than those which shine in a drawing room or lead a coterie. They were either women of rare genius and the courage of their convictions, or women trained in the stern school of a bitter experience, who found their true milieu in the midst of stirring events. The names of Mme. de Stael, Mme. Roland, and Mme. de Condorcet readily suggest themselves as the most conspicuous representatives of this stormy period. With different gifts and ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... and with specific grants to their general agent. If, then, in the progress of its administration there have been departures from the terms and intent of the compact, it is and will ever be proper to refer back to the fixed standard which our fathers left us and to make a stern effort to conform our action to it. It would seem that the fact of a principle having been resisted from the first by many of the wisest and most patriotic men of the Republic, and a policy having provoked constant strife without arriving at a conclusion which can ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... have been taught to look upon Johnson as a man of a harsh and stern character, let this tender and affectionate scene be candidly read; and let them then judge whether more warmth of heart, and grateful kindness, is often ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... eye, and now made his comrades stare, was the new suit that Fred wore. Gone was all that young man's former elegance of attire. His stern father had just left the boy, after having taken him to a clothing store where Fred was tricked out in a coarse, ready-made suit that had cost just seven dollars and a half. A more manly boy would have made a better appearance in such clothes, ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... to talk about this in private, but Demi has spoilt that plan, so I may as well have it out now," said Mr. Bhaer, looking a little stern, as he always did when any meanness or deceit came ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... pleasant, an inspiration while they lasted, and for a time I thought they must last as long as we did. But nothing pleasant endures forever, the bravest inspiration flickers and dies almost before we realize its flaring. The stern duty of Friday morning always haunted me in anticipation, for I have never been able to take lightly the work I do with so much difficulty, and Friday morning itself often brought even J. up with a sharp turn to face the fact ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... himself should be doomed to suffer the ignominy of public execution. How should he? Was he not the king? and was his word not the law? Who should dare to raise a hand against him? The idea seemed to him preposterous, grotesque, an absurdity, until he glanced upward and saw those set, stern white faces gazing down upon him with eyes in which he read the truth that his doom was fixed, immutable, inexorable. Involuntarily he shuddered, and glanced wildly about him as though looking for a way of escape. Would his own people stand tamely by and see him, their king, perish at the ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... yet, however stern the estrangement be, However time with laggard lapse may fret, That haunt of our fond friendship I shall hold As loved this hour as when elate I see Its draperies, dark with absence and regret, Slide softly back on ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... dreamt that he was in a witness-box before a crowded court. In the dock stood Lord Blandamer dressed in full peer's robes, and with a coronet on his head. The eyes of all were turned upon him, Westray, with fierce enmity and contempt, and it was he, Westray, that a stern-faced judge was sentencing, as a traducer and lying informer. Then the people in the galleries stamped with their feet and howled against him in their rage; and waking with a start, he knew that it was the postman's sharp knock on the street-door, ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... man. Will's eyes were grey as Phoebe's, but of a different expression; soft and unsettled, cloudy as the recent weather, full of the alternate mist and flash of a precious stone, one moment all a-dreaming, the next aglow. His natural look was at first sight a little stern until a man came to know it, then this impression waned and left a critic puzzled. The square cut of his face and abrupt angle of his jaw did not indeed belie Will Blanchard, but the man's smile magically dissipated this austerity of aspect, and no sudden sunshine ever brightened ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the following day; her passionate declaration that there was not a man in all that violent and desperate crowd, for whom she did not care as much as for him. And at the remembrance of her taunting words, his brow grew stern, though his heart beat thick with longing love. 'No!' said he, 'I put it to the touch once, and I lost it all. Let her go,—with her stony heart, and her beauty;—how set and terrible her look is now, for all her loveliness ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... be clear vision and obedience without love. This means a hard, cold, stern righteousness. It is truth without grace. Nothing can be made to seem more repulsive. One incident in Elijah's career furnishes the illustration here. Let us say such a thing very softly of such a mighty man of God, ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... solemn Abjuration Oath, alike for the Councillors of State and for future members of Parliament, and to substitute only a general engagement to be faithful to the Commonwealth, without King, Single Person, or House of Lords? Hardly anywhere now did there seem to be that stern, bold, uncompromising opposition to Royalty which would register itself, as Milton wanted, in an oath before God and man, but only that feebler Republicanism which would pledge itself with the understood reservation of "circumstances permitting." But ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... But it is very seldom that two men in real life, of equal learning on any topic, coincide so exactly in their trains of thought, and in the niceties of their expression in discussing it. The emphasis is deep, indeed, when this author graves his meaning with such a repetition. But Regan's stern school-master is abroad in this play, enforcing the philosophic subtleties, bringing home to the senses the neglected lessons of nature; full of errands to 'wilful men,' charged with coarse lessons to those who will learn through the senses only great Nature's ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... man. Almost seven feet tall, Mackenzie took him to be, so tall that he must stoop to enter the door; lithe and sinewy of limbs, a lightness in them as of an athlete bred; broad in the shoulders, long of arms. His face was stern, his red hair long about the ears, his Viking mustache long-drooping at ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... I walked to her stern and read her name in gilt letters: "Pirate, of Philadelphia." Then I remembered her. She was a Yankee ship of evil reputation, and although I wanted to get back to my home in New York, I turned away ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... polite even to excess, unseasonably; but haughty, and even brutal, when he ought to have been gentle and courteous: he was tall, and his manners were ungracious: he had a dry hard-favoured visage, and a stern look, even when he wished to please; but, when he was out of humour, he was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... from attempting an assault. It was fitting that whatever was to be done in the way of decisive operations in that quarter should be accomplished by the strong arm of the United States alone. Obeying the stern precept of war which enjoins the overcoming of the adversary and the extinction of his power wherever assailable as the speedy and sure means to win a peace, divided victory was not permissible, for no partition of the rights and responsibilities attending the enforcement of ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... arrested to send back to their masters, but as he was ordered away, he would turn them over to me. At that time a reward could be claimed for returning fugitive slaves. I took charge of them, and assuming a stern look and manner, enquired, 'Where are you going?' 'Going to the Yankee army.' 'What for?' 'We wants to be free, sir.' 'All right, you are free, go where you wish.' The satisfaction that came to me from their heartfelt 'thank'ee, thank'ee ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... brought the back of his head against the railing, elevating his eyes above his chest, and enabling him to peer through the open-work of the cage. Thus the two deadly enemies faced each other. The rajah's stern face paled at sight of the hideous, shapeless thing which met his gaze; but he soon recovered, and the old hard, cruel, sinister look returned. Neranya's black hair and beard had grown long, and they added to the natural ferocity of his aspect. His eyes blazed upon the rajah with a ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... axe in my hand," Nostromo whispered, wrathfully, "that in three strokes would cut through the side down to the water's edge. Moreover, each lighter has a plug in the stern, and I know exactly where it is. I feel it under the sole ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... born a stern resolve—I would conquer my diffidence; I would prove to Fred Hencoop, and any other fellow like him, that I was as good as he was, and could at least equal him in the attractions ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... round on his head, and over one of his shoulders hung a sleeved cloak[FN187] of cramoisy satin, and on the other was a green silk bag full of the aloes-wood, with which he fed the cresset by way of firewood. And they sighted in the stern another man, clad like the first and bearing a like cresset, and in the barge were two hundred white slaves, standing ranged to the right and left; and in the middle a throne of red gold, whereon sat a handsome young ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... gravely holding out his hand to Harry's elder brother. But, though hands were joined, the salutation was only formal and stern on both sides. ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Wallace to be found, like a wild flower, 215 All over his dear Country; [S] left the deeds Of Wallace, like a family of Ghosts, To people the steep rocks and river banks, Her natural sanctuaries, with a local soul Of independence and stern liberty. 220 Sometimes it suits me better to invent A tale from my own heart, more near akin To my own passions and habitual thoughts; Some variegated story, in the main Lofty, but the unsubstantial structure melts 225 Before ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... the two methods are never likely to be again so impressively contrasted as in King Lear and Le Pere Goriot. But, in truth, it must be impossible for any one who feels Balzac's power not to feel also how it is heightened by Balzac's absolute calm—a calm entirely different from that stern composure which was merely a point of style and not an attitude of the heart with the old Greek tragedians—a calm which, unlike theirs, insulates, so to speak, and is intended to insulate, the writer, to the end that his individuality, of which only the electric current ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... Judson remained closeted in the stern cabin of the "Mongoose", listening, poring over chart upon chart and taking notes, and for an hour the marine at the door heard nothing but things like these: "Now you'll have to put in here if there's any sea on. That current is ridiculously under-estimated, and it sets ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... horse-cloths and similar articles for ensigns of war. The struggling English, believing that they saw a new Scottish army rising as it were from the earth, were struck with panic, and broke and fled; and all that followed was mere butchery, though perfectly in accordance with the stern laws of the field. The English army was routed even more completely than was the French army, five centuries later, at Waterloo. Scott, with his usual skill, has made use of this incident in "The Lord of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... matter might be offered, which shall be withholden now. For many years I have battled through the world, an orphan, on my own account; and it is not surprising that the vehemence of my early days should have gradually sobered down before the stern realities that have at every step encountered me. Long before I received the unwelcome intelligence, that it was literally incumbent upon me to revisit the spot of my beloved mother's dissolution, the mention of its name had ceased to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... in Germany who had come from a far away Swiss castle; Count Rudolph of Hapsburg, a good, honest man with a good, honest, homely face, but bringing with him a stern sense of justice and of right, and a determination to put down the lawlessness of the savage German barons among whom ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... agree with him he'd tip them over. Discussion ceased at once. The four mariners instantly declared that he was right. Churchill even went so far as to say that he had known it was the Lusitania all the time; that he could always tell her by her funnels. Innes, who was seated in the stern and filling his position to the limit, acknowledged that for an instant—oh, the merest fraction of a second!—he had thought the steamer was the Ne'er-do-well, Berlin to Kansas City, but that he had seen his mistake almost instantly! ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... forbidding aspect from the Bay, making his first haven May 16. At that time, we can readily imagine, in this northern region the weather would not be very balmy. Even now the wild rocky shore stretches along drearily—though with certain stern picturesqueness—as far as eye can reach, and then must have been even less attractive, as it showed no ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... columns of mist weakly striving upward out of it: the whole hacked by those mountains Mr. Gray mentions, with belts of olive orchard on their flanks, and wild paths furrowing and wrinkling their stern faces. To your right there is a sheeted cataract falling from the basins of the town laundry, where the toil of the washers melts into music, and their chatter, like that of birds, drifts brokenly across the abyss to you. While you sit musing or murmuring in your rapture, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... was as majestic as you like; she was absolute; she could be stern; she was not above being angry; but she was still a woman, who loved grace, beauty, ornament,—her toilette, robes, jewels;—who considered the arrangements of her palace with attention, and liked both light and colour; who kept a keen eye on her Court, and exacted prompt and willing obedience from ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... sat at the stern, his brow dark and threatening, his arms folded and his lips set. His thoughts were too deep for utterance and no one ventured to disturb him. Though the pale countenance was outwardly calm, yet a volcano was raging in that ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... removed, gleamed down into this part of the hold, was a huge ground-tier butt, headless as Charles the First. And herein was a mat nicely spread for repose; a discovery which accounted for what had often proved an enigma. Not seldom Annatoo had been among the missing; and though, from stem to stern, loudly invoked to come forth and relieve the poignant distress of her anxious friends, the dame remained perdu; silent and invisible as a spirit. But in her own good time, she would mysteriously emerge; or be suddenly espied ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... battle-axe, And bade his followers mount their hacks, With a look on his countenance so stern, So little of fun, so full of fight, That, when he came in the Count's full sight, In something of haste and more of fright, The Count rode out of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... may be the captain of his soul, which is quite a different matter), and that the claim so universally put forward, that the leopard can change his spots, is simply an excuse for criticising the superficial pigmentation of other leopards. Dermod Randall, Miss G.B. STERN'S hero, is certainly not the master of his fate, which is inexorably moulded by the belief of his relatives, ascendant and descendant, that he must inherit the vices of his father, a particularly pard-like specimen, and may be expected at any minute ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... "It's mean," he admitted, "but I can't help but laugh when I think of how he looked kneeling there in stern resolve to be covered with glory, and the transformation when he was ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... colonial expression, the rider has been cutting up his tobacco and filling his pipe, while several feet in the air, nothing to front of him excepting a small lock of the animal's mane (the head being between its legs), and very little behind him, the stern being down; the horse either giving a turn to the air, or ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... favored him and he soon reached the boat, which seemed to be large enough, with some crowding, to carry the American party. It swung with its stern toward the shore, to which it was held by a rope that was passed ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... and surely no one will care to deny that the fleet which has practised in quiet years the system that must be followed in war will start with a great advantage on its side when it is at last confronted with the stern realities of naval warfare. ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... Pipe-stone Quarry. And they stood there on the meadow, 70 With their weapons and their war-gear, Painted like the leaves of Autumn, Painted like the sky of morning, Wildly glaring at each other; In their faces stern defiance, 75 In their hearts the feuds of ages, The hereditary hatred, The ancestral thirst of vengeance. Gitche Manito, the mighty, The creator of the nations, 80 Looked upon them with compassion, With paternal love and pity; ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... need of decisive victory. With them questions of strategic dispositions, offering chances of such victory, were of more importance than questions of supply or internal politics. They knew with what rapidity the Federal soldiers recovered their morale; and they realised but too keenly the stern determination which inspired the North. They had seen the hosts of invasion retire in swift succession, stricken and exhausted, before their victorious bayonets. Thousands of prisoners had been marched to Richmond; ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... one of the three that was decked throughout. The official persons and the crew on board her were sixteen in number. The two other vessels were of the class called caravels, and were decked fore and aft, but not amidships, the stem and the stern being built so as to rise high out of the water. One of them, the "Pinta," was manned by a crew of thirty, commanded by Martin Alonzo Pinzon. The other, the "Nina," had Vincent Yanez Pinzon for captain, and a crew of twenty-four men. The whole number of adventurers ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... race; and a like difference may also be discerned in the character of different families in the same city. And while this holds good of all cities, we have many instances of it in reading the history of Rome. For we find the Manlii always stern and stubborn; the Valerii kindly and courteous; the Claudii haughty and ambitious; and many families besides similarly distinguished from one another by ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... experience, I had great difficulties with the Bible doctrine of future retribution. I came again and again up to what it taught about the eternal penalties of persistent sin. It seemed as if I could not believe it: it must not be true. Time and again I would back away from the stern teachings of Jesus Christ and the Apostles concerning this matter. But one night I was waiting upon God that I might know the Holy Spirit in a fuller manifestation of His presence and His power. God gave me what I sought that night and with this larger experience of the Holy Spirit's presence and ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... set sail but a few days, a squall of wind came on, and on the fifth night we sprang a leak. All hands were sent to the pumps, but we felt the ship groan in all her planks, and her beams quake from stem to stern; so that it was soon quite clear there was no hope for her, and that all we could do was ...
— Robinson Crusoe - In Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... you doing over here, fellows?" asked Dory Dornwood, as the four passengers of the Missisquoi tumbled in over the stern of the Goldwing. ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... fierce manner of his in command, and inexorableness in punishing, when his men became used not to do amiss or disobey, was felt to be wholesome and advantageous, as well as just, and his violent spirit, stern voice, and harsh aspect, which in a little while grew familiar to them, they esteemed terrible not to themselves, but only to their enemies. But his uprightness in judging, more especially pleased ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... light of a torch borne at the stern of the hostile wherry, he saw that the pursuers had approached within a short distance of the object of their quest. The shot had taken effect upon the waterman who rowed the chase. He had abandoned his oars, and the boat was ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... near it, Saint-Pierre, the ancient Abbey church of a Benedictine monastery, now used as barracks, deserved a lingering visit for the sake of its splendid windows, the dwelling-place of Abbots and Bishops who look down with stern eyes, holding up their croziers. And these windows, damaged by time, were very singular. Upright, in each lancet-shaped setting of white glass, rose a sword-blade bereft of its point; and in these square-tipped blades Saint Benedict and Saint Maur stood lost in thought, with Apostles ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... hands in his, and held them. He made her meet his eyes. Stern, tender, unflinching eyes they were, with a ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... terms of soft courtliness, saying of her that she was a lady who might, he thought, with a little pains, be won to grace and godliness, could she be preserved from the taint of evil counsellors; so much had the winning sorceries of her exceeding beauty and her blandishments worked even upon his stern honesty and ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... fog. Soot lay on the window-sills, and mingled with street dust to form little black whirlpools in the wind. Even the white river steamers, guiding their heavy laden coal barges with the current, were gray with soft coal smoke. The foam of the river falling in broken cataracts from their stern wheels was oddly ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... you will understand the reason why. My sister was only five years old, I was three and Frank was a babe in the cradle. Broken hearted at the thought of the long separation, and scared by visions of battle my mother begged the soldier not to go; but he was of the stern stuff which makes patriots—and besides his name was already on the roll, therefore he went away to join Grant's army at Vicksburg. "What sacrifice! What folly!" said his pacifist neighbors—"to leave your wife and children ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... arrangement, early enough to be sure of preceding us there. It was, however, a good while before we saw anything of him, and we were already flattering ourselves that we had arrived first when he was suddenly observed in a boat coming under our stern. We were able to tell him that all was well on board, and he brought us a big packet of letters and newspapers that gave us news of home. A little officious gentleman, who said he was a doctor, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... he felt her hostility would be fatal to him. To give her no fresh offence, he fell into her manner, and treated her with a world of distant respect. Then again, who else but she could have warned him against poison? Then again, if so, why look so cold and stern at him? He cast one or two wistful glances at her; but the artful woman of thirty was impenetrable in public to the candid man of twenty-one. Even her passion could not ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... and numbed his stern, merciless system of self-repression. Fate, irresistible and unchangeable, obscured the clear path of duty which he had marked out for himself, and held him for the moment her passive victim. It was no idle ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... had succeeded to the throne of England,—a bright and vigorous young man, eager to be stirring in the world, brave and fearless, with a stern grasp of things beneath all,—a very sheet-anchor of firmness and determined character. Almost at the very opening of his reign, the moment he had secured his throne, he began a negotiation with France which boded no good. He offered to marry Catharine, the King's third daughter, and therewith ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to which he was strictly confined during the voyage, had a window in the stern, and he, too, had therefore some change of prospect. He gazed eagerly at every shifting picture of the land; but most eagerly when he found himself off Cap Samana. With his pocket-glass he explored and discovered the very point of rough ground on the height where he stood with Christophe, less ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... of the curtain, and the full morning light beat on it. As Rischenheim took the paper out, he looked up. He saw the face that glared so eagerly at him; his eyes met Rassendyll's: a sudden suspicion seized him, for the face, though the king's face in every feature, bore a stern resolution and witnessed a vigor that were not the king's. In that instant the truth, or a hint of it, flashed across his mind. He gave a half-articulate cry; in one hand he crumpled up the paper, the other flew to his ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope |
