"Straightforward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the stairs voices. In came three poilus—a pale boy with a weary, gentle expression in his rather faded blue eyes; a dark, heavy fellow of twenty-five or six, with big wrists, big, muscular hands, and a rather unpleasant, lowering face; and a little, middle-aged man with straightforward, friendly hazel eyes and a pointed beard. The pale, boyish one carried a violin made from a cigar box under his arm, just such a violin as the darkies make down South. This violin was very beautifully made, and decorated with a rustic design. ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... with which Telford performed the duties entrusted to him, and the skill with which he directed the works placed under his charge, had secured the general approbation of the gentlemen of the county. His straightforward and outspoken manner had further obtained for him the friendship of many of them. At the meetings of quarter-sessions his plans had often to encounter considerable opposition, and, when called upon to defend them, he did so with such firmness, persuasiveness, and good ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... it generally consists in using words or phrases ostensibly differing, as if they were equivalent: those addressed being expected to renounce their right to reduce the argument to strict forms of proof, as needless pedantry in dealing with an author so palpably straightforward. If an orator says—'Napoleon conquered Europe; in other words, he murdered five millions of his fellow creatures'—and is allowed to go on, he may infer from the latter of these propositions many things which the former of them would hardly have ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... Head of Medusa, and they watched "the divine sunsets on the Arno, turning it to pure gold under the bridges." Sometimes they were joined by Hiram Powers, who was one of their earliest friends in Florence, "our chief friend and favorite," Mrs. Browning said of him, and she found him a "simple, straightforward, genial American, as simple as the man of genius he has proved himself need be." Another friend of these early days was Miss Boyle, a niece of the Earl of Cork, somewhat a poet, withal, who, with her mother, ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... a new era when earnest, honest thought, and bold straightforward speech alone can effect any thing. It is the time for fearlessness and straightforwardness if there ever was one in our history. We have a great war in hand, and great political reforms and measures of tremendous importance are crowding thickly around it, while ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... qualities." La Bruyere summed up his attacks in a preface to the eighth edition of the "Caracteres" in 1694. He then retired again to his independence as a crafty old bachelor, and Saint Simon gives us a pleasant snapshot of him in these latest years, "a very straightforward man, capital company, simple, with nothing of the pedant about him, and ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... in a domestic and straightforward condition, and the windmiller no longer hesitated to come in. But he was less disposed to a hard and triumphant self-satisfaction than was common with him when his will ended well. A poor and unsuccessful ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... straightforward and transparent a character as "Old Put" should have become the subject of controversy. Too much is claimed for him by some disputants, and much too little is conceded to him by others. He was certainly as far from being a rustic booby as he ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... "In safe, straightforward fashion rather, and in broad daylight, the which is surer than stealing it aboard in ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... bogie. Children, like savages and ignorant adults, believe and invent and retail among themselves the most extraordinary and grotesque theories about the structure and functions of their bodies, the nature and causation of their illnesses and aches and pains. A plain and straightforward statement of the actual facts about these things not only will not shock or repel them, or make them old before their time, but, on the contrary, will interest them greatly, relieve their minds of many unfounded dreads, and save them from the commonest and most hurtful mistakes of humanity—those ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... him a straightforward answer. My hand was actually on the way to the spot where I felt the red box pressing against my side, when he rose from his seat and strode toward me; and a sudden passion ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... mind, fervid and impassioned, was in all his compositions, except Don Juan, eagerly fixed on the catastrophe. He ever held the goal full in view, and drove to it in the most immediate manner. By this straightforward simplicity all the interest which intricacy excites was of necessity disregarded. He is therefore not treated justly when it is supposed that he might have done better had he shown more art: the wonder is, that he should have ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... held slightly arched, palm down, nearly at arm's length before the breast; the right extended, flat, palm down, and pointing forward, is pushed from the top of the breast, straightforward, underneath, and beyond the left. (Shoshoni and ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... off munching and looked at my wife. Even in my eagerness I was struck by the singular intelligence of that look. There was nothing covert in it. On the contrary it was a most straightforward and transparent look. Kendal's knowledge—which might have sought cover if you had hunted it—had come out to ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... are here under discussion. Consequently, by force of the past selective adaptation of men's habits of thought, it happens that the requirements of beauty, simply, are for the most part best satisfied by inexpensive contrivances and structures which in a straightforward manner suggest both the office which they are to perform and the method of serving their end. It may be in place to recall the modern psychological position. Beauty of form seems to be a question of facility of apperception. The proposition could ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... had grown into a dishonest man. Monastic religion is like a varnish, it only serves to bring out the true colour, and is powerless to alter it by more than a shade. Those who have lived in religious communities know that human nature is the same there as in the world—that a man who is not straightforward may grow in monastic zeal day by day, but he will never grow straightforward. On the other hand, if a man be a good man, religion will make him better, but it must not be a religion ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... his employer's side of the case and become imbued with a grim determination to have no more cuts if soldiering can prevent it. Unfortunately for the character of the workman, soldiering involves a deliberate attempt to mislead and deceive his employer, and thus upright and straightforward workmen are compelled to become more or less hypocritical. The employer is soon looked upon as an antagonist, if not an enemy, and the mutual confidence which should exist between a leader and his men, the enthusiasm, the feeling that they are ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... scheme of sending it in the care of Nicholson and Snow because Marian had told her that she meant to enter their contest immediately she reached San Francisco, and she would have left them her address. On the last reading of the letter she had written, she decided that it was a manly, straightforward production, which should interest and attract any girl. But how was she to sign it? After thinking deeply for a long time, she wrote "Philip Sanders, General Delivery," and below she added ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... amazement; but his straightforward, quiet wife, had been for several years gradually coming to the opinion she had just expressed, and the death of her eldest son had affected her deeply. The merchant, finding that he was not very good at ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... subject that had, quite apart from its spiritual side, the same appeal for her that the art and practice of the theatre has for many others. (It is hard to imagine any simile that would have shocked Frederica more than this; in all her years of strenuous, straightforward life, she had never, as she would have said, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... unknown to the general public, had been occupying the attention of biologists for a hundred years and more, but it is distinctly implied that this was not the case. When Mr. Darwin said it was "conceivable that a naturalist might" arrive at the theory of descent, straightforward readers took him to mean that though this was conceivable, it had never, to Mr. Darwin's knowledge, been done. If we had a notion that we had already vaguely heard of the theory that men and the lower animals were descended from common ancestors, we must have ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... she went to sleep her mind, in spite of her, had imaged for her again the interesting, clever-looking face of the stranger under the roof, with his clear, straightforward glance that seemed to see so much, his smile which disclosed splendid teeth, his strongly moulded chin. And she had owned, frankly, driven to the confession just to see if it ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... say there is, Fanny. Very strange, indeed! 'Put off his defence!' Why should a man need any defence to his wife if he acts in a straightforward way? His own language condemns him: 'Wrong to stand out!' Now, will either of you tell me that Mr. Robarts would really have thought it wrong to refuse that invitation? I say that that is hypocrisy. There is no other word for it." By this time the poor wife, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... humour, as it is shown in the great body of comic writers who are represented by Mark Twain and the "Genial Showman," are its rusticity and its puritanism. The fun is the fun of rough villagers, who use quaint, straightforward words, and have developed, or carried over in the Mayflower, a slang of their own. They do not want anything too refined; they are not in the least like the farm- lad to whose shirt a serpent clung as he was ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... not understand any question in this form, or if you do not agree to any of the requirements stated upon it, return it to Headquarters, and say so in a straightforward manner. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... told her story in a straightforward manner. One of her generous projects was to have a rather grand funeral, with all the girls in the shop attending in a procession. "What a child she is!" thought Mr. Schriven, with difficulty repressing a laugh, but he proceeded very gravely to ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... believe in it. Their country was wronged. Here was one to set her right. Men whose honor was beyond question became secret agents of this power. The state was honeycombed and mined; society was a tangle of plots. The king was helpless, though his only wish was for the people's welfare. Honest and straightforward, what could he do against this far-reaching machination? The very advisers by his side were corrupted through mistaken patriotism. The idea that they were playing into the hands of the foreigner certainly ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... was brought before the people as a candidate for President of the United States, he was physically unable to speak with much force. But twenty years ago, for clearness of statement, and for an easy and straightforward method of speech he had few superiors. His language was excellent, his manner that of a man who had something to say and was intent upon saying it. He was at no time a tricky orator, nor did he aim at rousing the feelings, but in the clearest possible manner he would ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... Cary was honest, straightforward, and thoughtful. Flora was crafty, deceitful, and brilliant, but her innocent eyes and baby ways made her cleverness seem like that of a precocious child, so that she ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... you'd mentioned them then," said the straightforward Peggy; "as it is, we'll have to descend till this ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... ruler; and the Son felt himself cruelly hurt to be torn away so rudely from his hope and inclination. Accordingly, how dangerous soever for the position of the Family a declining of the Ducal grace might seem, the straightforward Father ventured nevertheless to lay open to the Duke, in a clear and distinct statement, how his purpose had always been to devote his Son, in respect both of his inclination and his hitherto studies, to the Clerical Profession; ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... interested in the antislavery cause, in good politics and sound principles; yet he saw that it would be useless for him to get up and preach against what he did not like. There were plenty of other earnest, serious-minded men like Garrison and Whittier who were fighting against the evil in the straightforward, blunt way. Lowell was as interested as they in having the wrongs righted; but he was more cool-headed than the rest. He considered the matter. A joke, he said to himself, will carry the crowd ten times as quickly as a serious protest; ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... begged us to explain, so Oswald did, in that clear, straightforward way some people think he has, and that no one can suspect for an instant. And he ended by saying how far from comfortable it would be to have Mr. Turnbull coming with his thin mouth and his tight legs, and that we were Bastables, ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... of deportation schemes, proposed in the eighteenth century and deliberately designed to remove from our country all Negroes both free and slave. It seems, therefore, safe to conclude that the colonization movement of 1816-17 was at that time sincere in its purpose and straightforward in its aims. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... in her environment, Ponatah remained in many ways quite aboriginal. For instance, she was embarrassingly direct and straightforward; she entirely lacked hypocrisy, and that which puzzled or troubled her she boldly put into words. There came a time when Bill discovered that Ponatah's eyes, when they looked at him, were more than friendly, that most of the services ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Bill's straightforward gaze of blank amazement made Daisy laugh, but she only said: "I can't tell you why she does such things, but she does all ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... begin. I am here to teach, and you are here to learn. As your master I expect prompt obedience. I shall look to see each of you do your best to acquire the knowledge which your parents have sent you here to obtain. Above all, I shall expect that every boy here will be straightforward, honorable, and truthful. I shall not expect to find that all are capable of making equal progress; there are clever boys and stupid boys, just as there are clever men and stupid men, and it would be unjust to expect that one can keep up to the ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... his conscience into his legal practise to a greater degree than is common with lawyers. He held (with Blackstone) that law is for the purpose of securing justice, and he would never make use of any technicality for the purpose of thwarting justice. When others maneuvered, he met them by a straightforward dealing. He never did or could take an unfair advantage. On the wrong side of a case, he was worse than useless to his client, and he knew it. He would never take such a case if it could be avoided. His partner Herndon tells how he gave some free and unprofessional advice to one who offered him ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... replied Mr. Hawley. "Everything is corrected and any exchange of letters made before it is cast. Men who handle type constantly become very expert in detecting errors, many compositors being able to read type upside down, or in reversed order, as easily as you can read a straightforward line ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... eyes, as I have already observed, from the skill he had at various times displayed in archery, morris-dancing, and other obsolete accomplishments. Proofs, however, were too strong. Ready-Money Jack told his story in a straightforward independent way, nothing daunted by the presence in which he found himself. He had suffered from various depredations on his sheep-fold and poultry-yard, and had at length kept watch, and caught the delinquent in the very ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... around his adversary, and keeping his eye on his uncle's property. His mother and brother, on the contrary, who were really disinterested, generous, and lofty, had been accused of greed because they had acted with straightforward simplicity. Philippe's covetousness was fully roused by Monsieur Hochon, who gave him all the details of his uncle's property. In the first secret conversation which he held with the octogenarian, they agreed that Philippe must not awaken Max's ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... let us halt a moment and glance around. As we hinted at the outset of this study, it would be idle to attempt to derive every comic effect from one simple formula. The formula exists well enough in a certain sense, but its development does not follow a straightforward course. What I mean is that the process of deduction ought from time to time to stop and study certain culminating effects, and that these effects each appear as models round which new effects resembling them take their places in a circle. These ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... Mr. Scott affirmed, "to the trust in point of abilities." Mr. Duane—this was Mr. Adams's own impression—"has a sly, surveying eye,... very sensible, I think, and very artful." And finally there was Mr. Livingston, "a downright, straightforward many" who reminded Mr. Adams that Massachusetts had once hung some Quakers, affirmed positively that civil war would follow the renunciation of allegiance to Britain, and threw out vague hints of the Goths ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... with the baby, we thought that it was her child. To the question, "Who was she?" she had replied in a straightforward way that she was unmarried. She did not say—a prostitute. Only the master of the apartment made use of that frightful word. The supposition that she had a child suggested to me the idea of removing her from her ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... had only looked at it. It was as far as he could go. Now that to go farther had become what he called a duty the perversity of his nerves was such that they refused. It was like him. He could always do the forbidden, the dare-devil, the crazily mad; but when it came to the reasonable and straightforward something in him balked. Here he was at what should have been the beginning of the end, and the demon which at another time would have driven him on was holding him back. Temptation had worked itself round the other way. It was temptation not to do, ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... so often at Rouen, that we are inclined to ask the question whether we, English people, really possess a higher working morality than the French. Are we really more straightforward and honourable than they? Are there bounds which they overstep and which we cannot pass? It has been our pride for centuries to be considered more noble and manly than many of our neighbours; is there any ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... their condition; therefore they are not those who have once lived on this earth, and passed off through death; for such, once dead, this scripture affirms, know not anything—they are in a condition in which there is "no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom." This is a plain, straightforward, literal statement; there is no mistaking its meaning; and if it is true, then it is not true that the unseen agents working through Spiritualism, are the spirits ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... taught us to see him, with strong, serious face,—austere, but not harsh,—velvet coat, white ruffles, and white curls. He stands before us as the undisputed founder of what is now recognized as American diplomacy. Straightforward, sound to the core, unswerving, veracious, exemplifying in every act the candor of the Puritan, so congruous with the new simple life of a nation of common people. I think we shall like best to study him as he stands at the door of the ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... bending forward to listen with the most composed deference, but pressed not in the slightest degree upon her confidence by any question or look down towards the letter, or up towards the lady's face, but straightforward looked he, till, quite provoked by his dulness, Mrs. Beaumont took the matter up again, and, in a new tone, said, "To be candid with you, my dear friend, this is a subject on which I feel some awkwardness and reluctance in speaking to you—for of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... was tried before the magistrates: and my grandfather told his story from the beginning, quite straightforward, just as I've told it to you. And the magistrates decided that, taking one thing with another, he'd had a great deal of provocation, and fined him five shillings. And there the matter ended. But now you know the ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... landscapes. The general tone of decoration was dark—red wall-papers and fittings stained brown. It was all clean and simple, and there was a total absence of ornament, I went and walked in the garden, which was of the same very straightforward kind—plain grass, shrubberies, winding paths, with comfortable wooden seats in sheltered places; one or two big beds, evidently of old-fashioned perennials, and some trellises for ramblers. The garden was adjoined by a sort of wilderness, with big ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... prove to be quite such a straightforward business as might have been expected. The truth is that, whatever a few monks and physicians may have thought of it, the proposed expedition terrified the ordinary seafaring population of Palos. It was thought to be the wildest and maddest ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... situation had passed without undue effort. Unhappily the man reopened it. Whilst using a crowbar as a wedge he endeavored to put matters on a straightforward footing. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... appearing a girl. He was pleased also at the way she nodded to him and said 'good evening' and looked him over from head to foot with such open curiosity and sincere friendliness." She sings too much to please the old housekeeper! "She is so pert and too straightforward with her speech." It is noteworthy too that she talks ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... very start Pierrette was hurt by the remarks of her two cousins,—hurt, she knew not why. Her straightforward, open nature, hitherto left to itself, was not given to reflection. Incapable of thinking that her cousins were hard, she was fated to find it out slowly through suffering. After breakfast the brother and sister, pleased with Pierrette's astonishment at the house and anxious to enjoy ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... my nightmare and daymare too, and the sin has been the 'Blot on my escutcheon.' I could look in nobody's face, with a 'Thou canst not say I did it'—I know, I did it. And so I resolved to wash away the transgression, and translate the tragedy over again. It was an honest straightforward proof of repentance—was it not? and I have completed it, except the transcription and last polishing. If AEschylus stands at the foot of my bed now, I shall have a little breath to front him. I have done my duty by him, not indeed ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... midst of her narrative of the journey; it may have been in reply to some other question interjected by another of her examiners: Passez outre, as she herself says. She immediately resumes the simple and straightforward tale.) ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... engage in public business, to avoid above all things that self-will which, as Plato says, is of the family of solitude, and to become longsuffering and patient, qualities which some foolish people hold very cheap. Marcius, plain and straightforward, thinking it to be the duty of a brave man to bear down all opposition, and not reflecting that it is rather a sign of weakness and feebleness of mind to be unable to restrain one's passion, flung away in a rage, bitterly irritated against the people. The young aristocracy of Rome, who had ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Roddy, not to allow that the shock may have unhinged his mind for a time? . . . No, I'm playing the humbug in my turn, and I'll own up. It was wicked, if you will: but it was great in its way, and determined . . . and women, you know, always fall slaves to that sort of thing. It was straightforward, too: Jimmy said Jack had given his man fair warning. Jimmy—but you know that boy's way—gave me the impression that he didn't condemn Jack's craze as unsportsmanlike: merely for being, as he put it, a thought bloodthirstier than any line of sport he himself felt any inclination to follow. ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "Still, he's rather head-strong, and he hasn't told me why he goes to the Butte; though the girl's father gave me a hint. I like Taunton—he's perfectly straightforward—and I'd almost made up my mind to ask your opinion about the matter, ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... fair-play English. He was no screened assassin of character, either with pen or pencil; no journalist's hack to stab in secret—concealing his name, or assuming a forged one; no masked caricaturist, responsible to none. His philosophy was of the straightforward, clear-sighted English school; his theories—stern, simple, and unadorned—thoroughly English; his determination—proved in his love as well as in his hate—quite English; there is a firmness of purpose, a rough dignity, a John-Bull look in his broad intelligent face; the very ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... descriptions of works of art, such as that of Ganymede and Eros playing with knucklebones, [1003] but prosaically calls himself back to the point from these pleasing digressions by such an expression as "but this would take me too far from my song." His business is the straightforward tale and nothing else. The astonishing geography of the fourth book reminds us of the interest of the age in that subject, stimulated no doubt by the researches of ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... number, and this would be no help to identification at a distance since all the graves are thus marked, and at a little way off these pegs are not visible. How she found the grave remained a mystery in the family, as no one believed her straightforward story that she had been present at the funeral. With my present knowledge the matter is simple enough, for I now know that the consciousness can leave the body, take part in events going on at a distance, and, returning, impress on the physical ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... give it, however, and with a clear conscience. Grant wrote as he had fought; with a simple, straightforward dignity, with a style that is not a style at all but the very absence of it, and therefore the best of all literary methods. It happened that Clemens had been comparing some of Grant's chapters with Caesar's Commentaries, and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Springfield, Massachusetts, near which place he owned a farm. He had a moderate fortune, and he was a most estimable man. Mr. Chapman had known him for many years, during which time he had always borne himself in an upright, straightforward manner, free from all reproach. Lately, however, he had become involved in some very serious difficulties in the West, and Mr. Chapman had advised him to see me, and obtain my assistance in extricating himself from his troubles. Mr. Chapman concluded by saying, ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... spending most of her days at Linndale, and he had a vague idea that she and Rodney together had been elaborating still further on the plans for the house. It was the furtiveness of it rather than the fact itself that troubled him. He was open and straightforward himself. Why couldn't ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... devil. It is also said that you broke the laws of God and man in your dealings with your relations, and that Parson Inch refuses to give you the right hand of fellowship until you can prove in a fair and straightforward way that you are not the man some ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... and merriest excursion was to Percy's lodgings, where he had various Greek curiosities which he wished to show them; and Theodora consented to come with her brother and sister in a simple straightforward way that Violet admired. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beautiful!" she burst out, finally; "and so was Faust; and I had never been to the opera in all my life before, and, of course—" blushing and palpitating, but still looking at him without a shade of falsehood in her innocent, straightforward eyes; "of course, I couldn't. How could I be so silly, and vain, and presuming, ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with Mac and my little maid, I passed through the crowd of female passengers on deck, and sought the privacy of the saloon. Before I had been long there, two ladies came to me, and in their cool, straightforward manner, questioned me. ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... smacks more of the childish plainness with which high and low talk in the family circles from Tangier to Malayia, than of prurience or suggestiveness. The Oriental cannot understand that it is improper to refer in straightforward terms to anything which Allah has created or of which the Koran treats. But in his conversation, as in his folk-lore, there is no subtle corruption or covert licentiousness—none of the vicious suggestion and false sentiment that pervade ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... certain restrictions in reference to the marriage, if it came off, which I should feel it my duty as a father to impose; and which I shall proceed, in short, to explain to you. As a man of the world, my dear Sir, you know as well as I do, that young ladies don't give very straightforward answers on the subject of their prepossessions in favour of young gentlemen. But I got enough out of her to show me that you had made pretty good use of your time—no occasion to despond, you know—I leave you to make her speak plain; it's more in ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... to the charge later on in a set of verses in which he pretends to pay tribute to Punch's bygone force—"honest if delicate"—and to Judy's and Toby's straightforward roughness. After making charges of ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... reasons for accepting the position here offered him being that he wished to take over a piece of property near Woodford from his brother-in-law, who found he could not manage it. As a practical farmer, and a straightforward capable man of business, he has gradually acquired the general confidence of the tenants here. That they are, as a rule, quite able to pay the rents which they have been "coerced" into refusing to pay, he fully ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... felt and unresisted, even by those who perhaps had been before prejudiced against her. Various were the characters she assumed in society—assumed to suit her own purpose, made up of art; even at home she sometimes found herself seeking for design, as if it were impossible to go straightforward, to act without some reason. We shall find, however, as we proceed, that she had one confidant at home, to whom, when exhausted by the fatigue of planning, she would confess herself, and who was ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... of course, only an incident in the great whirl of operations which began on the 3rd of February, when General Macdonald with the Highland Brigade moved westward from Modder River and seized Koodoesberg. Hitherto we had been waging a very straightforward kind of war, and Lord Roberts's masterly tactics between Modder River and Paardeberg were the first hint we had given our enemy that we also could be cunning. When I arrived at Modder River the wheels of this great operation were ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... it a very manly and straightforward letter. He had not acted so very badly after all, she thought; her father's strong will had evidently coerced him, and she knew how strong that will could be. He had meant no harm; he had only said pleasant things because it was his nature to say them; ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... about him. He was transparently simple, straightforward and unselfish. His capacity for work was prodigious, and when his own work happened to take less than his full time he characteristically found activity in serving a scientist or exercising an animal. So he used to help to send up balloons with self-recording instruments ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... provided the goal of his ambition could be reached. Throughout his career his main object was to rule his countrymen, and that object he attained by the adoption of methods which, whether they be regarded as tortuous or straightforward, morally justifiable or worthy of condemnation, were of a surety ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... pocket and proceeding to remove and roll up with his usual precise neatness the tape that confined them. He pushed the typed sheets across the little table. "I don't think you will find any error. The estate accounts are all straightforward. But there is an item in the personal accounts that I must ask you to consider. It is a sum of eight thousand pounds standing to your credit that I do not know what to do with. You will remember that when you ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... Mazarin, "was a great politician and therein shone his vast superiority over me. I am a straightforward, simple man; that's my great disadvantage. I am of a frankness of ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... strange streak in his nature which prompted him to conceal what he felt most strongly; to leave to others the task of guessing out his attitude; to stand on appearances without attempting to justify them, no matter how simple the justification might be. A moment's frank, straightforward talk might have caught Daly's attention, for the lumberman was, after all, a shrewd reader of character where his prejudices were not concerned. Then events would have turned out ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... to anything incomplete, and playfully, though half murmuringly, submitted to his 'good governess,' and let her keep him in excellent order. She knew where all his property was, and, in her quaint, straightforward way, would refuse to give him whatever 'was not good ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... companion by Lawyer Lloyd's son. Engrossed as he was in the making of money, a big, burly, gruff, uncultured contractor, he found time somehow to acquire a great respect for Mr. Lloyd. He thought him rather too scrupulous and straightforward a man to be his lawyer, but he admired him greatly, nevertheless; and, although he said nothing about it, secretly congratulated himself upon the way things were going. He had little idea that the circle of influence Bert had unconsciously ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... Jane. "You look very tired. Forget Irene for the time. I shall be back before long, and will send your lunch up to you. We will just have your mother's permission, and then we shall feel in a straightforward position. She may, of course, wish you to ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... new order suffered many trials more especially after the apostasy of its vicar- general Ochino in 1544, but with the blessing of God these difficulties were overcome. The Capuchins rendered invaluable service to religion by their simple straightforward style of preaching so opposed as it was to the literary vapourings that passed for sermons at the time, by their familiar intercourse with the poor whom they assisted in both spiritual and temporal misfortunes, by their unswerving loyalty to the Pope and by the work they accomplished on ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... jealous, there's every reason," P'ing Erh answered, "but for you to be jealous on her account isn't right. Her conduct is really straightforward, and her deportment upright, but your conduct is actuated by an evil heart, so much so that even I don't feel my heart at ease, not to say ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... do you know about the state you talk of?" said Mme. Bonacieux, shrugging her shoulders. "Be satisfied with being a plain, straightforward citizen, and turn to that side ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to persuade Denisov, though he instinctively felt that the way advised by Tushin and the other officers was the safest, and though he would have been glad to be of service to Denisov. He knew his stubborn will and straightforward hasty temper. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... itself. In a word, they mean—and everybody agrees with them—that the greatest capacity is entitled to the greatest reward; and, to use the mercantile phraseology,—which has, at least, the merit of being straightforward,—that salaries must be governed by capacity and ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... and contradictions in his character. Take for instance all that strange and picturesque episode of Hagar: see the splendid contrast between the craft and commercial guile of his dealings in Egypt and with Abimelech, and the simple, straightforward godliness of his later years. No, all those difficulties only attract me. Do you happen to know—of course you would know—do those German books, or the others, give anywhere any additional details ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... became desirable in her eyes, in her usual straightforward manner, she frankly sought him out and demanded his attention. His sudden appearance on the evening of her loss of self-confidence, the appeal his rescue had made to her girlish imagination, and the charm of the forbidden that hung over Old Angus McRae's ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... criticism as this (and I notice it only because it expresses the feelings into which many sensible and thoughtful minds have been fashioned by infection) the answer is simple and straightforward. It is just as impossible to generalize granite and slate, as it is to generalize a man and a cow. An animal must be either one animal or another animal; it cannot be a general animal, or it is no animal; ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... he, "but I have thought so much about them, and I have studied and consulted so much about them, that I think I have provided against all the dangers we have reason to expect. To me the whole business seems like very plain, straightforward sailing." ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... the point of audacity with which the fabulist was wont to mock at his readers. And still more so is this the case with others. 'The Horse and the Fly' states one of the unanswerable problems of life in quite a realistic and straightforward way. A fly startles a cab-horse, the coach is overset; a newly-married pair within and the driver, a man with a wife and family, are all killed. The horse continues to gallop off in the loose traces, and ends the tragedy by running ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the descending fire. It pursues and fells them to the earth. As they fly, their eyes are turned towards the dreadful faces in the air. Some hurry through a portico, huddled together, falling men, and women clasping to their arms dead babies scorched with flame. One old man stares straightforward, doggedly awaiting death. One woman scowls defiance as she dies. A youth has twisted both hands in his hair, and presses them against his ears to drown the screams and groans and roaring thunder. They trample upon prostrate forms already stiff. Every shape and attitude of sudden ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... often lonely. But she was buoyed up by the thought that Richard Dewey was somewhere in the State, and that the two messengers whom she had sent out would eventually find him. She felt great confidence in Ben, and also in Bradley, who had impressed her as an honest, straightforward man, though illiterate and not at ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... and delicately made his inquiries, and the girl answered them in a plain, straightforward manner. Her story corroborated all that had previously been related by young Pearson, and left no doubt in the mind of the detective that the occurrences of the eventful afternoon had been correctly detailed. He could not, however, ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... Coll struck me as being a downright, straightforward man, who had a pretty stiff pull of it to bring up and educate his children decently on seven pounds a month—seaman's wages.—I got him a berth as wharfinger to a steamship company at twelve pounds, and he was made as happy as ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... a few sparsely distributed grey hairs left on her square head, her face was full of wrinkles, her eye was hard and cold. From that time on, however, she did not seem to age. She did not quarrel any more, attended to her affairs in a straightforward, self-assured way, and observed her increasing impoverishment with ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... gaiety: "That's a fine scruple! Was it your husband who instructed you to tell me of it? I know, however, that he affects some delicacy in this matter. For my own part, I believe myself to be as honest as he is, and I can only repeat that, if I had a son like yours, so straightforward and good, and candidly loving, I should let him marry whomsoever he pleased in his own way. The Buongiovannis—good heavens! the Buongiovannis—why, despite all their rank and lineage and the money they still possess, it will be a great honour ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... righteousness are better than all emotion and all dogmatism and all churchism, says the world, and Christianity says much the same; but plain, straightforward righteousness and everyday morality come most surely when a man is keeping close to Christ. In a word, everything that can adorn the character with beauty, and clothe the Church with glorious apparel, whatsoever things are lovely and of good report, all that the world ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... would beat twice their number of Turks in less than no time, but, actually, the restricted Peninsula suits the Turkish tactics to a 'T.' They have always been good at trench work where their stupid men have only simple, straightforward duties to perform, namely, in sticking on and shooting anything that comes up to them. They do this to perfection; I never saw braver soldiers, in fact, than some of the best of them. When we advance, no matter the shelling we give them, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... the rhymes where they are peculiar are often repellent, and so far from adding charm to the verse that they appear as obstacles. This must not blind one from recognizing that Gerard Hopkins, where he is simple and straightforward in his rhyme is a master of it—there are many instances,—but when he indulges in freaks, his childishness is incredible. His intention in such places is that the verses should be recited as running on without pause, and the rhyme occurring in their ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... with a flushed face, and a sense of relief, angry, nevertheless, that she should read my inmost thoughts, having fancied that my invitation was a stroke of diplomacy. I learned afterward that diplomacy is a mistake for the simple man. With a straightforward "Yes" or "No" he can often turn aside the schemes of the cunning, but on forsaking these he generally finds the other side considerably too clever for him—all of which is a wanton digression from ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... was not even his step-sister. He experienced a thrill of joy over that,—notwithstanding the ugly truth that gave her the new standing; to his simple, straightforward mind, Viola's mother was nothing more than a prostitute. (In his thoughts he employed another word, for he lived in a day when prostitutes were called by another name.) Still, Viola was not to blame for that. That could ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... Dorothy McClain's attitude. From the time they were children the two girls had admired and loved each other, notwithstanding the difference in their natures. Dorothy was one of the happy persons whose attraction was so apparent that few natures resisted it. She was handsome and straightforward and sweet tempered. One girl in a family of six brothers, she had learned a freemasonry of living, and had not the sensitiveness and introspection that troubles so many young girls. Her mother was dead, yet she and her father had been such ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... like a sailor. And indeed a few questions elicited the information that he was a retired sea-captain. He gave his evidence gruffly but honestly, and although he kept so shady a public-house, seemed straightforward enough. He told much the same tale as had appeared in the newspapers. In the hotel on that night there was only himself, his wife and two children, and the staff of servants. Bolton retired to bed saying that he might start early for Gartley, and paid one pound to ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... from them nothing to facilitate their own schemes of aggression—nothing but what they knew before; for the policy of England, defective as it might be on other points, had this great and paramount advantage,-that it was open, honest, and straightforward."-E. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... thing is made so clear and plain, so solid in and out, There isn't any room at all for any kind of doubt. It's just a plain straightforward tale—a tale that lets you know The way they lived in ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... astounding change in four years. An organization of Civil War Veterans was electioneering for him among old soldiers. Powerful Democratic and independent sheets which had once vilified now extolled him. He was sincere, straightforward, and fearless. His demand at Kansas City that the platform read so and so or he would not run, while probably unwise, showed him ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... this idle chat, Kate," said Eli impatiently, "and let the young man answer me. How came you to know Gerard, our son? Prithee now think on a parent's cares, and answer me straightforward, like a soldier ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... promptly and heartily, you will have done a vast amount of good by writing it. * * * * * I have found in every chapter important truths, which I, as a would-be-farmer, needed to know, yet which I did not know, or had but a confused and glimmering consciousness of, before I read your lucid and straightforward exposition of the bases of Agriculture as a science. I would not have my son grow up as ignorant of these truths as I did for many times the price of your book; and, I believe, a copy of that book ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... glad I am back on board," Dimchurch said to Will the evening they re-embarked. "This marching, and chopping trees, and being shot at from ambushes, doesn't suit me. There is nothing manly or straightforward about it. Hand to hand and cutlass to cutlass is what ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... her, looked over her head and smiled at the attractive reflection of Joyce's rosy cheeks and straightforward gray eyes. Then she stopped suddenly and put her arms around her, saying, "What's the matter, ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... am compelled," I answered, "but only in case I am compelled, I shall take the one possible, straightforward course, and shall tell to Lady Rollinson the story I have told ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... my presentation to the supreme king. After much preliminary talk between the Kralahome and myself, through the medium of the interpreter, it had been arranged that my straightforward friend, Captain B——, should conduct us to the royal palace, and procure the interview. Our cheerful escort arrived duly, and we proceeded up the river,—my boy maintaining an ominous silence all ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... Martineau corrected. "Not overwork. Overwork never hurt anyone. Fatigue stops that. A man can work—good straightforward work, without internal resistance, until he drops,—and never hurt himself. You must be working ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... San Pietro's, selecting a wife and marrying her on the spot, out of hand, could only have been the contrivance of a straightforward, practical race. Among the common people betrothals were managed with even greater ease and dispatch, till a very late day in history; and in the record of a certain trial which took place in 1443 there is an account ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... generation that was destined to sport on the slopes of the volcano. The former seems to have been a loyal and homely soul; the latter, restless, imperious, penetrating, unamiable. Their dealings with Rousseau were marked by perfect sincerity and straightforward friendship. They gave him a convenient apartment in a small summer lodge in the park, to which he retreated when he cared for a change from his narrow cottage. He was a constant guest at their table, where he met the highest personages in France. The marshal did not ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... trying to stay the tide of fanaticism at the north that would overwhelm us? Has he not shown it in our own State in the appointment of our military governor? No man in the State could have been appointed to give more general satisfaction than W.L. Sharkey, an able, straightforward, just man. ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... leave with Mr. Parrish, however," Mr. Manderton resumed, looking round the group and emphasising the "did," "was his will and this letter ..."—he held up a typewritten sheet of slatey-blue paper—"which, a straightforward business communication in appearance, was in reality a threat against his life. It was with these two documents that Mr. Parrish spent the last few hours before he was found dead in this room. A few odd papers found lying on the desk have nothing to do with ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... but it cannot do everything. It is notorious in India that false witnesses can be bought at so much a head, according to the nature of witness required. Bribery and corruption are not mere names here, but facts, most difficult for any straightforward official to trace and track and deal with. We know, and everyone knows, that the White Man's Government, though strong enough to win and rule this million-peopled Empire, is weak as a white child when it stands outside ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... is dead! Who told you so? Eh! Was it Flinders? Ah! you see what comes of trusting to an unprincipled man like that. If you had only been open and straightforward with Aunt Lily, or with any of us, you would have been saved from this tissue of falsehood; forfeiting your Uncle Reginald's good opinion, and enabling Flinders to do your father this great injury.' She paused, and, as Dolores made no answer, she went on again—'Indeed, ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... though with some exertion, and re-assuming the sensible, straightforward, business-like ways which through her long life of solitary independence had caused Anne Valery to be often called, as Duke Dugdale called ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... of the latter state to the former, and disliked his official duties in Scotland, where the benefits of his administration were largely diminished by his want of perseverance and frequent absence. He appears to have been a man of honourable and straightforward conduct, whose character must be cleared from the aspersions of Wolsey and the English authorities. He married his cousin Anne de la Tour d'Auvergne, but left no legal issue, and all his honours became extinct at his ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... no small interest and value. A straightforward and piquant story of a noteworthy ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Bounderby. 'Do you suppose if there was any offence given me, I shouldn't name it, and request to have it corrected? I am a straightforward man, I believe. I don't go beating ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... to be any way out of it. If it had been the tall man alone I would have walked all the way back to Lanesport rather than stay. I never saw anyone whom I disliked so much, from the very first instant. But the Professor seemed perfectly straightforward. The cars had stopped, and I was left here on Rogers's Island, and might as well make the best of it. Besides if Captain Bannister were coming in the morning it was foolish to lose ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... Sr.'s, story you read in the paper. Soon after the news of the Zephyr's wreck, with all on board lost, as was then supposed, Thorwald's mother died. Her dying words (so young Thorwald told me, and I was moved by his simple, straightforward tale) were an appeal to her boy. She made him promise, for her sake, to study, study, study to gain knowledge, and to rise in the world! Thorwald promised. Then, believing both his parents dead, the young Norwegian, a youth of fifteen without money, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... peered sharply into her face. The thought seized him that she must surely not be in her right mind—that Burr's treatment of her and his danger had turned her brain. "Be you crazy, Madelon?" he asked, in his straightforward simplicity, and there was an accent of doubt ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... rhythms of this poet, or mimic of that other's attitude and outlook. The great zest of living which inspires him is far too real and intense to clothe itself in the trappings of any alien individuality. He is too straightforward to be even dramatic. It is not his instinct to put on a mask, even for purposes of artistic personation, and much ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... romantic in Edwin's generous heart. He was never tired of asking how old he was, was he robust, did a shock, a sudden shock, affect him much? and so on. Then had come the evening that Gwendoline loved to live over and over again in her mind when Edwin had asked her in his straightforward, manly way, whether—subject to certain written stipulations to be considered later—she would be his wife: and she, putting her hand confidingly in his hand, answered simply, that—subject to the ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... following evening when Pauline found herself alone with Briar and Patty. Both these little girls had plenty of character; but perhaps Patty had more of that estimable quality than her sister. They were both straightforward by nature, upright and noble, and were already benefiting by the discipline which had at last come into their lives. The glories of the birthday which was so near were already beginning to shed some of their rays over Pauline, and her sisters felt themselves ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... his goings to and fro, came this purger of other men's purses, and he saw the fortuitous grouping of the possibilities at a glance: abundant iron of good quality; an accessible vein of coal, second only to Pocahontas for coking; land cheap, water free, and a persuadable subject in straightforward, simple-hearted Caleb Gordon. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... asking him to take part in a football game. It was not that Raymond was especially popular; but he could run. In that simple day football was football—principally a matter of running and of straightforward kicking; and Raymond could do both better than any other boy in the school. He could also outjump any of us—when he would take the trouble to try. In fact, his physical faculties were in his legs; his arms were nowhere. He was never able to throw either far or straight. Some of his ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... voluntarily seeking their companionship and sharing their modest hospitality, they met on terms of perfect equality; but when associated with his own surroundings he seemed transformed into a person of fashion, haughty and aloof. It was quite absurd. Stephen was as simple and straightforward in one relation as the other, but perhaps the truth was that Deena ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... degree as theirs; nothing in his life threatened such express cruelty and tyranny. Neither ought we to set suspicion against evidence; and therefore I do not believe Plutarch in this matter. That his narrations were genuine and straightforward may, perhaps, be argued from this very thing, that they do not always apply to the conclusions of his judgments, which he follows according to the bias he has taken, very often beyond the matter he presents us withal, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne |
