"Truculent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a powerful and truculent Airedale, seems to have conceived a sudden and violent dislike for the nondescript). Yours must have done something to irritate him—he's generally ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... herself with careering about, taking a last leave of her beloved steed-a mangy-looking pony-and performing various freaks with it, then singing a truculent song of revenge, in pursuance of which she hid herself to await the bridal procession. And as the bride came on, among her attendants Dolores detected unmistakably those eyes of Gerald's! She squeezed ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... knout, Christopher, who visited men's trespasses like the Eumenides, never resorted to but in love for some great idea which had been outraged; why, this man knouted his way through life, from bloody youth up to truculent old age. Grim idol! whose altars reeked with children's blood, and whose dreadful eyes never smiled except as the stern goddess of the Thugs smiles, when the sound of human lamentations inhabits her ears. So much had the monster fed upon this great idea of "flogging," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... 'mater,' the intelligence—"A ten-pound rise all at once from Antrobus, mater. Whad d'yer think of that?" or again, the first whispering of love, dainty and witty and tender, to the girl he served a few days ago with sateen, or a gallant rescue of generalised beauty in distress from truculent insult or ravening dog. ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... afraid we shall have trouble at this bridge," Philip said, as the landlord left them. "They seem to be a rough lot, and this truculent lieutenant may not be satisfied with a story that his betters would accept, without question. We will ask our host if there is any place where the river can be forded, without going too far up. We can all swim and, ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... at last, locked the door and drew a long breath of relief. Upon his ear-drums there throbbed still the yells of his enthusiastic but noisy adherents—the truculent cries of those who had heard his great speech with satisfaction, of those who saw pass from amongst themselves to a newer school of thought one whom they had regarded as their natural leader. It was over at last. He had made his pronouncement. To some it might seem a compromise. ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... always wolves where there are sheep. You are in Champagne, and there's a forest; we have wild-boars, large and small game both, a little of everything," replied Michu, in a truculent manner. ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... indignation, had been scouring the streets in chase of his brother-in-law; but so soon as he caught a glimpse of the delinquent secretary, his purpose changed, his anger flowed into a new channel, and he turned on his heel and came tearing up the lane with truculent gestures and vociferations. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when I'm handled right, but if I'm handled wrong—" Stickney did not finish his sentence; but his truculent air was ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... entitled The Present Crisis: The True Cause of Our Indian Troubles, by William MacOubrey of the Middle Temple. There are also countless pamphlets in manuscript. MacOubrey was an enthusiastic and indeed truculent upholder ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... hollow square and casually glanced at the impossibility of those particular bullocks loafing on his paddock. If they came across the river again, he would hunt them back into Mondunbarra—he would do that much—but Muster M'Intyre's orders were orders. Two bullock drivers (here a truculent look came over the retainer's face) had selected in sight of the very wool-shed; and now all working bullocks found loafing on the run were to be yarded at the station—this lot being specially noticed, for Muster M'Intyre had a bit ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... inherit the estate of Don Diego, if the old Don died before spending it all, which it did not seem likely that he would do. But Ramon early demonstrated that he had a more important heritage in the sharp intelligence, and the proud, plucky and truculent spirit which had characterized the best of the Delcasars throughout ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... told. The story of the events here described spread through the kingdom. Thomas de Marle was put under ban by the king and excommunicated by the church. Louis raised an army and marched against him. De Marle was helpless with illness, but truculent in temper. He defied the king, and would not listen to his summons. Louis attacked his castles, took two of them, Crecy and Nogent, and in the end forced him to buy pardon by a heavy ransom and an indemnity to the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... miscellaneous shorter poems (among which may be noted the admirable epitaph on Arnauld, and an unhappy ode, Sur la Prise de Namur, 1693); and various critical studies in prose, his Lucianic dialogue Les Heros de Roman, satirising the extravagant novels not yet dismissed to oblivion, and his somewhat truculent Reflexions sur Longin being specially deserving of attention. The satires preceded in date the epistles; of the former, the first nine belong to the years 1660-67; the first nine of the epistles to the years 1669-77; three satires and three epistles may be described as belated. The year ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... while the first murderer gives account of what he has done, there comes a flash of truculent joy at the 'twenty trenched gashes' on Banquo's head. Thus Macbeth makes welcome to his imagination those very details of physical horror which are so soon to turn sour in him. As he runs out to embrace these cruel circumstances, as he seeks to realise ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Successor, his Mother and Father to be Guardians over him; but one Bieren (who writes himself Biron, and "Duke of Courland,' being Czarina's Quasi-Husband these many years) to be Guardian, as it were, over both them and him. Such had been the truculent insatiable Bieren's demand on his Czarina. 'You are running on your destruction,' said she, with tears; but complied, as ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... just to let you know what a truculent person he is, know that yesterday he more than insinuated that he would serve me in the same way that he ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... those that then rioted with the riotous. United States District-attorney Austin (when Wendell Phillips's name is written in letters of light on one side of the monument, down low on the other side, and spattered with dirt, let the name of Austin also be written) made a truculent speech, and justified the mob, and ran the whole career of the sewer of those days and justified non-interference with slavery. Wendell Phillips, just come to town as a young lawyer, without at present any practice, practically unknown, except to his own family, fired ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... precedents, which they accordingly met with in the registers, and were going to consider how to put it in execution when one of the Secretaries of State came to the bar of the house, and put into the hands of the King's Council a decree of the Supreme Council which, in very truculent terms, annulled that of the union. Upon this the Parliament desired a meeting with the deputies of the other three bodies, at which the Court was enraged, and had recourse to the mean expedient of getting the very original decree of union out of the hands of the chief registrar; for that ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... ALL OTHERS, not enough account is taken of individual variation. They, as well as man, and as well as other animals, have their cowards, their fighters, their slothful and their enterprising. And, too, there seem to be truculent and peaceful districts. North of Mt. Kenia, between that peak and the Northern Guaso Nyero River, we saw many rhinos, none of which showed the slightest disposition to turn ugly. In fact, they were so peaceful that ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... Sanskrit-Indians certainly altered in their traditions the real character of this race: they attributed to it physical and moral qualities not found in human nature; they transformed it into a race of giants; they represented it as monstrous, hideous, truculent, changing forms at will, blood-thirsty and ravenous, just as the Semites represented the races that opposed them as impious, horrible and of monstrous size. But notwithstanding these mythical exaggerations, which are partly due to the genius ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... which flies In darkness. As Adonis was mortally wounded by a boar's tusk, so (it is here represented) was Adonais slain by an insidiously or murderously launched dart: see p. 49. The allusion is to the truculent attack made upon Keats by the Quarterly Review. It is true that 'the shaft which flies in darkness' might be understood in merely a general sense, as the mysterious and unforeseen arrow of Death: but I think it ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... truculent group—it might have been a firing squad—made an imperious gesture with his hand. It was blue, except for two fingers which in the glaring ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... to his heroism, and who, with the Spirit of God upon him, stands up and pointing out his wickedness, rebukes the fallen monarch for his apostasy. Joash, doubtless stung to the quick by Zechariah's just reproaches, allowed the truculent princes to slay him in the court of the Temple, even between the very ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... wing bore the legend, "Cosmopolitan Hotel, Board or Lodging by the Day or Week. M. Roscommon," and you got an idea of the variety of the proprietor's functions. The "hotel," however, was more directly under the charge of Mrs. Roscommon, a lady of thirty years, strong, truculent, and good-hearted. ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... sort was never my vocation. I had not been an accessory- during-the-fact to a fight since I passed the truculent age of fourteen; and it is a marvel that I was able to hang to that dynamic bundle of trained muscles—which defines Mr. Earl Percy well enough—for more than ten seconds. Yet I did hang to him, as Pere Baudry testifies, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... War in these days means the cropping up of a multitude of questions dangerous not only to statesmen but to monarchs, and even to society itself. Monarchs and statesmen know this well; and, no matter how truculent they may at times appear, they really dread war ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... much disappointed by this lack of feeling, and said to her husband at night that she had expected better things from Archibald; but if she had gone suddenly into Bauldie's room—for that was his real name, Archibald being only the thing given in baptism—she would have found that truculent worthy sobbing aloud and covering his head with the blankets, lest his elder brother, who slept in the same room, should hear him. You have no reason to believe me, and his mother would not have believed me, but—as ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... no appeals," said the Major, with a truculent look. "No man shall appeal to Dick Querto till he is ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... teacher or policeman steps in to suppress his self-assertion the boy becomes an enemy of all authority and very often anti-social. The "rebel" in the Socialist camp is a good specimen of the man whose self-assertive period was injured by authority, and I suspect that the truculent drunk is letting off the steam that he should have let off at the ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... intermission. It rose and fell, that was all. From a truculent piano it leapt to a titanic crescendo only to find relief again in a fierce growling dissatisfaction. It seemed less of an elemental war than a physical attack upon a shuddering earth. The electric fires rifting the darkness of this out-world ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... to kill him. My name is Graham. I live a mile up the river and this coon has just about ruined my cornfield," was the truculent answer. ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... did was to gain time by delaying his answer to the proposition brought by Captain Lockyer. He assured that officer that he must consult with his people and see what they would do, and that he must also get rid of some truculent members of the colony, who would never agree to act in concert with England, and that therefore he should not be able to give an answer to Colonel Nichols for two weeks. Captain Lockyer saw for himself ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... this 'bout him 'putting out' Tom Cragg, in three?" At this there was a sudden silence and all eyes were turned towards the speaker, a small, red-headed fellow, with a truculent eye. "Come," said he, blowing out a cloud of tobacco smoke, "in three rounds! What d'ye say ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... remain so long unchanged as the actors. I can see the same Othello to-day, if I choose, that when I was a boy I saw smothering Mrs. Duff-Desdemona with the pillow, under the instigations of Mr. Cooper-Iago. A few stone heavier than he was then, no doubt, but the same truculent blackamoor that took by the thr-r-r-oat the circumcised dog in Aleppo, and told us about it in the old Boston Theatre. In the course of a fortnight, if I care to cross the water, I can see Mademoiselle Dejazet in the same parts I saw ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... drinkers of the inn had his own individuality of swagger, his truculent independence of mien, which suggested a man by no means habitually used either to receive commands or to render unquestioning obedience. Each of the men resembled his fellows in a certain flamboyant air of ferocity, but no one ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... posture of defence, with one eye on the mate; despite the kind offices of the latter below I knew not whether he were disposed to befriend me before the captain. What was my astonishment, therefore, to behold Griggs's truculent ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Iemon Uji, you know this woman?" His tone was hard and truculent. It conveyed the suspicion of the jealous old male. Iemon's former profession stood him in good stead. He had a glib tongue, and no intention to deny what had been made perfectly obvious—"It is fact, and nothing to be ashamed of on the part of Iemon; except as to attendant conditions ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... Pryor's Brigade, nine hundred out of fifteen hundred in a single campaign, would appall any but the grim Virginian soldiers. They are veterans now. They learn the art of war in fields like Seven Pines and Fair Oaks. Even Pryor, as chivalric in action as truculent in debate, now admits that the Yankees will fight. Fredericksburg's butchery is a victory of note. All the year the noise of battle rolls, while the Eastern war is undecided, for the second Manassas and awful Antietam balance each ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... The picture of the small, truculent Mike in frenzied revolt with a club against the idea of being decked with jewelry.... Mike turned to the two big men ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... the intruder; then, snatched back by his companions, turned wrathfully on his daughter, who, at his feet, with outstretched arms and streaming face, pleaded her cause with all the eloquence of young distress. Meanwhile the other nobles gesticulated vehemently among themselves, and one, a truculent-looking personage in ruff and Spanish cape, stalked apart, keeping a jealous eye on Tony. The latter was at his wit's end how to comport himself, for the lovely Polixena's tears had quite drowned her few words of English, and beyond guessing that the magnificoes meant him a mischief he had ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... do not and cannot act upon. The stout squire who prides himself upon his obstinacy, and whose pretty daughter manages him as easily as she manages her poodle, is a favorite character in English comedy. Every one knows some truculent gentleman who loudly proclaims that one half of mankind are knaves and the other half would be if they dared, but who would go mad with despair if he really believed the atrocious principles he loves to announce. Jefferson was not so constituted as to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... for the truculent passion Of JUVENAL'S masculine muse To flagellate folly and fashion In dress and in manners and views; But we've plenty of prophets and poets; We've few who are sober and sane; We don't want another DE ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... endured he was again going to let her live at the old family house, and all those doubts about Popenjoy had, she thought, been fully satisfied. The Marquis to her thinking was now almost a model Marquis, and this dear son, this excellent head of the family, had been nearly murdered by the truculent Dean. Of course the Dean was spoken of at Cross Hall in very bitter terms, and of course those terms made impression on Lord George. In the first moments of his paternal anxiety he had been willing to encounter the ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... enemies," and that he had "gone to look for the rebel, Jackson"—were really taken to mean what they said. When Pope did at last "find the rebel, Jackson," the hopeful public over the Potomac began to believe that their truculent pet might have ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... The moment the anchor was down, an armed boat's crew dashed aboard the Leonora and took possession. The officer in command had a surprise in store for him, when, entering the brig's cabin, he saw seated at the table not the truculent, piratical ruffian he expected to see, but a quiet, stout man of herculean proportions, who bowed politely and said, "Welcome on board the Leonora, sir. Have you come to seize my ship and myself? Well now, don't apologise, but sit down a while until my steward brings you a ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... rudeness," he said, lifting his Glengarry. "If the open window is the least annoyance to you, by all means let it be shut. To me it is a matter of perfect indifference." As he spoke he pulled the window up, and then he turned on the stranger with a look that seemed to imply: "Although I seemed so truculent a few minutes ago, you see what a good-natured fellow I am at heart." In most of Captain Ducie's actions there was some ulterior motive at work, however trivial many of his actions might appear to an outsider, and in the present case it was ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... somewhat large, exuberant, and truculent, When wroth—while pleased, she was as fine a figure As those who like things rosy, ripe, and succulent, Would wish to look on, while they are in vigour. She could repay each amatory look you lent With interest, and in turn was wont with rigour To exact of Cupid's ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... side. There were about thirty of them, I should say. I did just what you told me, that is, went on with my packing as if they were not there. For a little while they stood around staring like sulky children. Finally one of them said to me through Mary with a sort of truculent air, like a child experimenting to see how far he can go, that they were going to take Imbrie back. I told Mary to tell him that that was up to him; that he would have to deal with you later, if they did. Meanwhile I noticed they were edging between me and Imbrie, and presently Imbrie stood up, ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... resist the temptation. In crypt-like recesses we could see assassins sharpening their daggers or, perhaps, executioners putting the finishing touches on their scimitars. There were cavernous rooms where conspirators were crouched round a tiny charcoal fire. Groups of truculent young Arabs followed us shouting objurgations, and accepting small coins as ransom. We had glimpses of a mosque, the outside of a prison, and the inside of what once was a harem. On returning to the steamer one gentleman fell overboard and, swimming ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... fell upon Swanston in the dawn. The great-grandfather of the late farmer was then a little child; him they awakened by plucking the blankets from his bed, and he remembered, when he was an old man, their truculent looks and uncouth speech. The churn stood full of cream in the dairy, and with this they made their brose in high delight. "It was braw brose," said one of them. At last they made off, laden like camels with their booty; and Swanston Farm has lain out of the way of history from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now is may be guessed from the blank refusal even of her bishops to sanction the investigation which Cardinal Mercier asks for. It is still the gentle wolf's theory that the truculent lamb ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... his truculent spirit, and the usually collected and determined young man was at a loss how to proceed. The girl, however, was obviously impressed and pleased by his evidence of interest, whatever its nature; ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... at Neil that plainly demanded support, and then descended with truculent defiance from ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... narrow Flemish streets of tall houses with projecting upper stories, and showed them that seminary which was popularly supposed in England to be the hotbed of truculent plots, but where they only saw a quiet academic cloister and an exquisite garden, green turf, roses and white lilies in full perfection, and students flitting about in cassocks and square caps, more like an Oxford scene, as Mr. Fellowes ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... people's minds had had a little time to cool, they were ready enough to acknowledge their mistake in imagining a similarity between General Blood-and-Thunder's truculent physiognomy and the benign visage on the mountain-side. But now, again, there were reports and many paragraphs in the newspapers, affirming that the likeness of the Great Stone Face had appeared upon the broad shoulders of a certain ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... quite a few Y secretaries scattered over Italy who vehemently disclaimed that John Calhoun spoke for them or their sentiments. Among this number was his brother-in-law, John Cornwall, and two truculent and undiplomatic secretaries who had charge of the work with the Twenty-seventh Army Corps ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... a queer little fellow," said Herbert. "The most truculent little Radical to hear him talk, and yet staunch in his votes, for he can't go against those whose hair he has ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... these matters,' replied Zero, with an air of great dignity. 'This will shake England to the heart. Gladstone, the truculent old man, will quail before the pointing finger of revenge. And now that my ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... saw that he had a mouth which seemed to have a bitt in it; several hairs on a finely rounded head; and an air of efficient and truculent bonhomie tanned and wrinkled ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... rested on the knee of the night porter, a personage wearing a kind of livery, a strongly built, truculent-looking villain, whose duties, no doubt, comprised the putting of people out as well as the letting them ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... somewhat rude. On paper I observe that they have an appearance almost truculent. But spoken as the thing framed in the window-sill said them, they were equal to a song of Brudershaft and an episcopal benediction rolled ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... and things became worse instead of better; the cattle of the truculent wretch died fast, and the infernal hag gave him the pleasurable tidings that her arts were useless, and that the destructive visitation upon his cattle exceeded her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... see—the confederate of him who had entered Number 9; a sentry to forestall interruption? If so, the fellow lacked discretion, though his determination that the American should not interfere was undeniable. It was with an ugly and truculent manner, if more warily, that the ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... effective excitant; and at least to one old gentleman the spectacle of my successful struggles against sleep—and I hope they were successful—cheered the flight of time. He, when he was not catching flies or playing tricks upon his neighbours, gloated with a fixed, truculent eye upon the stages of my agony; and once, when the service was drawing towards a close, he winked at ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Shalmaneser the Assyrian prestige was maintained at a high level by dint of the same lavish bloodshed and truculent energy; but towards the eighth century it began to decline. There was then a period of languor and decadence, some echo of which, and of its accompanying disasters, seems to have been embodied by the Greeks in the romantic tale of Sardanapalus. No shadow of confirmation for the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... which so much trouble has been taken. Even were the discontent tenfold as deep-rooted as it now is, the Turkish Government might rely on the Mussulman population and the Arnauts to suppress any rising of the Christians. The chief danger to Turkey lies in the truculent nature of those whom she would be compelled to let loose upon the insurgents, and who would commit excesses which might be made an excuse for foreign intervention. The attainment of this ignoble end has been and still is the policy pursued ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... the beach I heard it. He had a pair of—what does the reader think?—Turtle- doves in his net-loft, looking down so drolly—the delicate creatures—from their wicker cage on the rough work below, that I wondered what business they had there. But this truculent Salwager assured me seriously that he had 'doated on them,' and promised me the first pair they should hatch. For a long while they had no family, so long 'neutral' indeed as to cause grave doubts whether they were a pair at all. But at last one of them began to show signs ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... sonorous, it had not the peculiar richness of the South. His gray eyes smiled as they met hers, and his manners were charming; but Betty, accustomed to grasp the salient points of character in a first interview, fancied that he could be overbearing and truculent. ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... praised, and all manner of new feats were taught them, all manner of stories told them; and the shrinking of well-trained young citizens from these lawless me "full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard," and some very truculent-looking, had given way to judicious flattery, and to the attractions of adventure and of a free life, where wealth ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... mortgaging property, and, later, these and older obligations fall due, and, failing payment, he is sued, and thereafter for some years he fights a stubborn rearguard fight with pursuing fate in the form of truculent creditors ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... ranged themselves shoulder to shoulder across the doorway, plainly with intent to bar the way. Gaubert, followed immediately by Marius, stepped aside and approached the landlord with arms akimbo and a truculent smile on his pale hawk face. What he and Marius said, Rabecque could not make out, but he distinctly heard the landlord's answer delivered with ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... were worth we descried a horse flying along the road at break-neck pace towards us. As it approached we saw it was carrying Dr. Ascher. When he drew up to us he stopped. The guards were holding forth in their most truculent manner at the moment. The doctor rapped out a few words, and the guards instantly dropped their hostility and arrogance to become as meek as lambs. Turning to us the doctor ordered every man to drop the ropes. We did so and ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... and I embrace truth, wheresoever I find it. Indeed, every religion is good and true, if it serves the high purpose of its founder. And they are false, all of them, when they serve the low purpose of their high priests. Take the lowest of the Arab tribes, for instance, and you will find in their truculent spirit a strain of faith sublime, though it is only evinced at times. The Beduins, rovers and raveners, manslayers and thieves, are in their house of moe-hair the kindest hosts, the noblest and most generous of men. They receive the wayfarer, though he be an enemy, and he eats and drinks and ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Warner of Ponape with his entourage of sixteen truculent, evil-faced Solomon Islanders was not regarded with enthusiasm by the chief officer and the ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... on. In my time I suspect his classes included a larger number than usual of bad and idle young scaramouches, who deserved to be turned out of the class, instead of the sort of over-forbearance their Professor showed. I feel sure now that a more truculent character than his would have enforced order better, with advantage to the weak and wavering pupils. He treated boys too much like human creatures—and some of us were as mischievous as monkeys. ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... glower along the corridors of the Millard. I pitied him for his defeat too much to notice his attempts to pick a quarrel. Firm in the affection of my Saccharissa and in the confidence of her father, I waived the insults of the aggrieved and truculent cousin. He had lost the heiress. I had won her. I could afford to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... nearly so fond of being noticed and caressed as are those of more populous and civilised districts. On attempting to stroke one of these surly brutes on the head, he displayed his teeth and growled savagely at me. Yet this animal, though so truculent in temper, and asking for no kindness from his master, is just as faithful to man as his better-mannered brother in the more settled country. I spoke on that ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... Patrick Ballymolloy was vastly more striking than attractive. He was both corpulent and truculent, and his hands and feet were of a size and thickness calculated to crush a paving-stone at a step, or to fell an ox at a blow. The nails of his fingers were of a hue which is made artificially fashionable in eastern countries, but which excites prejudice in western civilization ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... my pallet at night I hear from the street the sound of passing footsteps; And I can sort and name these passing footsteps. There are the truculent steps of the seeker after trouble, There are the fearful feet of those who are not at ease In the implacable streets. There are the fugitive feet of crime, And the solemn reassuring tread of big policemen; And the interrupted steps of the revellers, And the ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke
... spoils to the victors, and partly to the slavery agitation which was then beginning to make itself felt. The rise of the irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery made the South overbearing and truculent; it produced that class of politicians known as "Northern men with Southern principles," or, in the slang of the day, as "doughfaces;" and it had not yet built up a strong, vigorous, and aggressive party in the North. The lack of proper social opportunities, and this deterioration ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... of Napoleon III. is becoming gradually intelligible to the world at large, and public opinion has lately been veering round to a less unfavourable conclusion upon it than heretofore. He had long been reviled as a truculent despot, artful and dangerous, powerful and perfidious; the genius of Victor Hugo had set on him a brand of infamy. In reality, if we may trust later French writers, there was much that was good in his nature, and they are disposed to regard him with compassion. M. de ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... began picking out the more influential clansmen, by the fashion in which they fell together into groups, and took themselves off to the mill by the racing creek for discussion. While the young persons danced and "sparked" within, and the more truculent lads escaped to the road to pass the jug, and forecast with youthful war-fever "cleanin' out the Hollmans," the elders were deep in ways and means. If the truce could be preserved for its unexpired period ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... more truculent methods are represented by the story-tellers as resorted to free the afflicted household. Nothing short of fire is often deemed sufficient for the purpose. There were various methods of applying it. Sometimes we are told of a shovel being made red-hot and held before ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... window of Walmer Castle, looking across the Channel, momentarily expecting to discover BONEY crossing in a flat-bottomed boat. The trousers are of scarlet, with broad braid of gold lace on outer seams. Finally there is a truculent cocked hat, which OLD MORALITY persists in putting on with the peak astarn. The dress is picturesque, and OLD MORALITY's figure lends itself to it with peculiar ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... a-goin to pay fer them drinks?" The bartender's voice held a truculent note, and his eyes narrowed. "'Cause, believe me, stranger, if you think you ain't, you're plumb misguided. Things has be'n quiet an' peaceable around here fer quite a spell, but you'll pay fer two rounds of drinks or Timber City's ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... of loyalty in Missouri were snapped in Benton's fall, and that State swung off into the strongly-sweeping current of secessionism. The city of St. Louis remained firm a while, and returned Benton twice to the House; but his energies were exhausted now in defensive war; and the truculent and triumphant slave power dominating, the State at last succeeded, through the coercion of commercial interests, in defeating him even in the citadel of loyalty. He tried once more to breast the tide that had borne down his fortunes. He became a candidate for governor ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... man, for had he not routed the army of Bosambo? That Bosambo was not in command made no difference and did not tarnish the prestige in Tumbilimi's eyes, and though the raids upon his territory by Mimbimi had been mild, the truculent chief, disdaining the use of his full army, marched with his select column to bring in the head and the feet of the man who had dared ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... grandmother expectantly, but there was no answering glance. The old lady was evidently in one of her truculent ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... P. Sybarite comprehended in a glance and, comprehending, bristled like a truculent game-cock or the faithful hound in the ghost-story. The aspect of Respectability seemed to have upon him the effect of a violent irritant; his eyes took on a hot, hard look, his lips narrowed to a thin, inflexible crease, ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... opened, the times were evil, and no hope seemed anywhere on the horizon. The grasp of the infidel was tightened upon the Holy City, and what little force there ever had been among the rabble of Crusaders was gone now; the truculent ruffianism that pretended to be animated by the crusading spirit showed its real character in the hideous atrocities for which Simon de Montfort is answerable, and in the unparalleled enormities of the sack of Constantinople ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... spoke she could not help reflecting on the change that had come over him since he first spoke to her on the night following his release from prison. Then he was rude, almost truculent; now, even while he seemed angry, his demeanour suggested a refinement of feeling which ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... simply denied the accusation. This denial was indorsed by the editor of the newspaper in which the articles had been published, and the disagreeable incident was expected to end there. But this would not have satisfied the truculent M. Tremplier, and in the next number of his paper he expressed in arrogant terms an utter disbelief in Mr. Hamerton's denial, and venomously attacked him for his nationality, literary pretensions, etc., winding up his diatribe, as usual, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... representative got upon his feet with a truculent air. As he did so, somebody touched him upon the shoulder, and he turned to see his client leaning out of the dock. With an apologetic smirk at his lordship, the ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... him in every right-minded woman's eyes. I shall speak to him myself—I will have the truth from his own lips if I have to wring it out by main force," said Caspar speaking more to himself than to Mary Trent, and quite unaware how truculent an appearance he presented at that moment to that ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Ward and then furtively at Charlie Fox. If expression meant anything, Surbus was yet in danger of paying for that assault. She caught Ward's truculent eye, smiled, and shook her head at him. "We're pretty fair friends now," she said. "At least, we don't try to kill each other whenever we meet. 'Armed neutrality' fits our ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... Rokoff assumed a truculent air, attempting by bravado to show how little he feared Tarzan's threats. An instant later he felt the ape-man's steel fingers at his throat, and Paulvitch, who attempted to dodge them and reach the door, was lifted completely off the floor, ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... his ear, but as Germany personified, an angel with a flaming sword, beating back envious assailants from the beloved Fatherland. He saw his neighbors not as peaceful nations who had no possible desire to attack him, but on the contrary lived in constant fear of him, but as a band, of envious and truculent conspirators who could only be kept in order by the sudden stamp of the jackboot and the menacing clatter of the sabre. He insensibly imbibed the Nietzsche doctrine that the immorality of the Superman may be as colossal as his strength and ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... contemplating the result of what seems to them so preposterous a system as that of electing a judiciary by popular party vote, Englishmen have generally confined themselves to a complimentary expression of surprise that the results are not worse than they are. Surely, while being as truculent as they please in their attitude towards the hereditary principle, it would be well if Americans would similarly endeavour to dissociate their detestation of that principle from their feelings for the actual personnel of ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... controversy until the merits of the case were authoritatively ascertained, although the general argument of the despatch seemed to place the United States on the side of Venezuela. Moreover, Secretary Olney adopted a swaggering and aggressive, not to say truculent tone. He drew a contrast between monarchical Europe and self-governing America, particularly the United States, which "has furnished to the world the most conspicuous ... example ... of the excellence of free institutions, whether from the standpoint of national greatness ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... in his chair; the truculent directness of the detective was unpleasing to his tortuous ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... that of late had harassed her and goaded her and embittered her life, and mocked at her gentleness and kindness, was gone. That fierce, truculent hatred that she had so striven to put from her, now behold! of its own accord, it had seemed to leave her. How had it happened? Before she had dared the ordeal of confession this feeling of hatred, this perverse and ugly changeling that had ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... affairs, a steady course to be followed between an assertion of strength that is truculent and a confession ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... acknowledge for a time the sovereignty of King James. The captured ship of La Saussaye, with Biard and his colleague Quentin on board, was forced to yield to the fury of the western gales and bear away for the Azores. To Biard the change of destination was not unwelcome. He stood in fear of the truculent Governor of Virginia, and his tempest-rocked slumbers were haunted with unpleasant visions of a rope's end. It seems that some of the French at Port Royal, disappointed in their hope of hanging him, had commended ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... have been destroyed on board of prison-ships and in loathsome dungeons, never to be at peace with those fiends the refugees, whose thefts, murders, and treasons have filled the cup of woe." Tons of pamphlets, issued under the customary Latin pseudonyms, were filled with this truculent bombast; and like sentiments were thundered from the pulpit by men who had quite forgotten for the moment their duty of preaching reconciliation and forgiveness of injuries. Why should not these wretches, it was sarcastically asked, be driven ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... see the man cringe in abasement and contrition. But the heavy jaw thrust forth in truculent defiance; hate blazed forth from the deep-set eyes; the florid features were empurpled with rage. He made as if to reply, but turned away from the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... a close and long observer of wild things wishes it distinctly understood that while the common black-snakes and racers are practically harmless to birds, the Pilot Black-Snake, —long, thick and truculent,—is a great scourge to nesting birds. It seems to be deserving of death. Mr. Upp speaks from personal knowledge, and his condemnation of the species referred to is quite sweeping. At the same time Mr. Raymond L. Ditmars points out the fact that ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... striped worsted shirt, confined at the waist by a cutlass-belt, into which a long-barrelled pistol was thrust, and his legs encased in sea-boots reaching nearly to the thigh, was a particularly truculent-looking ruffian; and a powerful negro, somewhat similarly clad, who seemed to be his chief aide, was little ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... well. Mr. Beecot, in his amiable way, had no patience with his wife's nerves, and never lost an opportunity of placing her in unpleasant positions, whereby she might be, what he called, hardened. Paul sighed to think of his mother's position as he folded up the letter. She had a bad time with the truculent husband she had married. "And I can't believe she became his wife of her own free will," thought Paul; "probably the governor bullied her into it in his own ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... Democracy chase it, That gang of impenitent Dons Who drowned the occasional Placet By bawling their truculent Nons: No idle and opulent College Will feed that obstructionist clique, Those scoffers at Practical Knowledge Who ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... wonderful imitation of a truculent-looking toy Pomeranian, and the apparatus that gave forth a wheezy bark when you pressed it had materially helped the imposition that Lena, and Lena's maid, had foisted on the household. For a woman who disliked animals, but liked getting her ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... William of Orange had been for some years on the English throne. While far more liberal than his predecessor, his acts had somewhat limited the former freedom of the New England colonies. He did not attempt to appoint royal governors over these truculent people, but on Governor Fletcher, of New York, were conferred privileges which went far to set aside the charter rights ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... meeting, he proposed as a toast, "Here's the last verse of the (p. 147) last chapter of the last Book of Kings." This would seem to be but one specimen of the freedom of political speech in which Burns at this time habitually indulged,—the truculent way in which he flaunted defiance in the face of authority. It would not have been surprising, if at any time the Government had ordered inquiry to be made into such conduct, much less in such a season of anxiety and distrust. That an inquiry ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... followed quenched the fire that had been kindled. This incident, however, was the precursor of one of the stormiest periods in the history of the city and its cathedral church. Roger de Skerning occupied the episcopal chair, and the prior was one William de Brunham, a man of fierce and truculent disposition. An outbreak of hostilities between the citizens on the one hand and the monks on the other, was brought about by his arbitrary assumption of power; the bishop throughout, ostensibly preferring the safer game of a somewhat anomalous position of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... while the first murderer gives account of what he has done, there comes a flash of truculent joy at the "twenty trenched gashes" on Banquo's head. Thus Macbeth makes welcome to his imagination those very details of physical horror which are so soon to turn sour in him. As he runs out to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was so bewildered by Mrs. Brinkley's interpretation of Alice's latent motives that she let the truculent hostility of her aspiration pass unheeded. She looked helplessly about, and seemed faint, so that Mrs. Brinkley, without appearing to notice her state, interposed the question of a little sherry. When it had been brought, and Miss ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... moment. The music ceased as suddenly as it began and, warming himself at the great stove in the hall, Belding heard a short laugh and an exclamation. "Too much imagination," exploded Clark. The tone was one of utter incredulity. At that the young man felt curiously truculent. Elsie was only seventeen, while Clark was certainly not less than thirty-five. Then the latter reappeared, ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... everybody. Maggugans, who seldom or never visited Compostela, might be found performing their religious services there. Some of them even went so far as to penetrate into the almost inaccessible haunts of the upper Manorgao Mandyas, the hereditary and truculent enemies of Compostela whom even the Catholic missionaries could never convert. Debabons from the Slug-Libagnon region went fearlessly over to the Karga, Kasaman, and Mani districts and returned ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... be so many sufferers—the spirit of martyrdom is over. They that will go to church to be chosen sheriffs and mayors, would go to forty churches rather than be hanged." "Now let us crucify the thieves," said the author of this truculent advice in conclusion, "And may God Almighty put it into the hearts of all friends of truth to lift up a standard against pride and Antichrist, that the posterity of the sons of error may be rooted out from the face of ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... a merry-seeming fellow but with a truculent eye. "Look 'ee, Job, here's a match for Pompey at last, as I do think, man to man, bare fists or knives, a match and I'll ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... sea-fog was very thick, I discovered Balmoral, but not my Aunt. The truculent-looking proprietor of the house, who answered the door, condescended to inform me that my relative "was the difficultest lady he'd ever had to do for. And that she'd left two days a-gone." But where she had betaken herself to, he either ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... the same time with an altered version of his great poem, which he called the Gerusalemme Conquistata. He was induced to undertake this work in order to triumph over his truculent critics, the Della Cruscans, who had condemned the former version. In the Imperial Library at Vienna is preserved the manuscript of this version, with its numerous alterations and erasures, showing how laborious the task of remodelling must have been. He ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... second whistle was anything but truculent and anything but apologetic. It had the unconscious and spontaneous quality of the delight of the collector who finds a new specimen ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... the Duke of York would hang him if aware of his rank, he might be detained as a hostage or put to heavy ransom, or he might never be brought to the Duke's presence at all, but be put to death by some truculent underling, incredulous of a Scotsman's tale, if indeed he were not too proud to tell it. Anyway, Sir Patrick felt ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the deputy commanded, with a truculent air. "He'll want to see me, I guess. Anyhow, ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... the conduct of the nation's foreign policy, and the ending of the present attitude of subservience to all other Powers, great or small, were regarded as the first desiderata of the country. The Turks, too, who since the revolution of 1908 had become particularly truculent toward the Italians, especially in Tripoli, also came in for rough treatment, and various speakers demanded that the Government should secure adequate protection for Italian citizens and trade in the Ottoman Empire, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... millions in "dust" was washed out in one year. Every one had gold, sacks and cans of it. The wild license of the place was unspeakably vitiating. Fights with weapons were incessant. Rude dance halls and saloons were crowded with truculent, armed men in search of trouble. Churches and schools were unknown. Tents, log cabins, and brush shanties made the residences. "Hacks rattled to and fro between the several towns, freighted with drunken and rowdy humanity of both ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... he is not my father's heir. He has known it since the hour of my father's death. He knows that I know it. Yet he has kept the lands to this day." Another uneasy perambulation. "Do you think of that when you talk of revenge? Manliness? He has none. He is a pitiful, truculent, groveling coward, ready to buy profit at any price. He has robbed me of my inheritance. He stands in my place. He is a living lie. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... chapter" [153] in a loud twanging voice. Indeed, he had played the role of devout Mohammedan so long, that he had almost become one. The people of Zeila tried to persuade him to abandon his project. "If," said they, "you escape the desert hordes it will only be to fall by the hands of the truculent Amir of Harar." Nothing, however, could dash Burton's confidence in his star, and like Dante, he applied to Fear no ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... sureties, was sent to possess himself of the Castle of Rochester; but before he could bring in sufficient stores, he was invested by John, with Savary de Mauleon, called the Bloody, and a band of free-companions, whose noms de guerre were equally truculent—namely, the Merciless, the Murderer, the Iron-hearted. One of the archers within the walls bent his bow at the King's breast, and said to the castellane, "Shall I deliver you from yonder mortal foe?" "No; hold thy ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... short consultation took place between my friend and their host, who agreed that no resistance could be offered, that the door should be opened, and they must all submit to their fate. Then the banditti rushed in with fierce gestures; truculent men, with shaggy hair and beards, wrapped in dark capotes, with long guns in their hands, and daggers in their belts and bosoms. “Spare our lives, and take our money, and all that we have,” was the cry of some of the travellers. Nor were the bandits slow in falling upon the sacs and ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... Chapel, and I was only permitted to pay brief visits to her bedside. That I might not be kept indoors all day and everyday, a man, also connected with the meeting-house, was paid a trifle to take me out for a walk each morning. This person, who was by turns familiar and truculent, was the object of my intense dislike. Our relations became, in the truest sense, 'forced'; I was obliged to walk by his side, but I held that I had no further responsibility to be agreeable, and after a while I ceased to speak to him, or to answer ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... really satisfy the lover, when he knows that his love is answered, to realise that it is all the result of some preceding molecular action of the brain? That does not seem to me so much a truculent statement as a foolish statement, shirking, like a glib and silly child, the most significant of data. And I think we shall do well to say to our scientist, as courteously as Sir Lancelot said to the officious knight, ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... not believe any one was ever made better by flogging,) but for making a mistake in saying a lesson, which the poor boy had done his best to prepare, and which was driven out of his head by the fearful aspect of the truculent blackguard with his cane and his hoarse voice. And how indignant, in after-years, many a boy of the last generation must have been, to find that this tyrant of his childhood was in truth a humbug, a liar, a fool, and a sneak! Yet how that miserable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... twenty years, possibly for more, Mr. Burne-Jones was a resolute opponent of the Royal Academy, as resolute, though not so truculent, an opponent as Mr. Whistler. When he became a popular painter Mr. Agnew gave him a commission of fifteen thousand pounds—the largest, I believe, ever given—to paint four pictures, the "Briar Rose" series. Some time after—before he has exhibited in the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... flat indifference which had followed on that one difficult rending surrender. He went to meet her. If she had looked at him with her usual straightness, she might have remembered the boy of whom she had been fond—a small, queer boy, who did not like having his face washed, and who came to her truculent and swaggering, with smears ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... His less truculent but equally remorseless brother in villany, the brandied egotist, Falcon, could read that poor husband's letter without blenching; the love and the anticipations of rapture, these made him writhe a little ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... the insensate Achilles, Brutal, perverted in reason, to every remorseful emotion Harden'd his heart, as the lion that roams in untameable wildness; Who, giving sway to the pride of his strength and his truculent impulse, Rushes on sheep in the fold, and engorges his banquet of murder; So has the Myrmidon kill'd compassion, nor breathes in his bosom Shame, which is potent for good among mortals, as well as for evil. Dear was Patroclus to him, but the mourner that buries ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Pernambucano, Maceio-ite, or merchant of Bahia were informed that President De Sylva's raid was alone rendered possible by the help of a truculent British master-mariner and a dozen or so of his hard-bitten crew, he (the said Brasileiro) might be skeptical, or, at best, indifferent. But let the name of some puppet politician hailing from Sao Paulo be mentioned, and his eyes would flash with angry recognition; ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... bigger of the two demanded in the most peremptory fashion to be taken in to my father at once, leaving the younger one to watch the front door, where we could all see him marching up and down. When ushered in to my father, the gendarme, a huge, fiercely bearded man, adopted the most truculent manner. It had come to the knowledge of the police, he said, that my father had ridden on horse-back over a railway bridge, and along the line. Did he admit it? My father at once owned that he had done so, but pleaded ignorance, should he have broken any rule. Ignorance was no excuse, retorted ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... handkerchiefs fastened to the end of rulers. A band, equipped with combs covered with tissue-paper torn from their drawing-books, played the strains of the "Marseillaise." They advanced towards the seniors in a very truculent fashion. ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... was something in those days for a duke's son to take sides, even in a modified way, with the party of progress. His speech represented the views not so much of the multitude as of the middle classes. They were alarmed at the truculent violence of mob orators up and down the country; their fund of inherited reverence for the aristocracy was as yet scarcely diminished. They had their own dread of spoliation, and they had not quite recovered from their fright over the French Revolution. They ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... have been said to date. No one seeing his mouth had before that time been prevailed upon to trust him. Nature has a way of hanging out signs and then covering them up, so that the casual fail to see. He was a man of medium height, with abnormally long arms and a somewhat truculent way of walking, as if his foot was ever ready to kick anything or any person who might come ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... was in the waggon could not be seen, as it was covered over with buffalo robes and tarpaulin, but the detective could have sworn he saw it move, and give forth a sound not unlike a groan. Mr. Rawdon jumped down, telling a certain Jones of truculent countenance to drive on, as he guessed he'd walk the rest of the way this fine morning. The waggon drove off accordingly and at a rapid rate, while the working ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... that it was high time for some other institution to shelter this touchy and truculent person, and that he would lay the case before the next weekly Visitor and ask for it to be submitted to the Committee at their ensuing ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... the not-infrequent spectacle of some minor ship of war—a truculent, gray destroyer as like as not—shepherding in a sleek submarine, like a felon whale armoured and strangely caparisoned in gray-brown steel, to be moored in chains with a considerable company of its fellows on the far side of the roadstead, while its crew was taken ashore and consigned to some dark ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... guardian. This vile malefactor had been ordered for execution, and the noose was already coiled for his caitiff neck, when a neighbor of his master's—a great raiser of sheep—begged for him a reprieve, kindly volunteering the use of a truculent, but valuable ram belonging to him, for the purpose of illustrating the homaeopathic theory above alluded to. At nightfall the ram was brought and turned into a paddock, where he was left fettered to the dog with a couple of yards of chain. At the dawn of morning the ram's master ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... to admit to himself that Hutchings had not a pleasant face. It was choleric and truculent, and in spite of the man's evident anxiety, there was a sullen fierceness on it which gave him no little of the air of a ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... be provided with a number of such good and reliable soldiers selected by our General Staff," and he added with a truculent snort, "We could do with that sum of a thousand pounds here. You must put in a claim for it, Hillyard. Otherwise they'll ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... arrayed in poor Marston's garments, was the typical Greek seaman one might meet any day in almost any seaport town of importance. He was a fairly tall man, well and powerfully built, but his hawk-like and truculent visage inspired the American with a deeper aversion than that with which he regarded Ryan—who, however, was in reality the ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... loose from school and giving his heart a holiday—a simple, tender heart, preserved beneath the science of the law like a grape in sawdust. Now he would smile as I sang Jeanne's praises; now he would sit and listen to my objections with a truculent air, tightening his lips till they broke forth in vehement denial. "What! You dare to say! Young man, what are you afraid of?" His overflowing kindness discharged itself in the sincerest and most ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... send some after their enemies, was pronounced impolitic: the party sent in pursuit, and that left to guard the caravan,—either would be too weak if attacked by their truculent enemy. ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... Mr. Dunborough answered. And he took his first airing in a sedan next day. After that he grew so reticent about his affairs, and so truculent when the tutor tried to sound him, that Mr. Thomasson was at his wits' end to discern what was afoot. For some time, however, he got no clue. Then, going to Dunborough's rooms one day, he found them empty, and, bribing the servant, learned that his master ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... apologetic all day, and got her reward; especially from the boy, who was an adventurous and rather truculent baby, much she fancied, as his father must once have been, and who took to her more quickly than the girl did. Indeed, the second Rodney fell in love with her almost as promptly as his father had done before him. But little Portia wasn't ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... of them; but I wish you were here on another errand, though to Doom, my poor place, you are welcome. I am a widower, a lonely man, with my own flesh and blood rebel against me"—he checked his untimeous confidence—"and yet I have been chastened by years and some unco experiences from a truculent man to one preferring peace ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... for making cannon. When I got there it was about 8.30. The venerable Blanqui was seated at a table on the tribune; before him were two assessors. One an unwholesome citizen, with long blond hair hanging down his back, the other a most truculent-looking ruffian. The hall was nearly full; many were in blouses, the rest in uniform; about one-fifth of the audience was composed of women, who either knitted, or nourished the infants, which they held in their arms. A citizen was speaking. He held a list in his hand of a new Government. ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... strength. Heedless of his host's offer of water and a glass, he put it to his mouth, and swallowed three great gulps hurriedly. Then he breathed a deep breath, seemed to say with Macbeth, "Ourselves again!" drew himself up in a chair, and glanced around him with a look of gathering arrogance. A kind of truculent question was in his eyes—as much as to say, "Now then, what do you make of it all? What's your candid notion about me and my extraordinary behaviour?" After ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Warren. I'm going to torture you," he announced with a truculent scowl and a suggestive licking of ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... churches that owned them; he, too, was the finest painter of landscape of his time, as an accessory to the human figure. Moreover, he was a portrait-painter who, in his greatest efforts—those sumptuous and almost truculent portraits d'apparat of princes, nobles, and splendid dames—knew no superior, though his contemporaries were Van Dyck, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, and Velazquez. Rubens folded his Mother Earth and his fellow-man in a more demonstrative, a seemingly closer embrace, drawing from the contact ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... troop. The knight was closely followed by the Alsatian captains, who, with tremendous oaths in their mouths, and slashing blades in their hands, declared they would make minced meat of any one opposing their progress. Sir Thomas was equally truculent in expression and ferocious in tone, and as the whole party laid about them right and left, they speedily routed the defenders of the garden, and drove them towards the house. Flushed by their success, the besiegers shouted loudly, and Sir Thomas roared out, that ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... speaker, "we ain't; but we're goin' to. Now can the chatter an' duck. There ain't enough fer one here, let alone three. Beat it!" and the man, who was big and burly, assumed a menacing attitude and took a truculent ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... about Literary Snobs? has been a question, I make no doubt, often asked by the public. How can he let off his own profession? Will that truculent and unsparing monster who attacks the nobility, the clergy, the army, and the ladies, indiscriminately, hesitate when the turn comes to EGORGER ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... himself. To be at all consistent, he should put poison in his lozenges, and become the Herod of the village innocents. One of his many eccentricities is a love for flowers, and he visits me often to have a look at my greenhouse and my borders. I listen to his truculent and revolutionary speeches, and take my revenge by sending the gloomy egotist away with a nosegay in his hand, and a gay-coloured flower stuck in a button-hole. He goes quite unconscious of my ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... stockade vanished forever; and he even wondered whether his grandfather may not after all have had some such scheme in mind in inviting him to visit him, believing that the presence of this midget, and the fact that she was his own true cousin, would have a wonderfully soothing effect upon the truculent spirit of the boy. ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... Captain Nelson laughed. "When I think that you have raised your hand against that venerable but somewhat truculent prelate, I shudder at your boldness. I only caught a glimpse of him as he passed, but I could see ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... Phronesis, the pious mother, becomes subject to the power of Phrenzy. Then winged Pegasus is shut up in the stall of Corydon, and eloquent Mercury is strangled. Then wise Pallas is struck down by the dagger of error, and the charming Pierides are smitten by the truculent tyranny of madness. O cruel spectacle! where you may see the Phoebus of philosophers, the all-wise Aristotle, whom God Himself made master of the master of the world, enchained by wicked hands and borne in shameful irons on ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... prurience in the turbid flow of its fitful and furious rhetoric. The restless rage of his invective is as far as human utterance can find itself from the cynical infidelity of an Iago. Of him we may say with more rational confidence what was said of that more potent and more truculent satirist: ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne |
