"Abrupt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and, of course, the enthusiasm of a British audience almost reached its climax. We now encountered the gable-end of a station-house, and the balloon being by this time thoroughly collapsed, our aerial trip was brought to an abrupt conclusion. I know nothing more of what occurred, having been carried on a shutter, in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... She had determined that she would see no more of Sir John Conroy. She rewarded his past services with liberality: he was given a baronetcy and a pension of L3000 a year; he remained a member of the Duchess's household, but his personal intercourse with the Queen came to an abrupt conclusion. ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... by little, Polk Street dropped back to solitude. Eleven o'clock struck from the power-house clock. Lights were extinguished. At one o'clock the cable stopped, leaving an abrupt silence in the air. All at once it seemed very still. The ugly noises were the occasional footfalls of a policeman and the persistent calling of ducks and geese in the closed market. The ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... nature,—he strained his ears to listen, as it were to the deepening dumbness of all existing things,—and to conquer the strange sensations that were overcoming him, he proceeded at a more rapid pace,—but in two or three minutes came again to an abrupt halt. For there in front of him, right across his path, lay the fallen pillar which, according to Heliobas, marked the boundary to the field he sought! Another glance at his map decided the position ... he had reached his journey's end at last! What was the time? ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... as though they were signing a treaty, or granting an amnesty. The meanest employe seems to think himself invested with certain occult powers. His civility savours of government patronage; and his frown is inquisitorial. To his fellows, his address is abrupt and diplomatic. He seems to speak in cipher, and to gesticulate by some rule of freemasonry. But to the uninitiated he is explanatory to a scruple, as though mischief might ensue from his being misapprehended. He makes sure of your understanding by an emphasis, which reminds one of the loudness ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... at finding himself dragged away in so abrupt a manner by this Englishman, had sought in his subtle mind for some means of escaping from his fetters; but no one having rendered him any assistance in this respect, he was absolutely obliged, therefore, to submit to the burden of his own evil ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the whole household was busily engaged in making preparations for this abrupt, unexpected departure. Claire hurried the bewildered servants, and dressed her mother and the child, who laughed merrily amid all the excitement. She was in haste to go before Georges' return, so that he might find the cradle empty and the house deserted. Where should she go? She did not ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... meantime Mike Connell was much puzzled by the nature of the place in which he found himself after his climb, as well as by the abrupt disappearance of the lad upon whom he had counted for guidance. The darkness, with its accompanying profound silence, so affected him that, while he called several times, "Whist now! Where are you? Come out o' ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... results; and, as we explained in previous articles, unless proper chiaroscuro is secured on the model, it will be impossible to obtain it in the picture. The chief defect in this respect has been either that the light has been too abrupt, and consequently the high lights are very white and the shadows heavy, giving the pictures an under-exposed appearance, or the face is devoid of shadow, one side being as light as the other; hence it lacks the roundness necessary to constitute a good picture. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... appointed to meet the postillion with the carriage, and set out for England without further delay, leaving the unhappy Zelos to the horrors of indigence, and the additional agony of this fresh disappointment. Yet he was not the only person affected by the abrupt departure of Fathom, which was hastened by the importunities, threats, and reproaches of his landlord's daughter, whom he had debauched under promise of marriage, and now left in the fourth ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... the abrupt departure of the count, Jeanne de Saint-Savin owed to her child the only semblance of happiness that consoled her life. She loved him as women love the child of an illicit love; obliged to suckle him, the duty never wearied her. She would not let her women care for ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... thus prepared, Its still small voice is often heard, Whispering a mingled sentiment, 'Twixt resignation and content. Oft in my mind such thoughts awake, By lone Saint Mary's silent lake; Thou know'st it well,—nor fen, nor sedge, Pollute the pure lake's crystal edge; Abrupt and sheer, the mountains sink At once upon the level brink; And just a trace of silver sand Marks where the water meets the land. Far in the mirror, bright and blue, Each hill's huge outline you may view; Shaggy with heath, but lonely bare, Nor ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... roaming through the valley. I stood beside the sources of the Arveiron, which take their rise in a glacier, that with slow pace is advancing down from the summit of the hills to barricade the valley. The abrupt sides of vast mountains were before me; the icy wall of the glacier overhung me; a few shattered pines were scattered around; and the solemn silence of this glorious presence-chamber of imperial nature was broken only by the brawling waves or the fall of some vast fragment, the thunder sound of ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... politeness there is in his manners, what a depth of serenity and cheerfulness in his talk. Didst thou not expect quite a different picture, and figure to thyself an eccentric creature, always grave and sometimes even abrupt? Ah, what a mistake! To an expression of great mildness he unites a glance of fire, and eyes of a vivacity the like of which never was seen. When you handle any matter in which he takes an interest, then his eyes, his lips, his ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... and desolate spot where the road bent so sharply that they had turned a corner and come upon the crossing of the water without a previous view. They had been riding toward what had seemed a sheer wall of bluff, and that abrupt angle had brought them to a point where the road dipped sharply down and lost itself in the rapidly running waters of a narrow creek. On the opposite shore the road came out again with a right-angle turn to thread its course along a shelf of higher ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... her religion, and then throwing off her subjection; England first throwing off her subjection, and then compelled to reform herself. The old systems of thought were at an end. The change, like all social ones, was not abrupt, but it was decisive and final. It was the earthquake which shattered for ever the crust of error ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... which we reached late in the afternoon, was silent as oil and very deep, while the banks, muddy and abrupt, made it a ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... I said. He stood for a moment, inhaling the fragrance of the roses in great breaths, and staring about him; then with an abrupt gesture he opened the little gate, and gliding up the path with his furtive, stealthy footstep knocked at the door. For some half hour the Imp and I strolled to and fro in the moonlight, during which he related to me much about his outlaw and the many "ruses he had employed to get him provision." ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... greet a tall, lean individual more tanned than himself, with little, fine, weather lines about his eyes and an abrupt quickness of gesture which denoted his hair-triggered nerves. "What are you doing ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... my pen in my hand looking at those words again, without descrying any hint in them of the words that should follow, it comes into my mind that they have an abrupt appearance. They may serve, however, if I let them remain, to suggest how very difficult I find it to begin to explain my explanation. An uncouth phrase: and yet I do not see my way ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... suddenly backwards and causes the machine to dive. The Wrights had known of this tendency from Lilienthal's researches, but had imagined that the phenomenon would disappear if they used a fairly lightly cambered—or curved—surface with a very abrupt curve at the front. Having discovered what appeared to be the cause they surmounted the difficulty by 'trussing down' the camber of the wings, with the result that they at once got back to the old conditions of the previous year and could control the machine readily with small movements of the ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... stately olive trees cover the base and struggle as far up as they can by the fissures in the rocks. Behind the olives, and intermixed with them, are orchards of orange and lemon trees, bending under the weight of their beautiful fruit. Trees and tall shrubs hang over the edges of the abrupt banks, which enclose the tiny creeks and bays bordered with diminutive sandy beaches, or with long ledges of marble rocks, dipping gradually down into the deep-blue water, carpeted in some places with the thin flat siliceous leaves of the Posidonia Caulini, aNaiad not an alga, which ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... Cook named it; the land rises precipitously behind it to the height of about two thousand feet and forms a mass of bare rocky hills of a singularly grand and imposing appearance. It rises nearly perpendicularly from the lower wooded hills at its base and is as abrupt on its land side as on that which faces the sea. The summit extends from north to south for seven miles and forms a narrow craggy ridge on which are several remarkable peaks. It was called Mount Hinchinbrook and is visible from ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... cheerily, and Lili said to Mrs. March, with abrupt seriousness, "Augusta was finding a handkerchief under the table, and she was washing it and ironing it before she did bring it. I have scolded her, and I have made ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... about thirty square miles of country. From Pirna or Sonnenstein to Konigstein, as the crow flies, may be five miles east to west; but by Langen-Hennersdorf, and the elbow there, it will be ten: at Konigstein, moreover, Elbe makes an abrupt turn northward for a couple of miles, instead of westward as heretofore, turning abruptly westward again after that: so that the Saxon 'Camp' or Occupancy here, is an irregular Trapezium, with Pirna and Konigstein for vertices, and with area estimable as above,—ploughable, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... unbearable, because Mr. Browning, by his wife's desire, had telegraphed for news, begging for a telegraphic answer. No answer had come, and she felt convinced that the worst had happened, and that the brother to whom the message was addressed could not make up his mind to convey the fact in so abrupt a form. The telegram had been stopped by the authorities, because Mr. Odo Russell had undertaken to forward it, and his position in Rome, besides the known Liberal sympathies of Mr. and Mrs. Browning and himself, had laid it open to ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Torcy, and there traversing Sedan. The character of the locality may best be described as a ground covered with fruit gardens and vineyards, narrow streets shut in by stone walls, the roads overhung by forests, the egress from which was in many places steep and abrupt. Such was the ground. One word now ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... St. John's harbour is a mere sally-port in that castle wall. It is an abrupt opening, and is entered through the high and commanding posts of Signal and the ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... dozen times in succession. His feet were always "used to save his head" (contrary to our grandmothers' teachings). When he made the usual attempt to fly through the window on his first outing in the room, he went feet first against it, and thus saved himself a bumped head. His movements were abrupt in the extreme, and always so unexpected that he frequently threw the whole feathered family into a panic, apparently without the least intention of doing so. Standing beside the cage of another bird, he would wheel quickly and face the other ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... buttresses supporting the plateau above. Enough is left of the wall to show that it must have been a strong place at one time. It is attributed by common consent to the English. Protected on one side by the abrupt rock, it overlooked the valley from a height that to an enemy must have been very difficult of access. The fortified cavern is in the escarped cliff above the castle, with which there was, perhaps, a secret communication. The upper part of the wall is gone, but what remains ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... of the city wall. The place was very solitary. It was divided from the streets and mansions above by thick groves and extensive gardens, which stretched along the undulating descent of the hill. A short distance to the westward lay the Pincian Gate, but an abrupt turn in the wall and some olive trees which grew near it, shut out all view of objects in that direction. On the other side, towards the eastward, the ramparts were discernible, running in a straight line of some length, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... well as preposterously costly. For many years the price of coal and every form of liquid fuel had been clambering to levels that made even the revival of the draft horse seem a practicable possibility, and now with the abrupt relaxation of this stringency, the change in appearance of the traffic upon the world's roads was instantaneous. In three years the frightful armoured monsters that had hooted and smoked and thundered about the ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... the most perfect, specimen, is the small rock temple, which, being hewn out of the solid stone, is still in complete preservation. This is a small chamber in the face of an abrupt rock, which, doubtless, being partly a natural cavern, has been enlarged to the present size by the chisel; and the entrance, which may have been originally a small hole, has been shaped into an arched doorway. The interior is not more ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... amusing anecdotes to illustrate the right way and the wrong way of introducing religious conversation. In his office there was sitting one day a sort of lay preacher, who was noted for lugging in his favorite topic in the most forbidding and abrupt manner. A sea captain came in, who was introduced ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... good-looking enough: but she's not exactly to my taste. A little too showy, too abrupt for me. Personally I like a softer, quieter woman; but as a rule the women that I really admire haven't got ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... gradually to the tips, which are smooth; the bony cores are also spiral, so that in the dry skull the horn screws on and off. The colour of the old males is deep blackish-brown, the back and sides with an abrupt line of separation from the white of the belly; the dark colour also extends down the outer surface of the limbs; the back of the head, nape and neck are hoary yellowish; under parts and inside of limbs pure white; the face is black, with a white circle round ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... so evident that she had been a curious spectator of his abrupt entrance on deck that he was at first disconcerted and confused. But after a second glance at her he appeared to resume his composure, and advanced a little ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... With this abrupt and singular question she had taken an indignant figure, and her eyes were fiery: so that Wilfrid thought her much fitter than ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Came an abrupt lengthening of step, the guiding pressure grew more compelling, and she was caught up and carried along, though her velvet-shod feet never left the floor. Then came the sudden control down to the shorter step again, and she felt herself being held slightly from him ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... her own ill-treatment of them, gave a sharp yelp of dismay. The old dog arose and went and sat close by her, eying her solemnly and wagging his tail, as if begging her to observe how content he was. His dignity was somewhat impaired by sudden abrupt snaps at flies, which caused her to wink, stare, and be ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... ill-advised action of Lord Selkirk's agents, rendered an explosion not improbable at any time, and a certain feeling of disappointment came over them when they reflected that the hunting expedition, which they had entered on with so much enthusiastic hope, might perhaps be brought to an abrupt close. ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... spot hemmed in the Orange River they had hitherto evaded our attempts at retaliation. And now by sheer luck we had stumbled upon them. Jason and I, following up some copper indications amongst the mountain peaks, had turned an abrupt corner and found ourselves within a hundred yards of their big leader a huge grey monster that stood sentinel-wise upon a high rock watching us. The tiny black head of my foresight showed plainly against the wide grey chest ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... while the gentlemen continued their talking and drinking—Pere Joyeuse was always very slow in everything that he did, because of his abrupt excursions into the moon—the girls resumed their work, the table was covered with wicker baskets, embroidery, pretty wools whose brilliant coloring brightened the faded flowers in the old carpet, and the group of the ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of May we spent in drilling and idling and grumbling, and some of us, not so hard worked as Sergeant-Major Jenkins, in the true military style of conviviality, usually terminating in an abrupt entry in the orderly book, opposite the name of the follower of Bacchus, 'Drunk; two extra tours guard duty;' or 'Drunk again; four extra tours knapsack drill.' Now, the knapsack drill, as practised by well-informed and duty-loving sergeants of the guard, simply consists in requiring ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sitting in my apartment, arranging on a tray a present for my lord and master, I was surprised by the abrupt entrance of the kislar aga, accompanied by guards, who without explanation seized me, and led me into the presence-chamber, where the sultan and all the officers of state were assembled. It immediately rushed into my mind that my brother had deceived ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... archaic assemblage of Basque houses, the little square of the village with its kalsomined porches and its old plane-trees, then the old, massive belfry of the church, and, higher than everything, dominating everything, crushing everything, the abrupt mass of the Gizune from which comes so much shade, from which descends on this distant village so hasty an impression of night—Truly it encloses too much, that mountain, it imprisons, it impresses—And Ramuntcho, in his juvenile triumph, is troubled by the sentiment of this, ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... entitled the "Song of Age," is admired by his countrymen for its rapid succession of images (a little too mixed or abrupt on some occasions), its descriptive power, and its neatness and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... existence, a happy existence, he added sharply— objectively; and the stout figure in knickerbockers, rough stockings, a yellow buckskin jacket and checked cap pulled over a face which, he felt, was brightly red, surprised and a little annoyed him. In the abrupt appearance of this image it seemed that there had been no transitional years between his slender youth and the present. He had an absurd momentary impression that an act of malicious magic had in a second transformed him into a shape decidedly too heavy for grace. His breathing, where the ground ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... pages to a somewhat abrupt conclusion, it is because I have had the bad luck to get a chill out shooting, and have been somewhat seriously ill. However, I have hope that there is 'life in the old dog yet,' and that I may before long have some other adventures of a similar description to add to these 'unvarnished sketches' ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... There was a certain abrupt geniality about him. His tortoise-rimmed glasses gave him an oddly owlish look, like a small boy ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... short, about equal to the sporangium, stout, brown or brownish black, rugulose, solid; capillitial mass bright straw color; the elaters long cylindrical, 3-4 mu wide, adorned with spirals four, which wind unevenly, are perfectly smooth, and terminate in abrupt tips about twice the diameter of the elater; spores yellow, under the lens yellow, minutely and closely warted, globose, ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks. Many a man ought to have a bath-tub larger than the boat which here rode upon the sea. These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and each froth-top was a ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... the matter for him more, really, than his own courage had quite dared—putting the absent dots on several i's—he saw new questions swarm. They had been till now in a bunch, entangled and confused; and they fell apart, each showing for itself. The first he put to her was at any rate abrupt. "Have you heard of late from ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... daughter from walking in the sun, lest she should prove "a breeder of sinners;" for though conception (understanding) in general be a blessing, yet as Ophelia might chance to conceive (to be pregnant), it might be a calamity. Hamlet's abrupt question, "Have you a daughter?" is evidently intended to impress Polonius with the ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... The abrupt transitions of the gentleman's interest seemed to surprise the lady. She looked at him with a suspicion which perished under the expression in his brilliant eyes. What he meant, Laurie soberly explained, ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... saw one or two glances exchanged among the pirates before the interminable foul stream of fo'c's'le talk resumed its course, but apparently the incident of the scarred man's abrupt departure was soon forgotten. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... a piece of reckless extravagance; it was reckless in view of my straightened circumstances. And the reason I mention this apparent trifle is that it and its attendant circumstances influenced me in my conduct after the abrupt termination of the ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... she felt that she wanted to explain how she had spent her time, and she told him in abrupt, haughty words, that having to buy some furniture in a shop a long distance off, very far off, in the Rue de Rennes, she had met Limousin at past seven o'clock on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, and that then she had gone with him to have something to eat in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... divided by unequally bright streaks into seven distinct zones, running east and west. There is no central mountain or other obvious internal sign of former activity, but its irregular wall rises into abrupt towers, and is ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... country—I would to-night, if I could; but less, I fear, than some days—perhaps a week will not suffice. When I'm gone, Madam, I beg you'll exercise no reserve respecting the cause of my somewhat abrupt departure; I could easily make a pretext of something else; but the truth, Madam, is easiest as well as best to be told; I protracted my stay so long as hope continued. Now my suit is ended. I can no longer ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... appeared lonely as well as dark. M. Berty led the way across a narrow passage, at the end of which there was a door which he pushed open, saying in his usual abrupt manner: "Go in there and wait. I'll send ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and down, now from side to side, and now with long forward lurches that combined the other two motions. During one of these latter the little Jew was half awakened. He stopped snoring, leaving an abrupt silence in the air. Then Vandover could hear him threshing about uneasily; still half asleep he began to mutter and swear: "Dat's it, r-roll; I woult if I were you; r-roll, dat's righd—dhere, soh—ah, geep it oop—r-roll, you damnt ole tub, ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... turned at the tinkling sound, and would have stopped to lift it up after the manner of a careful servitor. But the eye of his lord was upon the fallen object, and with an abrupt wave of his hand towards the door, and the single word "Go!" the Earl dismissed his body-servant from ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... unwisdom of abrupt methods of approaching this wealthy group. They conducted themselves with modesty; they were polite, even servile, saying much in praise of the warrior twin. The one with the dog revealed genius for this sort of thing, and insisted on feeling the warrior's muscle. The flexed bicep appeared to leave ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... had, to give her in return:" and the old man (he looked ten years older for his six weeks, luck, and care, and trouble)—the old man could not get on at all with what he had to say—something stuck in his throat—but he recovered, and added cheerily, with an abrupt and rustic archness, "I don't know, mates, whether after all I can't give the good girl something: I can give her—away! Come hither, Jonathan Floyd; you are a noble fellow, that stood by us in adversity, and are almost worthy of my angel Grace." ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... plains lies outstretched toward the eastward and southward, while toward the northward and westward the horizon is bounded by low pine-covered hills and occasional forests of birch. No high mountains or abrupt outlines are any where visible—all is broad and sweeping, conveying some premonition of the vastness of the steppes that divide this region from the Ural Mountains. Waving fields of grain, pastures of almost boundless extent, and solitary farm-houses lie dim in the distance, while in the immediate ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... stopped short, with the air of one not accustomed to taking account of his own attributes, and apparently pondered the question as if for the first time. When he looked up to answer, it was with abrupt decision: ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... clauses of the treaty of Washington, in pursuance of the joint resolution of March 3, 1883, must have resulted in the abrupt cessation on the 1st of July of this year, in the midst of their ventures, of the operations of citizens of the United States engaged in fishing in British American waters but for a diplomatic understanding reached ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... even think of speaking to that child with a voice so abrupt, and with such a cloud on his forehead; but that cloud came to him from some place within, from a distant feeling of something which he had never looked at directly before. But he hardly knew the girl! When he went away the last time she was a child; ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... men came to an abrupt standstill, the horses, like the dogs, bunching together. Neptune had risen and Peter Champneys stood on the top step, his head about level with the old man's shoulder. He looked in vain for the sheriff; evidently, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... fact of importance for me in these MSS., I shall be grateful for a communication; but my appeal is rather made to the possessors of old family papers. There must, I think, be many letters—though he was a brief and abrupt correspondent—of the admiral's still existing in the archives of old Puritan families. These are the materials of history of which I am ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... she wrapped and hid from the whole world her own poor cunning. She found in her lonely condition no embarrassment, conceiving that her position as intermediary between her Church and the State was sufficient reason for her abrupt leaving of home. Sir Julian would doubtless explain matters to the Duke and Duchess, whom she believed were more than half of her faith. They would see she had been highly honoured by being entrusted ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... required curve, the formality and frequent emptiness of this subject is made to yield itself into good composition. When the subject rejects grace and demands a rugged form, the sinuous flow of line may be exchanged for an abrupt and forcible zigzag. In such an arrangement the eye is pulled sharply across spaces from one object to another, the space itself containing little of interest. In the short chapter on Getting out of the Picture, the use of this zigzag ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... a man possessing apostolic gifts, but was with Jesus the normal path for all who desired perfection. When the young man went away sorrowing, Jesus moralized on it, saying: "How hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of heaven:" which again shows, that an abrupt renunciation of wealth was to be the general and ordinary method of entering the kingdom. Hereupon, when the disciples asked: "Lo! we have forsaken all, and followed thee: what shall we have therefore?" Jesus, instead ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... order some provisions for the yacht. It was rather a tedious process, and when we came out of the back room we found the whole of the front of the place filled by a gaping, curious crowd. The proprietor suggested that they should retire at once, and an abrupt retreat immediately took place, the difficulties of which were greatly augmented by the fact that every one had left his high wooden shoes outside, along the front of the house. The street was ankle deep in mud and half-melted snow, into which they did not ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Saxham, without even an abrupt inclination of the head, had swung about and left her. She saw the heavily-shouldered, muscularly-built figure crossing the drift a little way down, stepping from boulder to boulder with those curiously small, neat feet, twirling his old horn-handled hunting-crop as he went, with a decidedly ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... The abrupt proposal produced a universal surprise in his hearers; though the abashed and conscious expression of Katherine Plowden's features sufficiently indicated that to her, at least, it was not altogether unexpected. The long silence that succeeded the question ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... saw the joke of the thing. At any rate, I found that in their charm for each other they had somehow not ceased to be amusing for me, and I waited confidently for the answer she would make to his whimsically abrupt bidding. But she did not answer very promptly, even when he had added, "Wanhope, here, is scenting something psychological in the reason of my laughing at you, instead of accepting the plain inference in ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... What change in the voice indicates the abrupt transition? What atmosphere does the voice create as a preparation for the climax ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... "Some species, when irritated, pout the lips, gaze with a fixed and savage glare on their foe, and make repeated short starts as if about to spring forward, uttering at the same time inward guttural sounds. Many display their anger by suddenly advancing, making abrupt starts, at the same time opening the mouth and pursing up the lips, so as to conceal the teeth, while the eyes are daringly fixed on the enemy, as if in savage defiance. Some again, and principally the long-tailed monkeys, or Guenons, display their teeth, and accompany their malicious ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... recruiting officer in New York City. Believing the woman he loved to be in Europe, this plan for his comfort only succeeded in bringing on a relapse. But the day following there came another cablegram. It put an abrupt end to his mutiny, and brought him and the ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... the valley's middle ascended over a number of huge steps, rounded and abrupt, at whose bases were pools of transparent snow-water edged with rude piles of erratic glacier blocks, scattered companies of alpine firs, of red bark and having cypress-like darkness of foliage, with fields of snow under sheltering cliffs, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... is simple and terse; it is evidently intended to be wholly comprehensive. Its decisive, almost abrupt tone would seem to forbid either question or argument. The old-world narrator of the sublime event thus briefly chronicled was a poet of no mean quality, though moved by the natural conceit of man to give undue importance to the earth as his own ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... but like a lady of the happy world, resting in luxury, a little while, from the assault of her own brilliant and fatiguing vitality. The flat, dark masses of her hair, laid on the dull red of her cushions, gave to her face an abrupt and lustrous whiteness, whiteness that threw into vivid relief the features of expression, the fine, full mouth, with its temperate sweetness, and the tender eyes, dark as the brows that arched them. Edith, ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... feelings really had been, and was not the fact of her marriage enough to remove any suspicion that Mutimer might formerly have entertained? But the manner of his question was so singular, the introduction of Eldon's name so abrupt, that she could not but discern in a measure ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... with an average width of ten feet. The floor is smooth and level, as also is the ceiling, which is nine feet above, supported by handsomely carved pillars and rising in a gray cliff projecting from the slope of the hill above, out to the brink of the more abrupt descent to the water's edge ninety feet below. Between the pillars are three large door-ways into the cave. The comparison suggested is an Egyptian temple, and the idea is continued within, where there are no chambers as in other caves; but instead, the entire interior is a labyrinth ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... the westward of a line drawn due south from Fort Kearney to the Republican we shall find a comparatively abrupt and unexplained change taking place in the scenery. Our green river-bottoms will give way to tracts of the color and seemingly of the sterility proper to an ash-heap. Our bluffs will recede, grow higher, and exchange their flat mesa-like surfaces for a curved ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... there was an abrupt silence amongst us. Crow and Wallop stopped short in the middle of their exclamation. Hawkesbury and I buried ourselves in our work, and Doubleday, standing before the fire, began to ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... choristers, to scatter, striding over the recumbent tombstones, and slipping between the broken columns and upright slabs. They lost the coffin and found it again. Nanteuil evinced a certain eagerness in her pursuit of it, anxious and abrupt, her prayer-book in her hand, freeing her skirt as it caught on the railings, and brushing past the withered wreaths which left the heads of immortelles adhering to her gown. Finally, the first to reach the graveside smelt the acrid ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... is drawing them up, sometimes because he does not pull them gradually, gives them an abrupt turn or draws them too far above the pitch at which they are intended to stand. More often, however, they break from being rusty at the point where they pass over the bridge or around the tuning pin. The best instruction concerning ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... "Oh, you darling! the very thing! Won't that pup"—an abrupt and convulsive cough subsided brilliantly into, "that pet of a Berta be pleased! I'll take it to her ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... of Europe, shaken by an intellectual tempest of physical discovery, disturbed by an abrupt and undigested enlargement in the material world, in physical science, and in the knowledge of antiquity, was to be offered a fruit of which each might taste if it would, but the taste of which would lead, if it were acquired, to evils no citizen of Europe then dreamt of; to things which even ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... physical types. Certain tribes whom we place in the Turanian group have all the distinctive characteristics of the white races. Others are hardly to be distinguished from the yellow nations. Between these two extremes there are numerous varieties which carry us, without any abrupt transition, from the most perfect European to the most complete Chinese type.[39] In the Aryan family the ties of blood are perceptible even between the most divergent branches. By a comparative study of their languages, traditions, and religious conceptions, it ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... anthropo-geographer looks to see not what reliefs are present, but how they are distributed; whether highlands and lowlands appear in unbroken masses as in Asia, or alternate in close succession as in western Europe; whether the transition from one to the other is abrupt as in western South America, or gradual as in the United States. A simple and massive land structure lends the same trait of the simple and massive to every kind of historical movement, because it collects the people into large groups and starts them ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... for the time being, acknowledging almost complete defeat. There was only a single consoling thought. At least, he had talked with her intimately concerning his affairs. With an abrupt change of manner, she stood up listlessly, and spoke in such a fashion as might become an old-fashioned wife, although her ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... anew upon turf, now soft and springy from the rain, and, refreshed by the long night's sleep in the bark shelter, he went rapidly. Eight or ten miles beyond the camp the trail made an abrupt curve to the eastward. Perhaps they were coming to some large river of which the Indian scouts knew and the turn was made in order to reach a ford, but he followed it another hour and there was no river. The nature ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... all her chances to talk stopped: "What's the matter with Maurice?" she pondered, crossly; "he's backed out of helping me. Why can't he go on shingling the chicken coop?" For it was while this delightful work was under way that it, and "talk," came to an abrupt end. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the blue depths. Then brush appeared on each side of the road. Gradually Carley's strain relaxed, and also the muscular contraction by which she had braced herself in the seat. The horses began to trot again. The wheels rattled. The road wound around abrupt corners, and soon the green and red wall of the opposite side of the canyon loomed close. Low roar of running water rose to Carley's ears. When at length she looked out instead of down she could see nothing but a mass of green ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... united at the base; outer margin of the ear conch terminating opposite the base of the tragus, the inner margin with an abrupt rounded projection directed inwards above the base; tragus very large, tapering upwards, with a lobe at the base of ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... heard from time to time of Proteus on the platform—how he was more and more eccentric—how he could not be understood—how abrupt his manner was. But the Chair did not believe that the flame which had once been so pure could ever be dimmer, especially as he recognized its soft lustre on every aspect ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... he replied, 'No, I cannot; you are telling me to do an impossible thing.' Although Monsieur Bernheim failed in this instance, I could not but admire his skill. After using every means of persuasion, insinuation and coaxing, he suddenly took up an imperative tone, and in a sharp, abrupt voice that did not admit a refusal, said: 'I tell you you can walk; get up.' 'Very well,' replied the old follow; 'I must if you insist upon it.' And he got out of bed. No sooner, however, had his foot touched the floor than he screamed even louder than before. Monsieur Bernheim ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... drive at a fast gallop. The little horse, driven to madness by the whip, would rear, as if possessed by a demon; the sled would sway, almost overturn, striking against poles, and Yanson, letting the reins go, would half sing, half exclaim abrupt, meaningless phrases in Esthonian. But more often he would not sing, but with his teeth gritted together in an onrush of unspeakable rage, suffering and delight, he would drive silently on as though blind. He would not notice those who passed ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... woman of five-and-seventy, yet, from her steady gait, her lively speech, and her fiery eyes, she appeared to be scarcely fifty. She was vigorous and hearty, expressed her opinions like a man, and was abrupt in her speech. Had she not worn women's garments one could easily have taken her for a man. Indeed, in conversation she held her own with ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... Algae.—(From a Memoir published in 1869.)) is a good hit against my talking so much of the insensibly fine gradations; and certainly it has astonished me that I should be pelted with the fact, that I had not allowed abrupt and great enough variations under nature. It would take a good deal more evidence to make me admit that forms have often ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... was written at the request of some of the members of the Browning Society, and was originally intended to be a primer. It bears the marks of this intention in its general scheme, and in the almost abrupt brevity which the desired limits of space seemed to impose on its earlier part. But I felt from the first that the spirit of Mr. Browning's work could neither be compressed within the limits, nor adapted to the uses, of a primer, as generally understood; and the book has naturally shaped itself ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... at her a moment, as if questioning both herself and the other, and finally handed the letter across with an abrupt movement. ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... try and find the Ambassador," suggested Marjorie. "I don't think he was really very cross, only a little abrupt, you know; and we could explain everything to him, and perhaps he would give ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... left. The sergeant halted a moment to take stock of the situation, and then we hurried on again. Every time he struck a man for lazy running, the man in his turn paid me with punch or kick. After a mile or so, the avenue made an abrupt turn to the east and brought us out on the main road in the rear ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... indifferent subjects; but the prince gave little heed to him. He was a prey to fatal grief: sometimes he could not persuade himself that Ebn Thaher was gone, and at others he did not doubt of it, when he reflected upon the conversation he had had with him the last time he had seen him, and the abrupt manner in which he ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... idly for a moment or two, and then with an abrupt swing of his whole figure, eloquent of defiant resolution, he stared the Major in the face, and said in ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Hiram first came to Burnsville he sought to be admitted as a member of Mr. Burns's family, but was met with a cold and abrupt refusal. Now, Mr. Burns not only desired Hiram to come at once to his house, but put his wishes in so decided a form that Hiram could not object. It was in vain, that Sarah interposed. She begged her father not to insist on the arrangement. Neither had Hiram the least desire to quit his comfortable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... seemed to him that they actually realized the almost forgotten ideal of serviceable womanhood. The talk at dinner turned first on the ailments of an old woman who was accustomed to clean the church, but was now suspected of being past her work; then, by an abrupt transition, on the new hat which the bank-manager's wife had brought home from Dublin; and, finally, the connection of thought being again far from obvious, on the hymns which had been sung that morning. It was at this point that Hyacinth ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... decided impression upon the house. The fact of being unable to continue his speech from weakness rather added to the effect; so that Mr. Disraeli truly said that, were not the house aware of the learned member's illness, the abrupt termination of his address on such a plea, and at such a moment, might appear an ingenious and rhetorical artifice. In his argument, Mr. Roebuck charged the government, the officials at home, and those in command abroad, with incapacity, conceit, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... reflected in the style. It may be gay, humorous, serious, sad, melancholy, according to the state of the writer's feelings. It may be colloquial or stately, concise or diffuse, plain or florid, flowing or abrupt, feeble or energetic, natural or affected, commonplace or epigrammatic,—as varied, in fact, as the character and mental constitution of the writers. But every writer has a prevailing style; and it is an interesting ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... of the child's sudden disappearance and equally abrupt discovery. There remained, however, the problem of the interloping baby, which now sat whimpering on the lawn in a disfavour as chilling as its previous popularity had been unwelcome. The Momebys glared at it as though ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... The abrupt zigzags bothered the long wagons, and their still longer teams. The bridges over dangerous chasms entailed the necessity of unloading the heavier carts, and caused great delay. Day after day passed away; but although the ascent ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... factions. The Arians upbraided the Catholics with the worship of three Gods: the Catholics defended their cause by theological distinctions; and the usual arguments, objections, and replies were reverberated with obstinate clamor; till the king revealed his secret apprehensions, by an abrupt but decisive question, which he addressed to the orthodox bishops. "If you truly profess the Christian religion, why do you not restrain the king of the Franks? He has declared war against me, and forms alliances with my enemies for my destruction. A sanguinary and covetous ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... was afraid to bring out the very pith of his story in so abrupt a manner. He wished to have the work over, to feel, that as regarded Herbert it was done,—but his heart failed him ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... a little abrupt to me at first, but he intended it to be. "Why," she asked with real alarm, ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... wings swept down on a clump of bushes hard by and poured forth a torrent of wild, joyous music. A strange performance! screaming notes that seemed to scream jubilant gladness to listening heaven, and notes abrupt and guttural, mingling with others more clear and soul-piercing than ever human lips drew from reed or metal. It soon ended; up sprang the vocalists like a fountain of fire and fled away to their roost ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... pair of lips bestowed a vigorous kiss upon her apple-blossom cheeks. She patted them on their shoulders, smiled at them with happy eyes full of love; and they rushed off to school, grumbling a little at her quick, abrupt ways, but loving her well deep down in ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... with a smile, which was instantly explained by an abrupt plunge from the top of a long hill down into a cutting between lichen-scaled rocks, tracing with our "pneus" as we went a series of giddy zig-zags. We had hardly twisted one way when lo! the time had come ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... tying up papers. His eyes watched me, I thought, with an anxious scrutiny as I approached; and I think it was not until I had saluted him that he recollected suddenly that he had not seen me before at Bartram, and stood up and greeted me in his usual abrupt and somewhat familiar way. It was vulgar and not cordial, and yet it was honest and indefinably kind. Up rose my uncle, that strangely venerable, pale portrait, in his loose Rembrandt black velvet. How gentle, how benignant, how ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... mountains there are no sharp peaks, or abrupt declivities, as in a volcanic region, but long, uniform ranges, heavily timbered to their summits, and delighting the eye with vast, undulating horizon lines. Looking south from the heights about the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... final, that she would break off the engagement on the grounds of his past failings. It was just a passing cloud, he told himself. Both of them would have been more upset had their love affair come to a sudden and abrupt close. He remembered how he had felt when he had parted from Lalage, the fever and the agony of it, the sense of utter desolation and hopelessness. And from that he came to think of Lalage herself. She had never turned on him because he drank. Far otherwise. ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... Waife's grandchild, in order to throw a few gleams of light on her past.—He leads her into the palace of our kings, and moralizes thereon; and, entering the Royal Gardens, shows the uncertainty of human events, and the insecurity of British laws, by the abrupt seizure and constrained deportation of an innocent ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sister, you will easily pardon an abrupt conclusion. I believe, by this time, you are ready to fear I would never conclude ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... away with an abrupt nod. Shortly afterwards Fairfield heard a taxicab scurry away down the sodden street. He leaned back in his chair and puffed a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling. There was a dim uneasiness in his mind, ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... hardly know when the last straggler is gone. Not so their return in the spring: then it is like an army of invasion, and we know the very day when the first scouts appear. It is a memorable event. Indeed, it is always a surprise to me, and one of the compensations of our abrupt and changeable climate, this suddenness with which the birds come in spring,—in fact, with which spring itself comes, alighting, maybe, to tarry only a day or two, but real and genuine, for all that. When March arrives, we do not know what a day may bring forth. It is like turning over a ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... have an important motive for the socialist attitudes towards sexual morality as it was during the activie nineteen seventies until the unexpected appearance of AIDS put an abrupt ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... cried, and with an abrupt if artificial resumption of his business-like air turned away to a show-case—to spare her the embarrassment of ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance |
