"Downright" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... anything wonderful in the dark, deep eyes at all,—they looked downright wicked to him. He took Carol away hurriedly, and questioned her feverishly to find out if Mrs. Waldemar had put any fresh nonsense into her ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... caused him some difficulty as he was not prepared to relegate Carrick to such servile rank. It might be of some significance to note that both Josef and Sobieska displayed a covert interest in this hesitation in the usually downright Chancellor. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... prospect of losing her. Should Lady Sheerness, he urged, reject his proposal, she might then be extremely offended with their marrying, after they knew her disapprobation; but if they did it without her knowledge, she would not have room to complain of downright disobedience, and if it was displeasing to her, yet being done, and past remedy, she would be inclined to make the best of what was unavoidable, and forgive ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... occur, by practising against an imaginary foe by hammering with a mace at a corn-sack swinging from a beam. Methinks I hit it as hard as of old, but in truth I know but little of the tricks of these Frenchmen. They availed nothing at Poictiers against our crushing downright blows. Still, I would gladly see what ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... of the wonderful in natural history, and their existence was unknown to the learned men of Europe till within the last sixty years. The most extraordinary of the two is the Ornithorhynchus, or, to translate the hard Greek word into English, the Duck-bill. Its mouth is a true duck's bill, a downright horny beak, and its short paws sprawling sideways with a membrane joining the toes together below, and coming a good deal beyond them in front, seem intermediate between the flippers of the seal and the webbed feet of a water-bird. The first naturalist who had anything to do ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... hero, when Palmer played it at least, was Joseph Surface. When I remember the gay boldness, the graceful solemn plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice—to express it in a word—the downright acted villany of the part, so different from the pressure of conscious actual wickedness,—the hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy,—which made Jack so deservedly a favourite in that character, I must needs conclude ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... stitches in vogue during the first era of needlework pictures. A single glance at one of the early specimens, though it may not charm, fills one with amazement at the amount of toil, ingenuity, patience, and downright love for the work the ancient needlewoman must have possessed. Not only pictures, however, were made in petit point. Many dainty little accessories of the toilet gave scope to the delicate fancy and ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... were always very bitter against any thing like sogering, as they called it; that is, any thing that savored of a desire to get rid of downright hard work; yet, I observed that, though this Jackson was a notorious old soger the whole voyage (I mean, in all things not perilous to do, from which he was far from hanging back), and in truth was a great veteran that way, and one who ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Little Russian, warming up. "It's so plainly evident that it's downright ridiculous—simply because men don't stand on an equal footing. Then let's equalize them, put them all in one row! Let's divide equally all that's produced by the brains and all that's made by the hands. Let's not keep one another in the slavery ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... Of course, I expected him to say something about our rights, failing Harry's, and he treated them as if they did not exist. Even when I introduced them in the most delicate way, he was what I call downright rude. 'Julius,' he said, 'I will not discuss any ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... to march from very pleasant quarters in Devonshire to the north-west of Ireland. The change at any time would have been unpleasant, but the service they were entering upon was particularly irksome and jarring to the feelings. Grumbling, in a military man, is, however, downright folly, and they soon made themselves tolerably at home in their new quarters. It is needless to dwell upon the disturbed and distracted state of the country, or on the military movements of the time. After the regiment had been quartered at the town of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... at an Inn and stepped within The Bar and read the "Times;" And never such a treat, as—the epistle of one "Vetus,"[42] Had he found save in downright crimes: "Though I doubt if this drivelling encomiast of War Ever saw a field fought, or felt a scar, Yet his fame shall go farther than he can guess, For I'll keep him a place in my hottest Press; 130 And his works shall be bound in Morocco d'Enfer, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... among the people, which no party could satisfy; while their measures has reduced the people to a state in which the disappointment of those expectations seemed to excuse, if not justify, even downright rebellion. They arrayed the agricultural and manufacturing interests in deadly hostility against each other; they sought to make the one responsible for the consequences springing only from the reckless misconduct of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... came without delay— Young Doctor Green and shrewd old Doctor Gray— They heard the story—"Bleed!" says Doctor Green, "That's downright murder! cut his throat, you mean Leeches! the reptiles! Why, for pity's sake, Not try an adder or a rattlesnake? Blisters! Why bless you, they 're against the law— It's rank assault and battery if they draw Tartrate of Antimony! shade of Luke, Stomachs ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... breath of its pres—ence, till emerging suddenly upon its plane, they had to struggle with it for very foot-hold upon the round earth. In such contests Lady Joan delighted. It was so nice, she said, to have a downright good fight, and nobody out of temper! She would come home from the windy war with her face glowing, her eyes flashing, her hair challenging storm from every point of the compass, and her heart merry ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... that they may obtain for it the highest as well as the most stable price; but not at the expense of corn, cotton, and wheat; and it is to be hoped, if any have debts to meet now or hereafter, that they may meet them with the least inconvenience consistent with plain, downright, integrity; but, from being led astray by the loud declamations of those who earn nothing themselves and know no trade but spoliation of the earnings of others, let them heartily say, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... "Oh, how deliciously downright you are, Miss Lambert. Well, do you know I have not the faintest notion why Neville asked me to marry him, any more than I know why I listened to him. I tell him sometimes that it was the most ridiculous mistake ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... demanded it; but Clavering, with his graceful insolence, ironical contempt of them, and thinly-veiled pride, was a type of all their democracy anathematized. More than one of them had winced under his soft laugh and lightly spoken jibes, which rankled more than a downright injury. ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... our Saint, while He Wou'd seem downright Humility, Some honest Features cry'd aloud, "Our Master is of Spirit proud." Pass him with Bonnet on, his Lip Will hang as low as to his Hip; His bloated Eye its Venom darts, And from its gloomy Socket starts; And if the Body's frame we scan, ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... things that young people are ignorant of, they were yet almost totally unacquainted with the ordinary attributes of social life—unsophisticated and naive to an extreme degree, they would have appeared in a fashionable drawing-room downright fools. On the other hand, they possessed great clearness of perception, presence of mind in danger, promptitude in action, and the utmost coolness in the face of apparently insurmountable obstacles—qualities that would have utterly confounded the young men who shine in the saloons of Europe, ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... details of New England history were essentially dry and unpoetic. Everything is near, authentic, and petty. There is no mist of distance to soften outlines, no mirage of tradition to give characters and events an imaginative loom. So much downright work was perhaps never wrought on the earth's surface in the same space of time as during the first forty years after the settlement. But mere work is unpicturesque, and void of sentiment. Irving instinctively divined and admirably illustrated in his "Knickerbocker" ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... State, had been notoriously Loyalist—that is, pro-British—ever since the troubles between the Colonists and the British grew angry. Governor Tryon, the Governor of the State, made no secret of his British preferences; indeed, they were not preferences at all, but downright British acts. ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... weather so that the grazing in the Basin itself would be held in reserve for storms. It was a very grave error, said Holman Sommers, to exhaust the pasturage immediately contiguous to the home corral. It might almost be defined as downright improvidence. Then he forestalled any resentment she might feel by apologizing for his seeming presumption. But he apprehended the fact that she and her brother were both inexperienced, and he would be sorry indeed to see them suffer any loss because of that inexperience. ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... "I am downright famished," the sailor said as he came up. "I would not have believed it if I had not seen it. How on earth did ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... me rich, Signor Mask, are pleased to joke with the unhappy child of a luckless race. That I might have been above want—nay, that I am not downright needy, may be true; but when they speak of a thousand ducats, they speak of affairs too weighty for my burdened shoulders. Were it your pleasure to purchase an amethyst or a ruby, gallant Signore, there might possibly be dealings ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... "how can you say so. I am downright chilly; but as there is to be dancing, it is better ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... next week," says the professor, troubled in somewise by the meaning in her eyes. What is it? Simple loneliness, or misery downright? How young she looks—what a child! That tragic air does not belong to her of right. She should be all ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... whatever, either in N(orth) America or in the W(est) Indies, remain under the British Empire. Our affairs in Ireland go on pretty well, and that is the only place where they do. (The) Lord Advocate made a downright, open speech, but Lord Geo(rge) did not understand it; though parts of it, by what the Advocate has said in debate, were most probably ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... all right," said Dan. "Cheer up, lad. There's fellers worse off than you!" An inspiration lit up his honest and downright brain for a moment. "Why," he said, "it's better to be you than be a feller like Bill that never had a fancy in his life. You've lost a lot, maybe; but you can't lose a ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... own it, but I was frightened, downright frightened. I quailed and I quaked. The sight of Sir Charles stepping out of the study window filled me with abject rapture. Metaphorically speaking, my craven soul squirmed at his heels. He was to me as a strong tower and house of defence.—But look here, Damaris, joking apart, tell ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... he thought mechanically. But not disgraceful—for the first time he was glad to discover a case of strike-breaking. She had also begun to take in sewing—and she looked thoroughly overworked. This gave him downright pleasure. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... warningly, "or no good 'ull come of it; and be foreright in all you do, and spake the truth to un. I've many a time wished I could, but with this to hide o' that one's and that to hush up o' t'other's, I know he holds me for a downright liard; and so I am by his measure, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... figurative truth. But now I'll shew you sunthin' in this town, that's as false as parjury, sunthin that's a disgrace to this country and an insult to our great nation, and there is no jeest in it nother, but a downright lie; and, since you go for to throw up to me our naval button with its 'eagle and anchor,' I'll point out to you sunthin' a hundred thousand million times wus. What was the name o' that English admiral folks made such a touss about; that cripple-gaited, one-eyed, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... I cannot believe that any man is a downright villain who is fortunate enough to have such ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... drew closer. Beasley always had a knack of so blending truth with his personal venom that it stung far more than downright insult. He wondered what the Padre's generosity had been, and wherein lay its connection with their present purpose. The explanation was not long in coming, for Montana Ike took up the challenge amidst a storm of ominous ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... born in the camp and his mother died when he was a baby. God knows how he pulled through! You know what those mining places are. His father, Frank Lee, was killed in a drunken row while I was there, and Abe showed so much cool nerve and downright manliness that I offered him a place with my party. He has been with ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... looking troubled. "I be afeared 'twill make him a downright enemy to you, lad. But you'll grow, and captain will learn you how to ply your fists, and when it comes to a fight, mind of my ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... phenomena of sound, we travel a very little way from downright sensible experience. Still the imagination is to some extent exercised. The bodily eye, for example, cannot see the condensations and rarefactions of the waves of sound. We construct them in thought, and we believe as firmly ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... keeps within the Degrees of Probability; But Mr. de la Bruyere gives us Characters of Men, who are not to be found in Nature; and, out of a false Affectation of the Wonderful, he carries almost every thing to Excess; represents the Irregularities of Life as downright Madness, and by his false Colours ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... and Grainger put his hand on the big man's shoulder, with a kindly light shining in his quiet, grey eyes. "I'll write and tell him all about it. And I'll tell him what a real, downright, ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... minutes before he had been swearing by all his gods—and they appeared to be numerous and mixed—that there were half a dozen fortunes left in the claim, and that he was only giving it up because he was downright weary of shovelling the ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... his thought from his heart like his sword from its scabbard, holding it aloft in his ermined hand, as on his scutcheon, shining with sincerity. That secret once penetrated, all is clear. We can comprehend the depth of convictions that are not thoughts, but living principles,—clear, distinct, downright, and as immaculate as the ermine itself. We understand that sale made to his sister before the war; which provided for all, and faced all, death, confiscation, exile. The beauty of the character of these two old people (for ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... not happen to call himself a salesman. Therefore he has never studied with personal interest the fine art of selling. He does not realize that ignorance of salesmanship, and consequent non-use of the selling process, almost always are responsible for the merely partial success or the downright failure in life of the man who deserves to win, but ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... "were always like that—downright and outspoken. It is an Aiken trait. No Aiken could ever help blurting out the truth if he knew he were to die for ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... veined with humour; she watches a roof-shingler with active delight, discovering poetry in cheerful manual toil. One day life seems to her depressing; another day, beautiful; another, inspiring; another, downright funny. ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... a downright numbskull," he said one evening in disgust; "I have been three weeks at it and no single idea has ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... from the consequences of imprudence; and there was something in Mervale's voice alone that damped his enthusiasm, and often made him yet more ashamed of noble impulses than weak conduct. For Mervale, though a downright honest man, could not sympathise with the extravagance of generosity any more than with that of presumption and credulity. He walked the straight line of life, and felt an equal contempt for the man who wandered up the hill-sides, no matter ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a folly still to twirl, And smirk and promenade and querl About the town? I'll put this down: A man becomes downright blast Before he knows that he is either That, or what I am—call ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... was too fully occupied in defending himself to be able to pay much attention to any thing else. At the commencement of the attack I was standing next to Browne, who being evidently singled out by his former opponent, advanced a step or two to meet him. He skilfully parried several downright blows from the heavy club of the latter, who in his turn dodged a swinging stroke which Browne aimed at his head, and instantly closed with him. The next moment they went whirling past me towards the ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... the hope of Grunewald,' cried Fritz. 'He doesn't suit some of your high-and-dry, old, ancient ideas; but he's a downright modern man - a man of the new lights and the progress of the age. He does some things wrong; so they all do; but he has the people's interests next his heart; and you mark me - you, sir, who are a Liberal, and the enemy of all their governments, you please to mark my words ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... perpetual fidget; endeavoring vainly to say Yes and No to all questions, Foreign and Domestic, that may rise. Whereby, in the Affairs of England, there has, as it were, universal St.-Vitus's dance supervened, at an important crisis: and the Preparations for America, and for a downright Life-and-Death Wrestle with France on the JENKINS'S-EAR QUESTION, are quite in a bad way. In an ominously bad. Why cannot we draw a ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... often fight without animosity. After the contest is over, you may commonly see the combatants walking and talking very sociably together: but as this circumstance makes them a little suspected by the public, they affect the greater rage when in conflict, and occasionally quarrel and fight in downright earnest. No," he continued, "I am told it is a very rare thing to see one of these prize-fighters who is a Glonglim; but most of their employers belong to ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... landlord's cunning and the perversion of the machinery of the law to serve his interests could devise was thrown in the way. It was a new doctrine to that day that any power should intervene between him and the tenants who represented his income, and it was held to be a hardship if not downright robbery. The builder took the same view. Every tenement house plan was the subject of hot debate between the Health Board and the builder, or his architect. The smallest air-shaft had to be wrung out of him, as it were, by main strength. The church itself was too often on the side of ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... money), that is to say, hay, straw, oats for the winter, bread, corn, cattle, horses, even men to recruit our foreign troops. The war must not be prolonged; and perhaps it may be necessary, according to the events which may happen between this time and the end of September, to make a downright desert before the line of the quarters which it may be thought proper to keep during the winter, in order that the enemy may be under a real impossibility of approaching us: at the same time reserving for ourselves a bare subsistence on the route ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of Dolores, though nothing on the part of the landlord could have astonished him. In the brief space of three weeks that worthy had been in the habit of telling him on an average about four hundred and seventy-seven downright lies per day. ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... you may end in it. But if he gave Violet a home of her own that was a home at the very start, she'd soon settle down in it. He needn't worry about the hard work it meant. The only thing that would keep Violet steadylike was downright hard work. No; she didn't mean anything cruel. They could have a char once a fortnight for a scrub-down ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... Miss Letitia's plumper shoulders, "your Aunt 'Titia has decided that so long as this is nearly August, there's no earthly use in your going to visit them until fall. So I'm going to write your father that. He may not like it, because he wants you right away, his letter says. But it would be downright foolishness to get you more summer clothes this late in the season; and you haven't near enough now, nor the right kind, to visit in a city. It's just like him, for all the world, this whole affair. Letting you alone for this ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... fast. Why, he was the darndest crape-hanger I ever met till you got him gingered up; he didn't have no more spirit than a sick kitten. Of course, he ain't what you'd call genial and expansive yet, but he's developed a remarkable burst of speed, and seems downright hopeful at times." ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... bright tusk whetting in his crooked jaws: They press him on all sides, and from beneath Loud gnashings hear, yet firm, his threats defy; Like them the Trojans on all sides assail'd Ulysses dear to Jove. First with his spear 510 He sprang impetuous on a valiant chief, Whose shoulder with a downright point he pierced, Deiopites; Thooen next he slew, And Ennomus, and from his coursers' backs Alighting quick, Chersidamas; beneath 515 His bossy shield the gliding weapon pass'd Right through his navel; on the plain he fell Expiring, and with both ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... the union of two such lines. Again, time can only be measured by space, space by time; they are true universals and contraries; their synthesis is motion, a conception which requires them both and is completed by them. Or again, the philosophical extremes of downright materialism and idealism are each wholly true, yet but half the truth. The insoluble enigmas that either meets in standing alone are kindred to those which puzzled the old philosophers in the sophisms ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... ergo:—"Therefore we may know that those who will not learn such sciences as they might get their living by, or do not fall into husbandry, are either downright fools, or else propose to get their living by robbery or by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... that this mode of preparation of soil would meet with favor among all farmers. There is a parsimonious class of cultivators who would consider it a downright loss of time, seed, and labor; but any one who will take the trouble to investigate, will find that these same parsimonious men never produced four hundred bushels of potatoes per acre; and that the few bushels of small tubers that they do dig from an ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... same words were lately spoken in England proving the eternal truth of The Nights which the ignorant call "downright lies." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... adjoining parishes. The church was full, the Sunday-school well attended, the Sabbath was kept holy, the women were one and all sober and thrifty, the men were fairly satisfactory except on Saturday nights, there was no want, little sickness, and very seldom downright sin. The expression downright sin is Mrs. Morrison's own,—heaven forbid that I should have anything to do with such an expression—and I suppose she meant by it thieving, murder, and other grossnesses that would bring the sinner, ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the marble image of death or weariness. So the concomitants should be distinctly marble, severe and monumental in their lines, not shroud, not bedclothes, not actual armor nor brocade, not a real soft pillow, not a downright hard stuffed mattress, but the mere type and suggestion of these: a certain rudeness and incompletion of finish is very noble in all. Not that they are to be unnatural, such lines as are given should be pure and true, and clear of the hardness and mannered rigidity of the strictly Gothic types, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... fellows for this work—a work wholly anomalous, unlike all other work that they have thought of in many respects—they will think that what I say is reasonable, and like the prospect all the better (I think) because they see that it means downright work in a cheery, happy, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you've worked with a camel in a bad temper, Mr. Jim," said Dave Boone darkly; he had put in a weary time in Egypt. "For downright wickedness them snake-headed ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... and while examining these proofs, and arguing upon them rationally, he overlooked the light attacks of his adversary, when not to the point, appeared insensible to his sarcasms and wit, and remained always cool and serious. Voltaire's vivacity at last turned to downright anger; his eyes flashed fire whenever they met the benign and placid countenance of the quaker, and the dispute went so far at last, that the latter, getting up, said, "Friend Voltaire! perhaps thou mayst come to understand these matters rightly; in the meantime, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... see fit to enlighten him. I was not sure of her motive in maintaining the alias, though I was certain it was more than a mere whim. How great it was I could not know. Should she persist in it I would help her up to the point of telling Max a downright falsehood. There I ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... with his feelings at that moment, condoned the sharpness of her words, which hardly reached him. The failure of the missionaries to see the merit in his work showed ignorance, but was their own affair; the omission to say "thank you" for his gift was downright rudeness. Their open contempt of his little masterpiece rankled hot in his mind. He vowed before Allah never again to seek to please a Frank and risk such insult. Henceforth he would cleanse his mouth whenever he so much as passed in the street near ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... it is only an insult to their miserable understandings. It arises from a total want of charity, or a total want of thought. Want of one kind was never relieved by want of any other kind. Patience, labour, sobriety, frugality, and religion, should be recommended to them; all the rest is downright FRAUD. It is horrible to call them "The ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the right arm and lungs, of which he died in a few hours, having been carried off the field by the bravery of lieutenant-colonel Gage, another of his officers. When he dropped, the confusion of the few that remained turned it into a downright and very disorderly flight across a river which they had just passed, though no enemy appeared, or attempted to attack them. All the artillery, ammunition, and baggage of the army were left to the enemy, and, among the rest, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... you earn, if I were you. You needn't spend much, but have a good time out of hours. You'll find yourself working side by side with other sons of rich men. And you can bet your bottom dollar they don't live on what they can earn. Unless you make a display of downright wealth you'll be judged on your merits. That's what you're driving ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... my dear fellow, to what the habit of bombasticising in newspapers brings you to. Here am I writing a downright article. Does the mind have its ruts, like a road? I stop; for I rob the mail, and I rob myself, and you may be yawning—to be continued in our next; I hear the second bell, which summons me to one of those abundant breakfasts the fashion of which has long passed away, in the dining-rooms ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... don't see why a gentleman isn't to have a trousseau as well as a lady. At any rate, I wanted a new black suit, fit for the hymeneal altar. And when there I made out John Gordon, and soon wormed the truth out of him. At least he did not tell me downright, but he let the cat so far out of the bag that I soon guessed the remainder. I always knew how it ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... Catt was not well-mannered, but he was good-hearted and stout-hearted. He was one of those rough young gentlemen who pride themselves upon "having no nonsense about them." He was downright in all things, even in love-making. He took, therefore, a very early opportunity of asking his betrothed "what this all meant about Monsieur de Gars?" and of observing, "She had only to say the word, and he was ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... friend. Formed on the good old plan, A true and brave and downright honest man He blew no trumpet in the market-place, Nor in the church with hypocritic face Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace; Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will What others talked of while their hands were still; And, while "Lord, Lord!" the pious tyrants ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... prepared to accept the statement of his trainers, Mr. and Mrs. McArdle, that Peter's proficiency is not so much the result of training as of downright self-education." ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Brian was forced to acknowledge, though for many days afterward he was still angry at Turlough for torturing and hanging those men. He had no scruples about a downright hanging, but torturing was a very different matter, and one of which ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... He's a regular fellow. You can have a great deal of respect and downright admiration for a Chinaman, ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... which he seems to be swallowing it himself. This story of the Abbess and Novice almost impels us to turn back to certain earlier chapters, or former volumes, and re-examine some of the subtler passages of humour to be found there—in downright apprehension lest we should turn out to have read these "good things," not "in," but "into," our author. The bad wine is so very bad, that we catch ourselves wondering whether the finer brands were genuine, when ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... seem severe, but I cannot bear a noise. I am so worn out when I come from the office. It seems each day my head aches worse than it did the day before." Miss Dorcas sighed. "And if it isn't a downright ache when I come home, it begins to pound as soon as I look at this book—" she eyed the account-book open before her—"I hoped you could have some new shoes this month. Those are downright shabby. But there isn't any money for them. I don't see how I am going to pay the gas bill ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... For downright, tantalizing cheerfulness there was no one to equal the night-watchman. While others strove to collect their befuddled senses, this individual prated of "wind eighty miles per hour with moderate drift and brilliant St. Elmo's fire." He boasted of the number ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... were often fatally gored and not a few men lost their lives. Notwithstanding the fact that it was such a downright desperate task, the men became so expert that they did not even hesitate to tackle, alone and single-handed, great bulls of twice the weight of their small ponies; they roped, held, threw, and branded them. The least accident or mistake, a slip of the foot, a stumble by one's horse, ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... whether he was surprised at Waterloo, he replied, "No. I was not surprised then, but I am now." We are indebted to Lady Shelley for letting us know what the Duke really thought on this much-debated question. In a letter written to her on March 22, 1820, he stated, with his usual downright common sense, all that there is to be said on this subject. "Supposing I was surprised; I won the battle; and what could you have had more, even if ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... into getting them little bags for collections now, all because he was jealous at the clerk's putting the plate inside my pew reg'lar for me to hold. It isn't that I care about 'olding a plate, but to see 'Umpage smirking round with one of them red velvet bags makes me downright sick—they'll drive me to go over and be a Baptist one of ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... related to me; for, after much panegyric on my understanding, and saying he was unworthy of such a daughter, she considered his match not only as the highest indiscretion as it related to himself, but as a downright act of injustice to me. One expression in it I shall never forget. 'You have placed,' said she, 'a woman above your daughter, who, in understanding, the only valuable gift of nature, is the lowest in the whole class of pretty idiots.' After much more of this kind, it concluded ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... time was something more than an annoyance—it was a downright grief to my blind Lucilla. On the morning of my departure, she clung to me as if she was determined not to ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... day he received a reply granting him nearly six months' leave, and with that message the question of his alleged insubordination may be treated as finally settled. There can be no doubt that among his many remarkable achievements not the least creditable was this mission to China, when by downright candour, and unswerving resolution in doing the right thing, he not merely preserved peace, but baffled the intrigues of unscrupulous diplomatists and ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... apparently enjoying the complete confidence of the father. What, that would be effective, could one say, without proofs, without ... This Mr de Barral must be, Mrs Fyne pronounced, either a very stupid or a downright bad man, to neglect his child so. You will notice that perhaps because of Fyne's solemn view of our transient life and Mrs Fyne's natural capacity for responsibility, it had never occurred to them that the simplest way out of the difficulty ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... minimum of necessities. They calculated that, by careful saving, they could pay off the debt in a year or so—unless one or the other fell ill or lost work. "That means," said Etta, eyeing their flimsy and all but downright worthless purchases, "that means we'll still be paying when this furniture'll be gone to pieces ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... the life of a lying scoundrel, he was, he says (p. 192), 'happily restrained by Divine Grace,' so that 'all sense of remorse was not extinguished,' and there was no fall into 'downright infidelity.' At length he picked up Law's Serious Call, which moved him, as later on it moved better men (ante, i. 68). Step by step he got into a way of steady work, and lived henceforth a laborious and honest life. It was in ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... R's 4th would be much stronger, the importance of halting the advancing Rook Pawn duly considered. Going from bad to worse, the downright blunder two moves later caps the climax—and more need ...
— The Blue Book of Chess - Teaching the Rudiments of the Game, and Giving an Analysis - of All the Recognized Openings • Howard Staunton and "Modern Authorities"
... "Downright lies, all of them," replied Hyde. Then he rose, saying, "I must ride onward. My mother will not sleep ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... some boys to whom Alene's timidity would have appealed, but he was not one of that kind. He was the most outspoken and the least gentle of all the boys with whom the Happy-Go-Luckys associated. But his downright honesty and fearlessness, his renown among the boys as an athlete, and especially his devotion to his little sister which Laura dilated upon, and of which new proofs were daily shown, had awakened Alene's admiration, and made her the more resent his calling ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... have thought, and have been afraid to say. Downright, straightforward, he told the Emperor truths as to Rome, as to man, and as to his vices, which I have longed to tell him. He has done what I am afraid to do. He has dared this, which I have dallied with, and left undone. What is ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... of study with which he is surrounded. Before undertaking the study of any thing, a man decides for what purpose he is studying this subject, and not the others. But to study every thing, as the men of scientific science in our day preach, without any idea of what is to come out of such study, is downright impossible, because the number of subjects of study is endless; and hence, no matter how many branches we may acquire, their acquisition can possess no significance or reason. And, therefore, in ancient times, down to even a very recent date, until the appearance ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... apparent by merely calling attention to the fact that the original argument has been garbled but in no wise refuted, An opponent can convict the one who has "answered himself" either of unpardonable ignorance about the subject or of downright dishonesty. ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... of his outcries and sulky resistance Trina had induced her husband to consent to such a move, bewildering him with a torrent of phrases and marvellous columns of figures by which she proved conclusively that they were in a condition but one remove from downright destitution. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... together unless they are attracted by a little honey; and the rich are made to supply the honey, of which the demagogues keep the greater part themselves, giving a taste only to the mob. Their victims attempt to resist; they are driven mad by the stings of the drones, and so become downright oligarchs in self-defence. Then follow informations and convictions for treason. The people have some protector whom they nurse into greatness, and from this root the tree of tyranny springs. The nature ...
— The Republic • Plato
... needful to regenerate the earth and cause the wilderness to become as Eden and the desert to blossom as the rose. Reversed, love and discord have broken more hearts, caused more sorrow, estrangement, and downright death than war, pestilence, and all other causes combined. It palsies energy and ambition, engenders gloom and despair, and transforms manhood into an icicle. Statistics prove that the married live longer, on the average, by several years than the ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... enough. Fate was downright cruel to us. Not a dozen feet away was liberty; and now we were back at the beginning again, with the ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... 'Ere, don't you talk rot. Working a miracle, indeed! Miracle! Well, that's downright funny! Why, you's the chap that don't believe in miracles.... Fact is, this is another of your silly conjuring tricks—that's what this is. Now, ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... no more. She carried Dora home with a heavy heart. Her joy at finding the child safe and sound was drowned out in the pain caused by Davy's behavior. The freak of shutting Dora up might easily have been pardoned. But Davy had told falsehoods . . . downright coldblooded falsehoods about it. That was the ugly fact and Anne could not shut her eyes to it. She could have sat down and cried with sheer disappointment. She had grown to love Davy dearly . . . how dearly she had not known until this minute . . . and it hurt her unbearably to discover ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a nest unlike the robin's nest. Each is qualified in its own work. We know that these birds would be sorely handicapped, and would probably be downright failures in providing nests in season for eggs, if each were required to work to plans and specifications of ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... follows: "Whether it be the relation of cause and effect, or only what logicians call a "mere coincidence," the fact remains that in Rome, Russia, France, and England, political corruption, cruelty of government, sexual immorality—nay, downright, impudent, open, boastful indecency—have culminated, for the most part, in the eras of the influence of viragints on ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... cat, so nimble were the boy's springs, and so fierce his attacks. Lucinus fairly lost his temper at last, and I stopped the fight, for although they fought with blunted weapons, he might well have injured the lad badly with a downright cut, and that would have meant ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... words were reassuring, although I still felt there was something behind her light manner which intimately concerned me. But I had learned to count on her downright honesty, and her words, "Nothing that cannot be helped, my dear," steadied me, gave me hope that no matter what trouble she had to tell me, she had also a panacea ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... work. I know better, because I am making a collection of such criticisms, showing the rating of our several painters. These summings up of mine will be extremely valuable as marking the changing taste of the public; for I have never supposed that either ill will or downright ignorance formed the basis of current criticism. The critics are merely expressing the trend of public opinion. It is not new to our age. Diaz, so one story goes, once came stumping (he had lost one leg) into Millet's cottage ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... manner that was enough to provoke a saint, if it were not for the man's well known character. "It will do I see," said my friend, "depend upon it, it will do—dont mind his sayings; but when you come to business, be plain, downright and firm, and you'll have his heart." When W. returned, he again surveyed me from head to foot, and again grinned and tittered. I was almost as tall as I am now, and as thin perhaps as you ever saw any one of the same height. My face too ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... to do with leather—but it was extremely profitable, and as I looked forward to one day sharing all Jack's worldly goods I did not grumble at the leather. Not that Jack had ever yet said a word to me which I could construe into a downright offer. He had looked, certainly, but then with eyes like his there is no knowing what they may imply. They were dark blue eyes, and his hair was bright brown, with a touch of yellow in it, and his moustache was tawny, and ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... sighed softly. Oakes was entitled to a certain amount of gloating, but there could be no doubt that his way of telling a story was downright infuriating. ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... an open space all around the point where the boy stood gazing at his fallen game. He fired, almost at random, at the nearest of the flying buffalo; but the buckshot whistled hurtlessly among the herd, and Sandy thought to himself that it was downright cruelty to shoot among them, for the scattering shot would only wound ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... you can be so silly as to waste your time like that I can't think. It isn't as if you really could write poetry, and I call it downright conceited for a girl to pretend she can. So, do leave off, there's a dear, and come and have a game. I want to try my new cannon, and you shall have first ...
— Laugh and Play - A Collection of Original stories • Various
... in a window. For a moment he wondered whence it shone; then he remembered that the glebe lands lay in that direction. The parish was building a house for its new minister, when he left Virginia, those many years ago. Suddenly he recalled that the minister—who had seemed to him a bluff, downright, honest fellow—had told him of a little room looking out upon an orchard, and had said that it ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... what he proceeds to argue is that the effect must be discernible in the cause, which is a different statement altogether. When he says that an effect cannot be greater than its cause, what he means is that an effect cannot be different from its cause, which is downright nonsense. He asks, How can that which has not life produce life? as though the question were on all fours with the necessity for a man to possess twenty shillings before he can give change ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... that Jonas Harding, who was as quick on the trail and as good a woodsman as myself, should be worsted by a mad buck; it seems downright impossible, Nuck." ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... suppose," went on Max, unable to hide his annoyance, "that if I were to tell you it was not a joke at all, but that I spoke in downright earnest, ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... tobacco-leaves to the dancers and musical ladies: both sexes eagerly seized the favourite refreshment, and crammed their mouths with it, then recommencing the music and dancing with renewed alacrity. When at length downright exhaustion put an end to the spectacle, the Kalushes were entertained with a favourite mess of rice boiled with treacle. They lay down round the wooden dishes, and helped themselves greedily with their dirty hands. During the meal, the women were much inconvenienced by their lip-troughs; ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... with disportive wit, Rally his friend, and tickle while he bit; Winning access, he play'd around the heart, And, gently touching, prick'd the tainted part. The crowd he sneer'd; but sneer'd with such a grace, It pass'd for downright ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... any difference to you, of course, and it can't make any difference—really—to him; but it's a downright dishonourable thing to do, and that makes a jolly lot of difference to me. You see, I haven't any business to go and ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... humble opinion, it would be downright stupid for you two girls to fool yourselves into disliking Lydia Orr. She'd like to be friends with everybody; why ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... Molloy! You look downright purty!" Mrs. Snawdor exclaimed, when she came up after assisting Mr. Demry with his refreshments. "I never would 'a' ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... guarded gate had been his, but no other ten days of his life had seemed so eventful or passed so swiftly. For at last he stood before his goal, had actually fastened his eyes upon so much of it as might be seen through its gate. Never had he achieved so much downright actuality. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... don't believe I can say that I downright believed that he'd make a world's champion. Don't believe's I could truthfully state that I thought that. But I guess there isn't anybody in this town that would ever deny but what I did say more than once that he'd make the best of 'em hustle—ye-e-s, ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... sort. It is the basis on which society rests, the conventional agreement. If society is about to be overturned, it is on this point. Women are beginning to tell men what they really think of them; and to insist that the same relations of downright sincerity and independence that exist between men shall exist between women and men. Absolute truth between souls, without regard to sex, has always been the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a drought has lasted a long time, people drop the usual hocus-pocus of imitative magic altogether, and being far too angry to waste their breath in prayer they seek by threats and curses or even downright physical force to extort the waters of heaven from the supernatural being who has, so to say, cut them off at the main. In a Japanese village, when the guardian divinity had long been deaf to the peasants' prayers for rain, they at last threw down ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... piqued herself more upon her principles, or allowed love to be made to her more profusely. There was a habit of courtship practised by the fine gentlemen of those days, which is little understood in our coarse downright times: and young and old fellows would pour out floods of compliments in letters and madrigals, such as would make a sober lady stare were they addressed to her nowadays: so entirely has the gallantry of the last century ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shocked with Pope's false reading of phenomena, where not the circumstances so much as the construction of the circumstances may be challenged, what must he think of those cases in which downright facts, and incidents the most notorious, have been outrageously falsified only in obedience to a vulgar craving for effect in the dramatic situations, or by way of pointing a moral for the stimulation of torpid sensibilities? Take, for instance, the death of the second Villiers, Duke of ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... o' them that argues. He maks downright assertions; every one o' them hits a body's conscience like a sledge-hammer. He said that to me as we walked the moor last night that didna let me sleep ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... "defects of his qualities,'' which I freely recognized, I regarded him as a fearless, upright, downright, straightforward man of the sort who must always play a great ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... listened patiently enough, but this was too summary. Westley Keyts is our butcher, a good, honest, energetic, downright business man with a square forehead and a blunt jaw and red hair that bristles with challenges. But he seems compelled to say too nearly what he means to render him useful in negotiations requiring any ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... said one day. "I took half a dozen over to the minister's wife this mornin', and she was so pleased! She said it was sich a blessin' to have fresh eggs again. She was gittin' sick o' them she's been buyin' at Billings'. She was downright thankful." ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... you know," said Mr. Tulliver, "what I want is to give Tom a good eddication—an eddication as'll be a bread to him. I mean to put him to a downright good school at midsummer. The two years at th' academy 'ud ha' done well enough if I'd meant to make a miller and farmer of him, but I should like Tom to be a bit of a scholard. It 'ud be a help to me wi' these lawsuits, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the facts. They have read essays on the uses of adversity in developing genius, and they are not sufficiently afraid to administer a dose of adversity beyond what the forces of the patient can bear. Laudanum in drops is useful as a medicine, but a cupful kills downright. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the job, and so I took it, and I flatter myself that I made a pretty good job of it. The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in this book, of a man who couldn't change his mind because his intellectual wardrobe was not sufficient to warrant a change. I was feeling downright sorry for the poor fellow till I got to wondering how many people are feeling sorry for me for the same reason. That reflection changed the situation greatly, and I began to feel some resentment against the blunt statement in the book as being ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... ante-room. It was a way they had. They were all there. Grand fellows, too, most of them—tall, broad-shouldered, and silky-haired, and as good as gold. That gets tiresome after a time, but everything can be set right with one downright rascally villain—a villain, mind you, that poor, weak women, know nothing about. GAVOR was that kind of man. Of course that was why he was to break his neck, and get smashed up generally. But I am anticipating, and a man should never anticipate. EMILY, for instance, never ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... during the night and things were complicated for some of us by sea-sickness. I have lively recollections of being aloft for two hours in the morning watch on Friday and being sick at intervals all the time. For sheer downright misery give me a hurricane, not too warm, the yard of a sailing ship, a wet sail and a bout ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... him of being an amiable aristocratic stick who failed to frighten the Junkers from their plan of war. Now, it is not in the least a question of whether we happen to like this quality or that: Mr. Shaw, I rather fancy, would dislike such verbose compromise more than downright plotting. It is simply the fact that Englishmen like Grey are open to Mr. Shaw's attack and are not open to yours. It is not true that the English were sufficiently clearheaded or self-controlled to conspire for the destruction ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... gradual in its development. The suggestion that a book, especially a novel, was translated from the English was an assurance of its receiving consideration, and many original German novels were published under the guise of English translations. Hermes roguishly avoids downright falsehood, and yet avails himself of this popular trend by describing his "Miss Fanny Wilkes" upon the title page as "So gut als aus dem Englischen bersetzt," and printing "so gut als" in very small type. Mller in a letter[3] ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... declare that of all the books I have seen only the Hindoo K[a]masutr[a]m, the literal version of the Arabian Nights, and the American Indian stories collected by Dr. Boas, can compare with this "sweet and beautiful" romance of Longus in downright obscenity or deliberate laciviousness. I have been able, without going beyond the latitude permissible to anthropologists, to give a fairly accurate idea of the love-affairs of savages and barbarians; but I find it impossible, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... he again wipes his spectacles and feels he has been sold! This life on the other side of Jordan he finds to be what his American cousins would call a "humbug," a downright swindle upon the sympathies and good taste of those who wear long streamers of crape, and groan and sob over his funeral rites! He feels in duty bound (out of consideration for those mourners who expect nothing else) to go scudding through the ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... accomplished his mission. Once again, without recourse to violence, he had maintained his reputation as the worst man in San Pasqual, for his power lay, not in a clever bluff, but in his all-too-evident downright honesty of purpose. Had Doc Taylor presumed to fly in the face of Providence, after that warning, Mr. Hennage felt that the responsibility must very properly rest on the doctor, for the gambler would have killed him as surely as he had the strength ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... into his body, till the blood streamed to his girdle, and the soil of the ford was crimson with the blood that fell from the body of that warrior so valiant in fight. And Cuchulain's endurance was at an end, for Ferdia continually struck at him, not attempting to guard, and his downright blows, and quick thrusts, and crushing strokes fell constantly upon him, till Cuchulain demanded of Laeg the son of Riangabra to deliver to him the Gae-Bulg. Now the manner of using the Gae-Bulg was ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... wish Sniatynski had given me a downright scolding, instead of larding his letter with sentences like this "In spite of all your good qualities it will come to this, that you will always be a cause of suffering and anxiety to those who love you." He brings it home with ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... trickiness—neglecting the paling between your cattle and your neighbour's clover field—"He's no juist the man for an elder." If it deepened into deceit—running a "greasy" horse for an hour before selling—"He wud be the better o' anither dip." And in the case of downright fraud—finding out what a man had offered for his farm and taking it over his head—the offender was "an ill gettit wratch." The two latter phrases were dark with theology, and even the positive degree of ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... Miss ——— in a little upper room. She has a small, brisk, wide-awake figure, not ungraceful; frank, simple, straightforward, and downright. She had on a robe, I think, but I did not look so low, my attention being chiefly drawn to a sort of man's sack of purple or plum-colored broadcloth, into the side-pockets of which her hands were thrust as she came forward ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
