"Harsh" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... His was the unappeasable hunger and thirst of those who long to know; and he wished to express what he learned, by making pictures and thus interpreting it for himself and others. It wasn't easy. Life turned a rather harsh face to him. He wasn't clothed like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field: he had to provide his own coverings as best he might. He wouldn't accept charity. He would wear his own old clothes but he wouldn't ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... for war, but what excuse, what palliation is there for those men in the North, who, regardless of liberty, of justice, and of humanity, ally themselves, openly some and secretly others, with the enemies of the Republic? Spare, spare, your anathemas, gentlemen. Do not longer employ the harsh language which you can command in denunciation of Southern traitors. They of the North who give aid and comfort to the enemy deserve to monopolize in the application all the harsh words and phrases ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... my way back, I met a mail, containing the last newspapers, and I found in them indications of great excitement in the North over the terms Sherman had given Johnston; and harsh orders that had been promulgated by the President and Secretary of War. I knew that Sherman must see these papers, and I fully realized what great indignation they would cause him, though I do ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... generally successful. After submitting to it for a time, the bushranger generally gave up the secret of the whereabouts of his gold. I do not mean to say that all the police officials indulged in this harsh treatment, but it is certain that many ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... contemptible, if the reports of such prejudiced persons as the queen and Mortimer are to be believed. But the fault is not a criminal or unnatural one. One can sympathize with a heart that yearns for the presence of a single friend in a world of cold-blooded critics or harsh counsellors. The not unattractive character of Gaveston, too, affectionate, gay, proud, quick-tempered, brave—with faults also, of deceit, vanity and vindictiveness—preserves the royal friendship from the sink of blind dotage upon an unworthy creature. The tragedy follows, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... harsh and uncompromising as that! And do you quite do justice to—to some of these men? There was no one to tell them the wrongs they were committing—if they were indeed wrongs. Our civilization is ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Quality is used in expressing the strongest degree of contempt, disgust, aversion, revenge, etc. Its characteristic is an explosive resonance in the throat, producing a harsh and grating sound, and its expression can be used in all the various tones, giving to them ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... his a look so gentle and grave that he could not think she was displeased, or harsh, or even unkind. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Athens, it is a mistake on your part to blame us for certain harsh resolutions concerning Athens at the conclusion of the war. (12) That vote was not authorised by the state of Thebes. It was the utterance merely of one man, (13) who was at that time seated in the congress of the allies. A more important fact is that when the Lacedaemonians summoned us to attack ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... girl is left with a cruel stepmother, who has a daughter who is bad-tempered and disagreeable, and extremely jealous of her. She becomes the Cinderella of the house, is ill-treated and beaten, but submits patiently. At last the harsh stepmother is urged by her daughter to get rid of her. It is winter, in the month of January; the snow has fallen, and the ground is frozen. The cruel stepmother in this dreadful weather bids the poor girl ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... and hardening hearts only by judgment that was always just; since evidently according to this theory it is not (as Origen has already said) apart from previous merit that some are formed for vessels of honour, and others for vessels of shame and wrath. That harsh sentence pronounced upon Judas by the Bishop of Hippon, which so grievously scandalised most of the Catholic theologians, although only the confirmation of the quotation from St. Jude, viz., that the wretched man had ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... "Harsh punishments should never be resorted to. The repressive system may check unruliness, but can never influence for good. It involves little trouble on the part of those who make use of it and may be efficacious in the army, which is composed of ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... to repeat his performances in public met with obstinate discouragement, till, reluctantly, the Station left him alone. Injured feelings were nourished, and opinions concerning his conduct and manners grew harsh and unrelenting the instant his back was turned. To his face there was no failure of cordiality, for it is not politic in a small station to ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... clergy afraid of the laity? But surely we know, in this place at least, that the clear voice of honesty and humility draws more hearts than the harsh accents of dogmatic ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... the rise in prices without administering the harsh medicine of recession, and we will move the economy into a steady period of growth ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Richard Nixon • Richard Nixon
... renvoi of Genet was proposed by himself. I opposed it on these topics. France, the only nation on earth sincerely our friend. The measure so harsh a one, that no precedent is produced where it has not been followed by war. Our messenger has now been gone eighty-four days; consequently, we may hourly expect the return, and to be relieved by their revocation of him. Were it now resolved on, it would be eight or ten days before the matter ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... housekeeper; and she thinks she cannot use me bad enough for it. Bless me! she curses and storms at me like a trooper, and can hardly keep her hands off me. You may believe she must talk sadly, to make me say such harsh words: indeed it cannot be repeated; as she is a disgrace to her sex. And then she ridicules me, and laughs at my notions of honesty; and tells me, impudent creature as she is! what a fine bed-fellow ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... scorpion whips. Above all, a nation cannot last as a money-making mob: it cannot with impunity,—it cannot with existence,—go on despising literature, despising science, despising art, despising nature, despising compassion, and concentrating its soul on Pence. Do you think these are harsh or wild words? Have patience with me but a little longer. I will prove their truth to you, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... says the grocery man, feeling that he had been too harsh, "Come back here and have some maple sugar. What did your Pa drive you away ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... liberty, of England. The Earl of Clare made a very bold and rational harangue, the King being present, against the King's sitting among the Lords, contrary to former precedents, during their debates; but he was not seconded. The King had this April prorogued, upon the Houses cavilling, and their harsh conferences concerning some bills, the Parliament from this April till the 16th of April 1672. Sir John Coventry's Bill against Cutting Noses passed, and O'Brian and Sir Thomas Sands, not appearing at the Old Baily by the time limited, stand attainted and outlawed, without ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... instructions Bentley walked up and down the room. His shaggy shadow on the several walls as he turned, marched and countermarched at Jackson's commands, filled Bentley with self-loathing. He found himself repulsive. His body perspired freely impregnating the ape skin with a harsh odor that was biting and terrible in his nostrils. It was sickening. He tried to close his mind to the repulsiveness of ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... And life should have its covering of dream—bird's flight, bird's song, wind in the ash-trees and the corn, tall lilies glistening, the evening shadows slanting out, the night murmuring of waters. There is no other genuine dream; without it to sweeten all, life is harsh and shrill and east-wind dry, and evil overruns her more quickly than blight be-gums the rose-tree or frost blackens fern of a cold June night. We elders are past re-making England, but our children, even these crippled children here, may yet ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... unfeeling if he liked; she felt as if she had only too much feeling just then, for it was bringing on her a strange contraction of heart. But he was too inherently good himself to put any harsh construction on her speech. Just before he went away, while he was ostensibly holding her hand and wishing her good-by, he said to her in a voice too ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... steep steps that led into a cellar. Mr. Dootleby concluded to stop there and ask his way. As he approached the cellar, he heard what seemed to be cries of distress. They grew more distinct, and accompanying them were the dull sounds of blows and the harsh accents of a man's voice, evidently ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... consorts with the flocks of which he is the father; and the bird conceives by him, from whose seed she herself was conceived. Happy they, to whom these things are allowed! The care of man has provided harsh laws, and what Nature permits, malignant ordinances forbid. {And} yet there are said to be nations[44] in which both the mother is united to the son, and the daughter to the father, and natural affection is increased by a twofold passion. Ah, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the lash. In vain they pleaded they would tell their story at once. Doltaire would not listen; the whipping first, and their story after. Soon their backs were bared, their faces were turned to the wall, and, as Gabord with harsh voice counted, the lashes were mercilessly laid on. There was a horrible fascination in watching the skin corrugate under the lashes, rippling away in red and purple blotches, the grooves in the flesh ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mutterings followed rapidly one upon the other, accompanied by the scornful laughter of those that had been balked in their hopes and expectations. The melamed, towering above the crowd, threw out insulting remarks, or burst into harsh laughter full of venomous malice. Under the second wall opposite the melamed stood Ber on a bench. These two men, standing opposite each other, presented a striking contrast. The melamed shook his head and waved his arms, ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... The two men faced each other, obedient to the harsh commands of Scully, whose face, in the subtly luminous gloom, could be seen set in the austere impersonal lines that are pictured on the countenances of the Roman veterans. The Easterner's teeth were chattering, and he was hopping ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... hapless Jeffreys recognises Raby and Scarfe! Surely this blow was not needed to crush him completely! Scarfe! How long he stood, statue-like, looking down the path by which they had gone neither he nor any one else could tell. But it was dark when he was roused by a harsh voice ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... Moist: The Bitter and Stomachical, with the Sub-acid and gentler Herbs: The Mordicant and pungent, and such as repress or discuss Flatulency (revive the Spirits, and aid Concoction;) with such as abate, and take off the keenness, mollify and reconcile the more harsh and churlish: The mild and insipid, animated with piquant and brisk: The Astringent and Binders, with such as are Laxative and Deobstruct: The over-sluggish, raw, and unactive, with those that are Eupeptic, and promote Concoction: There are Pectorals for the Breast and Bowels. Those of middle ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... I replied hastily. 'Does it not strike you as a little hard, Mr. Hamilton, that one should be judged beforehand in this harsh manner?—that because some girls are full of vagaries, the whole sex ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... thee—help thou the other," he cried, and snatching her up as if she had been but a feather, he was again in the act of springing to the door, when brought to a stand by a far more exciting impediment. A shriek from Telie Doe, uttered in sudden terror, was echoed by a laugh, strangely wild, harsh, guttural, and expressive of equal triumph and derision, coming from the door; looking to which the eyes of Nathan and the soldier fell upon a tall and naked Indian, shorn and painted, who, rifle in hand, the grim smile yet writhing on ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... department either, but became a horse-dealer's agent, the employe of secret money-lenders—nay, a money-lender himself. Then he had the faculty of never getting tired, was all day on his feet, would run any length for a few pence, and never resented a harsh word. He allowed himself no other recreation than that of counting over his different transactions and their probable results. He lived upon next to nothing; a slice or two of bread abducted from Ehrenthal's kitchen would serve for his supper. Only once during ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... of the restful change; but hours passed and no sounds met their ears, save the hissing and gurgling from the interior of the cave, and the harsh screech ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... that Hugo Handle, at twenty-three, became the head of a household. He did not need to seek work. From the time he was seventeen he had been employed in a large china-importing house, starting as a stock boy. Brought up under the harsh circumstances of Hugo's youth, a boy becomes food for the reformatory or takes on the seriousness and responsibility of middle age. In Hugo's case the second was true. From his father he had inherited a mathematical mind and a sense of material values. From his ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... beautiful than those in churches. He had forgotten that he was cold, and was feeling very happy, when the intentness of his gaze attracted the child's attention. She was whispering to her nurse, when a harsh voice cried out,— ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... interruption, signifying a loss of valuable time. He is anxious to bring you to your point at once and to express his own opinion as shortly and plainly as possible. The temperamentally nervous who meet him but casually find him harsh and think him ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... called him pittyfull Dogg for talking after that manner, & told him that for my part, having had the honour to have ben in his majesty's servis, I would pray for his majesty as long as I lived. Hee answered mee with harsh words that hee would return back to his fort, & when hee was there, that would not dare talk to him as I did. I could not have a fairer opportunity to begin what I dessigned. Upon which I told the young foole that I brought him from his fort & would carry him thither againe when I pleas'd, not when ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... three-and-twenty—not exactly pretty perhaps, but very well-looking. Her brown hair was plainly worn, without a cap, and the expression of her face was, I thought, one of sweetness and humility, contradicted in some degree by rather harsh lines about the mouth, denoting strong will and purpose. As a proof of the existence of this last characteristic, I may here mention that, when her first overweening confidence had yielded to doubt, she, although dotingly fond of her nephew, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... and one in the grain. The latter is pervading and irremediable. It touches nothing which it does not deface. It makes all things common and unclean. It grows more repulsive as the roundness of youth falls away and leaves its harsh features more sharply outlined. But the other coarseness is only the overgrowth of excellence,—the rankness of lusty life. It is vigor run wild. It is a fault, but it is local and temporal. Culture corrects it. As the mind matures, as experience accumulates, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... their ears from a side street. Glancing down it, they saw a young girl, wearing like flags the paint and manner of her profession, and uttering at intervals its peculiar cry—that shrill, harsh laugh which ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... interfere betwixt two combatants, to red or separate them, is proverbially said to be the most dangerous blow a man can receive.] you are come to no house o' fairstrae [*Natural] death." So saying, she raised the lamp, and turned its light on the dying man, whose rude and harsh features were now convulsed with the last agony. A roll of linen about his head was stained with blood, which had soaked also through the blankets and the straw. It was, indeed, under no natural disease that the wretch was suffering. Brown started back from this horrible object, and, turning to ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... And so completely were all taken by surprise by the startling, and as most of them believed truthful, revelation, and so great was the sensation produced by the appalling atrocities it disclosed, that the proceedings of the court were for some moments brought to a dead stand. But soon the shrill, harsh voice of Gaut's lawyer was heard rising above the buzz of the excited crowd, and bursting in a storm of denunciation and abuse on the witness, and all those who had a hand in bringing him forward, to thrust in, against all rule, such a story,—which, if true, had no more ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... little left. Only on the south wall (can I forget the hot feel of the brick-work?) lingered the one last peach. Now peaches are a fruit which I always had, and still have, an almost utter aversion to. There is something to my palate singularly harsh and repulsive in the flavor of them. I know not by what demon of contradiction inspired, but I was haunted with an irresistible desire to pluck it. Tear myself as often as I would from the spot, I found myself still recurring to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... by this?" asked Bobby, his blood boiling with indignation at the harsh treatment to which he ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... the common Cigale, is known in Provence as the Cacan; the name, being a fairly exact imitation of the sound emitted by the insect. This is the Cigale of the flowering ash, far more alert and far more suspicious than the common species. Its harsh, loud song consists of a series of cries—can! can! can! can!—with no intervals of silence subdividing the poem into stanzas. Thanks to its monotony and its harsh shrillness, it is a most odious sound, especially ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... trace that wandering among strange people, and in lands unknown to us, by which we try so pathetically to heal the hurts of the life we know, and that pure and passionate devotion to Art which one gets when the harsh reality of life has too suddenly wounded one, and is with discontent or sorrow marring one's youth, just as often, I think, as one gets it from any natural joy of living; and that curious intensity of vision by which, in moments of overmastering sadness and ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... few duties which interested me more than this. The astronomer, in pursuing his work, is not often filled with those emotions which the layman feels when he hears of the wonderful power of the telescope. Not to say anything so harsh as that "familiarity breeds contempt," we must admit that when an operation of any sort becomes a matter of daily business, the sentiments associated with it necessarily become dulled. Now, however, I was filled with the consciousness that I was looking at the stars through ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... the sound of approaching footsteps upon the shell path leading to the back of the house, and by the harsh ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... not dwell on the blunders of Cromwell, if we call them by no harsher name. It would be harsh to judge him for his mistakes or sins under his peculiar circumstances, his hand in the execution of Charles I., his Jesuitical principles, his cruelties in Ireland, his dispersion of parliaments, and his usurpation of supreme power. Only let us call things by their ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... Swift swooping shapes winged out from the trees, prey-hungry eyes gleaming green. And from the swamps came bellowings and stirrings from monster mud-encrusted bodies, awakening to their nocturnal quest for food. The night reechoed with the harsh cacophony of ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... including the Sixty-fourth Ohio, had each received a large assignment of drafted men so recently that none of these men had been with their regiments more than a month and many had joined within a week. The old soldiers all believed that the harsh orders were given for effect upon these drafted men, as we never before had received any such orders ...
— The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee • John K. Shellenberger
... some persons have associated that ugly word with a scene something like this: They have imagined a man standing with fist clenched, and eyes flashing fire, and the lines of his face knotted up hard, as he says in a harsh voice, "He that believeth not shall be damned," as though he found pleasure in saying it. If there is one person here to-night who ever had such a conception, will you kindly cut it out of your imagination at once? For ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... herself at length, and speaking in a harsh, constrained voice, which yet was low and not audible except to one who was near her, "have you seen ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... jungle rolled the horrid notes of the victory cry. The little monkeys in the tree-tops ceased their chattering. The harsh-voiced, brilliant-plumed birds were still. From afar came the answering wail of a leopard and the deep ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... law at once, and its operations will begin so soon as the general and his troops can be put in place. The dread alternative between its harsh rule and compliance with the terms of this measure is not suspended, nor are the people afforded any time for free deliberation. The bill says to them, take martial law first, then deliberate. And when they have done all that this measure requires them to do ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... and her temples felt compressed. She was thankful for the quiet round her. Any harsh voice would have been intolerable to her just then. There were many sounds in the village, but they were vague, and mingled, flowing together and composing one sound that was soothing, the restrained and level voice of ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... required to pay the penalty for their crimes; that their lands and hunting grounds should stand forfeit to the government, and they be expelled therefrom. In other words, it was asserted that the government should turn a harsh and stern countenance towards all these savage marauders and drive them by force, if need be, from ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... one should have justice done to him, and that he would be to them as a father to his children. But his bearing was so haughty that some of them went away shaking their heads, and fearing that he would be but a harsh father. ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... the road of intellectual advancement, shrinking from the love of free inquiry, of free action, of daring adventure, which was to be the real informing spirit of the great British nation; abhorring the Puritans—that is to say, one-third of his subjects—in whose harsh, but lofty nature he felt instinctively that popular freedom was enfolded—even as the overshadowing tree in the rigid husk—and sending them forth into the far distant wilderness to wrestle with wild beasts and with savages more ferocious than ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... swings his rattle with energy and conviction, as if bent on rousing the gods out of their indifference, while he stamps his right foot on the ground to add weight to the words, which he pours forth in a loud, resonant voice from his wide-open mouth. Although the Tarahumare, as a rule, has a harsh and not very powerful singing voice, still there are some noteworthy exceptions, and the airs of the rutuburi songs are quite pleasing to the ear. These, as all their dancing-songs, are of great antiquity ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... clue to these harsh and unexpected measures, except that there had been some recent smuggling discovered in Liverpool, and that the man in question had been sent down from London to act the part of Argus. If so, I landed in an evil hour: "nefasto die," making good the Spanish ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... Voices around me, harsh, guttural voices. Russian! By the Nine Dogs of War, I had pulled it off! But what were they saying? I was inside the lines, but was my deception successful? Or had my face relaxed with the shock of the blow? I thanked my Russian grandmother then for all the time she had spent ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... the table, like a man who is at bay. He was of middle height, very dark, and inclining to stoutness. His aquiline features and his eyes, round in shape, but half veiled by heavy lids, gave him something of the appearance of an owl. When he spoke, his voice was harsh and mechanical, and he always seemed to be looking just over the head of the person he addressed. He made no gestures and held ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... handed him a cup of wine, which he tasted and set down with a wry face and a shudder. Horace tried some afterwards, and was not surprised. It was a strong, harsh wine, in which goatskin and resin ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... were the superintendents, the supervisors, the special teachers, the principals—petty officers of a petty tyranny in which too often seethed gossip, scandal, intrigue. There were the "soft places"; the deceitful, the easy, the harsh principals; the teachers' institutes to which the poor teacher was forced to pay her scanty dollars. There were bulletins, rules, counter-rules. As she talked, Sommers caught the atmosphere of the great engine to which she had given herself. A mere isolated atom, she was set in some obscure corner ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... "Let it go as it came," though this good sense was apparently restricted to his own colds, for Watson relates that in a visit to Mount Vernon "I was extremely oppressed by a severe cold and excessive coughing, contracted by the exposure of a harsh journey. He pressed me to use some remedies, but I declined doing so. As usual, after retiring my coughing increased. When some time had elapsed, the door of my room was gently opened, and, on drawing my bed-curtains, ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... I had no more hand in his getting than he had himself. Poor li'l brat; I'm sorry I spoke harsh of him. He was give me—he was give me—an' I wish to God he was mine. Anyways he shaa'n't come to no harm. I'll fight the lot of 'e for un, till he 's auld ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the fatherless and widows, and keep himself unspotted from the world. Thus, with all his conviction and devotion, there was nothing hard or fanatical in his feeling or conduct, and he held pleasant personal relations with men of every faith. Few men indulged in so little harsh criticism of others, and he expressed censure or disapprobation by humorous indirection rather than by open accusation. 'We must not be too hard,' he was fond of saying, 'it is so difficult to know all the circumstances. If you should ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... apothecary and the ex-Minister of Finance. He gives a vivid picture of the life of the different classes of priests and monks, and the corrupt state of the Tibetan hierarchy. He describes the rudimentary system of education, the harsh and haphazard administration, the brutality of punishments, the system of espionage, the free position of women and the practice of polyandry, the filthy personal habits of the people, their superstitions, their occupations, ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... this peaceful and still morning, all of a sudden a harsh and terrible war-cry was heard! Your father was then quite a young man, and a very ambitious warrior, so that I was always frightened on his account whenever there was a chance of fighting. But I did not think of your uncle, Mysterious ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... personalities, as it were, and delicately blends them without changing their individual nature. Like the impressionist painters of to-day, he paints with primary colours, but with a delicate moderation that rejects anything harsh as ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... the conflict with the heathenism of the country, there have been in it hundreds of occurrences answering in substance to this description. From any one, therefore, who should be inclined to accuse us of harsh language, we may well repeat the demand in what terms he would think he gave the true character of a mental and moral condition, manifested in such uproars of savage violence as the Christian missionaries among eastern idolaters ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... are evident; his style is harsh, obscure and crabbed; it is sometimes said that he seems wiser than he really is mainly because his language is difficult; that if his thoughts were translated into easier prose our impressions of his greatness would be much modified. Yet it is to be remembered that he, like Lucretius, ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... genius was at first subjected to harsh criticism, which Tchekoff felt keenly, and Trigorin's description in "The Sea-Gull" of the trials of a young author is a cry from Tchekoff's own soul. A passionate enemy of all lies and oppression, ...
— Swan Song • Anton Checkov
... perished Rienzi, a being who was not a man, but a strangely responsive instrument, upon which virtue, heroism, courage, cowardice, faith, falsehood and knavery played the grandest harmonies and the wildest discords in mad succession, till humanity was weary of listening, and silenced the harsh music forever. However we may think of him, he was great for a moment, yet however great we may think him, he was little in all but his first dream. Let him have some honour for that, and much merciful ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... is old and harsh with years, And drudge of all my father's house am I. My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears, Come back to me, Beloved, or I die! Come back to me, ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... when her nerves had relaxed a little from the stretching strain. And, meanwhile, as she sat watching the face on the pillow, grieving for the waning life, now and then she raised her eyes to the other face on the opposite side of the bed, and told herself that Fate, harsh as it was, was yet not altogether unpitying. Although wounded and worn and sick at heart, Weldon was with ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... harsh tone, for a further explanation of their words, and the officers gave it to him. They censured the duke's idea of establishing a camp at Weimar, and dwelt contemptuously on the reasons that might have induced him to do so. They proved, by referring to the whole proceedings of the duke, that ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... was altogether sure that Pike was quite honest in his confession or not, for Bella's sake she could not be harsh with the old actor. Nor could he, Ruth believed, be wholly bad when he loved his child ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... no reply to the mountain girl's harsh summing-up of the damning evidence against the stranger, but left her and went softly to ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... nothing of severe, But such a face as promised him sincere. Nothing reserved or sullen was to see, But sweet regards, and pleasing sanctity, Mild was his accent, and his action free. With eloquence innate his tongue was arm'd, Though harsh the precept, yet the preacher charm'd; For, letting down the golden chain from high, He drew his audience upwards to the sky. He taught the Gospel rather than the law, And forced himself to drive, but loved to draw. The tithes his parish freely paid, he took; But never sued, or ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... feeling existing between members of the Cabinet comes out in many entries in Welles's Diary. "Pressing, assuming, violent, impatient, intriguing, harsh, and arbitrary," are examples of the terms in which Stanton is spoken of by Welles His contempt for the Committee on the Conduct of the War is expressed in no less stinging words. The members of this committee "are most of them narrow and prejudiced partisans, mischievous ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... and humid along west coast; temperate in western mountains affected by seasonal monsoon; extraordinarily hot, dry, harsh desert ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... world and lay it at your feet. It is all yours. You do not like what I do with it, perhaps. Very well... take it and do better. The power is yours for the asking! Power without end! [He reaches out his arms to her; a pause.] You do not like my way of love-making, perhaps. You find me harsh and rude. But I love you. And where, among the men that you know, will you find one who can feel for you what I feel... who would dare for you what I have dared? [Gazes at her with intensity.] Take your time. I have no wish to hurry you. But you must know that, wherever you go, my hand is ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... children, though rarer with girls than boys, she went one day into the kitchen for the carving-knife, that she might cut her throat; luckily the servants were at dinner, and the child retreated. Deafness, which proved incurable, began to afflict her before she was sixteen. A severe, harsh, and mournful kind of religiosity seized her, and this 'abominable spiritual rigidity,' as she calls it, confirmed all the gloomy predispositions of her mind. She learned a good deal, mastering Latin, French, and Italian ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... and talked about, and liked it as a child likes to be looked at when walking out with a splendid new doll. She had no idea that any one could say unkind things of her, or that there was anything in her conduct to call for harsh comments. It was so delightful to be winning every day at roulette, and spending the easily gained money in amusing ways, that Mary thought every one who came near her must be almost as much pleased with her luck as she was—all but the one man who had snubbed her, the man whose name she had ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... hedge, or rather like a paling of gaunt brown stems upholding a canopy of green. All around spread illimitable woods, wrapping hill, valley, and mountain. The spot was an oasis in a desert of leaves,—if the name oasis can be given to anything so rude and harsh. In this rugged area, or "clearing," all Braddock's force was now assembled, amounting, regulars, provincials, and sailors, to about twenty-two hundred men. The two regiments, Halket's and Dunbar's, had been completed ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... peep of day our ears were saluted with the usual unpleasant sound of "Leve! leve! leve!" issuing from the leathern throat of the guide. Now this same "Leve!" is in my ears a peculiarly harsh and disagreeable word, being associated with frosty mornings, uncomfortable beds, and getting up in the dark before half enough of sleep has been obtained. The way in which it is uttered, too, is particularly exasperating; and often, when partially ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... hers, and the realization was marvellously reassuring. The sound of the piano descended delicately from the drawing-room as from a great distance. From the kitchen came the muffled clatter of earthenware and occasionally a harsh, loud voice; it was the hour of relaxed discipline in the kitchen, where amid the final washing-up and much free discussion and banter, Florrie was recommencing her career on a grander basis. Hilda closed the door very quietly. When she had closed ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... remained silent, but were soon relieved when they were told, in a whisper, that it was only the cry of the lynx, and, blood-curdling though it was, it was really a good sign for them. When this harsh, doleful sound had died away in the distance, from a tree near them some great owls began their strange hootings, and the Indians ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... small hand. But Osra would not kneel; she stood upright, still and cold, as though she neither saw nor heard anything of what passed; she would not pity nor forgive the woman even if, as they seemed to think, she lay dying. But she spoke once, asking in a harsh voice: ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... it out of a farmer's wagon while he was waiting on another customer. "Stole" is a harsh term. I withdrew—I retired that watermelon. I carried it to a secluded corner of a lumber-yard. I broke it open. It was green—the greenest watermelon raised in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sweet that unseen bird? Lovelier could no music be, Clearer than water, soft as curd, Fresh as the blossomed cherry tree. How sang the others all around? Piercing and harsh, a maddening sound, With Pretty Poll, tuwit-tu-woo, Peewit, caw ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... light ironical note, and became harsh and abrupt with reminiscent disgust. "And the end of it all was failure. The superb presents of the Tsar were rejected. These presents: coats of black fox and ermine, vases of fossil ivory and of marble, muskets, pistols, sabers, magnificent lustres, table services ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... does not monsieur drink with us?" he demanded in a harsh voice, thrusting his face toward Chester. "Can it be ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... characteristic of religion, and that gladness is a more acceptable offering than tears, they teach a valuable lesson, needed always by men who fancy that they must atone for their sins by their own sadness, and that religion is gloomy, harsh, and crabbed. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... treatment may have been at times rather harsh but we must be careful to judge it from the general standard of those times. It has been pointed out that it would bear "favorable comparison with the treatment of the white sailors in the British and American navies of the same period."[386] The slave code allowed a ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... to suit his purposes. Armstrong had not done this. Although a man of some ability and military information, Armstrong lacked conventional morals, and was the possessor of objectionable peculiarities. He never won either the confidence or the respect of Madison. He not only did harsh things in a harsh way, but he had a caustic tongue, and a tone of irreverence whenever he estimated the capacity of a Virginia statesman. On the other hand, Tompkins had gentleness, and that refined courtesy, amounting almost to tenderness, which seemed so necessary ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... a lull suddenly in the noise of the race-course; the bookmakers' harsh shouts ceased, and even conversation stopped for a moment, for the ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... moment—it was nine o'clock in the morning, April 19th—the harsh sounds from a "condou's" horn (a kind of ruminating animal among the African deer) burst forth, and the drum was heard. The halt ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... under an institution of patriarchal simplicity, scarcely knowing he was in bondage, danced merrily at the best, in "kermis," at Christmas and Pinckster.[227] There were, doubtless, a few cases where the slaves received harsh treatment from their masters; but, as a rule, the jolly Dutch fed and clothed their slaves as well as their white servants. There were no severe rules to strip the Negroes of their personal rights,—such as social amusements or ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... in a harsh tone, "before entering into deliberations on the war, we should first consider whether it is still desirable." Napoleon cast on him a glance which once would have frozen the marshal's blood, but which now ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... say nothing harsh to, or disrespectful of, Alida de Barberie. I will not deny that a harrowing idea possessed me,—but I see my error, and repent ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... avoid all superfluous ornament, he has stripped his dramas of the embellishments of imagination; and for the harmony and flow of poetical language he has substituted, even in his best performances, a style which, though correct and pure, is generally harsh, elaborate and abrupt; often strained into unnatural energy or condensed into factitious conciseness. The chief excellence of Alfieri consists in powerful delineation of dramatic character. In his Filippo he has represented, almost with the masterly touches of Tacitus, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... confidence of their chief, and in order, by their countenance, to stamp upon his mind the impression of a happy omen; the second sometimes declined communicating bad news, in order, as he said, to avoid the harsh rebuffs which he had ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... excellent manager, nor was she otherwise than very kind in word and deed; and Marian could by no means understand the cause of the mixture of dread and repugnance with which she regarded her. Perhaps it was, that though not harsh, her manner wanted gentleness; her tones were not soft, and she would cut off answers before they were half finished. Her bright, clear, cold, blue eye had little of sympathy in it, and every look and tone showed that ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... from home, and to see new places and new people; and he was to go still farther away. He went on board a ship. He went forth to see what the world produced; and he found bad weather, rough seas, evils dispositions, and harsh masters. He went as a cabin-boy! Poor living, cold nights, the rope's end, and hard thumps with the fist were his portion. There was something in his noble Spanish blood which always boiled up, so that angry words rose often to his lips; but he was wise enough to keep them back, and ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... forgot his flocks and his well-stored caverns. Then, for the first time, he began to take some care of his appearance, and to try to make himself agreeable; he harrowed those coarse locks of his with a comb, and mowed his beard with a sickle, looked at his harsh features in the water, and composed his countenance. His love of slaughter, his fierceness and thirst of blood prevailed no more, and ships that touched at his island went away in safety. He paced up and down the sea-shore, imprinting ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... I venture to show you why, according to my belief, you should not marry Adam. I cannot tell you as I ought, but only try to show you where to seek the explanation of my seeming harsh advice. There are diseases more subtle and dangerous than any that vex our flesh; diseases that should be as carefully cured if curable, as inexorably prevented from spreading as any malady we dread. A paralyzed will, a morbid ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... the maze of gnarled fruit-trees, decaying farm implements and piles of lumber, towards the small door that formed the only opening in the first story of this deserted fortress, the cold silence was shattered by the harsh baying of dogs somewhere in the distance to the right, beyond the barns that formed one side of the court. From the villa came neither light nor sound. Giuseppe knocked at the weather-worn door, and the sound echoed cavernously within; but ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... of igniting kerosene and lox which caused Jordan to jump into the air, a terrible burst of smoke and dust and then an overwhelming, harsh shattering roar such as had not disturbed Canaveral Space Port in more than a ...
— If at First You Don't... • John Brudy
... her birth, and time was when she had trod its streets in arrogance and pride, when she had possessed friends by the score among its residents. But of all these there was not one to whom she dared appeal in this, her hour of need. These were harsh times; Spanish hatred of the revolutionists was bitter, and of the Cuban sympathizers none were left. Moreover, Esteban's denouncement as a traitor had estranged all who remained loyal to the crown, and so far as Rosa herself was concerned, she knew that it would not matter to them that she had ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... INTOLERANCE is a harsh term. It is stern, rigid, brutal, almost. It makes no compromise, combats a outrance and exacts blind and absolute obedience. Among individuals tolerance should prevail, man, should be liberal with man, the Law of Charity demands it. In regard to principles, there must and shall eternally be antagonism ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... regard weakness with sympathy, instead of with the contempt that it generally deserves. In the language of the prize ring, the pugilist who lies down while he can yet stand and see is called a "quitter." It would be harsh and unjust to apply to all suicides this opprobrious name; but there can be little doubt, I think, that the majority of them are weaklings who give up and lie down while they still have ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... unhappily she too soon discovered her husband was not one to aid her in her unsuspected task, to soothe and guide, and by his affection demand her gratitude and reverence. Enwrapped in selfishness or haughty indifference, his manner towards her ever harsh, unbending, and suspicious, Isabella's pride would have sustained her, had not her previous trial lowered her in self-esteem; but as it was, meekly and silently she bore with the continued outbreak of unrestrained passion, and never wavered from the path ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... tell, and harsh to hear; Sufficeth, I am come to keep my word, Though in some part enforced to digress; Which at more leisure I will so excuse As you shall well be satisfied withal. But where is Kate? I stay too long from her; The morning wears, 'tis ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... police-courts." And Deborah looked round the cellar with a shudder. Suddenly she started and held up her finger, nodding towards a narrow door at the side of the cellar. "Master's footstep," she said in a harsh whisper. "I'd know it in a thousand—just like a thief's, ain't it?—stealing as you might say. Don't tell him you've ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... few days after the order for the arrest of Milton's publisher, Livewell Chapman, the authorities signified their displeasure, though in a less harsh manner, with another Republican associate of Milton, his old friend Marchamont Needham.—Not without difficulty had this Oliverian journalist, the subsidized editor since 1655 of the bi-weekly official newspaper of the Protectorate (calling itself The Public Intelligencer ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... where the air fairly palpitates with sound; from every little marshy hollow and spring run there rises an impenetrable maze or cloud of shrill musical voices. After the peepers, the next frog to appear is the clucking frog, a rather small, dark-brown frog, with a harsh, clucking note, which later in the season becomes the well-known brown wood-frog. Their chorus is heard for a few days only, while their spawn is being deposited. In less than a week it ceases, and I never hear them again till the next April. ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... was a shunned woman, that is to say, people were almost afraid of her, so harsh did she seem in her manner. Some eighteen years before she had lost her husband, who had been shot in an attempt which he had made with some companions to rob the stage-coach. Marianne was expecting a child to be born when the body of her husband, with its blackened ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... thoughtful and discerning attentions of the mother. The wants and necessities of the young child must be anticipated; the fretfulness produced by disease, soothed by kind and affectionate persuasion; and the possibility of the sick and sensitive child being exposed to harsh and ungentle ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... of that voice, that peace, that silence, that soft air in which were no shouts, no roughness, no violence, that oasis in the harsh desert of life, and—heroic light gilding with its rays people and things—the light of the enchanted world conjured up by the reading of the divine poets! Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare, springs of strength, of ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... out, she met with nothing harsh; indeed, but for the sorrowful kindness of her family towards her, she could hardly have guessed that ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Breath, I put their Hand to my Throat that they may be made sensible of that tremulous Motion, when I utter my Voice; then I put the same Hand of theirs to their own Throat, and command them to imitate me; nor am I discouraged, if at the beginning their Voice is harsh and difficult; for in time it becomes ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman
... aroused in me a medley of feelings. The harsh expressions which my father had not scrupled to make use of hurt me deeply; the contempt which he cast on Marya Ivanofna appeared to me as unjust as it was unseemly; while, finally, the idea of being sent away from ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... been for many years a necessary evil in view of the national emergency, and of the increase in the mercantile marine which attracted large numbers to its service. Great abuses were perpetrated in the operation of this harsh method of maintaining an efficient naval force, and there was no part of the British Isles where the presence of a press gang did not bring dismay into many a home. Great Britain, then and for many years later, upheld to an extreme degree the doctrine of perpetual ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... which learns of it. It teaches by apprehension not by comprehension—which is what many philosophers try to do, and, in trying, break their jugs and spill the contents. Literature understands man and of what he is capable. Philosophy, on the other hand, may not be 'harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,' but the trouble with most of its practitioners is that they try to comprehend the Universe. Now the man who could comprehend the Universe would ipso facto comprehend God, and be ipso facto a Super-God, ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... symptoms, yet, after the pustule has duly exerted its influence, I should prefer the destroying it quickly and effectually to any other mode. The term caustic to a tender ear (and I conceive none feel more interested in this inquiry than the anxious guardians of a nursery) may sound harsh and unpleasing, but every solicitude that may arise on this account will no longer exist when it is understood that the pustule, in a state fit to be acted upon, is then quite superficial, and that it does not occupy the space of a silver penny. [Footnote: ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... insanity of organism which gives so much of the erratic and unstable to society, in its manifestations of mind and morals; it is the form of unstable mental organism which, like an unstrung instrument jangling out of tune and harsh, when touched in a manner to elicit in men of stable organisms only concord of sweet, harmonious sounds; it is the form of mental organism out of which, by slight exciting causes largely imaginary, the Guiteaus and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... confession had no sooner been made than her fault had been forgiven. She had told him that she did not love him. She had told him, even, that she had thought of leaving him. She had justified by her own words any treatment of his, however harsh, which he might choose to practise. But the result had been—the immediate result—that he had been more tender to her than she had ever remembered him to be before. She knew that he had conquered her. However cold and heartless his home ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... grunted a harsh voice in answer; "let him die, Miss Stella. He will bring you bad luck—let him die, I say." I felt a movement of air above me as though the woman of my vision turned swiftly, and once again I opened my eyes. ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... winds up that grey mountain is rough; its harsh stones and remorseless gradients take toll of leather as of flesh. Yet half a sole and a sound upper are better than no boot; and what climber but would postpone till after his descent the discarding ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... very much changed since I had left it some weeks before. Then it was in a fever of excitement, now it was in the chill of dark despair. German rule was firmly established, and was growing daily more harsh and humiliating for its citizens. Everything was done to Germanize the city, military automobiles were always dashing through, their hooters playing the notes of the Emperor's salute, Belgian automobiles that had been requisitioned whirred up and down the streets filled ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... ignorant and brutal as the higher were coarse and corrupt. Among the other qualities in which the times were deficient, was philanthropy. The measures which the wisdom and charity of the present have exerted to diminish crime, and to improve the condition of the poor, were then represented only by a harsh and cruel penal code, which had a powerful, though an indirect tendency to promote pauperism and to multiply criminals. Although population had greatly increased, no new provision had been made for religious teaching, and there were no schools but those of Edward and Elizabeth.[137] Defective poor-laws, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... all-powerless to break,—Zubeneschamali and Zubenelgunebi, Bellatrix and Betelguese, sonorous of Rome and Asia both, full of old echoes and the dry resonant air of Eastern plains,—names wherein sounded the clash of Bellona's armor, and the harsh stir of palm-boughs rustled by a hot wind of the desert, and vibrant with the dying clangor of gongs, and shouts of worshipping crowds reverberating through horrid temples of grinning and ghastly idols, wet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... him in for Harsh. Mr. Pinks is dead—the fellow, you know, who got the seat at the general election. He dropped down in London—disease of the heart or something of that sort. Julia has her telegram, but I see it was in last ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... was much grieved that her little Alfred shewed so much inclination to be cruel and revengeful, two qualities so dangerous in a child, or in any one; and she knew that, unless it was timely checked, it would grow into a habit. Harsh means, she did not like to adopt; and so she at last thought of a method which seemed likely to succeed. She was well aware of the inconvenience of having mice in her cupboard, as they not only commit great depredations, but soil every thing they ...
— Little Downy - The History of A Field-Mouse • Catharine Parr Traill
... water and down went the heads-of the thirsty horses for a long pull at the too often bitter spring, for in this region between the Assineboine and the South Saskatchewan fully half the lakes and pools that lie scattered about in-vast variety are harsh with salt and alkalis. Three horses always ran loose while the other three worked in harness. These loose horses, one might imagine, would be prone to gallop away when they found themselves at liberty to do so: but nothing seems farther from their thoughts; they trot along by the side of their harnessed ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... for the most part nice girls and, at heart, kindly intentioned; but Nan had gone through some harsh experiences, as well as exciting times, during the fall and winter semester at Lakeview Hall. She had made friends, as she always did; and the Masons, Grace and Walter, determined to have her with them in Chicago over the holidays. Therefore, in the third volume of the series, "Nan Sherwood's ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... obliged to quit the apartment, cruelly wounded, sometimes wondering whether he had really acted on a harsh selfish punctilio in cutting off the dying woman from the consolations of religion, and thus taking part with the persecutors, while his heart bled for her. Sometimes it seemed to him as if he had been on ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is one that appeals only to the ignorant. This is a plain and probably a harsh assertion, nevertheless it is absolutely the simple truth. The language and the reasoning of the nostrum vender are not designed to appeal to the trained, educated mind, or to an individual possessing innate common sense. Even ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... knee leaned a fair-haired child. The pitiful concern in the woman's lovely eyes was reflected in the soft wonder of the child's. Both, it seemed, were of the people. The drawing was full of rustical suggestion, touched here and there by a harsh realism that did but heighten the general harmony. The woman's grave comeliness flowered naturally, as it were, out of the scene. She was no model posing with a Westmoreland stream for background. She seemed a part of the fells; their silences, their breezes, their pure ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... inferior race upsets their nervous equilibrium. The lack of comfort and the need of abrupt action makes them discard gentleness and other external husks of civilization. The mildest of us are liable to become brusque; and harsh ones, brutal. Only ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... say you, it sounds very harsh to say we eat and drink ideas, and are clothed with ideas. I acknowledge it does so—the word IDEA not being used in common discourse to signify the several combinations of sensible qualities which are called THINGS; and it is certain that any expression which varies from ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... Venner, dazedly. He strove hard to burst into angry protest, but his tongue refused to utter the harsh words in the face of such a creature of beauty. "I don't understand why it is necessary at all, lady. It is no choice of mine, or my friends, that our schooner is aground and ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... of abstract generalisation. The Roman state is not a repetition of such a state of individuals as was the Athenian polis. The geniality and joy of soul that existed there have given place to harsh and rigorous toil. The interest of history ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... scrubs covered with the usual timber—that is to say, a mixture of the Eucalyptus dumosa or mallee, casuarinas or black oaks, a few Grevilleas, hakea bushes, with leguminous trees and shrubs, such as mulga, and a kind of harsh-, silver wattle, looking bush. On the latter order of these trees and plants the camels find their sustenance. Two stunted specimens of the native orange-tree or capparis were seen where I had left the two casks. From my furthest ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... ceux qu'elles n'aiment pas." This is a harsh saying, and of course not pure truth; but there is a deal of truth ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... possibilities of wealth that it contained, and had, perhaps, a desire to keep it to myself as long as might be; so that I thought nothing of the two who were waiting for me at the well-mouth, till I was suddenly called back by the harsh voice of the ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... their own happiness. Nor is it always those who have most completely abandoned dogmatic systems who are the least sensible to the moral beauty which has grown up around them. The music of the village church, which sounds so harsh and commonplace to the worshipper within, sometimes fills with tears the eyes of the stranger who sits without, listening among ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... into a harsh sob, and for a moment his hands covered his face. Then he shook himself ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... appearance; he had a shock of sandy hair, blue eyes, and a smoothly shaven mouth and chin somewhat receding from a finely chiseled nose. He was speaking earnestly, and in a tone of conviction. His voice was harsh, but his manner ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... the fashionable painter of the nineteenth century, was a large, common-looking man with a huge moustache, like that of a book agent; and Theophile de Sonis, the elegant story-writer, the worldly romancer, had a copper-colored nose, and his harsh beard was like that of a ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... changed their tactics, and by common consent soared above the balloon. Kennedy glanced at Ferguson. The latter, in spite of his imperturbability, grew pale. Then ensued a moment of terrifying silence. In the next they heard a harsh tearing noise, as of something rending the silk, and the car seemed to sink from beneath the feet ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... moonlight! 'Tis a fine spectacle, apart from all its indissoluble associations of awe and beauty. The mitigating hour softens the austerity of a mountain landscape magnificent in outline, however harsh and severe in detail; and, while it retains all its sublimity, removes much of the savage sternness of the strange and unrivaled scene. A fortified city, almost surrounded by ravines, and rising in the center of chains of far-spreading hills, occasionally offering, through their ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... features gave her more the appearance of some wild beast than a human being. She did not appear to be conscious of his presence; and before he had time to recover from his surprise or utter a word, she stretched both arms out before her as if toward the sun, and uttering a wild, harsh, inarticulate cry, dropped unconscious from the horse's ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... Jane, giving a loud, harsh laugh, and shaking her hair—the huge pompadour in front, the pug behind. "Well, go ahead. And I'll ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates |
