"Stolid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beginning with Basil, who was only a year younger than herself, though not nearly so capable and reliable, and ending with the fat baby who had not yet found his feet, while in between came harum-scarum Milly, boisterous Robin and Wilfred, coaxing, bewitching little Kitty, and round-faced, stolid, three-year-old Rowland, whose name was generally corrupted to Roly-Poly, because it seemed ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... face took on a decided pallor, and then his expression took on a blank, noncommittal look. There was no getting behind that stolid wall. ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... circumference of the globe. This thought staggered me and I believed there must be something wrong with a fellow who could conceive such a stupendous undertaking. Surely no one would think for a moment of putting it into execution! I also read with stolid indifference of the Herculean feats of labor performed by men known to history. For example, Demosthenes copied in his own handwriting Thucydides' History eight times, merely to make himself familiar with the style of that great man. An incident ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... has a stolid expression, redeemed slightly, perhaps, by its exchange often for a lugubrious one. I should feel disposed to predict for him the scoring of an immense success in the personation of such characters as those of the melancholy Dane; ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... bouleversement of the veracious sense—similar to certain perversions of the insane mind, and then other faculties of his nature are liable to share in the alteration. If the man was previously to the highest degree merciful and sympathizing, he may become stolid to human suffering as any infant who laughs at its mother's funeral, not from wickedness of disposition but absence of the faculty which appreciates woe, and I doubt not that this change goes far to explain the ghastly unfeelingness ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... aims of the Government as the quite normal state of the Turkish nation.... Every Turk is a born soldier, and adopts other pursuits chiefly because times are bad. When there is a question of fighting, if only in a riot, the stolid peasant wakes up and shows surprising power of finding organisation and expedients, and alas! a surprising ferocity. The ordinary Turk is an honest and good-humoured soul, kind to children and animals, and very patient; but when the fighting spirit comes on him, he becomes ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... trouble! I had read of the soothing companionship of the forest, the pleasure of the pathless woods. But I thought, as I stumbled along in the dismal actuality, that, if I ever got out of it, I would write a letter to the newspapers, exposing the whole thing. There is an impassive, stolid brutality about the woods that has never been enough insisted on. I tried to keep my mind fixed upon the fact of man's superiority to Nature; his ability to dominate and outwit her. My situation ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... impatient to explain matters to stolid Susan, and danced down stairs, her eyes sparkling and smiles on her lips. It was nothing to her now how long she stayed at school—her heart's treasure would be with her there, and she ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... that has been nurtured in long, long thoughts. In the calms under starlit skies, in the black darkness when tossing surges swing beneath the keel, in the glimmering vistas of sun-lighted seas, sailors ponder while their more stolid brothers on land allow their souls ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... my taste in choosing such an elegant equipage. However, we made the inside fairly comfortable with rugs and cushions, and, having paid the inn-keeper, I assisted the ladies to their seats and clambered in after them. The driver, a stolid, thick-headed fellow, cracked his whip, and we started off at a brisk trot, which, however, the horses did ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... mind, body or future than the larch yonder did about its roots or leaves, and who took praise and blame as indifferently as the tree, the sun or rain, roused in her a feeling of active dislike. She called Jane stolid to other people, but she was by no means satisfied that she was stolid. She was often sorry that she had brought herself measurably under the protection of Captain Swendon and his daughter by renting two of the rooms ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... drama of the flare-up of a stolid and apparently unfeeling nature in the flame of the ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... collar which rose above his ears, and frowning forth immitigably at any Englishman who might happen to cross the threshold. I am afraid, however, that the truculence of the old General's expression was utterly thrown away on this stolid and obdurate race of men; for, when they occasionally inquired whom this work of art represented, I was mortified to find that the younger ones had never heard of the battle of New Orleans, and that their elders had either forgotten ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in Gethsemane at the prospect, and for the abysmal sense of forsakenness on the cross? His sensitiveness of heart made Him feel the pain and shame of other men, a pain and shame they were frequently too stolid and obtuse to feel. He could not see able-bodied and willing workmen standing idle in the marketplace because no man had hired them, without sharing their discouragement and bitterness, nor prodigals ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... ahead. He had been fooled; pay the forfeit. Retreat into his own heart, and go ahead. Thirty, forty years.... He had himself to blame. And it wasn't as if he had to live in the house all the time; he had only to come back there. All that was killed was his heart. His frame was still stolid, his eye clear.... There would be little oases here and there, some great record of a voyage broken, friends bravely made, a kiss now and then, freely, gallantly given.... But ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... Hendricks' store. Ramos and Tiflin, two wild characters with seldom-cut hair and pipe stem pants, who didn't look as if they could be trusted with a delicate unpacking operation, broke the Archer out with a care born of love, there in Paul Hendricks' big backroom shop, while the more stolid members—and old Paul, silent in his swivel chair—watched ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... Patsy, "we've been misjudging him. I never beheld such a stolid, unimpressive countenance in my life; but the man must have a soul of some sort, or he would not think of sending ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... upon Henry Chatillon's saddle. We tossed a piece of buffalo robe to Jack, who was looking about in some embarrassment. He spread it on the ground, and took his seat, with a stolid countenance, at his ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... filled with tears; the sight of them put out the flame that had leapt for once from stolid Hugh, and he took her hand in his own ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... prepared. She thought of Kitty, saw the value of my suggestion, and went away at once to consult with the landlady. In the meantime I sent for the gardener, and told him what I was thinking of. He was one of those stolid Englishmen, who possess resources which don't express themselves outwardly. Judging by his face, you would have said he was subsiding into a slumber under the infliction of a sermon, instead of listening to a lawyer proposing a stratagem. When ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... headwaters of the Quah Davic, it was naturally one of the great New Brunswick moose that he was after. Nothing but the noblest antlers that New Brunswick forests bred could seem to him worthy of a place on those walls of his, whence the surly front of a musk-ox of the Barren Grounds glared stolid defiance to the snarl of an Orinoco jaguar, and the black, colossal head of a Kadiak bear was eyed derisively by the monstrous and malignant mask of a two-horned rhinoceros. With such a quest upon him, the Famous Hunter came, and ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the door and stood staring, the teamsters jumped as if they had been shot. But Billy only turned a stolid white face on me. ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... Here the stolid old German put in. In the last year the company had turned out more than six thousand men because of union ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... sign of vitality and interest; a mere excrescence. But are not these excrescences symptoms of a fever lying within our modern civilisation, a febrility which is going to make achievement of great ends and great work more difficult? We Britons, as a breed, are admittedly stolid; we err as much on that score as Americans on the score of restlessness; yet we are both subject to these excrescences. There is something terribly infectious about vulgarity; and taste is on the down-grade following the tendencies of herd-life. ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... just begun to operate; But owing to Gneisenau's stolid stagnancy The body of our army looms not yet! As Zieten's corps still plod behind Smohain Their coming must be late. Blucher's attack Strikes the remote right rear of the enemy, Somewhere ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... a byroad turned off towards Fairfield, the riders came upon a remarkable group in high debate over a donkey—Lady Latimer, Gampling the tinker, and the rural policeman. My lady instantly summoned Mr. Carnegie to her succor in the fray, which, to judge from her countenance and the stolid visage of the emissary of the law, was obstinate. It appeared that the policeman claimed to arrest the donkey and convey him to the pound. The dry and hungry beast had been tethered by his master in the early morning where a hedge and margin of sward bordered the domain ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... of martial build (Her standards set, her brave apparel on) Directed as by madness mere Against a stolid iceberg steer, Nor budge it, though the infatuate ship went down. The impact made huge ice-cubes fall Sullen, in tons that crashed the deck; But that one avalanche was all No other movement ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... upon him with drunken cunning, then his face grew stolid, and he said nothing further until the wagon drew up in a by-street, before a door, hung across with quaint signboards of Chinese characters. The door opened and closed behind him when his companions knocked, and Black, who recognized a curious sour smell, choked ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... of Andreas would kindle into something like intelligence, and a flush would warm his stolid countenance. He was a fair-haired young giant, white-skinned and well-featured, but dull, looking, with cold, hard eyes suggesting the barbarian that he was considered by the cultured Neapolitans, and that he certainly looked by contrast with them. Friar Robert ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... of the dance the Princess Malio, stiff, thin, and sour, and the old Duchess Scorpa, stolid, ugly, and squat, sat together in a corner of the ballroom—that is to say, the picture gallery—of ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... terror from the youth interrupted the solemn incantation. The prisoner slumped to his knees in Standish's grasp, weeping and jabbering for mercy. Brice saw the time was ripe for speech and that the captive's stolid nerve was gone. Turning on him, he ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... a carrier, "lumbering, slow, and honest; heavy, but light of spirit; rough upon the surface, but gentle at the core; dull without, but quick within; stolid, but so good. O, Mother Nature, give thy children the true poetry of heart that hid itself in this poor carrier's breast, and we can bear to have them talking prose all their ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... old skin-and-bones, with one tooth visible, which shook as the laugh emerged. Stolid men smoking, deigned ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... The stolid boatman gave the command; the man at the bow paddled one way, while the man at the stern paddled another, and the canoe ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... other hand, stolid, phlegmatic clay requires the stimulus of manure from the horse-stable. It can be plowed under at once, and left to ferment and decay in the soil. The process of decomposition will tend to banish its cold, inert qualities, and make the ground loose, open, and amenable ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... sight—and, after the manner of their craft, they abuse what they can't understand. Music is distinctly the language of the emotions,—and they have no emotion. They therefore generally prefer Joachim,—the good, stolid Joachim, who so delights all the dreary old spinsters and dowagers who nod over their knitting-needles at the 'Monday Popular' concerts, and fancy themselves lovers of the 'classical' in music. Sarasate appeals to those who have ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... who had been expecting a summons of this kind, did not display the alarm anticipated. Even when he was told that the old chief was certainly dying, and that it was impossible to help him in any way, he maintained his stolid indifference and ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... with genuine pleasure. For once her stolid indifference gave way to natural enthusiasm. Mrs. Baird presented Polly with the cup, and the Fenwick captain added to her joy by telling her that she had never seen such a wonderful exhibition of generalship. Dr. and Mrs. Farwell, with Uncle Roddy and Bob were waiting at ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... Clerical Life, Adam Bede, Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner, all published between 1858 and 1861. These four novels of the middle period are founded on the author's own life and experience; their scenes are laid in the country, and their characters are taken from the stolid people of the Midlands, with whom George Eliot had been familiar since childhood. They are probably the author's most enduring works. They have a naturalness, a spontaneity, at times a flash of real humor, which ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... than five feet high, thin and wiry, with grey hair and moustache, but otherwise clean-shaven. His features were unusually expressive and mobile from his somewhat scornful mouth to his deep-set, observant eyes, and clearly denoted the absence of the stolid Saxon strain in his blood. His accent too, though not that of an educated man, was quite free from the hateful Cockney twang. His dress was spare as his figure, but though well worn there was something spruce and trim about his whole demeanour which indicated that he was not totally ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... a noise, and there in the corner, among all the pink geraniums and the sunshine, the Signora Gemma sat laughing with a baby. It was a fair, bonny thing of eighteen months. The Signora was concentrated upon the child as he sat, stolid and handsome, in his little white cap, perched on a bench picking at ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... middle-aged lady, addressed as aunty; a youth called Albert, subsequently described by Garnet as the rudest boy on earth—a proud title, honestly won; lastly, a niece of some twenty years, stolid and seemingly without ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... stolid and phlegmatic!" muttered Mr. Dane, as he read the inscription. (Evidently that remark ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... slow-minded being, but possessed of a grim determination. To get an idea into his mind requires a blackboard and Chautauqua lecturer, but once he masters it, he never lets go; so it will be with football signals, once let him grasp a play, he will never be confused. He is simply a huge, stolid giant. He has a bulldog purpose to get an education, and nothing else matters. As for college spirit, the glad comradeship of the campus, he has no time for it; he pays no attention to the fellows ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... and not hard to please if her orders were faithfully carried out. He expressed no personal interest in the question of her guilt or innocence, he simply told what he had seen. I didn't altogether like his stolid indifference, it seemed impossible there should be so little humanity in a fellow-being, but I knew he was a good and conscientious waiter, and I concluded he was ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... nature deep, and he had a knack of deepening it when he wished to be impressive. His articulation was extremely deliberate, so that every word told; and his habitual manner was calm, but not stolid. I say "habitual," because it had variations. When Gladstone, just the other side of the Table, was thundering his protests, Disraeli became absolutely statuesque, eyed his opponent stonily through his monocle, and then congratulated himself, in a kind of stage ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... the object of Ireland's devotion, of England's fear, and of the world's admiration, kneeling with the people before the altar, practicing the piety of the people, with that humble simplicity, that recollection, that devoutness, and that modesty, which supercilious science and stolid pride abandon as things fit only to be followed by those whom they disdain as ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... excitement meet in a murder trial. The awful issue at stake gives significance to the lightest word or look. How the quick eyes of the spectators rove from the stolid jury to the keen lawyers, the impassive judge, the anxious prisoner. Nothing is lost of the sharp wrangle of the counsel on points of law, the measured decision's of the bench; the duels between the attorneys and the witnesses. The crowd sways with the rise and fall of the shifting, testimony, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... overtake the world at a night-school, where his mental quickness contrasted oddly with his slow, stolid demeanor. He worked hard at the forge all day; but everybody ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... enough, the camel's old evil incarnate. Blue beads and amulets to ward off evil! No eye's more evil than a camel's eye. The elephant is quite a comely brute, Compared with Satan camel,—trunk and all, His floppy ears, and his inconsequent tail. He's stolid, but at least a gentleman. It doesn't hurt my pride to valet him, And bring his shaving-water. He's a lord. Only the bluest blood that has come down Through generations from the mastodon Could carry off that tail with dignity, That ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... did not venture on any further interference. And yet this teaching, as Luther knew better than anyone, had not yet succeeded, in spite of all its popularity, in penetrating the souls of men. To a large extent, the masses seemed to be still stolid and indifferent. Even among the clergy, many were so unstable, so obscure, and so incompetent, that they failed to make any progress with their congregations. There were even some among them who were ready, according to circumstances, to adopt either the old or the new Church ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... cried Sally, hoarsely and breathlessly. "Let me be." She did not scream. She was too impressed by his exhibition of strength. He continued to hold her, and they stood breast to breast, Sally panting, and Toby with a kind of stolid determination. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... how great an advantage it would have been to be able to go down to Blackheath, and discuss the perplexities of the time in that genial and manly companionship, where facts were weighed with so much care, where conclusions were measured with such breadth and comprehension, and where even the great stolid idols of the Cave and the Market Place were never too rudely buffeted. Of a very different order of mind from Cairnes, but not less to be permanently regretted by all of us who knew him, was Mr. Bagehot, whose books on the English Constitution, on ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... carapace, beating him to his knees, before the attacker raced on into the billows of the mist. Another threw himself on the ground and lay there, pounding his claws against the baked earth. While a remaining two continued with stolid precision to fire at the lurking shapes which could only be half seen; and a third helped the ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... rest of that grim procession passed his place. There was another, a young fellow who looked ready to cry, walking unsteadily behind Jack, both his arms gripped by others of the Vigilance Committee. There were two crude stretchers, borne by stolid-faced miners in red flannel shirts and clay-stained boots. On the first a dead man lay grinning up at the sun, his teeth just showing under his bushy mustache, a trickle of red running down from ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... Madelon was too stolid to weep for her husband. But even her stolidity was not proof against the fiery influence of jealousy, and, waking and sleeping, her visions were of veiled damsels of Orient assailing the too inflammable ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... dropped to the scow, where little rivers of water made crooked paths across the deck. Piles of planks reared high at her back, and edged the scow with the squareness of a room. Scraggy knew that hauling lumber was but the cover for a darker trade. Yet as she glanced at the stolid, indifferent man trudging behind the mules a lovelight ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... the bell again rather nervously and waited. In her bag she had a little torch-light (for she was a practical young person), and taking it out, she flashed it on the door. It presented a stolid, impenetrable oaken front. She stepped out into the fog and scanned the windows which were already almost lost to view. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... flashed through his mind the wonderful things that he intended "Mortimer Stant" to be. It was to concern a man of forty (in his confident selection of that age he displayed, most stridently, his own youth) and Mortimer was to be a stolid, reserved Philistine, who was, against his will, by outside forces, dragged into ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... counter to be indicated by the thumb, a deadlock would appear to be inevitable. Our Master Thomas, however, never did realise what a deadlock is; he goes on till he gets what he wants. So you see them in pairs, taking up a stolid position at the counter, obstinately stating and re-stating their demands in a composite language of which the foreign element is almost negligible, until the merchant or his wife gives in and produces the article required. I know one simple soldier who managed to reconcile himself ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... fear of submarines. The landing would have had to take place in the inner portion of the Gulf of Iskanderun, Ayas Bay, where there were no facilities, where the surroundings were unhealthy, and where it would be particularly easy for the Turks to put up a stolid resistance. Our view was that for any operation of this kind to be initiated with reasonable safety, a very large body of troops would be necessary, that as far as Egypt was concerned the Nile Delta could be rendered absolutely ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... guard-mounting were the only ones where this was practicable, and an odd thing had become noticeable. Apache Indians sometimes stopped their ears, and always looked impolite, when the brazen trumpets sounded close at hand; whereas they would squat on the sun-kissed sands and listen in stolid, unmurmuring bliss to every note of the fife and drum. Members of the guard were always sure of sympathetic spectators during the one regular ceremony—guard-mounting—held just after sunset, for the Apache prisoners at the guard-house begged to be allowed to remain without ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... sensual, swinish, base, brute, imbruted, sottish, unintellectual, beastly, carnal, insensible, stolid, unspiritual, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... all this ever drips into my auricles in Holland. A country so small that they build dikes to keep the inhabitants from being spilt off the edge, is hardly the place for a scandal—certainly not in stolid Dordrecht or in that fly-speck of a Papendrecht, whose dormer windows peer over the edge of the dike as if in mortal fear of another inundation. And yet, small as it is, it is still big enough for me to approach it—the ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... have him next trying to treat with the gods, to attain Brahm's purification, Boodh's annihilation, to jump over the moon, or doing something that will make him candidate for the shaved-head-and-blister treatment. Remember, Ned, his brain is made of finer stuff than that stolid sponge inside your pia mater, that can take in quantum sufficit of beer, fog, and tobacco-smoke, unharmed. He can't stand it, and he's too rare and delicate a machine to go cranky thus soon. You've got the child under your thumb,—bring him out o' that. Make him take ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... perhaps for that reason he has refrained to pass that way. Outside, in the slippery streets, over which the red-capped children passed with shouts of glee, I had seen something of the preparations; the men, steel-like and stolid, marching by, the officers, stiff and martial-looking, saluting right and left under the quaint arcades of this charming city. Colored photographs of corps commanders adorned the windows and seemed ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... every inch of ground flying, as it seemed, from the air, on to roofs, in and out of windows, from house to house, from corner to corner, was the humorous, pathetic, expectant, matter-of-fact, dreaming, stolid Russian soldier. He was to come to me, later on, in a very different fashion, but on this dreadful day in O—— he was simply part ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... stiffened into silence and stolid rigidity. Unflinchingly, he eyed the oncoming giant. Brice motioned ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... the legitimate end of all labor. Will ignorance give respectability, or sweeten the toil of the husbandman? Will it elevate his thoughts and desires to higher and nobler aims, or inspire him to "look from nature up to nature's God?" Will it lead him instead of a fixed stolid gaze upon the earth over which he walks, to engage in the study of those great and omnipotent laws which regulate all matter, and which so wonderfully, yet certainly control both the animal and vegetable kingdoms? No! It will accomplish none of these desirable ends, but the ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... by no means a beautiful man. Indeed, they are all portrayed; all the privates of this distinguished Regiment are, if anybody cared to look at them—Redivanoff from Moscow seems of far better bone than Kirkman, though still more stolid of aspect. One Hohmann, a born Prussian, was so tall, you could not, though yourself tall, touch his bare crown with your hand; August the Strong of Poland tried, on one occasion, and could not. Before Hohmann turned up, there ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the day was passed in calculations and in conversations. I remained a steadfast adherent of the opinions of Professor Liedenbrock, and I envied the stolid indifference of Hans, who, without going into causes and effects, went on with his eyes shut wherever his ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... wrapped in a shawl, and sat cowering in a dull, stupified way, unlike the bright responsive manner for which she had been noted even in her lace-school days. Mary Morris gazed for a moment at Alison with a wistful appealing glance, then, with a start as of fright, put on a sullen stolid look, and kept her eyes on her book. The little Alice, looking very heavy and feverish, leant against her, and Mrs. Rawlins went on talking of the colds, the gruel she had made, and her care for her pupils' ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... traps? All this goes on in the midst of refinement, without prohibition from men or remonstrance from women. It is a fruit of the modern English system of game preserving;... and the artificial love of sport which cruel Norman tradition has fostered in the stolid Anglo-Saxon race." [Footnote: "On Cruelty" (Miscellanies, III, by Francis W. Newman).] It is an unassailable truth that if you look for the last remains of barbarity in a civilized nation you will find them in their sports. But I ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... characteristics—a talent for foreign languages, a subtlety of reasoning, originality but insufficient observation, and clever but fallacious minds. Similarly in the Bulgar there are qualities which even now can be ascribed to the Mongol blood. The Bulgar is more stolid than the Serb; he is less given to sympathy and on that account can be cruel. The Bulgar is benevolent because he is urged by kindliness, whereas the more impressionable Serb is under the influence both of sentiment, sentimentality and sympathy. These differences of ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... waiting for him, there stood watching him a party of Indians. They were dressed entirely in savage costume. Not one wore any garment of civilization as did many of the savages farther east. With stolid composure the Redskins looked at the boy, though they must have wondered what the young Paleface was doing, alone in ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... said the elderly surgeon. Amusing was his favourite word; but the expression of his face when he pronounced it never corresponded. He was a stolid man. "Come in," he added. "I'll get ready in ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... cheerfully down the cool stone steps of the beer-shop, Ardelia, bare-footed and abandoned, nibbling at a section of bologna sausage, cake-walked insolently with a band of little girls behind a severe policeman, mocking his stolid gait, to the delight of Old Dutchy, who beamed approvingly ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... must have been some splendid things in Erse and Gaelic too; for the Celtic mind, with its more vivid sense of colour, its quicker transitions, and deeper emotional quality, has ever over-cursed the stolid Teuton. But it ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... frequent or more destructive than those of their neighbors; and their general habits were the same. Still they were going on to decay, and they contemplated with stolid calmness their coming extinction. They felt it a destiny not to be averted or avoided by anything they could do, and were content with the excuse of folly for all its errors and sins. It is the will of God, or the Great Spirit, as the Indian phrases it. They were ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... to another question, but Johnson preserved a perfectly stolid face. It was all very well for him to advise his employer, and work up his cases for him if necessary. He was accustomed to do both these things, and his help had been invaluable to Sydney for several years past. But it was out of his line to display more confidence than was displayed ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... it. I do not much wonder at her conviction, if such it was, as I look at a daguerreotype of myself taken about that period, a round head, mostly hair, a low forehead, a pair of round eyes, thick nose and lips and short neck, altogether just such a solid, stolid child as one would expect to see from the country, bred in the sun and cold, and fed on brown bread and milk. My being with my sister, and a pupil in her school was a temporary expedient until a place could be found for me. At length it was found, a situation in a dry goods store, where I could ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... Miss President." It was the Blunderbuss, and her stolid face grew hot and red in the darkness, as she wondered if any one who knew that she didn't belong to 19— now would question her right to take part in the meeting. "But I was bound to do it," she reflected. "I guess she isn't the kind ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... brightly on the shaggy coats of Brutus and Cassius, as they idled about the yard, waiting, with steaming mouths and slowly wagging tails, to see the cart drive off. Old Mazey went out alone and used his influence with Dawkes, who, staring in stolid amazement, put a leather cushion on the cart-seat for his fellow-traveler. Shivering in the sharp morning air, Magdalen waited, while the preliminaries of departure were in progress, conscious of nothing but a giddy bewilderment of thought, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... sing to those equals in wonder, Of BRADSHAW (the expert on trains), Who have torn the Hun's fiction asunder— That our City's a mass of remains; Here's our proof that we're plainly not undone, That, although every night she lies hid, Our stolid undaunted old London Still ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... Barlow, I could not choose but ask myself in a whisper when tickled by a printed jest, 'What would HE think of it? What would HE see in it?' The point of the jest immediately became a sting, and stung my conscience. For my mind's eye saw him stolid, frigid, perchance taking from its shelf some dreary Greek book, and translating at full length what some dismal sage said (and touched up afterwards, perhaps, for publication), when he banished ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the room, where I found myself no longer alone. Sir James Barrie's "man" was there; a stolid Londoner, name of Brown, who told me he was visiting ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... neglected, they are still sound Catholics, and it may be that it was not thought to be in the interest of the authorities that they should be instructed in more worldly affairs. I am not prepared to argue this question. I only know that while stolid, and unemotional ordinarily, they are intensely patriotic. They became highly excited during the struggle some years ago to have their Flemish tongue preserved and taught in the schools, and I remember the crowds of people thronging the streets of Antwerp, Ghent and Bruges, with bands of ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... touched either of its occupants with his rawhide quirt, rode the Mexican. When they discovered him he was leaning forward, his half-closed eyes mere slits with pin-points of black fire to mark them, and his repulsive face a stolid mask. Ford's hand went instinctively to the whip: it was the only available weapon. But the Mexican merely touched his flapping sombrero and rode on ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... The stolid niece blundered heavily about the room, doing things that were entirely unnecessary, and raising much dust. She was a conscientious person in her own way, and felt that she must get through a certain amount of work in return for the ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... has maintained a stolid silence all this while. Perhaps he is out of humor at the change in the arrangements, and fears lest, after all his hard work, the young Chicagoan may ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... no very favourable impression by his actions. There seemed to be much that was forced about them, that was more incriminating than a stolid silence would have been. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... a sod of the turf, for the only dissipation life now offered her was this haggling with and shouting down of turf sellers. Denis Donohoe stood immovable beside his cart, patient as his donkey, his swarthy face stolid under the shadow of his broad-brimmed black hat, his intelligent eyes quietly measuring his noisy antagonists. When the woman's anger had quite spent itself the turf was purchased for ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... have trembled over it. My Lord Mayenne had not the reputation of being easily gulled. For aught we knew, he might be informed of the name and condition of every person who had entered Paris this year. He might, as he listened stolid-faced, be checking off to himself the number of monsieur's lies. But if M. Etienne trembled in his soul, his words never faltered; he knew his history well, by this. ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... insult the old well of his father and his father's father, the fountain of generations. To seal its mouth and bid its usefulness cease in the house where it had ministered for upwards of a hundred years was an act of desecration impossible to the man who in his stolid way loved the very stones that lined its slimy sides. The few sentiments that had taken hold on Abraham's arid nature went as deep as his obstinacy and clung as fast as his distrust of new opinions and new men. The question of water supply was closed in ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... about their business felling trees or digging the ground the savages would shoot at them from the shelter of the surrounding forest. If a man strayed from the fort he was sure to return wounded if he returned at all; and in this sort of warfare the stolid English were no match for the wily Indians. "Our men," says Smith, "by their disorderly straggling were often hurt when the savages by the nimbleness of their ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... common interest to link them each to the other. She was by nature blythe; a thing of sunshine, flowers and music, who craved a very poet for her lover; and by "a poet" I mean not your mere rhymer. He was downright stolid and stupid under his fine exterior; the worst type of Briton, without the saving grace of a Briton's honor. And so she had wearied him, who saw in her no more than a sweet loveliness that had cloyed him presently. And when the chance was offered ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... cards, and partially opening them glanced keenly at the index numerals. His stolid face remained unchanged. The doctor glanced at his and "came in." "Poker" John "came in." The dealer remained out. The doctor drew two cards; "Poker" John, one; Lablache drew one. The veteran rancher held four nines. "Lord" Bill gathered up the "deadwood," and, propping ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... darkest corner of the low-ceiled and far from spacious mezzanine floor, and at the very end of a passage lighted only by borrowed lights. The office doors along this corridor, each with its label, gave the place the look of a bath-house. At four o'clock the stolid porter had proclaimed, according to his orders, "The bank is closed." And by this time the departments were deserted, the letters dispatched, the clerks had taken their leave. The wives of the partners in the firm were expecting their lovers; the two ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... encouraged the hope that, as yet, the inhabitants were unaware that so formidable a guest traversed their highways. The heat had driven them indoors, whence outdrifted occasional shrill laughs, or the depressing whine of a maltreated concertina. In the shade a few Mexican children, like vivified stolid idols in clay, stared from their play, vision-struck and silent, as Alvarita came and went. Here and there a woman peeped from a door and stood dumb, reduced to silence by the aspect of the ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... bamboo or adobe hut of a native peeped from the rank foliage, and the naked or half-dressed occupants stared stupidly at the craft as it skimmed past. The head of the family lolled on the bank, or in the shade beside his home and smoked; the stolid wife slouched hither and thither like an automaton, plodding at her work or perhaps scratching the ground, that it might laugh a harvest, though oftener her work lay in fighting off the prodigious growth which threatened to strangle ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... how she turned the wrong way, in a manner which might have puzzled the quickest brain; but Moore did not show any surprise. That would come later when he had arranged his ideas a little; at present his face was perfectly stolid as he said: ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... wilderness surgery upon him. He did not see the age-old face of Nepapinas—"The Wandering Bolt of Lightning"—as the bent and tottering Cree called upon all his eighty years of experience to bring him back to life. And he did not see Bateese, stolid-faced, silent, nor the dead-white face and wide-open, staring eyes of Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain as her slim, white fingers worked with the old medicine man's. He was in a gulf of blackness that writhed with the spirits of torment. He fought them and cried ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... startled and there among the decoys swam a dozen little ducks, their heads up, their brights eyes glancing suspiciously from one to another of their stolid wooden relations. Before Bobby could realize that they were there, they had made up their minds; and, with the same abruptness that had characterized their arrival, sprang into the air and departed. Not, however, before Mr. ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... face her problem with a sort of stolid courage or resolution—she knew not what to call it. She was at bay—that was the truth of it. There must be some course of action upon which presently she must determine. What could it be? How could she take arms against her new, vast sea of troubles, so ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... under the stimulus of a delightful anticipation. I suspected that he was hurrying to some peculiarly agreeable rendezvous in Rome, and I hinted my suspicion, which he laughed off in such a way as to confirm it. The German, in the mean time, sat stolid and unmoved, making some pencilled calculations in a little pocket-book. He clearly did not ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... gloomy, smoky, dingy room. Bare yellow benches framed an empty square of brown linoleum. A labouring man with his wife and a child sat waiting with the stolid patience of the poor in one corner. They were starting on some Saturday afternoon excursion, and had mistimed their train. Maude Selby and Frank Crosse took the other corner. He drew a jeweller's box from his pocket and removed the lid. ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... buried in his hands, sobbing. Where were his mother's prayers now? They were adding to the power of the Bishop's. And the other man, harder, less moved, without a previous knowledge of the Bishop, leaned back against the fence, stolid at first. But as the prayer went on, he was moved by it. What force of the Holy Spirit swept over his dulled, brutal, coarsened life, nothing but the eternal records of the recording angel can ever disclose. But the same supernatural Presence that smote Paul on the ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... in obtaining some details of the attitude of the two condemned men. Vaucheray observes a stolid sullenness and is awaiting the fatal event with ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc |
