"Truculent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sonorous piano-forte, proceeded to wake the clangorous echoes of the Empyrean. They bade the prolyx Caucasian gentlemen not to misconstrue their inexorable demands, while they dined on acclimated anchovies and apricot truffles, and had for dessert a wiseacre's pharmacopoeia. Thus the truculent Pythagoreans had a novel repast ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... bringing her son His awfully truculent little red gun; The stock was of pine and the barrel of tin, The "bang" it came out where the bullet went in— The right kind of weapon I think you'll agree For slaying all fowl that ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... became sleep. Bridget, entering to lay the cloth, so found him. She approached on tiptoe, sniffed the perfume of the pocket-book, saw its gilded corners peep forth from its lair. She hesitated; she trembled; she was in mortal fear of that truculent slumberer; but sleep lessens the awe thieves feel or heroes inspire. She has taken the pocketbook; she has fled with the booty; she is in Mrs. Crane's apartment not five minutes after Mrs. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... perspicacious members of his Cabinet, "What do you consider Theodore's dominant trait" He thought for a while, and then replied, "Combativeness." No doubt the public also, at least while Roosevelt was in office, thought of him first as a fighter. The idea that he was truculent or pugnacious, that he went about with a chip on his shoulder, that he loved fighting for the sake of fighting, was, however, a mistake. During the eight years he was President he kept the United States ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... can see the same Othello to-day, if I choose, that when I was a boy I saw smothering Mrs. Duff-Desdemona with the pillow, under the instigations of Mr. Cooper-Iago. A few stone heavier than he was then, no doubt, but the same truculent blackamoor that took by the thr-r-r-oat the circumcised dog in Aleppo, and told us about it in the old Boston Theatre. In the course of a fortnight, if I care to cross the water, I can see Mademoiselle Dejazet in the same parts I saw her in under Louis Philippe, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... supported by a sex that compensates for dislike of its friend before a certain age by a cordial recognition of him when it has touched the period. A phalanx of great dames gave him the terrors of Olympus for all except the natively audacious, the truculent and the insufferably obtuse; and from the midst of them he launched decree and bolt to good effect: not, of course, without receiving return missiles, and not without subsequent question whether the work of that man was beneficial to the country, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... an agricultural people. They were not without many arts of life. They had extensive flocks and herds; and they even exported salted provisions as far as Rome. The truculent German, Ger-mane, Heer-mann, War-man, considered carnage the only useful occupation, and despised agriculture as enervating and ignoble. It was base, in his opinion, to gain by sweat what was more easily acquired by blood. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had had a little time to cool, they were ready enough to acknowledge their mistake in imagining a similarity between General Blood-and-Thunder's truculent physiognomy and the benign visage on the mountain-side. But now, again, there were reports and many paragraphs in the newspapers, affirming that the likeness of the Great Stone Face had appeared upon the broad shoulders ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cried briskly as, cocking his hat, he assumed a still more truculent air. Then, spreading out his hands, he growled in ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... with two grim, truculent-looking assistants, making preparations for the fearful operation they were about to perform, or leaning indolently on ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... himself a match for three men; he fell on his knees, and implored mercy. However, the ci-devant sustainer of the besieged chair was but little disposed to afford him the clemency he demanded, and approached the crestfallen bravo with so grim an air of truculent delight, brandishing his sword and uttering the most terrible threats, that there would have been small doubt of the final catastrophe of the trembling bully, had not the other gallant thrown himself in the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... say what you please," argued Charley, still truculent, "the whole trouble with Arthur is that he has ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... was only momentary. He was in ferocious spirits, indeed, over the breakfast-table, and bolted quantities of buttered toast and eggs, swallowed cups of tea, one after the other, almost at a single gulp, all the time gabbling with a truculent volubility, and every now and then a thump, which made his spoon jingle in his saucer, and poor, little Mrs. Sturk start, and whisper, 'Oh, my dear!' But after he had done defying and paying off the whole world, and showing his wife, and half convincing himself, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... same time with an altered version of his great poem, which he called the Gerusalemme Conquistata. He was induced to undertake this work in order to triumph over his truculent critics, the Della Cruscans, who had condemned the former version. In the Imperial Library at Vienna is preserved the manuscript of this version, with its numerous alterations and erasures, showing how laborious ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... will help you—and me, too!" responded Castlemayne, who was obviously incensed and truculent. "'Pon my honour, when I got your cards, I wondered if I'd been sleep-walking last night, and had gone and done for this man—I really did! It was all I could do to keep from punching his nose last night ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... his father's place and likewise to his heroism, and who, with the Spirit of God upon him, stands up and pointing out his wickedness, rebukes the fallen monarch for his apostasy. Joash, doubtless stung to the quick by Zechariah's just reproaches, allowed the truculent princes to slay him in the court of the Temple, even between the very shrine ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Avenue and Leicester Square, with, somehow, some of Fleet Street also in its ancestry. I passed two men on the sidewalk, their hats on the back of their heads, arguing fiercely. One had slightly long hair. The other looked the more truculent, and was saying to him, intensely, "See here! We contracted with you to supply us with sonnets at five dollars per sonnet—" I passed up a side-street, one of those deserted ways that abound just off the big streets, resorts, apparently, for such people and things as are ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... come to believe that, too. At any rate, though he was still truculent, there were ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... glower along the corridors of the Millard. I pitied him for his defeat too much to notice his attempts to pick a quarrel. Firm in the affection of my Saccharissa and in the confidence of her father, I waived the insults of the aggrieved and truculent cousin. He had lost the heiress. I had won her. I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... go home," I blubbered forth with the pertinacity of anguish, as I was constrained into the parlour of the truculent, rod-bearing, ferula-wielding Mr Root. I must have been a strange figure. I was taken from my nurse's in a hurry, and, though my clothes were quite new, my face entitled me to rank among the much vituperated unwashed. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... blistered hand and arm and stalking about the car in stocking feet and a pair of trousers two sizes too big for him. Murray, now that the corporal was no longer able to retain active command, had resumed his truculent and swaggering manner. Almost the first thing he did was to demand more money of Foster, and call him a liar when told that every dollar was burned. Then he sought to pick a fight with Hunt, who had, as he expressed it, "roped him like a steer," but the carload by this time had had too much of ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... cringe down before it, unaware that it is but a messenger sent by a mightier personage, whom a bend in the road hides from view. Needs must the sage, like his neighbour, be startled from sleep by the shouts of the truculent envoy, by the blows at the door that cause the whole house to tremble. He, too, must go down and parley. But yet, as he listens, his eyes are not fixed on this bringer of evil tidings; his glance will at times be lifted over the messenger's ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... from the grandfather of his prisoner, was at first disposed to spare him, but afterward consulted with his higher officials, some of whom advocated a policy of clemency, while others, including Mir Jafar's son, Miran, a truculent youth, not unlike Suraj ud Daulah in disposition, urged that the only security against a fresh revolution lay in the death of the prisoner. The latter accordingly was made over to Miran, by whose orders he was brutally murdered in the course of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the Order of the Golden Spur from his Holiness—was a tall spare man of a striking, if truculent, presence, with a high forehead, prominent eyebrows, densely black, cheekbones like razors, a complexion of walnut, and burning dark eyes. He carried his head high, and punctuated his vivacious utterances with snorts and free expectoration. He was, as I had seen ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... thirty of them, I should say. I did just what you told me, that is, went on with my packing as if they were not there. For a little while they stood around staring like sulky children. Finally one of them said to me through Mary with a sort of truculent air, like a child experimenting to see how far he can go, that they were going to take Imbrie back. I told Mary to tell him that that was up to him; that he would have to deal with you later, if they did. ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... entered into residence at Cedar Lodge, a pair of stout mauve-brown wood-pigeons—migrants from the pleasant elms of Holland Park—had haunted the tree. But they being, for all their dolorous cooings, birds of a lusty, not to say truculent, habit, grew weary of its persistent solemnity of aspect. So, at least, Dominic judged. He had been an interested spectator of the love-makings, quarrels, and reconciliations of these comely neighbours from his bedroom window daily while dressing. But one ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... does at my eyes particularly. Nothing wrong with 'em, is there?" The Sergeant sounded rather truculent. ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... exuberant, and truculent, When wroth—while pleased, she was as fine a figure As those who like things rosy, ripe, and succulent, Would wish to look on, while they are in vigour. She could repay each amatory look you lent With interest, and in turn was wont with rigour To exact of Cupid's bills the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... industrial and agricultural Canada on behalf of all the farmers whom he can persuade to elect him a majority minority in the next Parliament. And the prospect does not even dazzle him, or awe his colleagues of the coonskin coats and the truculent whiskers. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... of Mr. Billy Warner of Ponape with his entourage of sixteen truculent, evil-faced Solomon Islanders was not regarded with enthusiasm by the chief officer and the native crew of ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... was an uplifting, as though in preparation or anticipation of the miracle. All eyes were turned upon the two central figures. The priest realized the crucial moment, felt his power tottering, opened his mouth in denunciation, but fled backward before the truculent advance, upraised fist, and flashing eyes, of ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... sovereignty of King James. The captured ship of La Saussaye, with Biard and his colleague Quentin on board, was forced to yield to the fury of the western gales and bear away for the Azores. To Biard the change of destination was not unwelcome. He stood in fear of the truculent Governor of Virginia, and his tempest-rocked slumbers were haunted with unpleasant visions of a rope's end. It seems that some of the French at Port Royal, disappointed in their hope of hanging him, had commended him to Sir Thomas Dale as a proper subject for the gallows drawing up a paper, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... truculent person distinctly. "I want to be a big general with a cocked hat, and to kill people. I don't want to be a husband at all. ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... club of the Rue Monstrelet that the truculent orator Schut, abruptly introducing the subject to his hearers, inflamed them with the expressions and metaphors used on such occasions. He recalled the offence, the injury which had been done to Quiquendone, ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... his side. A look of dismay came over his face, and his truculent manner changed with a suddenness that forced a smile even to the stern ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... Not only was it possible for the natives to surround the Kansas with a whole swarm of men, but the mere number of their boats would render it exceedingly difficult to repel a combined assault. And nothing could be more truculent than the demeanor of the semi-nude warriors. They pointed at each person they saw on the decks, and made a tremendous row when they passed the canoe fastened alongside. Despite their keen sight, they evidently did not recognize Suarez, who ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... of his family experiences. With the appearance of British paramountcy at the Cape came a hint of law and order, of progress and its accompaniment—taxation. The bare whisper of discipline of any kind was sufficient to send the truculent Boer trekking away to the far freedom of the veldt. Quantities of them took to their lumbering tented waggons, drawn by long teams of oxen, and put a safe distance between themselves and the new-comers. All they wanted was a free home, conducted ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... electing a judiciary by popular party vote, Englishmen have generally confined themselves to a complimentary expression of surprise that the results are not worse than they are. Surely, while being as truculent as they please in their attitude towards the hereditary principle, it would be well if Americans would similarly endeavour to dissociate their detestation of that principle from their feelings for the actual personnel of the House of Lords. There is a good deal both in the constitution ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... freely to the Dean, defending himself, and going back in his reminiscences to the reign of Elizabeth. He declared that the world would yet be persuaded of his innocence, and he once more scandalised the Dean by his truculent cheerfulness. He ate a hearty breakfast, and smoked a pipe of tobacco. It was now time to leave the Gate House; but before he did so, a cup of sack was brought to him. The servant asked if the wine was to his liking, and Raleigh replied, 'I will answer you as did ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... on the knee of the night porter, a personage wearing a kind of livery, a strongly built, truculent-looking villain, whose duties, no doubt, comprised the putting of people out as well as the letting them ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... and they invited me to come up to the temple door and see them sacrifice to Kali a poor bleating kid that they had brought with them. When I declined, one of them who had already assumed a rather more truculent tone came forward and pressed me, saying that if I would accompany them they would not mind even sacrificing a white goat. There was a general shout of laughter at what was evidently regarded by the others as a huge joke. I turned away, though I did not then understand its ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... de Madame Angot and L'Arlesienne through France would mean the rewriting of a "Capitaine Fracasse." To hear the creature talk about it makes my mouth as a brick kiln and my flesh as that of a goose. He was the Adonis, the Apollo, the Don Juan, the Irresistible of the Tournee. Fled truculent bass and haughty tenor before him; from diva to moustachioed contralto in the chorus, all the ladies breathlessly watched for the fall of his handkerchief; he was recognized, in fact, as a devil of a fellow. But in spite of these triumphs, the manipulation of ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... stood over the main entrance in a threatening attitude. This conspicuous land-mark was known to every British ship-captain frequenting our port. Right well can the writer of these lines remember the truculent trident. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... detained all afternoon and part of the evening. As to what we learned, that may be dismissed in a few words: but the news was more satisfactory than it had been for a long time. The half-breeds were comparatively quiet, presumably because of a warning hint from headquarters. And the truculent officials of the rival company had taken no steps to call our people to account for the attack on Lagarde's store, nor did they appear to have any intention of demanding the person of Captain Rudstone. Doubtless they thought it best to let sleeping dogs lie. Of ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... confederate of him who had entered Number 9; a sentry to forestall interruption? If so, the fellow lacked discretion, though his determination that the American should not interfere was undeniable. It was with an ugly and truculent manner, if more warily, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... small room, and left there, The roughs paced backward and forward before the door, casting glances at me which I fancied to be sinister. In a few minutes their chief, a stalwart, brawny biped, swaggered in, twirling his moustaches, clanking his sword, and studying to seem truculent. He, no less than his men, was at a loss to know what I could have come there for. So I told him the unvarnished facts of the case, and paused for his reply. He had none to make. The latest news from Lucknow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... was high time for some other institution to shelter this touchy and truculent person, and that he would lay the case before the next weekly Visitor and ask for it to be submitted to the Committee ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... all day, and got her reward; especially from the boy, who was an adventurous and rather truculent baby, much she fancied, as his father must once have been, and who took to her more quickly than the girl did. Indeed, the second Rodney fell in love with her almost as promptly as his father had done before him. But little Portia wasn't ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... not my father's heir. He has known it since the hour of my father's death. He knows that I know it. Yet he has kept the lands to this day." Another uneasy perambulation. "Do you think of that when you talk of revenge? Manliness? He has none. He is a pitiful, truculent, groveling coward, ready to buy profit at any price. He has robbed me of my inheritance. He stands in my place. He is a living lie. Revenge? It ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... shorter poems (among which may be noted the admirable epitaph on Arnauld, and an unhappy ode, Sur la Prise de Namur, 1693); and various critical studies in prose, his Lucianic dialogue Les Heros de Roman, satirising the extravagant novels not yet dismissed to oblivion, and his somewhat truculent Reflexions sur Longin being specially deserving of attention. The satires preceded in date the epistles; of the former, the first nine belong to the years 1660-67; the first nine of the epistles to the years 1669-77; three satires and three epistles may be described ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... mend," she muttered quoting one of the old saws always on her lips. Then without raising her head, she added in the peevish, truculent tone of a thwarted child: "You had better go back in there before they come and get you. I am nothing but a servant, and as such I know my place and keep it. I am less than a servant, for they wouldn't dare do to Lena what they do ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... system of espionage, whisperings, backbitings, and miserable tittle-tattle, sometimes of the most slanderous or the most ridiculous kind, was set going all over Oxford. Never in Oxford, before or since, were busybodies more truculent or more unscrupulous. Difficulties arose between Heads of Colleges and their tutors. Candidates for fellowships were closely examined as to their opinions and their associates. Men applying for testimonials ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... of massive and powerful build, with somewhat harsh features, black hair and beard just touched with grey, and a sallow complexion sunburnt as brown as a berry. According to the prevalent fashion in those latitudes, he wore truculent-looking boots up to his knees, and a big sombrero hat slouched over his brow. There was a stern, hard expression about his face, except when he smiled or looked at Barbara Thorne. He did not look stern now, as she came quickly to meet him, and welcomed ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... briefly told. The story of the events here described spread through the kingdom. Thomas de Marle was put under ban by the king and excommunicated by the church. Louis raised an army and marched against him. De Marle was helpless with illness, but truculent in temper. He defied the king, and would not listen to his summons. Louis attacked his castles, took two of them, Crecy and Nogent, and in the end forced him to buy pardon by a heavy ransom and an indemnity to the church. As for the burghers who had taken refuge with him, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... forgiven Mary everything for the sake of her black-eyed boy; now she took the news that Rose was what she called "interesting" to Deb, and demanded that action should be taken upon it, with an air that was almost truculent. Deb, of course, did not believe in being spoken to, even by ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... from New York, as I have chronicled in the June "Atlantic." We had marched from Annapolis, while "rumors to right of us, rumors to left of us, volleyed and thundered." We had not expected that the attack upon us would be merely verbal. The truculent citizens of Maryland notified us that we were to find every barn a Concord and every hedge a Lexington. Our Southern brethren at present repudiate their debts; but we fancied they would keep their warlike promises. At least, everybody ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... made no reply, but flashed a look that would have frozen any one less insolent and truculent than ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... democracy that at a social meeting, he proposed as a toast, "Here's the last verse of the (p. 147) last chapter of the last Book of Kings." This would seem to be but one specimen of the freedom of political speech in which Burns at this time habitually indulged,—the truculent way in which he flaunted defiance in the face of authority. It would not have been surprising, if at any time the Government had ordered inquiry to be made into such conduct, much less in such a season of anxiety and distrust. That an inquiry was made is undoubted; ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... and that he had "gone to look for the rebel, Jackson"—were really taken to mean what they said. When Pope did at last "find the rebel, Jackson," the hopeful public over the Potomac began to believe that their truculent pet might have ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the articles, we were never left to ourselves. Truculent-looking men accompanied us to our several boarding-houses, paid our debts for us, finally bringing us by boat to a ship lying out in the bay. As we passed under her stern, I read the name CACHALOT, of New Bedford; but as soon as we ranged ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... while the first murderer gives account of what he has done, there comes a flash of truculent joy at the 'twenty trenched gashes' on Banquo's head. Thus Macbeth makes welcome to his imagination those very details of physical horror which are so soon to turn sour in him. As he runs out to embrace these cruel circumstances, as he seeks to realise to his mind's eye the reassuring ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to make him set out at once to the livery-stables in quest of his nephew, but he found that the young gentleman had that morning started for London, whither he proposed to follow him on the Monday. Lucy cried incessantly, in the fear that the gentle-hearted vicar might have some truculent intentions towards his nephew, and was so languid and unhappy that no one had the heart to scold her; and comforting her ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 1777, became the wife of Henry Brougham of Brougham Hall, Westmoreland. Their eldest son was Lord Brougham, who was thus the third cousin of Patrick Henry. To some it will perhaps seem not a mere caprice of ingenuity to discover in the fiery, eccentric, and truculent eloquence of the great English advocate and parliamentary orator a family likeness to that of his renowned American kinsman; or to find in the fierceness of the champion of Queen Caroline against George IV., and of English anti-slavery reform and of English parliamentary reform against aristocratic ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... the Major, with a truculent look. "No man shall appeal to Dick Querto till he is purged ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... called and told us that some arrangement had been made with the truculent creditor of our poor manager by which we shall not lose any more in this unlucky business. My father will be quit for about a hundred pounds. I am very sorry for Mr. Brunton, but he should not have placed ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Asiatic Bank, had spent a number of years with a firm in the Far East, where he had acquired a liver and a habit of addressing those under him in a way that suggested the mate of a tramp steamer. Even on the days when his liver was not troubling him, he was truculent. And when, as usually happened, it did trouble him, he was a perfect fountain of abuse. Mike and he hated each other from the first. The work in the Fixed Deposits was not really difficult, when you got the hang of it, but there was a certain amount of confusion in it to a beginner; and Mike, ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... wild beasts and huge men.... "Yes!" throws in Kundry eagerly, as if at the recollection of splendid fights witnessed, "he made his strength felt upon miscreants and giants. They were all afraid of the truculent boy!" He turns upon her a vaguely pleased wonder: "Who is afraid of me? ... Tell me!" "The wicked!" He seems trying to grasp a wholly new idea presented to him. "Those who threatened me were wicked? Who is good?" Gurnemanz in reply reminds him of his mother, who is good, and from whom ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... neglected me. He pays little attention to colored districts. My white neighbor glares elaborately. I walk softly, lest I disturb him. The children jeer as I pass to work. The women in the street car withdraw their skirts or prefer to stand. The policeman is truculent. The elevator man hates to serve Negroes. My job is insecure because the white union wants it and does not want me. I try to lunch, but no place near will serve me. I go forty blocks to Marshall's, but the Committee of Fourteen ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... getting avaricious and want to go home with my wallet full. Then I'm tired of my job. I suppose it's a foreman's privilege to insult his gang, but the brute we've got is about the limit. He's truculent but not very big, and some day, if I stop on, I'll pitch the hog into the river. Then I'll certainly get fired, and there'll be an end to my ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... universal, most men have had occasion to wish that their society would sit occasionally on some of the members. The member who bullies the servants is a not uncommon specimen of the club-bore. He may be called the bore truculent. He has been excellently caricatured by Thackeray ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... men the majority of whom at least were present for honest consideration of arguments. It is a thing not easily forgotten or forgiven for the Irishmen who engineered it, that such a ferocious and foolish display of truculent cowardice should have taken place. For an hour Mr O'Brien manfully faced the obscene chorus of cat-cries and disorder. He describes one of the incidents that occurred in ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... such a jewel, though cut according to the fashion of the last century, when men went wild over liberty and other illusory ideals and when, after having exhausted all the tamer kinds of dissipation, they amused themselves by cutting each other's heads off. Far be it from me to impute any such truculent taste to my honored guest. I only wish to observe that the land from which he hails has not yet outlived the revolutionary heresies of a century ago, that his people is still afflicted with those crude fever fantasies, of which Europe was only cured by a severe ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... landscape gathered themselves together again. From a corner of the corral Bob looked out upon a world full of grinning faces. A sick dismay rose in him and began to submerge his heart. They were glad he had been thrown. The earth was inhabited by a race of brutal and truculent savages. What was the use of trying? He could never hold out ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... After dinner I went to the public gardens, and into a theatre which is in them; there is no roof to it, and the acting is all by daylight, and in the open air. I only arrived at the end, just in time to see the deliverance of a Christian heroine and a very truculent-looking Turk crammed down a trap-door, but I could not understand the dialogue. Nothing certainly can be more extraordinary or more beautiful than Venice with her adjacent islands, and nothing ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... whirl and leap, brandishing spears and axes, and going through the pantomime of slaying an enemy. They are of fair physique, though tall and gaunt rather than sturdy of build. And—is it a mere accident, or in accordance with some custom—not one there present—whether among the truculent crew executing the dance or among the women in the background, appears ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... fierce, savage, barbarous, truculent, merciless, unmerciful, pitiless, ruthless, fell>. (With this group contrast the Kind ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Moesia, he could reckon as his own, and there was good hope that the other legions of Illyria would follow its lead.[394] The whole army, indeed, was incensed at the arrogance of Vitellius' soldiers: truculent in appearance and rough of tongue, they scoffed at all the other troops as their inferiors. But a war of such magnitude demands delay. High as were his hopes, Vespasian often calculated his risks. He realized that it would be a critical day for him when he committed his sixty summers and his two ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... sea-fog was very thick, I discovered Balmoral, but not my Aunt. The truculent-looking proprietor of the house, who answered the door, condescended to inform me that my relative "was the difficultest lady he'd ever had to do for. And that she'd left two days a-gone." But where she had betaken herself to, he either would not or could not tell me. "You'd best try along this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... bride's relatives on the left side and three for putting them on the right side. The debate, though instructive, is interrupted by the sudden entrance of seven women in a group. They are headed by a truculent old battleship, possibly an aunt or something of the sort, who fixes the nearest usher with a knowing, suspicious glance, and motions to him to show her ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... hundred out of fifteen hundred in a single campaign, would appall any but the grim Virginian soldiers. They are veterans now. They learn the art of war in fields like Seven Pines and Fair Oaks. Even Pryor, as chivalric in action as truculent in debate, now admits that the Yankees will fight. Fredericksburg's butchery is a victory of note. All the year the noise of battle rolls, while the Eastern war is undecided, for the second Manassas and awful Antietam balance each other. Maxime Valois feels ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... the power of Phrenzy. Then winged Pegasus is shut up in the stall of Corydon, and eloquent Mercury is strangled. Then wise Pallas is struck down by the dagger of error, and the charming Pierides are smitten by the truculent tyranny of madness. O cruel spectacle! where you may see the Phoebus of philosophers, the all-wise Aristotle, whom God Himself made master of the master of the world, enchained by wicked hands and borne in shameful irons on the shoulders of gladiators from his sacred ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... and bland than usual, but he could not conceal the angry glitter in his eye. As for the others, they betrayed their feelings more or less according to their natures; Anway was hard and composed; Tenterden vicious and truculent; little Domville apologetic and reproachful, and the other two, youths of no particular character, merely self-conscious ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... oddity of the thing never strikes himself. To be at all consistent, he should put poison in his lozenges, and become the Herod of the village innocents. One of his many eccentricities is a love for flowers, and he visits me often to have a look at my greenhouse and my borders. I listen to his truculent and revolutionary speeches, and take my revenge by sending the gloomy egotist away with a nosegay in his hand, and a gay-coloured flower stuck in a button-hole. He goes quite unconscious of my ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... were hanging on the line (and very common-looking clothes they were), so she could not have been a casual guest. Moreover, she was pacing the hard ground in front of the house, and staring at us with a truculent yet uneasy air. Curiosity was strong, and a sort of anger possessed me against the place ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... Simpson twin was that it actually occurred. Elisha, otherwise Nimbi-Pamby, came; Nimbi-Pamby stayed; and Nimbi-Pamby, when he finally rejoined his own domestic circle, did not go empty-handed (so to speak), for he was accompanied on his homeward travels by a large, red, bony, somewhat truculent cow, who was tied on behind the wagon, and who made the journey a lively and eventful one by her total lack of desire to proceed over the road from Edgewood to Acreville. But that, the cow's tale, belongs to another time and place, and the coward's tale ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... his curiosity, he thought he might talk to the two old squatters at the far end. The Carvers were independent and truculent. Now that Joe Merklos' relatives had arrived in full force, there was danger ...
— The Invaders • Benjamin Ferris
... worldly prosperity might have been said to date. No one seeing his mouth had before that time been prevailed upon to trust him. Nature has a way of hanging out signs and then covering them up, so that the casual fail to see. He was a man of medium height, with abnormally long arms and a somewhat truculent way of walking, as if his foot was ever ready to kick anything or any person who ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... with spaces where water is scarce. There is not a pass of any great importance, nor a river of any great difficulty, to be encountered from end to end, but the route is flanked on the north between Kandahar and Girishk by the Zamindawar hills, containing the most truculent and fanatical clans of all the Southern Afghan tribes. Little need be said of the 65 m. of route between Kandahar and the Baluchistan frontier at New Chaman. It is on the whole a route across open plains and hard, stony "dasht''—-a route which would offer no great difficulties ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... when next they meet. It is difficult to give any account of this remarkable correspondence; it is too far away from us, and perhaps not yet far enough, in point of time and manner; the imagination is baffled by these stilted literary utterances, warming, in bravura passages, into downright truculent nonsense. Clarinda has one famous sentence in which she bids Sylvander connect the thought of his mistress with the changing phases of the year; it was enthusiastically admired by the swain, but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unrolled the Scotch muffler from her throat, swinging her head from side to side in a sort of spuriously truculent manner, quite peculiarly her own. Her keen hazel eyes were fixed upon the face of the girl before her. Instinctively and immediately she liked Helen Cumberly; and Helen felt that this strong-looking, vaguely masculine woman, was ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... acceptance of the elementary facts of life. But about Cassel I am not so sure. The sight of that shameless annexe is too familiar in France to please our fastidious English tastes—it seems to express a truculent nonconformity, it is ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... hold opinions as to the marvellous results of Home Rule more adapted to their own positions and pursuits, but apparently on the same plane, no whit higher in the scale of intelligence. They regard the English as their natural enemies, and the lower you go the more truculent they become. One and all they hold the belief, industriously instilled by agitators, that the poverty of Ireland is due to the aggrandisement of England, that the bulk of Irish taxation flows into English coffers, and is used for English purposes to the exclusion of Ireland, and this they have ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... one direction and sent me off with part of the force in another direction, while the remainder stayed in camp guarding the impedimenta. I tumbled across a few snipers, and we enjoyed a harmless scrap; but Walter butted into a whole lot of truculent burghers. These were being reinforced and were full of fight, so he decided to retire, and also to retire the camp; but the message directing me to conform unfortunately went astray. The result was that before ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... on my pallet at night I hear from the street the sound of passing footsteps; And I can sort and name these passing footsteps. There are the truculent steps of the seeker after trouble, There are the fearful feet of those who are not at ease In the implacable streets. There are the fugitive feet of crime, And the solemn reassuring tread of big policemen; And the interrupted steps of the revellers, ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke
... has been taken. Even were the discontent tenfold as deep-rooted as it now is, the Turkish Government might rely on the Mussulman population and the Arnauts to suppress any rising of the Christians. The chief danger to Turkey lies in the truculent nature of those whom she would be compelled to let loose upon the insurgents, and who would commit excesses which might be made an excuse for foreign intervention. The attainment of this ignoble end has been and still is the policy pursued by more than one power. Prince Milosch played admirably ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... contemporary, "to see the great man tackle a tramp. Then he scented the battle from afar, bearing down on the enemy with a quivering nostril. If the nomad happened to be a gypsy he was courteously addressed. But were he a mere native tatterdemalion, inclined to be truculent, Borrow's coat was off in a moment, and the challenge to decide there and then who was the better man flung forth. I have never seen such challenges accepted, for Borrow was robust ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... she said shortly. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him then and there that she was through,—like Matt, the cook, that memorable afternoon, "completely an' ab-sho-lutely through." She refrained. There was no use in being truculent. But that drunken ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... host's offer of water and a glass, he put it to his mouth, and swallowed three great gulps hurriedly. Then he breathed a deep breath, seemed to say with Macbeth, "Ourselves again!" drew himself up in a chair, and glanced around him with a look of gathering arrogance. A kind of truculent question was in his eyes—as much as to say, "Now then, what do you make of it all? What's your candid notion about me and my extraordinary ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... and one loves him all the more for it, but it was exasperating too, with such tremendous issues at stake in the world of living thought, to see him pounding away at those truculent old Red Indians in their barbarian original tongue. Yet I would not for much forget those days when we saw him escaping utterly from all worries and troubles and perfectly happy before a blackboard covered with amazing ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... said the truculent soldier, drawing hard his breath, clenching 'his hands, setting his teeth, and using the other mechanical actions to rouse up and sustain his native ferocity of temper, "I sought your friendship, and you rejected mine. What would you now give that it ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... when Gwyn and Joe made their charge, they fully expected to see the man leaning over the old wall start off and run; but, as it happened, he did not, but stood up, turned, and faced them, looking a big, sour-faced, truculent fellow, who scowled at them ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... did the negro enter the climate of Hayti, and feel that more truculent and desolating one of the Spanish temper, than he began to revolt, to take to the mountains, to defend his life, to organize leagues with Caribs and other natives. The colonists were often slain in conflicts with them. The first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various |
