"Bluntness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... propensities. In dress and manner he affected the plain bluff Englishman, wore a blue coat, beaver gloves (or none at all), and a hat broad in the brim, spoke of all foreigners with supreme contempt, and of himself as honest Tom Ringwood. This lip honesty and assumed bluntness were a standing joke with those who knew his real character, but passed muster as perfectly genuine with ingenious and newly imported youngsters like myself, who took him for a wealthy and respectable English gentleman, the champion of fair play, just as at a race, or fair, boobies ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... said the minister, with a certain affected bluntness, so successful when it was a question of flattering Louis's self-esteem, "what use is there in being agreeable to your majesty, if one can no longer be ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he has rather a blunt way of saying things, but that very bluntness often places thoughts much more distinctly before us—Paul was speaking of her; he did not suspect anything; if he had, he is good-natured, he would not have spoken thus—well, he said ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... publish her life, he turned like a wild beast upon the "blackguards" who "thrust their paws into his bowels" by prying into his intimacies. To the last he dismissed similar proposals by critics of the highest status with a cavalier bluntness highly surprising to persons who only knew him as the man of punctilious observance and fastidious good form. For the rest, London contained much that was bound by degrees to temper the gloom and assuage the hostility. Florence and Rome could furnish nothing like the circle of ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... thing I must say to you quite plain, to begin with," remarked Mrs. Wick, whose language, though not disrespectful, had a certain bluntness. "I can't admit female ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... to the great Company's secretary," said Geoffrey, with a bluntness under which the other winced, as ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... marriage, and I have no inclination that way. I am willing to be friends with everybody, and nothing more with anybody." The sentences came with the cruel detachment of bullets; but, "Not again, not twice," was his uppermost thought. Any bluntness, any ruggedness, rather than another month like that of the past ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... so." Susan was listening with a mind made abnormally acute by the champagne she had freely drunk. The coarse bluntness and directness of the man did not offend her. It made what he said the more effective, producing a rude arresting effect upon her nerves. It made the man himself seem more of a person. Susan was beginning to have a kind of ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... experience with women, Mrs. Clarke's remarkable ingenuity in hypocrisy would almost certainly have suggested to him that she was no novice in the life of deception. Her appearance of frankness, even of bluntness, was admirable. To every one she presented herself as a woman of strong will and unconventional temperament who took her own way openly, having nothing to conceal, and therefore nothing to fear. She made a feature ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... something," pleaded a young man whom a merchant was about to discharge for his bluntness. "You are good for nothing as a salesman," said his employer. "I am sure I can be useful," said the youth. "How? Tell me how." "I don't know, sir, I don't know." "Nor do I," said the merchant, laughing at the earnestness of his ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... The bluntness of the question did not seem to disturb her. She was not sorry, in fact, that he had asked it. She let her work lie upon her knee, and leaned back in her low garden chair, her hands resting upon its wicker arms. She turned on him a clear ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... times for tact and times for bluntness, and this was a time, Brent decided, for the latter. "What goes on here, Senator," he said, "is none of your business. Otherwise, you ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... Nan like the way her uncle acted while he listened—and afterward. He talked a good deal about Gale and the way she was treating her cousin. When Nan declared she never would have anything to do with him, her uncle told her with disconcerting bluntness to get all that out of her head, for she was going to marry him. When she protested she never would, Duke told her, with many harsh oaths, that she should never marry de Spain even if he had to kill him or get killed to stop it, and that if she had ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... she don't weigh very heavy," said Jerry, in a shamefaced bluntness, as if he wronged the absent goddess through such crudities. "You can't seem to see anybody that's had the thoughts she has and the way she's got of putting 'em—you can't see 'em very big-framed or heavy, can you? I ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... why," said Hardy, looking him full in the face, and puffing out huge volumes of smoke. In spite of the bluntness of the attack, there was a yearning look which spread over the rugged brow, and shone out of the deep set eyes of the speaker, which almost conquered Tom. But first pride, and then the consciousness of what was coming next, which began to dawn on him, rose in his heart. It ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... but little to say,' said Nixon, affecting to give to his sullen and dogged manner the appearance of an honest bluntness; 'I am as little apt to throw away words as any one. But here is the question—Will you join heart and hand with ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... fearest as the last is the birthday of eternity." "As an infant in the womb is preparing to dwell in this world, so ought we to consider our present life as a preparation for the life to come."37 At another time he says, with stunning bluntness, "There is nothing after death, and death itself ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... did not resent his bluntness, except by saying to each other that he was taking it out ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... of her speech—"unless you knew how to make a better use of it than to get together over rum and tea if you are women, or over beer and pipes if you are men, and talk scandal at your neighbours' expense. Come, friends," she added, changing at once from bluntness to courtesy, "oblige me by taking your cans and going home. I expect several persons to call to-day, and it will be inconvenient to have the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... surgeons, two of them departed aboard the tug, the third remaining to care for the patient. Hank, despite all his bluntness of manner, was proving himself valuable in the sick-room, while Joe spent most of his time in the wireless room of the bungalow, waiting to receive or send any word. So, as evening came, Tom Halstead bestirred himself with the preparation of ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... dealt with by man or woman. He was gentle, soft, if you please, childlike with those he loved, but there was dangerous mettle in him not to be tampered with by trickery or guile. Christopher had shown me with his uncompromising bluntness what I had merely suspected; the girl loved danger and saw it in Jerry's eyes, fascinated by the imminence of peril that lurked in his innocence. A strange passion, calculating, cold, abnormal. And Jerry loved this girl—adored ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... before, had been sent over to Vienna by Salomon to coax Haydn into an engagement in 1787. When he was admitted on that occasion to Haydn's room, he found the composer in the act of shaving, complaining the while of the bluntness of his razor. "I would give my best quartet for a good razor," he exclaimed testily. The hint was enough for Bland, who immediately hurried off to his lodgings and fetched a more serviceable tool. ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... "You weren't!" The bluntness of Barclay's exclamation of astonishment caused Irving to blush, and Barclay himself, realizing what he had betrayed to Irving's perception, looked ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... not, say anything by way of reply, two of them remarked sneeringly: "With all this doltish bluntness of his will he after all absorb himself in abstraction?" While Hsiang-yuen also clapped her hands and laughed, "Cousin Pao has ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... lowered. He could not see her expression, but he had always been confident of his ability to talk himself out of trouble, so he rambled on in pretence of camaraderie, currying favour, as he believed, ingratiating himself with the coarse bluntness that served him among some ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... explanation, given him in Polynesian by his own Shadow, tended somewhat to detract from the disinterestedness of their sympathy. "They say, 'It is good for the Queen of the Clouds to weep,'" Toko said, with frank bluntness; "'but not too much—for fear the rain should wash away all our ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... shadow of his square hut inside the compound, squatted Zalu Zako. The lips and nose were nearer to the Aryan delicacy than the negroid bluntness; for the Wongolo, like the Wahima, are a mixed Bantu-Somali race. In colour his skin had the red of bronze rather than the blue of the negro, and the planes of his moulded chest were as light as the worn ivory bracelets upon his polished limbs. Broad in the shoulders he had almost ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... meanest of mankind. Let such examine the features and the manners of Mr. Fox. Was that man made for a Jesuit? Is he capable of the dirty, laborious, insidious tricks of a hypocrite? Is there not a certain manliness about him, that disdains to mislead? Are not candour and sincerity, bluntness of manner, and an unstudied air, conspicuous in all he does?—I know not how far the argument may go with others, with me, I confess, it has much weight. I believe a man of sterling genius, incapable of the littlenesses and meannesses, incident to the vulgar courtier. What are the principal ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... dragged unwillingly to the consulting-room of a Cavendish Square physician by her father, who had insisted on having "a tonic or something" prescribed for her. The physician was one of those men who achieve a fashionable practice by an outrageous bluntness—a calculatedly outrageous bluntness. He had found that women like to be bullied by ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... condition of the human body, its comparative slowness of foot; the absence of teeth adapted for prehension or for defence; the same want of power for similar purposes in the hands and fingers; the bluntness of the sense of smell, so as to render it useless for the detection of prey which is concealed;—all these are features which stand in fixed and harmonious relation to the mental powers of man. But, apart from these, they would place him at an immense disadvantage in the struggle ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... entered on the file.... But what does it matter to you if my hair lacks the shears? If you will forgive me what may seem to you a piece of rudeness, I declare that the poor man is ashamed of such things with the sensitiveness of a young girl. YOU, for instance, would not care (pray pardon my bluntness) to unrobe yourself before the public eye; and in the same way, the poor man does not like to be pried at or questioned concerning his family relations, and so forth. A man of honour and self-respect such as I am finds it painful and grievous to have to consort with ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... wondered the direct attack had not come sooner. Its bluntness hardly surprised him. He felt himself leap forward to accept it. A sudden subsidence ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... than might have been well expected; but such men are philosophers, and their very recklessness of human life is in some respects the result of a due estimate of its vicissitudes. They rode on their way laughing at the sturdy bluntness of the old wagoner, which their leader, of whom we have already heard under the name of Dillon, related to them at large. With a whoop and halloo, they cheered the travellers as they rode by, but at some distance from, the encampment. The tenants of the encampment, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... did fit Gates like an old glove, yet his most dominant characteristic was an unfailing loyalty to our family and an honest bluntness, both of which had become as generally recognized as his skill in handling the Whim—"the smartest schooner yacht," he would have told you on a two-minute ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... quality of Sue's tone that her new and transcendental views lurked in her words; but all except their obvious meaning was, naturally, missed by Arabella. The latter, after evincing that she was struck by Sue's avowal, recovered herself, and went on to talk with placid bluntness about "her" boy, for whom, though in his lifetime she had shown no care at all, she now exhibited a ceremonial mournfulness that was apparently sustaining to the conscience. She alluded to the past, and in making some remark appealed again to Sue. There was no answer: ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... in the character of a great people: the love and the habit of civil liberty and religious conviction and independence. Allied to these is another trait—truthfulness. To speak the truth in word and action, to the verge of bluntness and offense—and with more relish sometimes because it is individually obnoxious and unlovely—is an English trait, clearly to be traced in the character of this people, notwithstanding the equivocations ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... without too much treading upon the Author's Heels, and destroying our Design of giving it an easie, Comick Style, most agreeable to our present Times" (Terence's Comedies, p. xx). To this end it was necessary to tone down the "familiarity and bluntness in [Terence's] Discourse" which were "not so agreeable with the Manners and Gallantry of our Times." This was intended to bring Terence up to the level of gentility for which he was credited by compensating for the barbarity of Roman social manners. But the translation was willing ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... that conscious struggle against law, by which law is discovered, may easily enough be confounded with the utter repudiation of it. Both forms of mind will discuss the same questions; both will discuss them freely, with a certain plainness and daring, which may range through all grades, from the bluntness of Socrates down to reckless immodesty and profaneness. The world will hardly distinguish between the two; it did not in Socrates' case, mistaking his reverent irreverence for Atheism, and martyred ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... answered with sudden bluntness, "I may as well own up that I did it in anger, because I wanted ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... said, "I like your courage, your truth, and your bluntness. You Texans, or rather you Americans,—because the Texans are Americans,—have some of the ruder virtues which we who are of the Spanish and Latin blood now and then lack. You are only a boy, but you have in you the qualities that can make a career. ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... said—'Mr. Trevor, you are already acquainted with the plainness, and what you perhaps have thought the bluntness, of my character. I have but one rule: I speak all that I think worthy of being spoken, and if I offend it is never from intention. What you have related of these lordly men does not in the least astonish me. Their vices are as odious as you have described ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... a place as any other for the man who goes out there to work," I said. "But somehow you don't look to me like a chap that is used to what is called roughing it. Pardon my bluntness." ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... wonder at little Elizabeth for her discomfort under the rude homeliness of Stokesley, where the children made a bad copy of their father's sailor bluntness, and the difficulties of money matters kept down all indulgences. She knew that Captain Merrifield was as poor a man for an esquire as her father was for a surgeon, and that if he were to give his sons an education fit for their station, he must make his household live plainly in every way; ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... injury. Of late she had seemed absolutely changed towards him; and from being his good friend, with established intimacies, she had turned before his very eyes into an alien, almost an enemy, more beautiful than ever, to be true, but perverse, mocking, impish. She flouted him for his youth, his bluntness, his guileless transparency. But hardest of all to bear was the delicate derision with which she treated his awkward attempts to express his passion for her, to speak of the fever which had taken possession of him, almost ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... was in character. Those who know me at all, know that I have always been actuated by different principles from the rest of mankind: and while none regarded the interest of his friend more, no man on earth regarded his own less. I have often affected bluntness to avoid the imputation of flattery; have frequently seemed to overlook those merits too obvious to escape notice, and pretended disregard to those instances of good nature and good sense, which I could not fail tacitly to ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... likely six weeks," she said with kind bluntness. It was best he should know the worst ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... is the fundamental basis of good conversation. We must show habitual consideration and kindliness towards others if we would attract them to us. Bluntness of manner is no longer excused on the ground that the speaker is sincere and outspoken. We expect and demand that our companion in conversation should observe the recognized courtesies ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... bluntness of your methods is deplorable. Instead of insinuating that I am accepting Roger as a pis-aller, it would be more seemly if you would congratulate me and—wish ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... chuckled at the old joke. Mr. Timson bowed carelessly. Mr. Watkins Tottle bowed stiffly. Mr. Gabriel Parsons led the way to the house. He was a rich sugar-baker, who mistook rudeness for honesty, and abrupt bluntness for an open and candid manner; many besides Gabriel mistake bluntness ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... with entire sincerity,—I said,—always feels himself in danger of two things, namely,—an affectation of bluntness, like that of which Cornwall accuses Kent in "Lear," and actual rudeness. What a man wants to do, in talking with a stranger, is to get and to give as much of the best and most real life that belongs to the two talkers as the time will ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... remembrance that other people have feelings, and to taking them into account, and as an ordinary guide of conduct this includes a great deal and requires training and watchfulness to establish it, even where there is no exceptional selfishness or bluntness of sense to be overcome. The nature of an ordinary healthy energetic child, high-spirited and boisterous, full of a hundred interests of its own, finds the mere attention to these things a heavy yoke, and the constant self-denial needed to carry them ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... happy, but their occupation humiliated them since they had begun to set a higher value on themselves, and their disgust increased while they were mutually glorifying and spoiling each other. Pecuchet contracted Bouvard's bluntness, and Bouvard assumed a ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... that he was taking his siesta. "Then I had better take my own," said I, and returned to the posada. In the evening I went again, when I saw him. He was a short bulky man about thirty, and received me at first with some degree of bluntness; his manner, however, presently became more kind, and at last he scarcely appeared to know how to show me sufficient civility. His brother had just arrived from Santander, and to him he introduced me. This last was a highly-intelligent person, and had passed many ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... fellow with his bluntness hopes to do more than the long sutes of a thousand could; though he be sowre he's quick, I must not trust him. Sir, this Lady is not to speak with you, she is more serious: you smell as if you were new calkt; go and be hansome, and ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the gates with hopes of homes and clearings rising in our hearts—until the motionless figure of the young Virginian met our eye. It was then that men began to scoff at him behind his back, though some spoke with sufficient backwoods bluntness to his face. And yet he gave no sign of anger or impatience. Not so the other leaders. No sooner did the danger seem past than bitter strife sprang up within the walls. Even the two captains were mortal enemies. One was Harrod, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fellow Who, having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affect A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb Quite from his nature: he cannot flatter, he,— An honest mind and plain,—he must speak truth! An they will take it, so; if not, he's plain. These kind of knaves I know which in this plainness Harbour more craft and more corrupter ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... recommends men to women as this; proceeding, if we believe the common opinion, from that natural timidity of the sex, which is, says Mr Osborne, "so great, that a woman is the most cowardly of all the creatures God ever made;"—a sentiment more remarkable for its bluntness than for its truth. Aristotle, in his Politics, doth them, I believe, more justice, when he says, "The modesty and fortitude of men differ from those virtues in women; for the fortitude which becomes a woman, would be ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... to divert your Attention from the great object—the publick Good. "Manly is a blunt, honest and I believe brave officer.' I observe your Caution; and I admire it because I think it is a proof of your Integrity. Manlys Bravery is an Article of your Beliefe. His Bluntness& Honesty, of Certainty. I have not yet lookd into the Papers; but I recollect, when they were read in Congress, to have heard the Want of Experience imputed to him, and some thing that had the Appearance of blameing him for not giving ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. And they are modern: treating problems of character and milieu, they disdain the adventitious aids of eloquence and theatrical splendor, and speak to us with the directness, often with the bluntness, of nature herself. Hebbel was no naturalist, in the sense of one who seeks but to reproduce phenomena in all their details, sordid, trivial, or vulgar, if such they be. But through Ibsen, who esteemed him alone among his German predecessors, he became a factor in the recent naturalistic ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... mentioned by Natty as Billy Kirby. This fellow, whose occupation, when he did labor, was that of clearing lands, or chopping jobs, was of great stature, and carried in his very air the index of his character. He was a noisy, boisterous, reckless lad, whose good-natured eye contradicted the bluntness and bullying tenor of his speech. For weeks he would lounge around the taverns of the county, in a state of perfect idleness, or doing small jobs for his liquor and his meals, and cavilling with applicants about the prices of his labor; frequently preferring idleness to an ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... tractable I find—And is it possible that you can love him? Miraculous! (Miran. Nods.) Pardon the bluntness of my Questions, for my Time is short; may I not hope to supplant him in your Esteem? (Miran. Sighs.) Good! she answers me as I could wish—You'll not consent to marry him then? (Miran. Sighs.) ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... patient as he was, had had a tiger's temper at bottom. Durgin had seen it roused once or twice, and even received a chance sweep of the paw. Richard liked Durgin's rough wit as little as Durgin relished Richard's good-natured bluntness. It was a mistake, that trying to pick up the dropped ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... airs, no wish to be greater and handsomer and cleverer than she was. She knew herself, and her station, and thanked Heaven for it. There was about her speech and manner something of the shortness and bluntness which often characterizes royalty; and if the lady of a parish is not a queen in her own circle, it is never the fault of a parish. Mrs. Hazeldean dressed her part to perfection. She wore silks that seemed heirlooms,—so thick were they, so substantial and imposing; and over ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... beautiful; occasionally ludicrous failures occur: in the smallest designs the face is very often a dead letter, or worse: and in all, Giotto's handling is generally to be distinguished from that of any of his followers by its bluntness. In the school work we find sweeter types of feature, greater finish, stricter care, more delicate outline, fewer errors, but on ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the young Commander on descending to the cabin, was to examine the blade of the penknife. Passing it over his finger, he perceived that the edge had that particular bluntness which would have been produced by cutting through a rope, and on closer examination he found it full of numerous fine notches, apparently the result of the resistance it had met with. His next care was to examine ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... that the reader may at first like fig. 14 the best. I shall endeavor, in the next chapter, to show why he should not; but it must also be noted, that fig. 12 has lost, and fig. 14 gained, both largely, under the hands of the engraver. All the bluntness and coarseness of feeling in the workmanship of fig. 14 have disappeared on this small scale, and all the subtle refinements in the broad masses of fig. 12 have vanished. They could not, indeed, be rendered in line ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... them an entrance on the end towards the road. They went to court about it, and he was called to account by the usual process of law. The plain, gruff old farmer, who seems all along to have been a man of strong sense and decided character, filed an answer, which is unsurpassed for bluntness of expression. It has no language of ceremony, but goes to the point at once. It has a general interest as showing, to how late a period the inhabitants of this neighborhood were exposed to Indian attacks, and what means ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... a ball with one of her young friends. A man well known for his bluntness, whose acquaintance she is to make later in life, but whom she now sees for the first time, Monsieur Foullepointe, has commenced a conversation with Caroline's friend. According to the custom of society, Caroline listens to this ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... drive me there, if you will," she replied, with the bluntness of despair. "My taxi's ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... bluntness &c adj.. V. be blunt, render blunt &c adj.; obtund^, dull; take off the point, take off the edge; turn. Adj. blunt, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... less respectfully. William thought him a busybody who had been properly punished for running into danger without any call of duty, and expressed that feeling, with characteristic bluntness, on the field of battle. "Sir," said an attendant, "the Bishop of Derry has been killed by a shot at the ford." "What took him there?" ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... only sorry you should find such an occupation as that of the 'interviewer' open to you. I can scarcely imagine such work to be congenial to a lady's feelings, as, in the case of really distinguished personages, she must assuredly meet with many a rebuff! I hope I have not offended you by my bluntness, ... "— here he trailed off into inaudible polite murmurs, while the "Tiger-Lily" ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... you, Mr. Hugo,' said the other. 'And, if I may be excused a certain bluntness, it is very obvious that, though you say little, you are no ordinary man. Can it be possible that you have lived so long and so fully and are yet capable of pitying the dead? Have you not learnt that it is only they who are happy?' He ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... you have been a statesman; you have been a conspirator; you are a great nobleman, consequently you must know men; you reason, pardon my bluntness, as if you did not know them at all, or rather, your generous desires in my ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... be a relief to both of us, I believe, to bring this conversation as soon as possible to an issue. You will excuse me, then, my dear niece, for speaking with a bluntness which, under other circumstances, would be unpardonable. You have, I am certain, given the subject of our last interview fair and serious consideration; and I trust that you are now prepared with candour to lay your answer before me. A few ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... her directly," said Diana, with some bluntness, "but as she is no fool, I fancy she suspects. Why ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... size, his sense of mass and multitude, would be an occasional cumbrousness, turgidity, unwieldiness, ineffectualness: what we might expect from his vivid realism would be an occasional over-rankness or grossness; from his bluntness, a rudeness; from his passion for country, a little spread-eagleism; from his masterly use of indirection, occasional obscurity; from his mystic identification of himself with what is commonest, cheapest, nearest, a touch at times of the vulgar and unworthy; from his tremendous ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... discovery of the late Lord Salisbury in the last days of the Victorian Era. At that time he had been a Foreign Office clerk, a keen-eyed young man with a lock of black hair hanging loosely across his brow. Lord Salisbury recognised in him a man of genius as a diplomat, and with his usual bluntness called him one day to Hatfield and gave him a very ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... his own will you shall live at 'The Tiger,'" warned Job. "Excuse my bluntness in reminding you of his words; which, no doubt, you committed to memory long before you told me about 'em; but the point lies there. You can't be in two places at once, and so sure as you sign yourself 'Gurd,' you'll sell, or ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... profound and condensed thought in a style that is at once clear and rich. His moral character was singularly mixed and complex, and bears no comparison with his intellect. It exhibits a singular coldness and lack of enthusiasm, and indeed a bluntness of moral perception and an absence of attractiveness rarely combined with such extraordinary mental endowments. All that was possible to be done in defence of his character and public conduct has been done by his ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... she would take it. There was not the first twinkle of a simper about eye or lip. Surprised, but quite gravely, she looked up, and met his odd bluntness with as quaint an honesty of her own. "I was pretty sure of it a while ago," she said. "And perhaps I was, in a demoralized sort of a way. But I've come down, Mr. Wharne,—like the coon. I'll tell you presently," she went on,—and she spoke now with warmth,—"who ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... would have gone against them without waiting for the Nabob's leave, but Admiral Watson was more scrupulous, considering that to do so would be a violation of our recent treaty. Yet he did not shrink from upbraiding the Nabob in round terms, and sent him one letter in which he threatened, with the bluntness of a seaman, to kindle such a fire in his country as all the water in the Ganges should not be ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... it," said Achilles; "that you came to take the parting orders of him who now acts the sovereign. Surely, had I seen you there, with that steadfast, open, seemingly honest countenance, cheating the wily Greek by very dint of bluntness, I had not forborne laughing at the contrast between that and the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... but do service where it owes an obligation! In the disguise of a serving man, all his greatness and pomp laid aside, this good earl proffered his services to the king, who, not knowing him to be Kent in that disguise, but pleased with a certain plainness, or rather bluntness in his answers, which the earl put on (so different from that smooth oily flattery which he had so much reason to be sick of, having found the effects not answerable in his daughter), a bargain was quickly struck, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... make the matter as clear as the sun at noonday, there would still be sceptics. On shewing the above arithmetical calculation, for example, to an English lady, who has for a number of years studied Scotch character and manners, she, with a degree of bluntness that was exceedingly startling, gave it as her unqualified opinion, that the whole thing was a piece of nonsense; and that the only reason, as far as she could observe, why the Scotch do not shut the door, is that ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... exigencies of policy: King Constantine's dethronement was decreed, not because it was lawful, but because France required it, and England, for good reasons, could not let France bring it about alone: what Russia thought of the transaction, she soon let the whole world know with disconcerting bluntness. Petrograd not only withdrew her troops from the performance, but made short work of the "guarantee" and "protection" quibbles by roundly declaring that "the choice of the form of government in Greece, as well as its administrative organization, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... "that foreigners find our bluntness very disagreeable and difficult to meet; but I know that they frequently misjudge us on the same account. It is to our benefit, ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... as you pretend?" asked Napoleon, who was always delighted at the unceremonious words of his old comrade, and who permitted to Lannes that bluntness which he would not have ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... 1908, a few months before his death, is valuable. He knew he was a dying man, and not only wished to collect these fugitive bits of verse, but wished to leave behind him his theory of poetry. With characteristic bluntness, he says that the poems which follow the Preface were mostly written "before the views just stated, with which they have little to do, had ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... I not act and speak like one?"—it was remarked, however, that he had not learnt, or did not desire, to conceal his emotions—that he commended with more rapture than was courteous, and contradicted with more bluntness than was accounted polite. It was thus with him in the company of men: when woman approached, his look altered, his eye beamed milder; all that was stern in his nature underwent a change, and he received them with deference, but ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... nature in all these tales, and the same optimistic delusion regarding "the people" for which the eighteenth century paid so dearly. The painters likewise caught the tendency, and with the same thorough-going conscientiousness as their brethren of the quill, disguised coarseness as strength, bluntness as honesty, churlishness as dignity. What an idyllic sweetness there is, for instance, in Tidemand's scenes of Norwegian peasant life! What a spirituelle and movingly sentimental note in the corresponding German scenes of Knaus and Huebner, and, longo intervallo, Meyerheim ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... man your grandfather was, Mr. Glenarm. You’ll excuse my bluntness, but I take it that you’re a frank man. He was a very keen person, and, I’m afraid,”—he chuckled with evident satisfaction to himself,—”I’m really afraid, Mr. ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... in you, even if I don't care a fig for your music," Phebe answered, with a bluntness that should have been death ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... With a bluntness not unkind he asked O'Reilly what had brought him to Cuba, Then before the young man could answer he gestured with a letter in ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... bad taste. Probably the enmity between him and Caesar arose or was confirmed in this way, as Cato always made a point of being rudest to those whom he most disliked. He fancied that he was imitating his great ancestor, and asserting the virtue of good old Roman bluntness against modern Greek affectation; he did not in the least see that he was himself a curious example of Roman affectation, shown up by the real amenities of intercourse, for which Romans ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... doubted. Olivares said to Buckingham, "You gave me some assurance and hope of the prince's turning catholic." The duke roundly answered that it was false. The Spanish minister, confounded at the bluntness of our English duke, broke from him in a violent rage, and lamented that state matters would not suffer him to do himself justice. This insult was never forgiven; and some time afterwards he attempted to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... lip service which anticipates a tip. But in the Irishman there is a natural delicacy of feeling which expresses itself in lofty kinds of courtesy. An Englishman, compelled by a sense of duty to see the ticket of a passenger, would have asked for it with callous bluntness. The Irishman, knowing that his victim was in pain, approached the subject of tickets obliquely, hinting by means of an anecdote of great interest, that people have from time to time been known ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... more, I have reason to believe Tommy likes him. She speaks well of him, and there is a great deal in that; because I know that if she disliked him she would not conceal the fact. She has, occasionally, much of her old uncle's bluntness about her, and will not say one thing and think another; unless, indeed, when she has a design in it, and ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... truth and justice. But neither he nor any other person ever entered the lists of theological controversy without paying dearly for the encounter. Perpetual strife grieved and disturbed his own spirit, while his energy, perseverance, and bluntness of speech, gained him many enemies. Wherever this unfortunate sectarian schism was introduced, it divided families, and burst asunder the bonds of friendship. For a long time, they seemed to be a Society of Enemies, instead of a Society of Friends. ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... to maintain the same measure of absolutism which their Tudor predecessors had maintained—nothing more, nothing less. There were, however, several reasons why, for them, this was an impossibility. The first arose from their own temperament. The bluntness, the lack of perception of the public will, and the disposition perpetually to insist upon the minutest definitions of prerogative, which so pre-eminently characterized the members of the Stuart house must ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... particular, has been sharply questioned by the experts. "Saxon" and "Norman," for example, no longer seem to us such simple terms as sufficed for the purpose of Scott's Ivanhoe or of Thierry's Norman Conquest, a book inspired by Scott's romance. The late Professor Freeman, with characteristic bluntness, remarked of the latter book: "Thierry says at the end of his work that there are no longer either Normans or Saxons except in history.... But in Thierry's sense of the word, it would be truer to say that there never were 'Normans' ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... that he was awkward at a trick. For little souls on little shifts rely, And coward arts of mean expedients try; The noble mind will dare do anything but lie. False friends, his deadliest foes, could find no way But shows of honest bluntness, to betray: That unsuspected plainness he believed; He looked into himself, and was deceived. 930 Some lucky planet sure attends his birth, Or Heaven would make a miracle on earth; For prosperous honesty is seldom seen ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... called upon to join in the commendation, but instead of complying, he cried out to the guards, "Take me back to the quarries." Dionysius, took the joke and pardoned him. He afterwards left the Syracusan Court, and went to his native place, Cythera; and it was characteristic of his bluntness and wit, that, on being invited by the tyrant to return, he replied by only one letter ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... quickening or brightening of the wits which bacchanalian poets have conventionally attributed to alcohol. An abstainer in a party of even moderate topers finds their jokes dull and their anecdotes pointless, and his principal amusement consists in his observation of their curious bluntness to the groundlessness of their merriment. There is no more fatal habit to a literary man than that of using alcohol as a stimulant between meals. The vital powers go on getting worn out more and more without their ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... Elton's manners are superior to Mr. Knightley's or Mr. Weston's. They have more gentleness. They might be more safely held up as a pattern. There is an openness, a quickness, almost a bluntness in Mr. Weston, which every body likes in him, because there is so much good-humour with it—but that would not do to be copied. Neither would Mr. Knightley's downright, decided, commanding sort of manner, though it suits him very well; his figure, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... way of bluntness, "there ain't no horse you can git, but I warned you 'bout the claim, and I don't want to see you ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... constitutional timidity seemed to be filled to the brim by the loudness of Allan's voice and the bluntness of Allan's request. He ran over in the same feeble flow of words with which he had deluged Midwinter on the occasion when ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... came out, showed him a hedger's cuff, which he held in one hand, and a bush in the other, to explain the use of it, and asked him if the former, being an article he made and sold, was subject to a Stamp Duty? Mr. Pitt appeared rather struck with the oddity and bluntness of the man's question, and, mounting his horse, waived a satisfactory answer by referring him to the Stamp ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... demanded with brotherly bluntness. "It takes a woman, by thunder, to knife her friends in the back. What are you trying to build up anyway? Take it from me, old girl, you want to cut out this picking away at Marion behind her back—or ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... dressed as a boy. Though he complimented me on my self-denial in making what he called "some sacrifice of beauty" to pass for a boy, "so that the audience can't say, 'Why, James must be a fool not to see she is a girl,'" he scolded me for my want of bluntness. ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... ever heard of. For was not Mr. Sharpman there, himself? and did not he know that it was all real and true? He could not understand the lawyer's allegation. Later on, when Sharpman declared boldly that Ralph's statement on the witness-stand was a carefully concocted falsehood, the bluntness of the charge was like a cruel blow, and the boy's sensitive nerves shrank and quivered beneath it; then his lips grew pale, his breath came in gasps, the room went swimming round him, darkness came before his eyes, and his ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... meant by a "vulgar" person? What do you yourselves mean by "vulgarity"? You will find it a fruitful subject of thought; but, briefly, the essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation. Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an untrained and undeveloped bluntness of body and mind; but in true inbred vulgarity, there is a deathful callousness, which, in extremity, becomes capable of every sort of bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... his appearance. Miss Sommerton saw that he was a handsome man, and wondered this had escaped her notice before, forgetting that she had scarcely deigned to look at him. She thought he had spoken to her with inexcusable bluntness at the falls, in refusing to destroy his plate; but she now remembered with compunction that he had made no allusion to his ownership of the boat for that day, while she had boasted that it was hers. She determined to return and send one of the boatmen up to awaken ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... opportunity; but she was so eager to communicate her scheme, that she could bear no delay; and therefore they suffered me to go without opposition. Indeed, whenever my situation or affairs are mentioned by Madame Duval, she speaks of them with such bluntness and severity, that I cannot be enjoined a task more cruel ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... having married a genius, I'm afraid you're wrong," he said, with a bluntness not ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... little ruler,' said a single soldier, addressing Alroy; 'pardon my bluntness, but I knew you before ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... that very morning spoken out with a pitiless bluntness, which had made Philip unusually thoughtful. The very words the Queen had used haunted him—'tale-bearers, who had neither clean hearts ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... the English personal independence and public spirit, and hospitality, and truth. He liked to tell stories in proof of their virtues, but he was not blind to the defects of their virtues: their submissive acceptance of caste, their callousness with strangers; their bluntness with one another. Mrs. Clemens had been in a way to suffer socially more than he, and she praised the English less. She had sat after dinner with ladies who snubbed and ignored one another, and left her to find her own amusement in the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... query with the brutal bluntness of his kind; and yet there was a vague suggestion of tenderness in his tones under the ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... was an attractive and noisy occupation. Every fresh flower was greeted by the little girls with shrieks of delight, even of awe, as though the flower had dropped straight from heaven; their father was in ecstasies too, and every now and then he threw the scissors on the floor, in vexation at their bluntness. Their mother kept running into the nursery ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... speak with the bluntness and decision demanded by the circumstances. A committee of men, mature in years and solid in judgment, some of whom we can name, must be put in control of the campaign. Mr. Grayson must be kept within strict limits; he must take advice ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... for some time. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 299; Jackson's Life of Goodwin, 79 et seq.; Hanbury's Memorials, III. 78, note.— Burton, I believe, migrated to Stepney.]——Burton and Goodwin having been called to account, the next blow was at John Lilburne. With characteristic bluntness Lilburne had been for some months pressing the business of his own petition for arrears of pay upon the House of Commons, going to the House personally, waiting on the Speaker, circulating printed copies of ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... appearance they resemble the great American family to which they belong; but their physiognomy seemed to me to be slightly different from that of any other tribe which I had before seen. Their expression is generally grave, and even austere, and possesses much character: this may pass either for honest bluntness or fierce determination. The long black hair, the grave and much-lined features, and the dark complexion, called to my mind old portraits of James I. On the road we met with none of that humble politeness so universal in Chiloe. Some gave their "mari-mari" (good ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... and her tone startled me. I had supposed her bound to Sir Richard by ties of a certain sort. Her bluntness and independence puzzled me as much as her splendid beauty enraptured me. I tried ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... you are wrong, just as certainly as the people who believed the sun moved round the earth. The trouble is that I know it only with the same cold mental conviction, and therefore can be of no help to either of you. Pardon me for my bluntness: do you expect to marry Grace, should she become ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... Bilberry, Treachery Bindweed, Great Insinuation Bindweed, Small, Humility Birch, Meekness Bittersweet, Truth Blackthorn, Difficulty Bladder Nut Tree, Amusement Bluebell, Sorrowful Regret Bonus Henricus, Goodness Borage, Bluntness Box Tree, Stoicism Bramble, Lowliness Broom, Neatness Buckbean, Calm repose Buglos, Falsehood Bulrush, Indiscretion Bundle of Reeds, Music Burdock, Touch me not Bur, You weary me Buttercup, Childishness Butterfly ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... presently, in the tone of hearty understanding and genuine interest with which the talk went on; and it was as if all that was generous and mindfully suggestive in it had first and truly come from her. They unfolded herself for her—these friendly ones—as she could not do; out of her bluntness grew a graciousness that lay softly over it; the cloud itself melted away and floated off; and Desire began to sparkle again more lambently. For she was not one of the kind to be meanly or ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... The bluntness of taste and the intense concentration on self, which were shown most disagreeably in Elle et Lui, appear on a different side in another book which is not a novel at all—not even a novel as far as masque and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... to protect herself from them; and as to Calais, the possession of a fishing town on a foreign coast was of no moment to her in comparison with the peace and security of her own realm. This answer did not tend to close the breach. Besides the bluntness of the refusal of their offer, the French were irritated and vexed to hear their famous sea-port spoken of ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... perceive that Liancourt, who was greatly moved by the beauty, the innocence, and the unprotected position of Fanny, had not confined caution to himself; that with his characteristic well-meaning bluntness, and with the license of a man somewhat advanced in years, he had spoken to Fanny herself: for Fanny now seemed to shun Philip,—her eyes were heavy, her manner was embarrassed. He saw the change, but it did not grieve him; he hailed the omens which he ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said, turning and speaking with the bluntness of a boy without subtlety of speech. "I never'll ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... its specifications were no doubt familiar to Jefferson, when he wrote the "Declaration" four years later. This document was circulated throughout the colony, and was indorsed with unexpected enthusiasm by scores of towns; many of them, with rustic bluntness, telling their thoughts in language even stronger than that of their model. The fishermen of Marblehead (of whom history says not much, but whatever is said, is memorable) affirmed that they were "incensed at the ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... upon her bluntness and practicability. As she spoke she took her cheque-book out of her reticule, and, opening it, dipped her pen into the ink. I am inclined to think that the flutter of that cheque-book was her ladyship's mistake. The girl had common sense, and must have seen the difficulties in the way ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... tell you," he replied, "with merciful bluntness. Your mother was a slave; it was my design, so soon as I had saved a competence, to sail to the free land of Britain, where the law would suffer me to marry her: a design too long procrastinated; for death, at the last moment, intervened. You will now understand the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "I admire your bluntness," remarked the former chairman across the table, "although I can't say as much for your philosophy. It is our duty to keep everybody contented; we cannot do any public weeding-out until the others are satisfied that the ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... personal odor tends to play a not inconsiderable part in sexual attractions and sexual repulsions. As a sexual excitant, indeed, it comes far behind the stimuli received through the sense of sight. The comparative bluntness of the sense of smell in man makes it difficult for olfactory influence to be felt, as a rule, until the preliminaries of courtship are already over; so that it is impossible for smell ever to possess the same significance in sexual attraction in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... her health might experience from the want of exercise. At the moment when I was wrapped up in sorrow, and giving free vent to my tears, our friend the mate made his appearance, and inquired, with his honest bluntness, the cause of our whimperings. Hortense replied, in a sobbing voice, that she could no longer go upon deck because she had torn her shoes, and I had no others to ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... man hitched uneasily on his chair, but at last, with his characteristic bluntness said, "Hanged if I know! They say that them that gits down doesn't very often git up again. Yet I know they ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... was Otway at the embarrassment he could not wholly hide, and which delayed his answer, that he spoke the truth with excessive bluntness. ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... These, of course, have lost their interest with the passing away of the times which gave them birth. The points of many of the jokes have corroded, and the barbed head of many an arrow of Artemus's wit has rusted into bluntness with the decay of the bow from which it ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... was at times gauche, blunt, awkwardly infelicitous in speech or silence, when he would have wished, as he knew perfectly how, to be considerate, gentle, sympathetic, responsive. On the other hand, his shyness and reticence were seemingly contradicted by a downright bluntness, a deliberate frankness in matters of opinion in which his convictions were involved; for his views were most positively held and his convictions were often passionate in intensity, and he declared them, ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... I do!" acknowledged the Senior Surgeon with equal bluntness. "But my little kiddie here loves you!" he hastened somewhat nervously to affirm. "Oh, I'm almost sure that my little kiddie here—loves you! She needs you anyway! Let it go at that! Call ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... court to her friends and acquaintances, Monseigneur le Duc de Bourgogne sought to please her, was respectful to her, attentive to her friends, not always with success. She acted towards Monseigneur le Duc de Bourgogne like a mother-in-law, and sometimes spoke with such authority and bluntness to Madame de Bourgogne as to make ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Christina, with a bluntness that astonished the advocate of Ericson's claims; "my cousin Adolphus, and no other. He is braver than this savage; and as to nobility, he is as nobly born as my own right honourable papa, and that is high ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... the smithy churl under whose blow you have suffered has often done me despite and injury. He has thwarted me in counsel and despised me in action. His brutal and unhesitating bluntness is a living reproach to the subtlety of my natural disposition. I fear him, and ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... the bluntness of a military man, Colonel Hofferman had put his finger on the open wound which for long years had been a source of irritation to the detective force and the intelligence department alike, when, owing to circumstances, both were called on to intervene at one and ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... the archduke Count of Bruay, had obtained permission to make a visit to a wounded relative, then a captive in the republican camp, and was hospitably entertained at the stadholder's table. Maurice, with soldierly bluntness, ridiculed the floating batteries, the castles on wheels, the sausages, and other newly-invented machines, employed before Ostend, and characterized them as rather fit to catch birds with than to capture a city, defended by mighty armies ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Spanish negotiator. Perhaps no other course could have been more effectual in securing success than this obvious indifference to it. In the prevalent condition of public feeling and of his own sentiments Mr. Adams easily assumed towards General Vives a decisive bluntness, not altogether consonant to the habits of diplomacy, and manifested an unchangeable stubbornness which left no room for discussion. His position was simply that Spain might make such a treaty as the United ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... Mrs. Wilkins. She was not usually told this quite so immediately and roundly. Abundantly as she was used to it— impossible not to be after twenty-eight solid years—it surprised her to be told it with such bluntness, ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... deals somewhat severely with Cromwell's usurpation; yet the author did not hesitate to dedicate it to that remarkable man, who, after carefully reading it, gave it back to his daughter, Lady Claypole, with the remark, full of characteristic bluntness, that "the gentleman need not think to cheat him of his power and authority; for what he had won with the sword he would never suffer himself to be ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... seven William appeared with a light cart of Dr Palmer's, to take Harry and his luggage to school. Perhaps the bluntness of the old butler was more opportune now than ever. It prevented the lengthening of a parting that could not be otherwise than utterly sad and wretched to Harry. There was the good kind Mrs Valentine to leave; and the dear old farm, where he had spent so many joyous days in happy ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... Major, "must pardon my bluntness. I am unable to hide what I know. For some time back I have suspected Major Hammersmith, but Mr. Godall is unmistakable. To seek two men in London unacquainted with Prince Florizel of Bohemia was to ask too ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tender eyes, the angelic texture of her robes, and the musical tinkle of her voice. But Leonidas had no confidant, and what healthy boy ever trusted his sister in such matter! "YOU saw what she was like," he said, with evasive bluntness. ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte |
