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More "Sternness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Berg," resumed the old gentleman, with a gravity that tended even towards sternness, "I would not fail in any act of courtesy towards you, especially her at my own home; but justice, mercy, and truth are above all other considerations. Both you and I know this child's history sufficiently well to be aware that it is a dangerous thing to exert an influence at random ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... through the open window while his master goes through the paces of a courtlier dance. We encounter sequential chords of the seventh, and their use, rhythmically framed as they are, gives a line of sternness to the dance. Niecks thinks that the second Mazurka might be called The Request, so pathetic, playful and persuasive is it. It is in E minor and has a plaintive, appealing quality. The G major part is very pretty. In the last lines the passion ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... chief causes of this relaxation of sternness on his part was the accounts which he heard of the Indian youth. His fleetness of foot, his skill with bow and rifle, his personal daring and prowess, his quickness and strength, his comeliness of ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... raps with the closed fist than in the making of maps with inky fingers—a bootless toil, as it always hath seemed to me. Next to her sat SALLY, the little milkmaid, casting coy glances at mother, who would have none of them, but with undue sternness, as I thought then, and still think, tossed them back to the shame-faced SALLY. Lower down sat JOHN TOOKER, "GIRT JAN DOUBLEFACE" he was ever called, not without a sly hint of increasing obesity, for JOHN, though a mighty man of thews and sinews, was no small trencherman, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... his father remarked with some sternness. "Kindly attend to that little matter, Professor, as soon as you have corrected the feverishness. And, by the way, Professor!" (The Professor left his distinguished pupil standing at the door, and meekly returned.) "There is a ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... has gone far enough," ruled the elder in a voice of finality, his amusement suddenly giving way once more to sternness. "I've listened to you because you seemed to be full of talk an' I was willin' to let you get it off your chest, but I don't need counsel from any cub of a boy. I'm nigh onto fifty years old an' I've run my family all these ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... will be all right now. They were a little spoiled; in that case sternness will do no harm. If I hold on she'll come to love me. Then when the gentleman is gone, I can humor her again; then our misunderstanding will be forgotten. What wouldn't I give for the half-hour they're with the gentleman? ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... godhead were gathered those of the princes and counsellors who were left alive. Some of them, like Guatemoc, were clad in rent and bloody mail, others in their customary dress, and one in a priest's robe. They had only two things in common among them, the sternness of their faces and the greatness of their rank, and they sat there this night not to decide my fate, which was but a little thing, but to take counsel as to how they might expel the Spaniards before ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... infinite compassion, rather than the accents of anger, sounds in them; and it alone is heard in the outburst of lamenting in which Christ's heart runs over, as in a passion of tears, at the close. The blending of sternness and pity, each perfect, is the characteristic of this wonderful climax of our Lord's appeals to His nation. Could such tones of love and righteous anger joined have been sent echoing through the ages in this Gospel, if they had not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of no mind to end my wildness and my roaming just yet; and still, seeing that I was, by gentleness of my Quaker mother and by sternness of my Virginia father, set in the class of gentlemen, I had no wish dishonorably to engage a woman's heart. Alas, I was not the first to learn that kissing is a most ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... can't realize what this thing has cost me, in peace. He was the last I should have suspected. I must save him. Help me do it. The Church is supposed to be hard-hearted, but she is forgiving—too forgiving sometimes. My duty is to be stern, and a judge; but I cannot judge him with sternness. I would give my life to think that this was all a bad dream. Don't you see that he is the man I always thought would be my own bishop? How can I go ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... same stories, or the naturalist in the latter. Humor, Cooper certainly had; but it is the humor that gleams in fitful flashes from the men of earnest purposes and serious lives, and gives a momentary relief to the sternness and melancholy of their natures. The power of producing an entire (p. 240) humorous creation he had not at all, and almost the only thing that mars the perfectness of "The Pathfinder" is the occasional effort to make one out of Muir, the character designed to play the part of a villain. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... something exceedingly winning, to us, in that sturdy sense, that thirst for mathematical precision, that impatience of theory, that positive and self-reliant—we don't mind saying, somewhat dogmatical—air, that sternness of feature, thinness of lip, and coldness of eye, which belong to the best examples. We respect even the humbler ones; for they at least hate sentiment, they do not comprehend or approve of humor, and they never relish wit. ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... she said, interrogatively; and, as she waited for an explanation of the American's presence, surprise gave way to a look of great sternness and severity, almost of dislike. Nay more, Madame de Lera's attitude was instinct with protest—the protest of an honest woman drawn unwillingly into what she feels to be an atmosphere of untruth and intrigue. She was telling herself that she owed the fact of Vanderlyn's visit to some ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... sore and sensitive. Was it the new love which had flung off its shield of sternness and left it exposed to every lash that flew? The misery of others afflicted him. Thoughts of injustice grew into motives of action, the loss of faith into the gain of unutterable longing. Who were these gods who heard not the cry of the weak and were ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... to believe that he has done all the cruel things he is accused of, but says that his sternness and severity were necessary for the occasion, and that Spain should be very grateful to have found such a leader ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 40, August 12, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... n't be alive at this moment if it were not for your treatment. Oh, Grace!" She began to cough again; the paroxysm increased in vehemence. She caught her handkerchief from her lips; it was spotted with blood. She sprang to her feet, and regarded it with impersonal sternness. "Now," she said, "I am sick, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... character of the Non-conformist colonizations. Along the seaboard wild pirates nestled, skimmers of the seas of the most daring type, worthy brethren of the Kidds, the Blackbeards, and the Teaches, terrors of the merchantman and the well-disposed emigrant. But in spite of the sternness of the law-abiding, and the savageness of the lawless portions of the English settlements, they contrasted favorably in every way with the settlements which were nominally French and the centres of colonization ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... had softened, and he had expended all his sternness, but his caution remained. With a significant glance toward his prisoner, the ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... refuge here, for his head was of the statesman-class, and his demeanor that of one who had exercised influence over large numbers of men. He sometimes endeavored to set on foot a familiar relation with this old man, but there was even a sternness in the manner in which he repelled these advances, that gave little encouragement for their renewal. Nor did it seem that his companions of the Hospital were more in his confidence than Middleton himself. They regarded him with a kind of awe, a shyness, and in ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... doctor had shown a certain sternness. He had told his son, with some emphasis, that, until he accomplished some creditable work in the world, he must never expect one penny more than his present allowance of L150 a year. There were good horses and dogs at Upcroft, however, and a very comfortable home. The ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... he, with some measure of sternness. "Take care, if you fancy you love another man, that he may ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... inscription. He turned at the noise of our approach, and calmly waited our coming. His eye glanced quickly from the features of O'Shaughnessy to those of Baker; but seeming rapidly reassured as he walked forward, his face at once recovered its usual severity and its cold, impassive look of sternness. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... it might be Bob's father had put the vital question to him, asking squarely if he could vouch for it that he had mailed that important letter; and poor Bob had to confess his shortcoming. Then Mr. Jeffries, with a return of his old- time sternness, had told the offender that in punishment he should not be allowed to participate in the great Thanksgiving ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... soldier. He paused an instant to gaze about, and held his hat in his hand, the sun touching his tanned cheeks, and flecking the long, light-colored hair. He looked strong and manly in his tightly buttoned jacket, a knife at his belt, a rifle grasped within one hand. There was a sternness to his face too, although it lit up in a smile, as the searching eyes caught glimpse of my white dress in the cool shade of the grape arbor. Hat still in hand he came toward me, but I only bent the lower, as though I knew nothing of his approach, ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... your Prayer-Book to little purpose, if you think so," said Mr Lerew, with more sternness than he had hitherto shown. "Only think of the unspeakable comfort obtained through priestly absolution, which will be thus afforded you. You will then know that your sins are put away. You will feel so holy, and clean, and pure. Let me, with all loving earnestness, urge you and your sweet niece ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... of his lot in life did not produce in him self-satisfaction and complacency, but often did make him uneasy. He had inherited his father's sternness of conscience and moral fibre. At one time when a parishioner sold a piece of property and asked Mr. Nelson to use the money to buy his first car, he was sorely perplexed as to the appropriateness of accepting such ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... the maker of that melancholy town called Geneva, where, only ten years ago, a man said, pointing to a porte-cochere in the upper town, the first ever built there: "By that door luxury has invaded Geneva." Calvin gave birth, by the sternness of his doctrines and his executions, to that form of hypocritical sentiment called "cant."[*] According to those who practice it, good morals consist in renouncing the arts and the charms of life, in eating richly but without luxury, in silently amassing money without ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... Were an officious stranger to try to convince an artist that one color would answer all his purposes as well as a greater number, would the suggestion of the untutored interloper cause the artist to waver in the sternness of his faith? And shall the subject of this sketch revolutionize his mode of stove-blacking at the promptings of an ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... those who meditate disunion, is just to leave them to themselves, and see what they can make of it. No, gentlemen; the time for meditated secession is past. Americans, North and South, will be hereafter more and more united. There is a sternness and severity in the public mind lately aroused. I believe that, North and South, there has been, in the last year, a renovation of public sentiment, an animated revival of the spirit of Union, and, more than all, of attachment ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... child in prison is quite limitless. I remember once in Reading, as I was going out to exercise, seeing in the dimly lit cell opposite mine a small boy. Two warders—not unkindly men—were talking to him, with some sternness apparently, or perhaps giving him some useful advice about his conduct. One was in the cell with him, the other was standing outside. The child's face was like a white wedge of sheer terror. There was in his eyes the terror of a hunted animal. The next morning I heard him at breakfast time crying, ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... located in the position which belongs to Order. These organs were but little developed in Gall, whose great success was due to his philosophic originality and independence. He was not a close observer, and there was a sternness in his nature which prevented him from accepting readily the suggestions of Spurzheim, who with less boldness of character and greater accuracy of perception, was better fitted for minute observation and anatomical analysis. His own cranium has been preserved, in which ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... I broke his window," said MacIan, with a face of wood. "I answered, 'Because he blasphemed Our Lady.' I had no other reason. So I have no other answer." Vane continued to gaze at him with a sternness not ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... disciplinarian, and, although he had so materially benefited by the Pet's assistance, yet, when he perceived that that pugilistic gentleman was not possessed of the full complement of academical attire, the duties of the Proctor rose superior to the gratitude of the Man; and, with all the sternness of an ancient Roman Father, he said to the Pet, "Why have you ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... touch a form That could show what Homer's age Bred to be a hero's wage. "Were not all her life but storm, Would not painters paint a form Of such noble lines" I said. "Such a delicate high head, So much sternness and such charm, Till they had changed us to like strength?" Ah, but peace that comes at length, Came when Time had ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats
... chosen to make as to the purity of his strain. A notable immobility of nature—his friends called it firmness, his enemies obstinacy; a seeming disregard of what others might think of him; a certain sternness of manner—an unreadiness, as it were, to open his door to the people about him; a searching regard with which he was wont to peruse the face of anyone holding talk with him, when he seemed always to give heed to the looks rather than the ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... truly martial character of Ten Eyck. His fine, manly figure appeared to me to enlarge, his countenance actually became illuminated, and the expression of his eye, usually so full of good-nature and fun, seemed to change its character entirely, to one of sternness and seventy. ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... fancy that it had its origin in some unspeakable wrong, perpetrated half a lifetime ago in this old gentlewoman's presence, either against herself or somebody whom she loved still better. Her features had a wonderful sternness, which, I presume, was caused by her habitual effort to compose and keep them quiet, and thereby counteract the tendency to paralytic movement. The slow, regular, and inexorable character of the motion,—her look of force and self-control, which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... knew my husband well by reputation, and had, before our marriage, asked him to her house, but had not been fortunate enough to possess sufficient attraction. Percivale was much taken with her, notwithstanding a certain coldness, almost sternness of manner, which was considerably repellent,—but only for the first few moments, for, when her eyes lighted up, the whole thing vanished. She was much pleased with some of his pictures, criticising freely, and with evident understanding. The ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... omen, when Mobarec, who knew better than he what to judge, began to smile, and said, "Take courage, my prince, all goes well." In short, that very moment, the sultan of the genii appeared in the shape of a very handsome man, yet there was something of a sternness in his air. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... were the words in themselves, they seemed doubly so in that lonely room; and Henry was glad to lock the door and return to the comparatively living world downstairs. But from that moment old Mr. Lingard was transfigured in his eyes. Beneath all the sternness of his exterior, the grimness of the business interests which seemed to absorb him, Henry had discovered the blessed human spring. And he came too to wear a certain pathos and sanctity in Henry's eyes, as he remembered how old a man he was, and that secretly all this time, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... passed the age of dolls and toys, when they began, about twelve, to use their minds (an epoch at which they ceased to laugh at Schmucke) they divined the secret of the cares that lined their father's forehead, and they recognized beneath that mask of sternness the relics of a kind heart and a fine character. They vaguely perceived how he had yielded to the forces of religion in his household, disappointed as he was in his hopes of a husband, and wounded in the tenderest fibres of paternity,—the love of a father ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... says Mr. Bancroft, "still acknowledged the fixedness of the divine decrees, and the resistless certainty from all eternity of election and of reprobation, there were not wanting, even among the clergy, some who had modified the sternness of the ancient doctrine by making the self-direction of the active powers of man with freedom of inquiry and private judgment the central idea of a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... existed between him and Lieschen. They had been led to take this improper step by fear of her parents, who, had the attachment been discovered, would, it was thought, have separated them for ever. Herr Lehfeldt's sternness, no less than his superior position, seemed an invincible obstacle, and the good mother, although doting upon her only daughter, was led by the very intensity of her affection to form ambitious hopes of her daughter's future. It was barely ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... very grave, as he did not look even when Kuzmitchov gave him a scolding or threatened him with a stick; listening intently, he dropped quietly on one knee and an expression of sternness and alarm came into his face, such as one sees in people who hear heretical talk. He fixed his eyes on one spot, raised his hand curved into a hollow, and suddenly fell on his stomach on the ground and slapped the hollow of his ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... not this messenger," said the other, with a touch of sternness in her look and tone. "He seems to me like a wolf in sheep's clothing. He does not refer all things to God as 'Our Father,' and in his use of the Word he does not seem sincere. I trust that he is ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... his hair gleamed the Flamingo Feather that proclaimed the station in life to which he was born. His handsome figure, proud face, and fearless bearing caused the members of the council to regard him with approving glances, and it was with less of sternness in his tone than usual that, after the door was ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... careful hands have sedulously restored each feature that age may have injured. It is clear that the completeness of detail—the clean outlines, the hard, unworn surfaces—are characteristics of innate strength, and connect themselves with the causes of a certain northern sternness and rigidity in the general ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... of his thoughts with deep interest, and not without some degree of awe, when she considered that she was entirely in his power; but forbore even to hint her fears, or her observations, to Madame Montoni, who discerned nothing in her husband, at these times, but his usual sternness. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... bearing was respectful, and at the same time independent. There was none of that confusion which might be expected on the part of a lad from the city in the presence of a lady of rank. His dark, heavy eyebrows, resolute mouth, and square chin gave an expression of sternness to his face, which was belied by the merry expression of his eyes and the bright smile when he ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... now, gentlemen," said the General quickly. "We will join the ladies. Harry," he added, with some sternness, "lead ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... this place, directly," I said, with as much sternness as I could assume. "If you please, I will bid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... little, eyeing the throng, or rather looking first at one and then another man in it, as though he were trying to think what such an one was thinking of, or what he were fit for. Sometimes he caught the eye of one or other, and then that kindly smile spread over his face, but faded off it into the sternness and sadness of a man who has heavy and great thoughts hanging about him. But when John Ball first mounted the steps of the cross a lad at some one's bidding had run off to stop the ringers, and so presently the voice of the bells fell dead, leaving ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... a pause—they were now in the parlour—said, speaking very slowly, that they were in a sore affliction of Satan, and that they must withstand him with a good courage—"and look you," he added, turning with a great sternness to the three, "if there be any mortal sin upon your hearts, see that you confess it and be shriven speedily—for while such a thing lies upon the heart, so long hath Satan power to hurt—otherwise have ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Parisian proletariat caused riots and outbreaks in such important and widely separated cities as Lyons, Marseilles, and Bordeaux. With the same devotion and thoroughness that had characterized their foreign policy, but with greater sternness, the officials of the National Convention stamped out all these riots and insurrections. By 1795 all France, except only the emigres and secret conspirators, had more or less graciously ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... is true I have known you only a little while, but all that time—ever since I saw you, in fact, and even before, when your father showed me your picture—I have loved you. Nay, hear me out." There was an unusual sternness in his voice. My lord appeared to be in the imperative mood,—something to which she had not been accustomed. He meant to be heard, and with beating heart perforce she listened. "Quiet that spirit of mockery but a moment, and attend my words, I pray you. No, I will not release ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... his sternness troubled her more and more. They were alone in the corridor that led to the committee-room. She stopped, holding him back with her strong young arms. He had hardly looked at her till then. She had changed in the months ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... certain to be sustained by the sympathies of the masses. But he who is crushed by the masses themselves, must look beyond the limits of his earthly being for consolation and support. The wrongs committed by democracies are of the most cruel character; and though wanting in that apparent violence and sternness that marks the course of law in the hands of narrower governments, for it has no need of this severity, they carry with them in their course all the feelings that render ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... constable and a magistrate; he has to maintain proper order and cleanliness, and settle in a conciliatory spirit all disputes between buyers and sellers. Florent, who was of a weak disposition put on an artificial sternness when he was obliged to exercise his authority, and generally over-acted his part. Moreover, his gloomy, pariah-like face and bitterness of spirit, the result of long suffering, were ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... folk-lore, semi-magic, semi-allegorical, semi-moral tales which express the ideals and experiences of a different and younger world than ours of today. And it replies, "Give them these." It feels in the sternness of saga stuff and in the humanity of folk-lore, a validity and a dignity and a simplicity which seem to make them suitable for children. These tales tell of beliefs of folk less experienced than we: we have outgrown them. ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... attachment to that principle or hostility to it. We know that fidelity to an idea can never be reassured by adherence to a name; and hence we shall criticise all parties with equal severity, though we trust that the sternness of truth will always be blended with the temperance of impartial candor. With tolerance for all opinions, we have no patience with hypocrisy and pretense; least of all with that specious fraud which would make a glorious principle the apology for personal ends. It will therefore be a leading ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... present proud position of being allowed to write for (and be printed in) the "Atlantic Monthly," without much previous polish, through the companionship of the fairer sex. Why was it made a crime worthy of Draconian sternness to address our she-comrades in the pleasant paths of learning? Why did we behold the severe Magister Morum himself, in utter forgetfulness of his own rule, mingle in the mazy dance on an evening occasion, at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the Hills, you are merciful! So merciful! Your mercifulness and my sternness temper each other, and the result being justice, makes the mission we are pointed to fulfill a labor both of use and love. You plead for postponement. This indulgence, without some sign of repentance on his part, we ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... aware that any one has given us quite so vigorous a picture of Britain in the days of the Roman conquest. Mr. Henty has done his utmost to make an impressive picture of the haughty Roman character, with its indomitable courage, sternness, and discipline. Beric is ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... not interrupt me,' said the Carrier, with some sternness, 'till you understand me; and you're wide of doing so. If, yesterday, I'd have struck that man down at a blow, who dared to breathe a word against her, to-day I'd set my foot upon his face, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... plainly that medicines may assuage pain, that skill may close wounds, that those who are incontestably dying may be snatched from the grave. The Jewish physician became a living, an accepted protest against the fatalism of the Koran. By degrees the sternness of predestination was mitigated, and it was admitted that in individual life there is an effect due to free-will; that by his voluntary acts man may within certain limits determine his own course. But, so far as nations are concerned, since they can yield no personal accountability ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... her hands together above her head, and burst into a flood of tears. Her father looked upon her with such sad sternness as his tender nature was capable of. He laid hold of one of her arms to draw a hand from the face ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... from his chest 5 Against his will the stifling load revealing, Though Nature forced; though like some captive guest, Some royal prisoner at his conqueror's feast, An alien's restless mood but half concealing, The sternness on his gentle brow confessed, 10 Sickness within and miserable feeling: Though obscure pangs made curses of his dreams, And dreaded sleep, each night repelled in vain, Each night was scattered by its own loud screams: Yet never could his heart command, though fain, 15 One deep ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... stood in front of that ancient fortress, Ravenswood's emotions were of a very complicated description; and as he led the way into the rude courtyard, and hallooed to Caleb to give attendance, there was a tone of sternness, almost of fierceness, which seemed somewhat alien from the courtesies of one who is receiving ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... another way," said the nurse. Its unnatural hardness and sternness of tone passed away from her voice, and its native gentleness and sadness returned, as she made that reply. "You read the newspapers like the rest of the world," she went on; "have you ever read of your unhappy fellow-creatures (the starving outcasts of the population) ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... can have your holiday," laughed he. "But"—with mock sternness—"in moderation! He must be an incident only. With those who win the high places, sex is an incident—a charming, necessary incident, but only an incident. He must not spoil your career. If you allowed that you would be like a mother who ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... figure was solemnly gliding forward—a figure slight, emaciated, and habited in a long black cassock. This was relieved at the throat by one peeping patch of purple, and above the throat was a face the delicate sternness of which was like semitransparent ivory. The company parted, making way for the great Churchman, and then a scene enacted itself which cannot be better described than in the words written many years previously by the author of Lothair himself. "The ladies did ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... essential progress. The world had been too pleasant to him to allow of his giving many of his hours to work. His father was one of the best men in the world, revered on the bench, and loved by all men; but he had not sufficient parental sternness to admit of his driving his son well into harness. He himself had begun the world with little or nothing, and had therefore succeeded; but his son was already possessed of almost everything that ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... out the three outraged mummies; the brother with actual sternness, and the sisters in plain fear. Had their eccentric cousin really gone out of ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... replied that I had left Florence on account of the events I have described above, and that I meant to go back after two or three days, in order to resume my service with the Duke. On hearing this, the Prior and Messer Lorenzo turned round on me with such sternness that I felt extremely uneasy; then they said to me: "You would do far better to return to France, where you are rich and well known; for if you go back to Florence, you will lose all that you have gained in France, and will ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... and shades of pleasure were dim; he might have suggested a stone bench in the dusty Tuileries or a penny chair at the back part of the Champs Elysees. These things would have been a trifle stern, and sternness alone now wouldn't be sinister. An instinct in him cast about for some form of discipline in which they might meet—some awkwardness they would suffer from, some danger, or at least some grave inconvenience, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... the magistrate's study and directed to stand right opposite the light, while Mr. Landale installed himself in an arm-chair with a blood-curdling air of judicial sternness, Johnny Shearman, at most times as dare-devil a pickle of a boy as ever ran, but now reduced to a state of mental and physical jelly, underwent a terrible cross-examination. It was comparatively little that he had to say, and no doubt he wished most ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... respectably occupied by her successor. It was not, as has been well shown by a late author, that James was void either of parts or of good intentions; and his predecessor was at least as arbitrary in effect as he was in theory. But, while Elizabeth possessed a sternness of masculine sense and determination which rendered even her weaknesses, some of which were in themselves sufficiently ridiculous, in a certain degree respectable, James, on the other hand, was so utterly devoid of "firm resolve," so well called ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... of anaesthetics rose above the mouldy smell of the unventilated apartment, which was made still closer by the inquisitive neighbors whom the doctor's orders had not been able to bar out. Despite his sternness they gathered in the corners, watching the white-faced girl on the bed. She was moaning, though unconscious. This was not the first time Mary had met the young doctor in such places. He looked up with evident ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... a natural sternness, which forbid all familiarity to all men. Even Colonel Hamilton, who was naturally facetious, never ventured, during his long service, the slightest intimacy. Hamilton, whom he esteemed above all men, and to whom he gave his entire confidence, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... side. Captain Courtney's appearance was much in his favour; though his firm mouth and the general expression of his features showed that he was accustomed to command, the pleasant smile occasionally playing over his countenance relieved them from too great sternness. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... though not knowing what she did, she raised her arm, standing behind him there, as if to shake hands. Abruptly he wheeled round, with a face down which the great tears coursed, but awful in its pallor and sternness; and, taking no notice of her outstretched hand, pointed to the door. Weeping bitterly, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... governor, and died in the governor's chair. In 1645 he was made Major-general of the Colonial troops; nine years before he had headed a campaign against the Pequot Indians. His character illustrated the full measure of Puritan sternness; he was an inflexible persecutor of the Quakers, and was instrumental in causing four of them to be executed in Boston. In his career is found no feeble passage; he was always Endicott. He was a man grown before he attained, under the ministrations of Samuel Skelton of Cambridge, in England, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Epirus, the townsman of Alexander the Great, made an expedition to Italy. This was the way it came about. The city of Tarentum was a Spartan colony at the head of the gulf that bears its name. It was as proud as its parent, but had lost all the grave sternness of manners, and was as idle and fickle as the other places in that languid climate. The Tarentines first maltreated some Roman ships which put into their gulf, and then insulted the ambassador who was sent to complain. Then when the terrible Romans were ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... 'Good-morning; how is the patient, nurse?' braced my faltering nerves in a moment, and enabled me to answer him without embarrassment. He had his grave professional air, and looked hard and impenetrable. I had reason afterwards to think that this sternness of manner was assumed for my benefit, for once, when I was preparing some lint for him, I looked up inadvertently and saw that he was watching me with an expression that was at once sad ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... payment of a small license fee. This favor was taken away in 1870, for the alleged reason that American captains failed to procure licenses, and in the course of this year many of our ships were seized and confiscated. New sternness had been imparted to the provincial policy by the Canadian Act of Confederation, valid from July I, 1867, which joined Ontario and Quebec with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, thus inspiring our neighbors to the north with a new sense of their ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Guitry glanced at his companion's profile, for the night was no longer inky black. It was a simple direct young face, not handsome, but full of dignity and kindness; the line of the jaw had a certain sternness, and the wide and delicately molded ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... mistaken her meaning. Step by step she recoiled from him until she stood at the distance of some paces, her hands pressed against her cheeks, her eyes fixed on him with a strange mixture of tenderness, pity, and sternness. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... knew that his stern refusal had greatly irritated his private secretary, and was anxious to show that, though in the cause of public duty he was obliged to be stern, he was quite willing to forget his sternness when the necessity for it had passed away. On this morning, therefore, he was very cheery. But to all his cheery good-humour John Eames would make no response. Late in the afternoon, when most of the men had left the office, Johnny appeared before the chairman for the ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... a model system of home-discipline. "I know him," says God, "that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the ways of the Lord to do justice and judgment." He was not a tyrant; his comrades did not bear the rough sternness of a despot, neither did his power wear the scowl of vengeance. But these bore the firmness and decision of love tempered and directed by the law of Christian duty and responsibility. They showed ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... flog the knave soundly when he comes," cried the father, vainly endeavoring, under an appearance of sternness, to hide his inward emotion ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... moment's silence. She saw signs of a new sternness about the closely-drawn lips, the steel-grey eyes, from which a momentary tenderness seemed ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... jumping up and flashing before her in a storm of passion to which his former sternness had been as nothing—"what! my letter made you so unhappy that you were obliged to go to Mr. Harcourt for relief! You appealed for sympathy from me to him! from me who am—no, who was, your affianced husband! Had you no idea of the sort of bond that existed ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... said Tony, addressing Mr. Tubbs with sudden sternness, "maybe you could bluff these here soft guys, but we're a different breed o' cats, we are. Whatever you know, you'll come through with it and come quick, or it'll be the worse for your ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... itself, fully resolved to besiege it. 16. It was then the senate and the people unanimously agreed to send deputies to him, with proposals for his restoration, in case he would draw off his army. 17. Coriola'nus received these proposals at the head of his principal officers, and, with the sternness of a general that was to give ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... there made a tremendous difference. A dark and terrible sternness actuated Casey. He projected his soul into that clattering car of iron and wood. And it was certain he prayed. His hair stood straight up. There! the narrow cut in the hill! the curve of the track! He was pounding at it. The wheels shrieked. Looking ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... his present age of something over fifty, he is tall and not robust, with an extremely sympathetic face that has about it little of his father's rugged cast and sternness. Perhaps it is this evident sympathy that commands the affection of so many, for I have been told more than once that he is the best beloved man in the Army, and one who ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... life-work of Thomas Stevenson remains; what we have lost, what we now rather try to recall, is the friend and companion. He was a man of a somewhat antique strain: with a blended sternness and softness that was wholly Scottish and at first somewhat bewildering; with a profound essential melancholy of disposition and (what often accompanies it) the most humorous geniality in company; shrewd and childish; passionately attached, passionately ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was opened to him by a servant and he asked for Mrs. Brockett. In the cold and dark hall the lady sternly awaited him, but the sternness fell from her like a cloak when he told her the reason ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... forgotten him sooner," he said, with a touch of sternness, "you would not find yourself tied now to a man you ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... reserved almost to sternness. He had none of the qualities which awaken personal enthusiasm. He was one of those great leaders who are worshipped from afar. Besides, it is not an easy task to rule another's household. Benefits however ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... wavy blue line of the Cantal mountains. To the north-east the sky-line was marked by the Mont-Dore range, with the highest peak of Auvergne, the Puy de Sancy, clearly visible against the lighter blue of the cloudless air. The feeling that prevailed throughout this wide expanse of country was solemn sternness. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Lovell's portrait hung in Edward's room. It was a photograph exquisitely coloured, and was on the left of a dark Judith, dark with a serenity of sternness. On the right hung another coloured photograph of a young lady, also fair; and it was a point of taste to choose between them. Do you like the hollowed lily's cheeks, or the plump rose's? Do you like a thinnish fall of golden hair, or an abundant cluster of nut-brown? Do you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he, "my strength would become sternness. Nature gave me a despotic disposition. I have had, and have still, many times the greatest difficulty to control it; but with God's help I shall succeed! My Elise, we will improve ever. On the children's account, in order to ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... heavenward-ascending Virgin, all harshness and sternness are effaced, even to the last trace; and, indeed, does not Painting itself seem in it to soar upward, transfigured on its own pinions, as the liberated Psyche delivered ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... have since that period been frequently chang'd; and possibly some of them, from principles merely political, may of late have look'd down upon us with less sternness in their countenances than a BERNARD or a . . .: But while there has been no essential alteration of measures, no real redress of grievances, we have no reason to think, nay we deceive ourselves if we indulge a thought that their hearts are ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... the latter in strategy. After organizing Prussia's citizen army, it was Scharnhorst's fate to be mortally wounded in the first battle; but his place, as chief of staff, was soon filled by Gneisenau, in whose nature the sternness of the warrior was happily blended with the coolness of the scientific thinker. The accord between him and Bluecher was close and cordial; and the latter, on receiving the degree of doctor of laws from the University of Oxford, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... to tell anything wrong you have done; ten to one if I have not done the same thing. I am not perfection, and if it is necessary to sin in order to have sympathy, I am glad I have committed sin enough to have sympathy. The sternness of perfection I do not want. I am going to live so that my children can come to my grave and truthfully say, "He who sleeps here never gave us one moment of pain." Whether you call that religion or infidelity, suit yourselves; that is the way I ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... kind to his boys as he was stern when sternness was needed. Hoover came down with typhoid in his Junior year, just at a time when his finances could not afford such an expensive luxury. So Dr. Branner sent him to a hospital and saw that he was cared for by the best of physicians and nurses and told him to ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... for the suspicion cast upon him, ready to believe that he was guilty, resenting it upon Constance, had now to stand and learn that the guilt lay in his family, not in theirs. No wonder that he stood silent, grave, his lips drawn in to sternness. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of uncertain will-power he hesitated a long time. He tried kindness and sternness and promises and threats. The Hollanders remained obstinate, and continued to sing psalms and listen to the sermons of their Lutheran and Calvinist preachers. Philip in his despair sent his "man of iron," the Duke of Alba, to bring ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... with duty. Sometimes he waits upon me like a maid, Silent with watchful eyes. Oh, would to Heaven, He used me like a slave bought in the market! Yes, used me roughly! So, I were his own; And words of tenderness would falter in, Relenting from the sternness of command. But I am not enough for him: he needs Some high-entranced maiden, ever pure, And thronged with burning thoughts of God and him. So, as he loves me not, his deeds for me Lie on me like a sepulchre of stones. Italian lovers love not ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... what the ants thought of it, but he did. He fired it twice with great sternness and ceremony. All the crew had wadding in their ears, and there was an effect of going into action about the whole affair, and first they hit and wrecked the old sugar-mill, and then they smashed the abandoned store behind ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... officers of a free People, had refused the Emperor, when he came within their walls, bread, water, salt and fire; they had driven him forth the city groaning and trembling, and they now condemned the conspirators to death. Guardians of the town founded by Remus long ago, they copied the sternness of the first Consuls of Rome. But their city, which went clad in silk and cloth-of-gold, was ever ready to slip betwixt their fingers, like a lascivious, false-hearted wanton; and fear and anxiety made ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... the flood sends the rainbow also? There are not two gods, nor many gods, but one God, of whom are all things. Light and darkness, storm or sunshine, barrenness or wealth, come alike from him. Diseases, storm, flood, blight, all these show that there is in God an awfulness, a sternness, an anger if need be—a power of destroying his own work, of altering his own order; but sunshine, fruitfulness, peace, and comfort, all show that love and mercy, beauty and order, are just as much attributes of his ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... he perceived me for the first time, and his face changed instantly into cold sternness. I saw him sweep one hasty glance around, as though he suspected that I might not be alone, and his hand fell once more upon his sword hilt, in posture ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... enthusiasm which had impelled them to emigrate, preserved all its force; and they met, with a firm unshaken spirit, the calamities which assailed them. Our admiration of their fortitude and of their principles, sustains, however, some diminution from observing the sternness with which they denied to others that civil and religious liberty which, through so many dangers and hardships, they sought for themselves. Their general court decreed that none should be admitted as freemen, or permitted to vote at elections, or be capable of being chosen as ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... cousin," replied Atterbury with strange sternness. "And, since the fellow is here in disguise, it ought to be our business to ask him some questions. Come ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... a slop dealer's by the precious Harry, a rope, a midnight flitting, a passage taken on board an English ship; the anchor weighed; and the lovers were free on the bounding main. A most refreshing story! I put on a sudden air of sternness, and shot a question at ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... the carriage broken!' cried Elfride. She was disappointed: Stephen doubly so. The vicar showed more warmth of temper than the accident seemed to demand, much to Stephen's uneasiness and rather to his surprise. He had not supposed so much latent sternness could co-exist with Mr. Swancourt's ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... reply; and it was delivered in a tone of unusual sternness; for it must be remembered that she entertained much anger against Sir Robert, for permitting the marriage to take place so manifestly against the inclination of his daughter. "No, sir, it is many nights since she has ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... she came, with that sweet composure in her face which results from a consciousness of doing generally just and generous things. I resumed, therefore, that sternness and displeasure which her entrance had almost dissipated. I took her hand; her charming eye (you know what an eye she has, Sir Simon) quivered at my overclouded aspect; and her lips, half drawn to a smile, trembling with apprehension of a countenance so changed from ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Thomas go to church? The Miss Underwoods did go to church very regularly, and thought much of the propriety and necessity of such Sunday exercises. They could remember that in their younger days their father always had been there with them. They could remember, indeed, that he, with something of sternness, would require from them punctuality and exactness in this duty. Now and again,—perhaps four times in the year,—he would go to the Rolls Chapel. So much they could learn, But they believed that beyond that his Sundays were kept holy ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... gently put aside, and a man, of remarkable garb and mien, advanced into the chamber, pausing as he beheld her dejected attitude, and gazing on her with a look on which pity and tenderness seemed to struggle against habitual severity and sternness. ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... morning officers with white flags appeared on the bastions; then, regiment by regiment, the troops marched in, two hundred men sleeping on the ground floor of the Jenkins' house, thirty thousand in all entering the city, but without disturbance, old La Marmora being a commander of a Roman sternness. ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... deep subterranean joy. He had had his way with the musk-ox in the Arctic Circle; with the white bear at the foot of Alaskan Hills; with the seal in Baffin's Bay; with the puma on the slope of the Pacific; and now at last he had come upon the trail of Labrador. Its sternness, its moodiness pleased him. He smiled at it the comprehending smile of the man who has fingered the nerves and the heart of men and things. As a traveller, wandering through a prison, looks upon its grim cells and dungeons with the eye ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not entered his head at all. Of course he knew van Hert by name; everyone did. And because of his reputation for anti-English views Carew both marvelled and at the same time gleaned a probable motive. And the result of his cogitations was that added sternness which always came into his face when he was ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... he said, assuming an unconscious dignity of mien and sternness of countenance, "I shall ask you some questions, sometime, which you may not think quite polite. And you must answer me: you understand. I'm bound to know ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... ever been, not only the first, but the only object of his public action: and with this patriotic loyalty there mingled something of a personal feeling, more akin to romance in its paternal tenderness than seemed consistent with the granite-hewn strength and sternness of his general character. A thorough soldier, with a soldier's contempt for fine-spun diplomacy, he had been led into many a blunder when acting as a chief of party and of State; but his absolute single-minded honesty had more than redeemed such errors; "integrity and uprightness ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... first leader the government of the Netherlands had passed through as many as five hands. The Duchess of Parma's indecision soon imparted itself to the cabinet of Madrid, which in a short time tried in succession almost every system of policy. Duke Alva's inflexible sternness, the mildness of his successor Requescens, Don John of Austria's insidious cunning, and the active and imperious mind of the Prince of Parma gave as many opposite directions to the war, while the plan of rebellion remained the same in a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... all others like himself; his dauntless spirit prompts him to engage in daring enterprises, and to insist on their being carried out. And this is certain, that where things hard to execute are ordered to be done, the order must be enforced with sternness, since, otherwise, it ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... His sternness offended Burrell, for the soldier was not the kind to discuss his affairs in this way, therefore he drew ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... smiled, but said with some sternness; "I really hope, Helen, that Briarwood will quell your too exuberant spirits to a degree. But you need not be afraid of Dr. Tellingham. He is the mildest old gentleman one ever saw. He is doubtless engaged upon ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... and faced her; his pale face working with emotion, but his voice subdued to calmness. Lady Kirton's last words halted, for his look startled even her in its resolute sternness. ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the anecdotes illustrating his sternness in enforcing city ordinances is the following: A police officer once reported to him the case of the occupants of a house who had neglected sweeping in front of their premises. He informed him that the family had consisted of a widowed mother and two daughters, but that the mother ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... her brother, roused for the first time into sternness, "this is more than nonsense. One word more of this, and you will cut me off from my ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kneeling man before her, and suddenly the wild look of hatred and unrelenting sternness died out ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... The sternness faded from Brilliana's gaze. She was not really angry with this overcareful gentleman; she would only have been grieved had he proved the man to serve her well. He was no more for such enterprises than your lap-dog for bull-baiting. Ridiculous in his finery, pitiful in his subterfuge, ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... here in her story and put her scarlet flower face in her hands, while Jed groaned and dropped his own face down upon his arm. The old judge's face took on a grim sternness, the jury stopped whittling and the face of every woman in the court room gazed upon the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the minor prophets of the Old Testament, a contemporary of Isaiah, Hosea, and Amos; his prophecies are in the same strain as those of Isaiah, and numerous are the coincidences traceable between them; though a great sternness of temper and severity of tone appears in his prophecies, a deep tenderness of heart from time to time reveals itself, and a winning persuasiveness (chap. vi. 8); chap. vii. 8-20 has been quoted as one of the sweetest ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... few moments by the entrance of Richard, come, as a matter of form, to ratify the treaty by the kiss of peace. The King, without speaking, gave it with rigid sternness of countenance; but Richard, as he turned away, heard him mutter, "May I but live to be revenged on thee!" and when he was gone, the King burst out into such horrible imprecations against his two sons, that the faithful Geoffrey of Lincoln and the clergy of Canterbury, who ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the Armenians cannot boast of as vast a literature as the Persians, their one-time conquerors, but that which remains of purely Armenian prose, folk-lore, and poetry tells us of a poetic race, gifted with imaginative fire, sternness of will, and persistency of adherence to old ideas, a race that in proportion to their limited production in letters can ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... farmer looking down the lane in his turn, bearing his afflictions with a patient sternness that may have been born of watching his wife's serenity. There was a half-withered rose lying within his reach. Some days nobody came up the lane, and the wild birds that ventured near the house ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... this favourable mistake to a habit of fatness, which spread through a short, squab stature; and a round, plump, fresh coloured face gave him greatly the look of a Bacchus, had not an air of austerity, not to say sternness, very unsuitable even to his shape of face, dashed that character of joy, necessary to complete the resemblance. His dress was extremely neat, but plain, and far inferior to the ample fortune he was in full possession of; ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... village, and was of a wild and reckless character. This was, however, partly his father's fault, who never gave him any kind and friendly instruction, and always treated him with a great degree of sternness and severity. ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... sailed back from New York with a company of American officers; they consisted in the main of trained airmen, Navy experts and engineers. Before my departure the extraordinary sternness of America, her keenness to rival her allies in self-denial, her willing mobilisation of all her resources, had confirmed my optimism gained in the trenches, that the Allies must win; the mere thought ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... silence, but not a tumbler was lifted. Insult to the host, or insult to conviction? was the thought which held each guest; when quick into the breach stepped Mr. Grundy. With one palm pressed upon the rim of his tumbler, and with head proudly lifted in a half defiant sternness, wholly belying the careless voice in which he offered the compromise, "No absent heroes," said he. "In lieu of that I offer Andrew Jackson! the future President of the United States of America." It was said in jest, yet not one but understood that Mr. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... in the streets. She comforted herself, however, with the reflection, that seeing he would drink, he drank with no bad companions—drank at all events where what natural wickedness might be in them, was suppressed by the sternness of her rule. Were he to leave her fold—for a fold in very truth, and not a sty, it appeared to her—and wander away to Jock Thamson's or Jeemie Deuk's, he would be drawn into loud and indecorous talk, probably into quarrel ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... listened, and her beautiful face grew anxious, for the sternness of her husband's voice, in answer to those feeble plaints, gave little hopes of conciliation. Directly Mellen came through the boudoir and sat down on a couch near his wife, shading his face with one hand, not wishing her to see how much he was disturbed. Elizabeth ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... was truly beautiful in face and person, twenty-two years of age, full and finely formed, and dressed always with the most studied neatness. She was, in truth, a seductive creature. She made an instantaneous impression on my senses. There was, however, somewhat of a sternness of expression, and a dignity of carriage, which caused at once to fear and respect her. Of course, at first, all went smoothly enough, and seeing that mamma treated me precisely as she did my sisters, I came to be regarded as quite a child by Miss Evelyn. She found that she had to ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... horror, even the earnest Duerer and Botticelli treating them with a grotesqueness which shows how far they were from any conviction of their reality. Signorelli is the only painter of the Renaissance I can recall who has succeeded in giving a savage sternness, a formidable brutishness to his fiends, which is very far from grotesque, but is really appalling. These ferocious creatures are of all colours, slate-blue, crude purple, heavy green, livid mauve—sometimes of all these poisonous-looking colours fading ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... of nature, the climate and the scenery, exert an appreciable and an acknowledged influence on the mental characteristics of a people. The sprightliness and vivacity of the Frank, the impetuosity of the Arab, the immobility of the Russ, the rugged sternness of the Scot, the repose and dreaminess of the Hindoo are largely due to the country in which they dwell, the air they breathe, the food they eat, and the landscapes and skies they daily look upon. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... become so unpopular in American literature? Is it because she is, after all, just what that loftiest if not most impeccable of Puritans called her, stern daughter of the voice of God? Is there to be no more sternness in our morals now we understand their psychology, no voice commanding us to do this or not to do that because there is a gulf set between worth and worthlessness? Is it true that because we are not to be damned for playing golf on Sunday, nothing can damn us? That because the rock-ribbed Vermont ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... she was in the breakfast-room, ministering to the little ones clustering around her. The father's frown had lost its accustomed sternness, as he stood regarding his eldest child. A gentle, sympathetic light was in his eyes as they rested on the sweet face grown older, much, in those days of anxious care. How matronly she looked! So patiently listening to, and answering every wish ...
— Edna's Sacrifice and Other Stories - Edna's Sacrifice; Who Was the Thief?; The Ghost; The Two Brothers; and What He Left • Frances Henshaw Baden
... and he had expended all his sternness, but his caution remained. With a significant glance toward his prisoner, the ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... it happened, scarcely had Phoebe's eyes rested again on the judge's countenance than all its ugly sternness vanished, and she found herself almost overpowered by the warm benevolence of his look. But the fantasy would not quit her that the original Puritan, of whom she had heard so many sombre traditions, had now stepped ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... As long as I live you shall have one sincere friend; do not be afraid to tell anything wrong you have done; ten to one if I have not done the same thing. I am not perfection, and if it is necessary to sin in order to have sympathy, I am glad I have committed sin enough to have sympathy. The sternness of perfection I do not want. I am going to live so that my children can come to my grave and truthfully say, "He who sleeps here never gave us one moment of pain." Whether you call that religion or infidelity, suit yourselves; ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... trying to think what such an one was thinking of, or what he were fit for. Sometimes he caught the eye of one or other, and then that kindly smile spread over his face, but faded off it into the sternness and sadness of a man who has heavy and great thoughts hanging about him. But when John Ball first mounted the steps of the cross a lad at some one's bidding had run off to stop the ringers, and so presently the voice of the bells fell dead, ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... and Miss Edgeworth was in doubt whether it would be becoming under the circumstances to laugh or to cry, so she made no speech in reply. She said afterwards to Mrs. Martin, "Mr. Philip must have been a most severe master; I can see sternness on his brow." Moreover, she was secretly aware that she did not deserve his compliments, and that her learning was limited, especially in arithmetic; she had often to blame the figures for not adding up correctly. ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... imaginative, exuberant, unrestrained, and, like some of the greatest actors on the stage of human affairs, he had associated his own personality with the prevalence of right ideas and good influences. In Turgot, on the other hand, we discern something of the isolation, the sternness, the disdainful melancholy of Tacitus. He even rises out of the eager, bustling, shrill-tongued crowd of the Voltairean age with some of that austere moral indignation and haughty astonishment with which Dante had watched the stubborn ways of men centuries before. On one side Turgot ...
— Burke • John Morley
... benefactors of mankind the figure of Calvin is perhaps the least attractive. He was, so to speak, the constitutional lawyer of the Reformation, with vision as clear, with head as cool, with soul as dry, as any old solicitor in rusty black that ever dwelt in chambers in Lincoln's Inn. His sternness was that of the judge who dooms a criminal to the gallows. His theology had much in it that is in striking harmony with modern scientific philosophy, and much in it, too, that the descendants of his Puritan converts have learned to loathe ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... more important works of fifteenth century sculpture, will perhaps lead us to think that, as the sculpture of Antiquity, in its superb idealism, its devotion to the perfect line and curve of beauty, achieved the highest that mere colourless art can achieve—thanks to the very purity, sternness, and narrowness of its sculpturesque feeling—so also, perhaps, modern sculpture, should it ever re-arise, must be a continuation of the tendencies of the Renaissance, must be the humbler sister of painting, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... sternness inflexible as steel in the brief sentence. Under it for an instant, though not visibly, Baroni flinched; and a fear of the man he accused smote him, more deep, more keen than that with which the sweeping might of the Seraph's fury had moved him. He knew ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the kneeling man before her, and suddenly the wild look of hatred and unrelenting sternness died out of ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... hear to your going; no more would mother; and it would be money wasted besides," said Reuben, with sternness unusual for him. ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Lillian, forgot everything but the strange aspect of the man before her, and the words to which she listened like a statue. Still standing pale and steady, Paul spoke rapidly, while his eyes were full of mingled sternness, ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... had been carried after he had been shot. The sun had set, and a soft twilight was filling the room, but the light which still came in at the window fell full on Paul. Mr. Anketell, entering softly, saw the expression on the boy's face, the look in his eyes, and his heart ached, and all his sternness vanished. "My boy," he said, oh, so tenderly, "tell me what it is that is troubling you; tell me all about it, I know there is something. Can't you bring yourself to trust me not to be hard ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... were so constantly exposed occurred this year, carrying away the dikes, and destroying lives and properly to a considerable amount. In Friesland alone twenty thousand men were victims to this calamity. But no suffering could affect the inflexible sternness of the duke of Alva; and to such excess did he carry his persecution that Philip himself began to be discontented, and thought his representative was overstepping the bounds of delegated tyranny. He even reproached ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... husband, conversing eagerly with the sovereign, in some degree startled her back to the present scene. His cheek was flushed with exercise and excitement; his large dark eyes glittering, and a sunny smile robbing his mouth of its wonted expression of sternness. On passing his mansion he looked eagerly up, and with proud and joyous greeting doffed his velvet cap, and bowed with as earnest reverence as if he had still to seek and win her. The chivalry of Don Ferdinand Morales was proved, yet ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... up the stairs as Patricia pinned on her hat and hurried away for her singing lesson, and only the sternness which Tancredi showed toward late-comers kept her from lingering to hear ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... everything. After we have been used to the sight of black objects, the terror abates, and the smoothness and glossiness, or some agreeable accident of bodies so colored, softens in some measure the horror and sternness of their original nature; yet the nature of the original impression still continues. Black will always have something melancholy in it, because the sensory will always find the change to it from other colors too violent; or if it occupy the whole compass of the sight, it will then ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... eyes were fixed on Paris. The long, thin, lamb-like face was still further elongated, there was a sternness on its features, a grey shadow falling from its contracted brows. Thus even in death she retained the livid expression of a jealous woman. The doll, with its head flung back, and its hair dishevelled, seemed to lie dead ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... blaze. Then, as his glance rested upon the stranger's starved, almost ashen face—it seemed to be gradually growing livid—the sternness of his ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... through this earthly life, and stand on the other side, and can look back on the path over which we have been led, it will appear that we have found our best blessings where we thought the way was most dreary and desolate. We shall see then that what seemed sternness and severity in Christ was really truest ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... tremendous ceremony into the magistrate's study and directed to stand right opposite the light, while Mr. Landale installed himself in an arm-chair with a blood-curdling air of judicial sternness, Johnny Shearman, at most times as dare-devil a pickle of a boy as ever ran, but now reduced to a state of mental and physical jelly, underwent a terrible cross-examination. It was comparatively little that he had to say, and ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... boy! he was not born for business"; a third, with light auburn hair, and laughing tawny eyes, has all the lively humor, and activity, and gaiety of the South; while the fourth, he of the tawny red hair and fan-shaped beard, is rough as a communist, with his portentous cravat, his sternness, his dignity, ...
— Gaudissart II • Honore de Balzac
... about, and held his hat in his hand, the sun touching his tanned cheeks, and flecking the long, light-colored hair. He looked strong and manly in his tightly buttoned jacket, a knife at his belt, a rifle grasped within one hand. There was a sternness to his face too, although it lit up in a smile, as the searching eyes caught glimpse of my white dress in the cool shade of the grape arbor. Hat still in hand he came toward me, but I only bent the lower, as though I ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... salon, and his sombre eyes passed from the Marquis to Mademoiselle. As they rested upon her some of the sternness seemed to fade from their glance. He found in her a change almost as great as that which she had found in him. The lighthearted, laughing girl of nineteen, who had scorned his proffered love when he had wooed her that April morning to such disastrous purpose, was now ripened into a stately ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... weep: for not only do my thoughts on subjects connected with the chief interests of man daily, nay hourly, descend a thousand fathoms "too deep for tears;" not only does the sternness of my habits of thought present an antagonism to the feelings which prompt tears—wanting of necessity to those who, being protected usually by their levity from any tendency to meditative sorrow, ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... could not be done. She prayed and begged, and lay upon his bosom imploring him to spare her this utter degradation; but now that the proposal had been fairly made, that he had got her to discuss the plan, his usual sternness returned; and at last he told her, somewhat roughly, that if she would not come with him in the manner he proposed, he would leave her ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... breath steamed out in the frosty entry. "I guess you had better be a little careful about getting him excited," he said at last, evasively. "You had better get along as easy as you can with him." The doctor's manner implied more than his words; he had his own opinion of Deborah Thayer's sternness of rule, and he had sympathy ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I fancy I hear the swish of the warrior's sabre. The peasant has vanished or else gapes through the open window while his master goes through the paces of a courtlier dance. We encounter sequential chords of the seventh, and their use, rhythmically framed as they are, gives a line of sternness to the dance. Niecks thinks that the second Mazurka might be called The Request, so pathetic, playful and persuasive is it. It is in E minor and has a plaintive, appealing quality. The G major part is very pretty. In the ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... marriage ceremony between them was there performed. He thought that Melissa appeared as she had done in her most fortunate and sprightly days, before the darts of adversity, and the thorns of affliction, had wounded her heart. Her father seemed to be divested of all his awful sternness, and gave her to Alonzo with cheerful freedom. He awoke, and the horrors of his former dream were dissipated by the happy influences ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... memory of this that kept the grave shadow of a smile on the father's lips for all the sternness of his eyes. He never turned his head, for, looking straight forward, he could conjure up the laughing vision; but when he glanced to the empty saddle he heard once more the last unlucky shot fired from the train as they raced ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... till it is formally announced," said he maliciously, still looking at her, though few save himself could have failed to be abashed by the firm, severe expression of her dark eyes, and lips compressed into all the sternness ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... be,' said I with some sternness. 'Take the tiller and—yes, you may hold on to it with some ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Rowley out, and locked the door behind him. Then he sat down in an armchair on one side of the fire, and looked at me with uncompromising sternness. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Assistant walked on, he began to meet persons coming out of their houses, in obedience to the invitation. There was the staid citizen, whose sobriety bordered on sternness, with hair closely cropped to avoid the "unloveliness of love-locks," covered with a large flapped peaked hat, and arrayed in broad white band and sad-colored garments, on whose arm leaned his wife, or walked independently ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... refused the Emperor, when he came within their walls, bread, water, salt and fire; they had driven him forth the city groaning and trembling, and they now condemned the conspirators to death. Guardians of the town founded by Remus long ago, they copied the sternness of the first Consuls of Rome. But their city, which went clad in silk and cloth-of-gold, was ever ready to slip betwixt their fingers, like a lascivious, false-hearted wanton; and fear and anxiety ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... well-advertised Pharaoh, Ramases; a square, deep jaw; and an aquiline nose that gave the final touch of power. For the power undeniably was there, and while the general effect had grimness in it, there was neither harshness nor any forbidding touch about it. There was an implacable sternness in the set of lips and jaw, and, most curious of all, the eyelids over the steady eyes of black were level as a ruler. This level framing made the woman's stare remarkable beyond description. Henriot thought of an idol carved in stone, stone hard and black, with eyes that stared across ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... now, tell me the exact truth," and Adam Adams put as much of sternness as possible ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... Further: feeble, expectative and vacillating minds, deprived of the faculty to embrace in all its depth and extension the task before them,—such minds cannot have a clear purpose, nor the firm perception of ways and means leading to the aim, and still less have they the sternness of conviction so necessary for men dealing with such mighty events, on which depend the life and death of a society. Such men hesitate, postpone, bias and deviate from the straight way. Such men believe themselves in the way to truth, when they are ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... manifest itself in turbulent and nearly mutinous broils. About twenty in number, they collected quickly; and, although obliged to dispense with their fire-arms in such an amusement, there was a sternness, in the visage of each of the whiskered worthies, that showed how readily he could appeal to the bayonet that was suspended from his shoulder, should need demand it. Their Commander himself withdrew, with the rest of the officers to the poop, in order that no incumbrance might ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... entirely; her little ambitious projects should be wholly thrown aside, that no effort might be spared for the accomplishment of her one great duty. Tenderness and sympathy and example should do their utmost, but she would not spoil her boy: there should be sternness if it were needed; and she felt that this would try her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... incivility displacency^. disrespect &c 929; procacity^, impudence: barbarism, barbarity; misbehavior, brutality, blackguardism^, conduct unbecoming a gentleman, grossierete, brusquerie^; vulgarity, &c 851. churlishness &c adj.; spinosity^, perversity; moroseness &c (sullenness) 901.1. sternness &c adj.; austerity; moodishness^, captiousness &c 901; cynicism; tartness &c adj.; acrimony, acerbity, virulence, asperity. scowl, black looks, frown; short answer, rebuff; hard words, contumely; unparliamentary language, personality. bear, bruin, brute, blackguard, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and a flower-like delicacy of temperament, the yearning desire to be of some service in the world, coupled with the curious, critical introspection which marks every sensitive and refined nature and paralyzes action, overcast his life and manner to the common eye with pensiveness and even sternness. He wrote verses in which his heart seems to exhale in a sigh of sadness. But he was not in the least a sentimentalist. The womanly grace of temperament merely enhanced the unusual manliness of his character ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... by the precious Harry, a rope, a midnight flitting, a passage taken on board an English ship; the anchor weighed; and the lovers were free on the bounding main. A most refreshing story! I put on a sudden air of sternness, and shot a question ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... spoke she looked an embodiment of fair youth and innocent pleasure, and her mother, with a mother's admiration and sympathy in her heart, gave her a lingering glance before she put on a little sternness, and said, "My child, I don't like to hear you talk in that light way. Your heart's desires, I trust, are set upon better things, ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... Katie did not notice. She was looking with a passionate sternness off at New York. "Let anything be touched," she spoke it with deep feeling. "I say nothing's too precious to be touched—if touching it can ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... away and take your monstrosity with you," said the mother, pushing away her daughter with pretended sternness, and turning to the visitor she added: "She is my ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... disappointed: Stephen doubly so. The vicar showed more warmth of temper than the accident seemed to demand, much to Stephen's uneasiness and rather to his surprise. He had not supposed so much latent sternness could co-exist with Mr. Swancourt's frankness ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... admiration. The old woman looked sternly at her for a moment. Then she relented, and her hand stole among the girl's clustering curls. The little burst of temper gave way to a semi-humorous look of feigned sternness. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... nibbling the flowers on our grave. Do you regret your father, that old tyrant who made your first years wretched? How can you be sure that your children will love you? The very care you take of their education, your precautions for their happiness, your necessary sternness will lessen their affection. Children love a weak or a prodigal father, whom they will despise in after years. You'll live betwixt fear and contempt. No man is a good head of a family merely because he wants to be. Look round on ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... extraordinary goodness to him. He not only remembered, but did many acts of kindness to his early friends, of which more than one touching anecdote is related. Such traits of sensibility, gleaming through the natural austerity and sternness of a disposition like his, like light breaking through a dark cloud, affect us the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... making any reply, the fact being that several individuals in high trust among these Whiteboys were occasionally employed to sound suspected persons, in order to test their sincerity. For about half a minute he spoke not; but at length he said, with something like sternness— ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... of that melancholy town called Geneva, where, only ten years ago, a man said, pointing to a porte-cochere in the upper town, the first ever built there: "By that door luxury has invaded Geneva." Calvin gave birth, by the sternness of his doctrines and his executions, to that form of hypocritical sentiment called "cant."[*] According to those who practice it, good morals consist in renouncing the arts and the charms of life, in eating ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... Ecclesiastical Court, he had been a quarrelsome disputant rather than a statesman. His parsimony went to the extreme of meanness; his avarice was insatiable and restless. So long as he connived at smuggling, he reaped a harvest in that way; when Grenville's sternness inspired alarm, it was his study to make the most money out of forfeitures and penalties. Professing to respect the Charter, he was unwearied in zeal for its subversion; declaring his opposition to taxation by Parliament, he urged it with all his power. Asserting most solemnly that he had ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... in the sternness of that low lady-like voice, and of that dark deep eye, that terrified Kate more than the brightest flash of lightning: and it was well for her that the habit of truth was too much fixed for falsehood or shuffling ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wondered whose the fault could be? And then, according to his habit, he thought of the pianist. Of course, it was the fault of the pianist. And, while continuing to sing, he slowly turned and gazed with sternness at the pianist. The audience must not be allowed to be under any misapprehension as to the identity of the culprit. Unfortunately, Emanuel, wrapped up, like the artist he was, in his performance, had himself ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... Nearly all the Gauls are of a lofty stature, fair, and of ruddy complexion; terrible from the sternness of their eyes, very quarrelsome, and of great pride and insolence. A whole troop of foreigners would not be able to withstand a single Gaul if he called his wife to his assistance, who is usually very strong, and with blue eyes; especially when, swelling her neck, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Draining the natural juices that were spread Around his vitals; in his arid jaws Set flame upon his tongue: his wearied limbs No sweat bedewed; dried up, the fount of tears Fled from his eyelids. Tortured by the fire Nor Cato's sternness, nor of his sacred charge The honour could withhold him; but he dared To dash his standard down, and through the plains Raging, to seek for water that might slake The fatal venom thirsting at his heart. Plunge him in Tanais, in Rhone and Po, Pour on his burning ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... except under torture, but that while suffering the purifying actions of the flames of hell they so realized the beauty of holiness that they submitted willingly to their agony and praised God for the sternness of his judgment. This poem gave me decided physical pleasure, yet I know that if my hand were held in a fire for five minutes I should feel nothing but the pain of the burning. To get the feeling of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a sofa, and, having summoned his steward, ordered him to fill me out a glass of port wine. He uttered not a word till I had drunk it; and then, turning to me, with a look in which I could read nothing of sternness, he said— ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... a grimmer side to this Spartan discipline, designed to cultivate a cold sternness never to be relaxed during youth, except in the screened intimacy of the home. The boys were inured to sights of blood. They were taken to witness executions; they were expected to display no emotion; and they were ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... goin'," he said with the greatest coolness, but at the same time with equal sternness, "to bore a hole ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... anxious about you at your house," Don Silverio said with some sternness. "Is it well to ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... what I'm going to do with you, eh, you young rascal?" he asked him, with a chuckle which took all the sternness out of his threatening tones. "Can ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... true patience, whatever the cause of its sufferings, brings with it a blessed sense of the faithful sternness, the fruitful lovingness of God, who will not let even the feeblest of sinners be satisfied with less than he can attain, in whose hands the punishment, like fire, runs swiftly and agonisingly to and fro, consuming the baser elements of ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... as they advanced towards the enemy. The king had given orders to march straight on Lutzen. "He animated his men to the fight," says Richelieu, "with words that he had at command, whilst Wallenstein, by his mere presence and the sternness of his silence, seemed to let his men understand that, as he had been wont to do, he would reward them or chastise them, according as they did well or ill on ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... was most galling to Spanish pride. Spinola, as a son of Italy, and not inspired by the fervent hatred to Protestantism which was indigenous to the other peninsula, steadily resisted those arguments. None knew better than he the sternness of the stuff out of which that republic was made, and he felt that now or never was the time to treat, even as, five years before, 'jam ant nunquam' had been inscribed on his banner outside Ostend. But he protested that his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... good Brother went to take leave of his fair Penitent, and upbraided her with more than usual sternness for living a dissolute life. He exhorted her urgently to repent and pressed her to wear a hair-shirt next her skin,—an incomparable remedy against naughty cravings and a sovran medicine for natures over prone to ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... towards Iberia before it turned to Italy, which gave Marius time to discipline the bodies of his men and to confirm their courage; and what was most of all, it gave the soldiers an opportunity of knowing what kind of a man their general was. For the first impression created by his sternness and by his inexorable severity in punishing, was changed into an opinion of the justice and utility of his discipline when they had been trained to avoid all cause of offence and all breach of order; and the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... introduced to her she was both daunted and disappointed; the gravity, amounting almost to sternness, with which Mrs. Fisher received her, and explained to her the duties she was expected to perform, awed in the first place, and mortified in the second. The establishment of this fashionable modiste, with which Myra had associated nothing but laces and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the war which daily seems more inevitable, declared that the situation may yet be saved unless some overt act occurs." At the same time the device showed a three-dimensional picture of the planetary president, impressive, dominating, stern with a sternness that could mean ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... suppose, to disgust me; to tire me out; to make me withdraw from the debate, and give him the opportunity of saying he had put me to flight. He was mistaken. I kept my ground. And I kept my temper. And I kept my gravity. I rebuked him at times with becoming sternness, and then went on with my task. It is probable that I spoke more strongly against the Bible, and that I said harder things against the church and the ministry, than I should have done, if he had ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... was sternness itself so far as the great race was concerned. Not one of the juvenile Danbys dared to allude to it in his august presence. Only on one occasion did he unbend, and that was when little Fandy ventured to ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... James Lee. The lads under his charge were a rude, rough, unruly set, quick, like their elders, to quarrel, and to quarrel fiercely, even to the drawing of sword or dagger. But there was a cold, iron sternness about the grim old man that quelled them, as the trainer with a lash of steel might quell a den of young wolves. The apartments in which he was lodged, with his clerk, were next in the dormitory of the lads, and even in the midst of the ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... said with brief sternness. "Either do my will and obey me, or thou wilt remain a close prisoner till thou hast come to thy senses. My guests shall not be insulted by thy forward tongue. Barbarous and wild as the English love to call us, they shall find that Res Vychan is not ignorant of those laws which govern the world ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... however, were so marked by prominent characteristics, which appear in all likenesses of him, that a stranger could not be mistaken in the man; he was remarkably dignified in his manners, and had an air of benignity over his features which his visitant did not expect, being rather prepared for sternness of countenance.... his smile was extraordinarily attractive. It was observed to me that there was an expression in Washington's face that no painter had succeeded in taking. It struck me no man could be better formed for command. A stature of six feet, a robust, but well-proportioned frame, ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... his outburst, the sight of his fine face convulsed with uttermost agony and repentance, worked a sudden revulsion in Katherine's heart. All her bitterness, her momentary sternness, rushed out of her, and there she was, quivering all over, hot tears in her eyes, gripping the hands of ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... which to the young seems always to betoken the futility of, and to warn against the folly of, struggle against what must be; yet they were kind eyes, and humourous, with many of the small lines of laughter at their corners. Reading the eyes and mouth together one perceived gentleness and sternness to be well matched, working to any given end in amiable and effective compromise. "Uncle Peter" he had long been called by the public that knew him, and his own grandchildren had come to call him by the same term, finding him too young ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season."[353] Another instance of his generous and tender feelings toward his nation is seen in his behavior when the people made the golden calf. First, his anger broke out against them, and all the sternness of the lawgiver appeared in his command to the people to cut down their idolatrous brethren; then the bitter tide of anger withdrew, and that of tenderness took its place, and he returned into the mountain to ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... young girl who seeks her destiny. She also has her "wooing moods," during which, on small provocation, she "hastily pens a few lines"—of verse such as no young lady's diary should be without. She has, moreover, her intervals of sternness, when she boxes ears; now in case of her father, unfilially, and anon in more righteous conflict with her step-mother's wicked lover. But her demonstrations do not usually take the brief form of blows, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... seem to be uncouth and of the earth; they are children of Nature who have been so long in contact with the elements and soil they seem to partake of the sternness of the landscape quite as much as the sturdy oaks tried by the storms and stress of unnumbered days of exposure. His Shepherdess is also worth considering and represents his aim in art." These are ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... Mr. Felix Sweetsir," Moody answered, with a sudden sternness of tone, and a sudden coldness of ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... John Knox had an audience with Mary, who, hearing of a furious sermon he had preached against the Mass on the previous Sunday in St. Giles's Church, thought that a personal interview would mitigate his sternness. The Queen took him to task for his book entitled The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regimen of Women, and his intolerance towards every one who differed from him in opinion, and further requested him to obey the precepts of the Scriptures, a copy of which she ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... surprise, and came deliberately towards the window. "Why do you call me?" he said, with a sternness that took her completely unawares, his face being now pale. "Is it not enough that you see me here moiling and muddling for my daily bread while you are sitting there in your success, that you can't refrain from opening old wounds by calling out ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
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