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More "Dour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... anywheres, except to church—they never miss that—and nobody goes there. There's just old Thomas, and his sister Janet, and a niece of theirs, and this here Neil we've been talking about. They're a queer, dour, cranky lot, and I WILL say it, Mother. There, give your old man a cup of tea and never mind the way his tongue runs on. Speaking of tea, do you know Mrs. Adam Palmer and Mrs. Jim Martin took tea together at Foster Reid's last ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... following his unexpected illness brought no relief to the bishop, at all events to outward seeming, for he was paler and more haggard than ever in looks, and as dour as a bear in manner. With Mrs Pendle he strove to be his usual cheerful self, but with small success, as occasionally he would steal an anxious look at her, and heave deep sighs expressive of much inward trouble. All this was noted by Cargrim, who carefully strove, by sympathetic looks and dexterous ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... miserably back and forth between the two, wondering wildly what they would say if he turned the whole thing down. His eyes lit on the dour, heavy Number One, and inwardly he shook his head. No. There was no question about that. You didn't turn down Zoran Jankez. He looked at Aleksander Kardelj, and in spite of the other's smiling face, he decided you didn't turn down ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... affairs. It was a wild, bold land he traversed, and thinly peopled; at pains to avoid the larger towns, he sought by choice the loneliest paths that looped its quiet hills; such as passed the time of day with him were few and for the most part peasants, a dull, dour lot, taciturn to a degree that pleased him well. So that he soon forgot to be forever alert for the crack of an ambushed pistol or the pattering footfalls of an assassin ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... on their side, accustomed to the ready submission of all the peoples under their sway, could not understand or tolerate the Jews. To them this people with its dour manners, its refusal to participate in the religious ideas, the social life, and the pleasures of its neighbors, its eruptions of passion and violence on account of abstract ideas, and its rigid exclusion of the insignia of Roman majesty from the capital, seemed the ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... stirring behind him. Then Aletha climbed to the exit port and swung out. Bordman heard a dour muttering from the engineer. Then he saw her greeting her cousin. She had slipped out of the conventionalized Amerind outfit to which Bordman was accustomed. Now she was clad as Anglo-Saxon girls dressed for beaches ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... feather disappeared, The dowdy hood again was donned, And in the gloom the fair one neared Her home and husband dour, who conned ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... William Roper had come. Mr. Manley bade him bring him to him at a quarter-past. He felt that suspense would make William Roper malleable, and he intended to hammer him. At thirteen minutes past nine he composed his face into a dour truculence, an expression to which the heavy conformation of the lower part lent ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... views, gay and winsome though she was, it was not long before Mary was at issue with her dour Protestant subjects and their spokesman, John Knox. It was hoped by her brother, James Stuart (Murray), and Secretary Lethington that a modus vivendi might be found by persuading Elizabeth to secure to Mary the English succession in case she herself ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... after his marriage, Bianca Buonaventuri was introduced at Court as Bianca Cappello. The young Duchess of course was furious, and pointedly refused all intercourse with her rival. Bianca, on the other hand, laid herself out to propitiate the dour Austrian princess and to stifle slander. Still a mere girl, she was in full command of all the moves in woman's strategy. There was no school like that of Venice for the display of tact and fascination. To be sure, she was living in a crystal ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... do wi' 'im i' an Edinburgh lodgin' the nicht. The auld wifie I lodge wi' is dour by the ordinar', an' wadna bide 'is blatterin'. I couldna get 'im past 'er auld een, an' thae terriers are aye barkin' aboot ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... among the solid burghers of Glasgow a large "following" of a very serious kind, douce, dour men, whose strongly-marked features looked as if they had been chiselled out of their native granite—men who settled themselves with a grave kind of enjoyment to listen to a full hour's sermon, and who watched every point their minister made with a critical acumen ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... went for the first time on the Circuit as Advocate-depute, Armstrong of Sorbie inquired of Lord Minto in a whisper "What long black, dour-looking Chiel" that was that ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... trample upon, tread down upon, trample down upon; crush under an iron heel, ride roughshod over; rivet the yoke; hold a tight hand, keep a tight hand; force down the throat; coerce &c. 744; give no quarter &c. (pitiless) 914a. Adj. severe; strict, hard, harsh, dour, rigid, stiff, stern, rigorous, uncompromising, exacting, exigent, exigeant[obs3], inexorable, inflexible, obdurate, austere, hard-headed, hard-nosed, hard-shell [U.S.], relentless, Spartan, Draconian, stringent, strait-laced, searching, unsparing, iron- handed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... has since rollit ower me, and I am now but a dour carle, whose auld pow the roll o' time hath blanched; my bonnie Janet is gone to her last hame, lang syne, my bairns hae a' fa'en kemping for their king and country, and I ainly am left like a withered auld trunk, waiting heaven's gude time when I sall ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... be angry, but are you quite sure you really care, and is it wise to care? We are so very different. You are so very English, and I, in spite of a pink and fluffy exterior, am at heart as bitter and dour and prejudiced as any Covenanter that ever whined a psalm. My mind could never have anything but a Scots accent. You are reserved, and rather cold; I am expansive to a fault. You are terrifyingly clever; my intelligence is of the feeblest. You have a refined sense of humour; ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... it was to see, A fecht baith fell an' dour, sirs, For ere the tuilzie weel began The glen ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... these folk, one and all, look fat and prosperous, their mien is dour, and they speak reluctantly, and through their teeth. Possibly this is because they are over-weary with toil. However that may be, the full-fed country people of the region laugh but ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... now an unhung and travelling basket, heavy, iron-ribbed, anciently mossy, oozy of slime, fell with neat exactitude upon the bald, bare cranium of Mr. Alastair Kenneth MacIlwraith, head gardener, and dour, irascible child and ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... was in anything but the mood for joking, yet a certain dour humour in the jest caught his fancy and persuaded him against his ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... sister-in-law: Joseph and I joined at an unsociable meal, seasoned with reproofs on one side and sauciness on the other. His cake and cheese remained on the table all night for the fairies. He managed to continue work till nine o'clock, and then marched dumb and dour to his chamber. Cathy sat up late, having a world of things to order for the reception of her new friends: she came into the kitchen once to speak to her old one; but he was gone, and she only stayed to ask what was the matter with him, and then went back. In the morning ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... with my back to the wall, staring blankly at the trembling landlord, who was ready at any moment to foam at the mouth, and at the dour landlady, who was quite capable of keeping him in order, there came in one of those dark, showy Italian girls with a man. She wore a blouse and skirt, and no hat. Her hair was perfectly dressed. It was really Italy. The man ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... catch, served to keep them both occupied—Hazel as much as he, for she went out with him on all but the hardest trips. So that their isolation in the hushed, white world where the frost ruled with an iron hand had not so far become oppressive. They were too busy to develop that dour affliction of the spirit which loneliness and idleness breed through the long winters ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... as he had opened the dour, the king looked upon the table, and cried with a loud voice, Great art thou, O Bel, and with thee is no ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... was accepted, but it was obvious that this time their attitude towards the man who welcomed them was one of declared and pronounced hostility. Graveling was there, with sullen, evil face. He made no attempt to shake hands with Maraton, and he sat at the table provided for them with folded arms and dour, uncompromising aspect. Dale came late and he, too, greeted Maraton with bluff unfriendliness. Borden's attitude was non-committal. Weavel shook hands, but his frown and manner were portentous. Culvain, the diplomat of the party, was quiet and reserved. David Ross alone had never lost his attitude ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... plaint of the wind on the moor, Crying at dawning, and crying at shut of the day, And the call of the gulls that is eerie and dreary and dour, And the sound of the surge as it breaks on ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... to the doing of it himself, he climbed the stair in the Crow's Nest, meaning to snatch a little sleep before the labors and hazards of a new day should claim him. But McCloskey, the dour-faced, was waiting for him in the upper corridor—with ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... The dour fugitives on the other side of the stream have a legend that those who safely cross the "Field of Blood"—so they call the anemone-sprinkled land beyond—without so much as crushing a flower may claim ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... blessings of civilisation; and how, by the intervention of a terrible old woman, the queen of the tribe, this momentary weakness was overcome. My other choice, the last tale in the collection (and the only one contributed by Miss MARY FINDLATER), is a dour little comedy of the regeneration, through poverty and hard work, of two underemployed and unpleasant elderly ladies. A restful book, such as will keep no one awake at nights, but will give pleasure to all who ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... time he came into the room where Robert sat, and began once more to question him. But Robert was still obdurate, and stolidly kept silent. Mr. Clapper recognized at once that this was a clear case of a dour nature in the wrong. It needed correction, and that of a severe kind. That spirit he felt must be broken, or there would be trouble ahead in after years for Robert Sinclair. Mr. Clapper was determined ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... no longer mud-caked and dour. A very smart figure is this Private Dowey, and he winks engagingly at the visitors, like one who knows that for jolly company you cannot easily beat charwomen. The pleasantries that he and they have exchanged this week! The sauce he has given ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... Procyon's rising was just tinting the windows of Jeff's cottage when he aligned and activated his little communicator on his breakfast table. Its three-inch screen lighted to signal and a dour and disappointed Consul Satterfield looked at him. Behind Satterfield, foreshortened to gnomishness by the pickup, lurked Dr. Hermann, Earth ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... say? She's gone; gone where neither you nor that dour-faced deevil that befooled us all will find her soon, I promise you, Dickie Jennifer!" he snapped; and I gave them my back and stumbled blindly to the door, making sure his next word would tell my poor wronged lad all that he ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... the way it'll be. The McRaes don't cry back on a bargain," the dour old buffalo-hunter said. "But first we'll look at this young man's arm. Get water and ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... intention of neglecting its own duty in the premises: the Englisher was not to be let off while memories of Bruce and Bannockburn lived in Scottish hearts. Which way he turned that day and in the months that followed he met dour faces. Excepting Cap'en Donald McKay, a retired mariner, whose native granite had been somewhat disintegrated by exposure to other climates, no man gave him a word;—this, of course, without counting Neil McNab, who called on Timmins three times a week to offer ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... aware of that. And if I have held a feeling toward Donald MacRae these thirty-odd years, it was a feeling of envy. I would have traded places with him and been the gainer. I would have liked to tell him so. But I couldn't. He was a dour Scotchman and I suppose he hated me, although he kept it to himself. I suppose he loved Bessie. I know I did. Perhaps he cherished hatred of me for wrecking his dream, and so saw my hand in things where it never was. But he was wrong. Bessie ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... now," said the dour good-wife, "But ye should let him be; He's maybe only a drover chap Frae the land ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... and sound asleep in the swing-box that dour old Whinstane Sandy had manufactured out of a packing-case, with Francois' robe of plaited rabbit-skin to keep their tootsies warm. I'd finished my ironing and bathed little Dinkie and buttoned him up in his sleepers and made him hold his little hands together ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... father sitting by the living-room window and came to a stop. Mr. Darner was a dour, heavy-set man with a coarse, bristling gray beard. He glared at Whiteface ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... of this sort, but I could hardly resent them from the Colonel as I could have done had they fallen from any one else's lips; but I fancy he saw at last that they were distasteful to me, for after a while he forebore to comment upon my dour looks. ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... Andrew McNeil's dour face had grown bewildered, but softened. Christine—if she had not seen a little too much, if she had not known that lovely golden hair hanging in rich plaits about the woman's shoulders covered the crisped head of a white negress, if she had not overheard ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... the door, he had a right to be within. Marguerite and Dumiger both looked at the fire, as though they could read in its confused shapes the reason of this interruption; but the result could not have been very satisfactory, for neither spoke, while reluctantly Dumiger rose to open the dour, and Marguerite followed ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... their faither's murderers. And a' nicht Dandie had his nose to the grund like a tyke, and the ithers followed and spak' naething, neither black nor white. There was nae noise to be heard, but just the sough of the swalled burns, and Hob, the dour yin, risping his teeth as he gaed." With the first glint of the morning they saw they were on the drove-road, and at that the four stopped and had a dram to their breakfasts, for they knew that Dand must have guided them right, and the rogues could be but little ahead, hot foot for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her head at him and glanced at Farrington, but that dour man had drawn a chair to the edge of the box, and was staring moodily ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... the inflexible jaw. A man of deep character, a man with an alert mind, grim, ascetic, self-contained, formidable—so I read Dr. Leslie Armstrong. He held my friend's card in his hand, and he looked up with no very pleased expression upon his dour features. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but twa ounce a day o' meal was the maist they'd get. And men fight but tame on an empty wame, so they sent a flag o' truce, And blithe were the Privy Council then, when the Whigs had heard that news. Twa Lords they sent wi' a strang intent to be dour on each Cavalier, But wi' French cakes fine, and his last drap o' wine, did Middleton make them cheer, On the muzzles o' guns he put coats and caps, and he set them aboot the wa's, And the Whigs thocht then he had food and men to stand for the Rightfu' Cause. So he got ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... Sara Lee, enveloped in a large pinafore apron, made the omelet in the kitchen. Marie brought a pail of fresh milk. Henri, with a towel over his left arm, and in absurd mimicry of a Parisian waiter, laid the table; and Jean, dour Jean, caught a bit of the infection, and finding four bottles set to work with his pocketknife to ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of beauty in him, we might have been more lenient; only we found it not, and, I admit, took little pains to search. I shall never forget the look of dour forgiveness with which he heard our excuses for missing Morning Prayers that Sunday morning of our single visit to The Towers. My sister learned that a change was made soon afterwards, prayers being "conducted" after breakfast instead ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... remove his dour look from their vicinity. "I'll be around at eight," he said. "See ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... she blinkit bonnily the while, an' when the tea was weel maskit, she smoored her wrath an' stappit her mooth wi' a bit o' oaten cake. We aye keep that i' the hoose, for th' auld servant-body is geyan bad at the cookin', an' she's sae dour an' dowie that to speak but till her ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the lonely post a little settlement had gathered—a band of sturdy Scots. Those dour and doughty pioneers of peoples had planted on the Red River their homes upon their little "strip" farms—a rampart of civilization against the wide, wild prairie, the home of the buffalo, and camp ground of ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... enthusiastically, "it will be the greatest football match that ever was played;" but an old burgher, with his left hand in a sling, bound up in dirty-looking bandages, interposed: "No; the only game we like to play now is the one with cannon-balls." No; these dour, stolid men take their fighting sadly and sternly; there is none of the "frolic welcome" with which our Irish Tommies, for instance, enjoy their fighting or endure the waiting for it. When I was a prisoner in Pretoria ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... In that quiet, secluded spot their shrill voices rang out with extreme clearness. A rabbit or two scuttled away, and a pheasant flew off with a whirr. Presently another and heavier pair of boots might be heard tramping towards them, the bushes parted, and a dour-looking face, with lantern jaws and a stubbly chin, regarded them grimly. The gamekeeper glowered a moment, then ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... between op. 1 and 2 there lay two years and twenty works. Be this as it may, one cannot help liking the C minor Rondo. In the A flat section we detect traces of his F minor Concerto. There is lightness, joy in creation, which contrast with the heavy, dour quality of the C minor Sonata, op. 4. Loosely constructed, in a formal sense, and too exuberant for his strict confines, this op. 1 is remarkable, much more remarkable, than ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... company, or laying a straight course for the little booth wherein the girl plied her mean trade; and then, all at once, to the stupefied astonishment of Chepstow,—where the captain was reckoned, with reason, a particularly hard, sour, dour sort of body, anything but friendly or hospitable,—the pair of them were discovered comfortably installed beneath the Pendarves' roof, as snug as if they had lived there all their lives and never meant to go away! The ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... of Dour, both about 15 or 16, have been sent together to an English Boarding School. Glyn's father has been for many years a Colonel in the Maharajah's father's army, but now the old Maharajah is dead, and his son, known at school as "Singh", has inherited the title. The Colonel ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... on me against Black McTee?" queried the engineer, deeply moved. "Well, lad, McTee's a dour man, but dour or not he shall not run the engine room of ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... ominous court proved to be appallingly short. The dour-faced elders merely put their heads together, muttered a few sentences, then straightened up almost immediately. The chief priest—he with the yellow face—thrust out his fist and made the immemorial signal of death by jerking his thumb at the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... that. I didn't git home much afore darruk, and me owld horse wasn't more nor in the shtable an' I 'atin' me supper, quiet like, afore Belcher druv up to me house wid his purty man on the seat wid 'im. An' says he: 'Mike Conlin! Mike Conlin! Come to the dour wid ye!' So I wint to the dour, an' he says, says he: 'Hev ye seen a crazy old feller wid a b'y?' An' says I: 'There's no crazy owld feller wid a b'y been by me house in the daytime. If they wint by at ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... from eight o'clock to midnight. Christobal and Walker shared the next one; by four o'clock it would be daylight, so the doctor was retiring early to his cabin when he met Elsie, by chance as it seemed. She was self-possessed, even smiling, with a certain dour serenity. ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... he wanted it to be silver gray—he said his mother used to wear silver gray when she sat in the porch on summer evenings. Yes, this dress is like a piece of old lavender—it reminds me of the past, of the sunny, happy past. I have had such a happy life, Effie—never a cross word said, never a dour look given me. Love has surrounded me from the moment of my marriage until now. I feel young to-night, and I am going to be happy, very happy. The children must look their best too. Run up, darling, to the nursery and see that Susan is doing them justice—they are pretty children every ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... said at another time, "twa or three even dared to question the minister, but I'm thinking they made nothing o't. The majority agrees that he was just inspired to change his text. But Lang Tammas is dour. Tammas telled the session a queer thing. He says that after the diet o' worship on that eventful afternoon Mr. Dishart carried the Bible out o' the pulpit instead o' leaving that duty as usual to ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... uneasy feeling has prevailed for a year or more. It's this d—d Oliverian element among them. You see, ever since his Majesty's blessed restoration, gang after gang of rebels have been sent us—Independents, Muggletonians, Fifth Monarchy men, dour Scotch Whigamores—dangerous fanatics all! Many are Naseby or Worcester rogues, Ironsides who worship the memory of that devil's lieutenant, Oliver. All have the gift of the gab. We disperse them as much as possible, not allowing above five or six to any one plantation, we of the Council ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... a deliberate untruth. He bit his lip. "Well, I looked to find myself in an enemy's country at this Tergou; but maybe if ye knew all ye would not be so dour." ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... and came presently to DOUN, which is the classical Scots spelling of the English DOWN, I should begin to feel uneasy; and if I went on a little farther, and came to a classical Scots word, like STOUR or DOUR or CLOUR, I should know precisely where I was - that is to say, that I was out of sight of land on those high seas of spelling reform in which so many strong swimmers have toiled vainly. To some the situation is exhilarating; as for me, I give one bubbling ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been so grumpy about the Scotch doctor. The man is everything dour that the word "Scotch" implies. I detest him on sight, and he detests me. Oh, we're going to have a sweet time ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... startling paradox? How is it, and why is it, that the artistic and exuberant, genial and sentimental German submits to the hard rule of the commonplace, uninteresting, and dour Prussian? ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... "That's rough, Astro." He looked at the three dour faces and then said, "Would you consider getting ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... Seth's keen desire to return forthwith to Virginia. Seth, in short, was seldom able to express himself adequately, emotion scarcely ever sounded in his voice, and the expression of his face was a fixed and unchangeable one, somewhat dour and ill-tempered in aspect and reflecting nothing of the ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... the rain splashing on his little Prayer Book. The body was reverently lowered by means of a couple of ammunition belts from a machine gun, and the three rounds cracked strangely in the rain-laden air, the water dripping from the rifles. After the firing, one of the party, a dour-looking Scot, void of all sentiment I should have thought (God forgive me!) stooped, and picking some objects out of the mud, thrust them into a handy pocket. They were his three empty cartridge cases. Then the Fifes sorrowfully marched away, leaving ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... rogue's sconce cracked shall be, Thy base-born bones be-thwacked shall be. I'll deal thee many a dour ding For that thou darest ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... the pain, and the uncertainty of it all. Never was a girl so dazzled, so humbled, so worshiped, so neglected, so courted. He was a creature of a thousand moods to torture one. What guise would he wear to-day? Would he be gay, or dour, or sullen, or teasing or passionate, or cold, or tender or scintillating? I know that my hands were always cold, and my cheeks were always ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... liked him very well withal. He would have been much distressed to have harm happen to him, and he was very much concerned and alarmed to see him so candidly discouraged and sick at heart. Perhaps too quick to draw an inference, Robbins mistrusted his intentions; his dour habit boded ill in the servant's understanding: men in such moods were apt to act unwisely. But if only he might contrive to delay Duncan until Kellogg's return, he thought the former might yet be saved from the consequences ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... dour deep trench Their mettle did not blench, When mist and midnight closed o'er sad Sedgemoor; Though on those hearts of oak The tall cuirassiers broke, And Afric's tiger-bands sprang forth with ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... reason of their coming, Fingin cried to his young men, "Harness me my horses and yoke my chariot. There are few," he said, "in Erin for whom I would leave my own house, but that youth is one of them. His father Amargin was well known to me. He was a warrior grim and dour exceedingly, and he ever said concerning the boy, 'This hound's whelp that I have gotten is too fine and sleek to hold bloody gaps or hunt down a noble prey. He will be a women's playmate and not a peer amongst Heroes.' And that fear was ever upon ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... and the others to the door, was silent and dour. He had been cavalierly affronted by a man who, but a few short years before, he would have considered a mere underling. Here was Cowperwood bearding the lion in his den, dictating terms to the principal financial figures of the city, standing up trig and ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... air sweet with the scent of pine and flowers, the old Manor had something of the brilliancy of other days. But, in sad contrast to the old days, now poor Budge watched the extra help from the village with a dour and suspicious eye and Harkness, dignified in his faded livery, made the "extra" table in the conservatory as Christmasy as he could, with a heart heavy with doubt as to the "fitness" of ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... are favorite vantage points of golf widows and enthusiasts who are too old to follow the competitors around the course. To-day they were filled, for an international title was at issue and Herring, prince of amateurs, was playing off the final round of his match with the dour Scotch ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... hands and her eyes again. "Eh, what will Marget Ahanny o' the Shankfit say noo—this frae the Yerl William. Eh, sirce, this is better than an Abbot's absolution. I declare 'tis mair sustainin' than a' the consolations o' religion. Malise, do you hear, great dour cuif that ye are, what says my lord? And you to think so little of your married wife as ye do! Think shame, you being what ye are, and me the ain sister to that master o' merchandise and Bailie o' Dumfries, Maister Ninian Halliburton o' ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Margot beamed and grimaced triumphantly to her confederate. Victory was in the air! Mrs McNab could not refuse to grant a night's shelter to a tired and chilly traveller, and by to- morrow—Margot smiled to herself, recalling the contortion of the dour Scotch face,—by to-morrow she was complacently satisfied that Mrs McNab would no longer wish to be rid of ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... another billet for old Ranger, and had installed a dour Scotchman in his place. But Sylvia still corresponded with young Guy, still spoke of him as the man she meant to marry. It was true she did not often speak of him, but that might have been through lack of sympathetic listeners. There was, moreover, about ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... deep-set, keen eyes and brown, thin faces; Evans, who was supposed to be over-seer, and important enough to arrive late; younger fellows, like Fred Anderson and David Boone (the latter's hair suspiciously smooth and shiny); Hogg, the dour old man who ruled the flower garden and every one but Norah; and a sprinkling of odd rouseabouts and boys, very sleek and well brushed, in garments of varying make, low collars, and the tie the bushman loves "for ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... wand'ring wide this wintry night, I 'm wand'ring wide and late, And ridgy wreaths afore me rise, As if to bar my gate; Around me swirls the sleety drift, The frost bites dour an' keen; But breathings warm, frae lovin' lips, Come ilka ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... wide, bright places seemed suddenly to open and shine before me. Not places to shrink back from—oh no! no! One could be sure, then—SURE! Feargus had lifted his bonnet with that extraordinary triumph in his look—even Feargus, who had been rather dour. ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... King Edward's dour sister-successor Queen Mary and her sombre spouse Philip of Spain were scarcely the people to make the place bright on their occasional visits, and when they were here shortly after their marriage it was said "the hall door within the Court was continually shut, so that no man might ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold
... also had noticed that reflection in the mirror, and it had not helped to soothe her spirits. She felt an unreasoning anger against Claire for appearing more attractive than herself, but it did not occur to her that she was heightening the contrast by her own dour, ungracious manner. Altogether that tea-party was a difficult occasion, and as it proceeded, Claire's spirits sank ever lower and lower. She had spent more than she had any right to afford on those two expensive ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... The two friends, scorning delights, living laborious days, had seen but little of one another. Light-hearted Annie had borne to her dour partner two children who had died. Nathaniel George, with the luck supposed to wait on number three, had lived on, and, inheriting fortunately the temperament of his mother, had brought sunshine into the gloomy rooms above the shop in High Street, ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... school in the town hall, shouted with glee as they romped in the snow-laden gale. It had no terrors for them. They were not concerned with the dour prospect that brought anxiety to ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... seriously urged against Lamb as an author that he is fantastical and artistically artificial, it must be owned he is so. His humour, exquisite as it is, is modish. It may not be for all markets. How it affected the Scottish Thersites we know only too well—that dour spirit required more potent draughts to make him forget his misery and laugh. It took Swift or Smollett to move his mirth, which was always, three parts of it, derision. Lamb's elaborateness, what he himself calls his ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... they're in his power again. He'll work his fines well out on 'em, I'll warrant. He's as slippery as an eel, he is. He's like a cat,—as sleek, and cunning, and fierce. It'll never be an honest up and down fight wi' him, as it will be wi' Thornton. Thornton's as dour as a door-nail; an obstinate chap, every ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... described the process of making "salt-rising" bread, and to the recipe added a friendly caution, that, if allowed to ferment too long, the dough would become "as sad and dour as a stane, and though you br'ak your heart over it, wad ne'er be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... likely. Man, Saunders cam tae me a haflin, and hes been on Drumsheugh for twenty years, an' though he be a dour chiel, he's a faithfu' servant as ever lived. It's waesome tae see him lyin' there moanin' like some dumb animal frae mornin' tae nicht, an' no able tae answer his ain wife when ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... bitter self-reproach, asking himself angrily what he was doing. He knew how much she gave him, what full measure of her affection! Was not that enough?—Out upon you, Louden! Are you to sulk in your tent, dour in the gloom, or to play a man's part, and if she be happy, turn a cheery ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... may be richt, Mirran," replied her spouse. "It's no sic a cheery subjec' 'at we sud hae muckle to say to ane anither anent it! He's a man noo, and weel luikit upo'; but it maks unco little differ to his parents! He's jist as dour as ever, and as far as man could weel be frae them he cam o'!—never a word to the ane or the ither o' 's! Gien we war twa dowgs, he couldna hae less to say til's, and micht weel hae mair! I s' warran' Frostie says mair in ae half-hoor ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... Jr., was not greatly abashed as he faced the dour tribunal of the faculty. The younger members, among whom were several he knew to be mighty good fellows at heart, sat at the lower end of the long table, and with owlish gravity attempted to emulate the appearance ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I hope not. But he is a dour man of nearly twice her years. An honest man? Well, I have never heard him accused of dishonesty. A hard man he has been called, but he suits our thriftless laird all the better for that. He has kept his place as factor at Blackhills for fifteen ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... demonstration as if to retake Binche. This was supported by the artillery of both the First and Second Divisions, while the First Division took up a supporting position in the neighborhood of Peissant. Under cover of this demonstration the Second Corps retired on the line Dour-Quarouble-Frameries. The Third Division on the right of the corps suffered considerable loss in this operation from the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... upright and longing to be merry in a dour world, he sank down among the spotted, the shiftless, the worthless. But ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... overcome by a sadness he cannot account for. Salarino tells him that the mental attitude is everything; that mirth is as easy as gloom; that nature in her freakishness makes some men laugh at trifles until their eyes become mere slits, yet leaves others dour and unsmiling before jests that would convulse even the venerable Nestor. Gratiano maintains that Antonio is too absorbed in worldly affairs, and that he must not let his spirits grow ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... that's not to the point, is it? You are in trouble, you poor little dear, and your old Nancy must try and make matters better for you. I love you, little Paulie. I'm fond of you all, but you are my special favorite. You were always considered something like me—dark and dour when you liked, but sunshiny when you liked also. Now, what is it, Paulie? Tell ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... read, the dour face of Rufus brightened, and he rubbed his hands in satisfaction ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... babe, warming and caressing our hearts. We did not know then that happiness was a thing to be sought. We only knew that peddling is a pleasure, that a bank account is a supreme joy, that a dish of mojadderah cooked by Im-Hanna is a royal delight, that our dour dark cellar is a palace of its kind, and that happiness, like a bride, issues from all these, and, touching the strings of Khalid's lute, mantles us ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Carnegie," was returned with a shrillness in the measured tones; "you would not; and ye'll learn yer own task, and say Yes to sour, dour Staneholme." ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... and down he went on the ground. I leaped from the car, to be instantly surrounded by an infuriated crowd, which seemed to gather from all the quarters of the broad, decaying square. The elderly man, helped to his feet by sympathetic hands, shook his knotted fists in my face. He was a dour and ugly peasant, of splendid physique, as hard and discoloured as the walls of Aigues-Mortes; his cunning eyes were as clear as a boy's, his lined, clean-shaven face as rigid as a gargoyle; and the back of his neck, above the low collar of his jersey, showed itself seamed ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... tree, but "dreigh and dour" in the leafing; and yonder stands an Ash-grove like a forest of ships with bare poles in the docks of Liverpool. Yet like ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... savagely invaded by forges and mine shafts and gaunt black things. It was scarred and impeded and discoloured. Even before that invasion, when the heather was not in flower it must have been a black country. Its people were dour uncandid individuals, who slanted their heads and knitted their brows to look at you. Occasionally one saw woods brown and blistered by the gases from chemical works. Here and there remained old rectories, closely reminiscent of the dear old home at Otteringham, ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... authorities during this trying period, as they had kept their eyes on the new boy and were seriously considering this same idea, thinking it would perhaps be better to advise his father to take him away. The dour youker was plainly enough so unhappily out of place that they were inclined not to try to keep him. ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... person was twice again as tall as the plump little fellow beside him, and was as dour and thin as the other was cheery and fat. He seemed in a state of perpetual depression, and no amount of chuckles on the part of the plump gentleman could cause even a passing smile over the long sad face of the ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... a day has since rollit ower me, and I am now but a dour carle, whose auld pow the roll o' time hath blanched; my bonnie Janet is gone to her last hame, lang syne, my bairns hae a' fa'en kemping for their king and country, and I ainly am left like a withered auld trunk, waiting heaven's gude time ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... through with remarkable smoothness. Both landlords and tenants were weary of the strife, and ready for peace on terms. The leaden, merciless pressure of the great Land Courts set up by Mr. Gladstone's Act of 1881 had gradually worn down the dour and obstinate wills of the Irish landlords. The very men who had denounced land purchase as the worst element in the scheme of 1886 were now enthusiastic on its behalf. The only opposition that could have come to such a scheme ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... days he had been noticed in their company, or laying a straight course for the little booth wherein the girl plied her mean trade; and then, all at once, to the stupefied astonishment of Chepstow,—where the captain was reckoned, with reason, a particularly hard, sour, dour sort of body, anything but friendly or hospitable,—the pair of them were discovered comfortably installed beneath the Pendarves' roof, as snug as if they had lived there all their lives and never ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... coat in the outer room, and taken my seat at my desk in the inner office, there to collect my thoughts in preparation for the grave events which the day might bring forth, when, suddenly, an ill-dressed, dour-looking individual entered the room without so much as saying, "By your leave," and after having pushed Theodore—who stood by like a lout—most unceremoniously to one side. Before I had time to recover from my surprise at this unseemly intrusion, the ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... now, nay now," said the dour good-wife, "But ye should let him be; He's maybe only a drover chap Frae the land ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... time, "twa or three even dared to question the minister, but I'm thinking they made nothing o't. The majority agrees that he was just inspired to change his text. But Lang Tammas is dour. Tammas telled the session a queer thing. He says that after the diet o' worship on that eventful afternoon Mr. Dishart carried the Bible out o' the pulpit instead o' leaving that duty as usual to the kirk-officer. Weel, Tammas, being precentor, has a ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... being questioned, described the process of making "salt-rising" bread, and to the recipe added a friendly caution, that, if allowed to ferment too long, the dough would become "as sad and dour as a stane, and though you br'ak your heart over it, wad ne'er be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... a dour mood of unrest, spite of the promise of wealth he carried in his pocket. He mailed the package and the letter, and went to a saloon and had a highball. He was not a drinking man—at least, he never had been one, beyond a convivial glass or two with his fellows—but he felt that day ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... that's got near done with the world, and you are a slashing young chap, and the girls look after you. But still, though I am parting with the world, and you have got a long time to stay in it, I am better off than you. The sight of these flowers makes me joyful, but it only seems to make you dour. Now, shall I tell you how it is ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... one and all, look fat and prosperous, their mien is dour, and they speak reluctantly, and through their teeth. Possibly this is because they are over-weary with toil. However that may be, the full-fed country people of the region laugh but ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... was become the most powerful man in Scotland, and it is not to be dreamt that a dour, stiff-necked nobility would suffer it without demur. They intrigued against him, putting it abroad, amongst other things, that this foreign upstart was an emissary, of the Pope's, scheming to overthrow the Protestant religion in Scotland. But ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... and were entering the labyrinth of detached banks which obstruct the funnel-shaped cavity between the upper and middle prongs. This I knew from the chart. My unaided eye saw nothing but the open sea, growing dark green as the depths increased; a dour, threatening sea, showing its white fangs. The waves grew longer and steeper, for the channels, though still tortuous, now begin to ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... was to see, A fecht baith fell an' dour, sirs, For ere the tuilzie weel began The glen was ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... and how, by the intervention of a terrible old woman, the queen of the tribe, this momentary weakness was overcome. My other choice, the last tale in the collection (and the only one contributed by Miss MARY FINDLATER), is a dour little comedy of the regeneration, through poverty and hard work, of two underemployed and unpleasant elderly ladies. A restful book, such as will keep no one awake at nights, but will give pleasure to all who appreciate slight studies of ordinary life sketched with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... afternoon the deacon returned and hung his nets up to dry. He was dour, his fever having left him. But he had a ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... visions of extinction. Disparagement was preferable. By publicity shall ye know them. Even public men with rhinocerene hides had been seen to shiver. Cause women courted him. Prize fighters on the dour morn after a triumphant night had howled between fury and tears as Mr. Lee Clavering (once crack reporter of the gentle art) wrote sadly of greater warriors. Lenin had mentioned him as an enemy of ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... different Yuletide; the natives had not. The natives made the most of theirs; we the least of ours. Some of us had dreamt of dining in Europe. Others of us had visions of beer drinking at the coast. A great many would fain have taken the waters of Modder River. But all were disappointed, dour, and sorrowful—all save our true ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... other servants mind it?" asked Fenwick. But his wife on such a matter could have a way of her own, and that project was soon knocked on the head. No doubt her father's house was the proper place for her, but then her father was so dour a man. ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... Everywhere I went, where there were wounded men, I sang for those who were strong enough to be allowed to listen, and told them stories, and did all I could to cheer them up. It was heartrending work, oftentimes. There were dour sights, dreadful sights in those hospitals. There were wounds the memory of which robbed me of sleep. There were men doomed to blindness for the rest of ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... her confederate. Victory was in the air! Mrs McNab could not refuse to grant a night's shelter to a tired and chilly traveller, and by to- morrow—Margot smiled to herself, recalling the contortion of the dour Scotch face,—by to-morrow she was complacently satisfied that Mrs McNab would no longer wish to be rid ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... tummy, he explained. Then Dinky-Dunk and I both like to give pet-names to things. He calls me "Lady Bird" and "Gee-Gee" and sometimes "Honey," and sometimes "Boca Chica" and "Tabby." And I call him Dinky-Dunk and The Dour Maun, and Kitten-Cats, though for some reason or other he hates that last name. I think he feels it's an affront to his dignity. And no man likes a trace of mockery in a woman. But Dinky-Dunk's names are born of affection, and ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... was sixty-five; Father Bonat had no age; Andrew Levoy possessed the years of dour silence. Only Graehme Stewart and Elodie, bride of Albret, were young. In the great gray country their lives were like spots of color on a mist. Galen Albret finally ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... my back to the wall, staring blankly at the trembling landlord, who was ready at any moment to foam at the mouth, and at the dour landlady, who was quite capable of keeping him in order, there came in one of those dark, showy Italian girls with a man. She wore a blouse and skirt, and no hat. Her hair was perfectly dressed. It was really Italy. The man was soft, dark, ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... remarkably good-looking young lady whom the said master was serving with exemplary diligence to fear dire consequences to himself if he became the direct cause of a broken idyl. The position was even worse if he fell back on an artistic lie. The Earl was a dour person where servants were concerned, and Salome did not demand John the Baptist's head on a salver with greater gusto than the autocrat of Fairholme would insist on Dale's dismissal when he discovered the facts. Talk of the horned dilemma—here was an unfortunate ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... played any part in politics: politics did not interest him. He was the only Irishman I have ever met who cared nothing for either the political or the religious issue. He had a prejudice against one Orange district, because the people in it were dour. He had a prejudice against one Roman Catholic district, because the people in it were rude. Otherwise his mind was untroubled. Life was what interested him. He would have watched a political or religious riot with ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... troubles was by no means ended. Debt weighed like a millstone round her neck. As the weary months went by and Aphra was begging in vain for her salary, long overdue, to be paid, Butler, a harsh, dour man with heart of stone, became impatient and resorted to drastic measures, eventually flinging her into a debtor's prison. There are extant three petitions, undated indeed, but which must be referred to the early autumn of 1668, from Mrs. Behn to Charles II. Sadly complaining of two ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... walk with a dog—that is the beginning of dancing: the end of it is the beginning of a world. A young dog is a piece of early morning disguised in an earthly fell, and the man who can resist his contagion is a sour, dour, miserable mistake, without bravery, without virtue, without music, with a cranky body and a shrivelled soul, and with eyes incapable of ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Crawshay, dour and threatening, came a little further into the room. Behind him in the hall was a vision of his escort. Sir Denis looked up from the hearth with ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in anything but the mood for joking, yet a certain dour humour in the jest caught his fancy and persuaded ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... and hard, with deep-set, keen eyes and brown, thin faces; Evans, who was supposed to be over-seer, and important enough to arrive late; younger fellows, like Fred Anderson and David Boone (the latter's hair suspiciously smooth and shiny); Hogg, the dour old man who ruled the flower garden and every one but Norah; and a sprinkling of odd rouseabouts and boys, very sleek and well brushed, in garments of varying make, low collars, and the tie the bushman loves "for best"—pale blue satin, with what ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... were Protestants of the most dour sort, and they distrusted their new ruler because of her religion and because she loved to surround herself with dainty things and bright colors and exotic elegance. They feared lest she should ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... conditions of life, school themselves much more than they are schooled. Active, inquisitive, resolute, and possessing a fair share of the national perfervidum ingenium, not without some tincture of those elements of the Scottish character known as the "canny" and the "dour," our worker early developed that robust vigour of mind and body which has so long stood the wear and tear of ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... Bianca Buonaventuri was introduced at Court as Bianca Cappello. The young Duchess of course was furious, and pointedly refused all intercourse with her rival. Bianca, on the other hand, laid herself out to propitiate the dour Austrian princess and to stifle slander. Still a mere girl, she was in full command of all the moves in woman's strategy. There was no school like that of Venice for the display of tact and fascination. To be sure, she was living in ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... since; four of the men—Allan Macpherson, Jock Hunter, Donald Nicholl, and Sandy Grahame—came in after tattoo, and all a bit fu'. It was not here they got it, though; I know better than to supply men with liquor when it is time for them to be off to the barracks. Captain Muir, who is the only dour carl in the regiment, happened to be on duty, and he spoke a good deal more hardly to them than to my mind there was any occasion, seeing that they are good soldiers and not in the guardroom more often than others. They answered him more freely, no doubt, than they would have done had they ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... Darn Darner's father sitting by the living-room window and came to a stop. Mr. Darner was a dour, heavy-set man with a coarse, bristling gray beard. He glared at Whiteface through ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... lived much as had the men about him. He had been chained to the same hard and dour materialism as they, yet for him life had another essence and dimension, because he had been born with a soul ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... tread down upon, trample down upon; crush under an iron heel, ride roughshod over; rivet the yoke; hold a tight hand, keep a tight hand; force down the throat; coerce &c. 744; give no quarter &c. (pitiless) 914a. Adj. severe; strict, hard, harsh, dour, rigid, stiff, stern, rigorous, uncompromising, exacting, exigent, exigeant[obs3], inexorable, inflexible, obdurate, austere, hard-headed, hard-nosed, hard-shell [U.S.], relentless, Spartan, Draconian, stringent, strait-laced, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... to Dour, in Belgium, and for us a bad day's march it was. My job was to keep touch with the 14th Brigade, which was advancing along a parallel road to the west.[5] That meant riding four or five miles across rough country roads, endeavouring ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... that she bears upon her bosom,—a magical jewel, whence, with the sky's aid, she draws the soft rain that is her scent and her cosmetic. 'Fragrant the fertile earth after soft showers.' Do you know, I could almost forgive the dour and detestable Milton everything for the sake of those seven words. They show that in the sense of smell he had at least ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... for I am Al-Damigh, the King, brother of Kundamir the King." Then there rushed forth a horseman of the Kafirs, as he were a flame of fire, and crave at Al-Damigh, without word said; but the King received him with a lance thrust in the breast so dour that the point issued from between his shoulders and Allah hurried his soul to the fire, the abiding-place dire. Then came forth a second he slew, and a third he slew likewise, and they ceased not to come out to him and he to slay them, till he had made an end of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... when William marched down the street singing (the word is a euphemism) his scout songs in his strong young voice. Curious smells emanated from the depth of the garden where William performed mysterious culinary operations. One old lady whose cat had disappeared looked at William with dour suspicion in her eye whenever he passed. Even the return of her cat a few weeks later did not remove the hostility from her gaze whenever it happened ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... said, Mr. Comyn spoke out his wish—nay, his commands—that Barbara should prepare to receive Mr. Bruce as a bridegroom in six months thereafter. And now Mr. Bruce himself, a shy and dour man at other times, found courage one day, after dinner, to express his—"love;" so he really called it, and so we suppose must we, in our extreme ignorance of the precise category of nomenclature to which the feelings that actuated him belonged. Honest man! bigoted ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... and liked him very well withal. He would have been much distressed to have harm happen to him, and he was very much concerned and alarmed to see him so candidly discouraged and sick at heart. Perhaps too quick to draw an inference, Robbins mistrusted his intentions; his dour habit boded ill in the servant's understanding: men in such moods were apt to act unwisely. But if only he might contrive to delay Duncan until Kellogg's return, he thought the former might yet be saved from the consequences of folly of some insensate sort. And casting about for an excuse, ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... is needed," Scharpe said in a dour, bass voice, staring off past Jonas' left ear at the darkening sky. "And for the money, you will be welcome. I must take your word that you are not dangerous; I can only pray that you do ...
— Wizard • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... Man, Saunders cam tae me a haflin, and hes been on Drumsheugh for twenty years, an' though he be a dour chiel, he's a faithfu' servant as ever lived. It's waesome tae see him lyin' there moanin' like some dumb animal frae mornin' tae nicht, an' no able tae answer his ain wife when ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... laughter. Number One Ward, however, was quite empty except for my friend, Private McPhee, stalking majestically up and down as if on sentry go, wearing a "fit of the blues" several sizes too large for him and an expression which would, I believe, be described by kailyard novelists as "dour." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... would have laughed at me in that affectionate way of his. You would never have taken us for brothers. We were so different in temperament and appearance that we were almost the reverse of each other. He was the handsomest boy I have ever seen, frank, fair-skinned and winning, while I was dark, dour and none too well favoured. He was the best runner and swimmer in the parish, and the idol of the village lads. I cared nothing for games, and would be found somewhere among the heather hills, always by my lone self, and nearly always with a story book in my pocket. He was clever, practical ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... this startling paradox? How is it, and why is it, that the artistic and exuberant, genial and sentimental German submits to the hard rule of the commonplace, uninteresting, and dour Prussian? ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... I joined at an unsociable meal, seasoned with reproofs on one side and sauciness on the other. His cake and cheese remained on the table all night for the fairies. He managed to continue work till nine o'clock, and then marched dumb and dour to his chamber. Cathy sat up late, having a world of things to order for the reception of her new friends: she came into the kitchen once to speak to her old one; but he was gone, and she only stayed to ask what was the matter with him, and then went back. In the morning he rose ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... heart of life; but he makes a very shallow incision, if he only reaches as deep as habits and calamities and sins. Deeper than all these lies a man's vision of himself, as swaggering and sentimental as a penny novelette. The literature of can-dour unearths innumerable weaknesses and elements of lawlessness which is called romance. It perceives superficial habits like murder and dipsomania, but it does not perceive the deepest of sins—the sin of vanity—vanity ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... he had lived a very queer life. Indeed, he was held in such universal awe and abhorrence that we used to fly at his approach, and never spoke of him amongst ourselves saving in such terms as "Auld dour crab," ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... a great content, when at nine o'clock Holloway brought him word that William Roper had come. Mr. Manley bade him bring him to him at a quarter-past. He felt that suspense would make William Roper malleable, and he intended to hammer him. At thirteen minutes past nine he composed his face into a dour truculence, an expression to which the heavy conformation of the lower ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... up to a dour-looking individual at a counter at the ramp's end. Clearing my throat, I said rather inanely, "Hello!"—but what does one say to ...
— Lost in the Future • John Victor Peterson
... factor in his affairs. It was a wild, bold land he traversed, and thinly peopled; at pains to avoid the larger towns, he sought by choice the loneliest paths that looped its quiet hills; such as passed the time of day with him were few and for the most part peasants, a dull, dour lot, taciturn to a degree that pleased him well. So that he soon forgot to be forever alert for the crack of an ambushed pistol or the pattering footfalls of an assassin ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... black, bullet-headed, and dour. He had held socialistic views in his fiery youth, but had changed his mind like the rest of us when he found himself rising in the world. In these days he received a percentage on the Works profits, and cursed the impudence of Labor. As to visitors, his politics were that all such had ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... She's gone; gone where neither you nor that dour-faced deevil that befooled us all will find her soon, I promise you, Dickie Jennifer!" he snapped; and I gave them my back and stumbled blindly to the door, making sure his next word would tell my poor wronged lad all that he should have learned from never any other ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... jewel-tinted sea; the ship steamed toward it as through the mists of creation's third morning, and all good things seemed possible. Thus had Simpson, reared in an unfriendly land, imagined it, for beneath the dour Puritanism that had lapped him in its armour there still stirred the power of wonder and surprise that has so often through the ages changed Puritans to poets. That glimpse of Hayti would remain with him, he thought, yet within the hour he was striving desperately to hold it. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... prosecution was Sir Herbert Templewood, K.C., M.P., a political barrister, with a Society wife, a polished manner, and a deadly gift of cross-examination. With him was Mr. Grover Braecroft, a dour Scotch lawyer of fifty-five, who was currently believed to know the law from A to Z, and really had an intimate acquaintance with those five letters which made up the magic word Costs. Apart from this valuable knowledge, he was a cunning and crafty lawyer, picked ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... was atrocious; so was the next morning; but about noon we were cheered by the sight of the glorious mountain-walls of well-remembered Midian, which stood out of the clear blue sky in passing grandeur of outline, in exceeding splendid dour of colouring, and in marvellous sharpness of detail. Once more the "power of ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... winsome though she was, it was not long before Mary was at issue with her dour Protestant subjects and their spokesman, John Knox. It was hoped by her brother, James Stuart (Murray), and Secretary Lethington that a modus vivendi might be found by persuading Elizabeth to secure to Mary the English succession in case she herself died childless, on the undertaking ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... of the marsh were full of purple vistas, threaded with gossamers. Past a dour plantation of gnarled spruces and a maple-fringed, sun-warm valley they found the "something" ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... gray; he wanted it to be silver gray—he said his mother used to wear silver gray when she sat in the porch on summer evenings. Yes, this dress is like a piece of old lavender—it reminds me of the past, of the sunny, happy past. I have had such a happy life, Effie—never a cross word said, never a dour look given me. Love has surrounded me from the moment of my marriage until now. I feel young to-night, and I am going to be happy, very happy. The children must look their best too. Run up, darling, to the nursery and see that Susan is doing them justice—they ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... wondered, since, why I never shed a tear during all those terrible three days. I couldn't, in some way, though the nurse herself was crying, and poor old Whinnie and Struthers were sobbing together next to the window, and dour old Dinky-Dunk, on the other side of the bed, was racking his shoulders with smothered sobs as he held the little white hand in his and the warmth went forever out of the little fingers where his foolish big hand was trying to hold back the life that couldn't ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... his predecessor Botha is striking. These two men, with the possible exception of Kruger, stand out in the annals of the Boer. Kruger was the dour, stolid, canny, provincial trader. The only time that his interest ever left the confines of the Transvaal was when he sought an alliance with William Hohenzollern, and that person, I might add, failed him ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... if you please," requested Martin, with intense gravity, serenity, phlegm. The boy had naturally a low, plaintive voice, which in his "dour moods" rose scarcely above a lady's whisper. The more inflexibly stubborn the humour, the softer, the sadder the tone. He rang the bell, and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... him. He was devoted to her mother—and for his friends he'll do anything. But I don't want to make a saint of him. He can be a dour man when he likes—and he and I fight about a good many things. I don't think he has much faith in the new England we're all talking about—though he tries to go with it. Have you?" He turned ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... made a powerful demonstration as if to retake Binche. This was supported by the artillery of both the First and Second Divisions, while the First Division took up a supporting position in the neighborhood of Peissant. Under cover of this demonstration the Second Corps retired on the line Dour-Quarouble-Frameries. The Third Division on the right of the corps suffered considerable loss in this operation from the enemy, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... another Scot, the first time he ever saw a kilt was on a Sassenach; indeed kilts were perhaps invented, like golf, to draw the English north. John is doing nothing, which again is not a Scotch accomplishment, and he looks rather miserable and dour. The Comtesse is already at her Patience cards, and occasionally she smiles on him as if not displeased with his long silence. At last ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... ice. Mac caught hold of the single-tree and brought the racing dogs to an abrupt halt. The priest and he righted the sled, and Mac straddling it, tucked in a loosened end of fur. When all was again in running order, Mac was on the same side as Father Wills. He still wore that look of dour ill-temper, and especially did he glower at the unfortunate Kaviak, seized with a fresh fit of coughing that filled the round eyes ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... real owner of the title and estates! And I'll tell you how I explain the whole thing. Michael Carstairs, as I remember him—and I saw plenty of him as a lad and a young man—was what you'd call violently radical in his ideas. He was a queer, eccentric, dour chap in some ways—kindly enough in others. He'd a most extraordinary objection to titles, for one thing; another, he thought that, given a chance, every man ought to make himself. Now, my opinion is that when he secretly married a girl who was much below him in station, he went ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... way it'll be. The McRaes don't cry back on a bargain," the dour old buffalo-hunter said. "But first we'll look at this young man's arm. Get water and clean ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... Alec micht hae committed a waur sin than thrashin' the dominie. He's a dour crater, that Murdoch Malison, wi' his fair face and his picket words. I doot the bairns hae the warst o' 't in general. And for Alec I hae great houpes. He comes o' a guid stock. His father, honest man, was ane o' the Lord's ain, although he ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... said to him, you mean," said Shenac sharply. "I was sorry for that as soon as I said it. But, Hamish, if you think I'm going down on my knees to Angus Dhu to tell him so, you're mistaken. He may not be a thief and a robber, but he's a dour carle, though he is of our own kin, and as different from our father as the dark is different from the day. And I can say nothing else of him, ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... hour Of yawning graves and coffins dour. Beneath your bed this clock please hide And ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... conscious of her vivid face, framed in a fringe of black hair, of a mischievousness in her beauty, some careless abandon in the swing of her limbs. But something in the level dark brows of the Rector, something that was dour, forbade her smile. It died in a little flush of confusion. The peasants passed and the Rector gave them time to make some headway before he resumed his ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... behaviour is of the house of Ralph Nickleby, "Kidnapped" is all excellent—perhaps Mr. Stevenson's masterpiece. Perhaps, too, only a Scotchman knows how good it is, and only a Lowland Scot knows how admirable a character is the dour, brave, conceited David Balfour. It is like being in Scotland again to come on "the green drive-road running wide through the heather," where David "took his last look of Kirk Essendean, the trees about the manse, and the big rowans in the kirkyard, where his father and mother ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... downright natures of us Northern folk break in vain efforts. Our advances are met with an imperceptible but impermeable resistance by the very people who are bent on making the world pleasant to us. It is the very reverse of that dour opposition which a Lowland Scot or a North English peasant offers to familiarity; but it is hardly less insurmountable. The treatment, again, which Venetians of the lower class have received through centuries from ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... who were meant to be dour were always dour," Sir. S argued, "since the days of John Knox, and long before. It was partly climate—partly persecution. Both agreed with our constitutions. But look, here's the little house where one ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... stretching the catch, served to keep them both occupied—Hazel as much as he, for she went out with him on all but the hardest trips. So that their isolation in the hushed, white world where the frost ruled with an iron hand had not so far become oppressive. They were too busy to develop that dour affliction of the spirit which loneliness and idleness breed through the ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... transport. Dropped bomb into transport parked 1/2 mile S. of village. Transport stretching along the road from Dour to Houdain (not ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... in Dour, which we reached after a fourteen-mile march, and in spite of all attempts at keeping the streets clear it was some time before we could get through. Part of the Division was halting there for the night, and the municipal authorities ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... illness brought no relief to the bishop, at all events to outward seeming, for he was paler and more haggard than ever in looks, and as dour as a bear in manner. With Mrs Pendle he strove to be his usual cheerful self, but with small success, as occasionally he would steal an anxious look at her, and heave deep sighs expressive of much inward trouble. All this was ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... says Sandy, gey dour-like—he's as bucksturdie as a mule when he tak's't in's heid—"but we're no' deid yet, an' we'll mibby manish to garr some fowk winder yet, when a's dune. What's been dune afore can be dune again; the speerit o' Bannockburn's no' de'ed ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... inheritance and by precept her mother had trailed the serpent over her life. To Lena, fortune and misfortune were still things of outward import, and almost synonymous with possession and non-possession. Yet, in spite of Mrs. Quincy's dour looks, Lena found herself singing as she moved swiftly about the room. Spontaneous joy was a rare thing with her. The first peep into ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... oor cares i' the fine sicht an' 'afore the compassionate hert o' the Maister, an' see what he can do for 's! Sic things aiven we can lea' to him! I houp there'll be nae mair bludeshed! He's a fine lad, Steenie Kennedy—come o' a fine stock! His father was a God-fearin' man—some dour by natur, but wi' an unco clearin' up throuw grace. I wud wullin'ly hae seen oor Eppy his wife; he's an honest lad! I'm sorry he gied place to wrath, but he may hae repentit by the noo, an' troth, I canna blame ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... splendid nature she fully believed the girl to possess. But when Miss Symes, full of thoughts for Betty's comfort, entered the room, followed by a servant bringing a little tray of temptingly prepared tea, Betty's look was, to say the least of it, dour; she did not smile, she scarcely looked up, there was no brightness in her eyes, and there were certainly no smiles round ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
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