Stern Show

Famous quotes containing the words stern and/or show:

    His eloquence was of every kind, and he excelled in the argumentative as well as in the declamatory way. But his invectives were terrible, and uttered with such energy of diction, and stern dignity of action and countenance, that he intimidated those who were the most willing and the best able to encounter him. Their arms fell out of their hands, and they shrunk under the ascendant which his genius gained over theirs.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    Back now to autumn, leaving the ended husk
    Of summer that brought them here for Show Saturday
    The men with hunters, dog-breeding wool-defined women,
    Children all saddle-swank, mugfaced middleaged wives
    Glaring at jellies, husbands on leave from the garden
    Watchful as weasels, car-tuning curt-haired sons
    Back now, all of them, to their local lives....
    Philip Larkin (1922–1986)