Without even cracking a smile, say

Usage examples of sternly.

The love of rapine and war allured to the Imperial standard several tribes of Saracens, or roving Arabs, whose service Julian had commanded, while he sternly refused the payment of the accustomed subsidies.

Severus mounted the tribunal, sternly reproached them with perfidy and cowardice, dismissed them with ignominy from the trust which they had betrayed, despoiled them of their splendid ornaments, and banished them, on pain of death, to the distance of a hundred miles from the capital.

Directly below them crouched a Great Dane, brindled, enormous, one eye fixed sternly on the window.

Before they reached it, a band of knights in burnished armor rode from among the trees, and their leader sternly ordered the travelers to halt.

Their health assured, Asper, Mirt, and Aleena vere thrust into chairs in the most distant corner of the room and sternly bidden to wait and not stir.

English law protects equally and sternly the religions of the Indian people, and as the man Passepartout has admitted that he violated the sacred pagoda of Malabar Hill, at Bombay, on the 20th of October, I condemn the said Passepartout to imprisonment for fifteen days and a fine of three hundred pounds.

The sternly beautiful gaze of the mosaic image of Phos in the dome there never failed to fill him with awe.

Capt Holmes swung his swivel chair to the right and stared sternly out the window for a moment, offering Prew a profile of the jutting jaw, grim mouth, and sharp commanding nose.

And yet it is not easy for good men, being men, sternly to rebuke the spirit that seems to be effective in promoting the good cause that they have at heart.

Fine brooches and ornate neck-encompassing torcs winked and flashed from many throats, for the room now filled with nobles and advisers, chiefs and priests, Brehons or judges and Seanachies or historians, ollams and sternly robed Druids.

Unlike not a few of his peers, Don Guillermo did not really like witnessing whippings or maimings or torture, but recognized and accepted that such were the only proven ways to maintain discipline among the commoner sorts and the slaves, so he steeled himself and observed those punishments he had ordered as sternly and blankfacedly as a hidalgo knight should.

Those who were most devoted to the Union of the Constitution might, consequently, be expected to resist most sternly any usurpation of undelegated power, the effect of which would be to warp the Federal Government from its proper character, and, by sapping the foundation, to destroy the Union of the States.

Irish soda bread, rich with currants yet the dough sternly unsweet, into my mouth beneath the veil.

Kilfoyle heroically hustled her Thady into the house as she saw him on the brink of beginning loudly to relate his encounter with the strange man, and desired him to whisht and stay where he was in a manner so sternly repressive that he actually remained there as if he had been a pebble dropped into a pool, and not, as usual, a cork to bob up again immediately.

We also fell into general human things, sternly discussed the future destiny of Europe and of mankind, prophesied doctrinarily that after Caesarism France would fall at once to the level of a secondary state, which we were quite sure could come about terribly quickly and easily.