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More "Pertinacious" Quotes from Famous Books



... and bountiful patron towards them, even above his fortune; of which, in those administrations, he was such a dispenser, as, if he had been trusted with it to such uses, and if there had been the least of vice in his expense, he might have been thought too prodigal. He was constant and pertinacious in whatsoever he resolved to do, and not to be wearied by any pains that were necessary to that end. And, therefore, having once resolved not to see London, which he loved above all places, till he had perfectly ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... but 'tis the hand receives it, not the conscience. Conscience! while you are about it, inscribe it on your lists of exiles. It is an obstinate opponent, pertinacious, persistent, inflexible, making a disturbance everywhere. Drive it out of France. You ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... the island where I dwell there runs a winding path. It is probably as old as the settlement of the country, and has been kept open with pertinacious fidelity by the fishermen whose right of way it represents. In some places, as between Fort Adams and Castle Hill, it exists in its primitive form, an irregular track above rough cliffs, whence you look down upon the entrance to the harbor and watch the white-sailed schooners that glide beneath. ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... valid. You might be warm, pathetic or sulky, fretful or patient, grave or serious in testifying your repugnance, but you were equally a doomed man; escape was impossible. Your host was in his turn eloquent,—authoritative,—facetious, —argumentative,—precatory,—pathetic, above all, pertinacious. No guest was known to escape the Leetle Anderson. The last time I experienced the laird's hospitality there were present at the evening meal the following catalogue of guests:—a Bond-street dandy, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... Sir, pursuing the allegory of David and Goliath, give you some of the 'stones' ('hard arguments' may be called 'stones,' since they 'knock down a pertinacious opponent') which I could 'pelt him with,' were he to be wroth with me; and this in order to take from you, Sir, all apprehensions for my 'life,' or my 'bones'; but I forbear them till you demand them of me, when I have the honour to attend ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... appointed. In a few hours every man knew his post, and was ready to repair to it as soon as the beat of the drum was heard. That machinery, by which Oliver had, in the preceding generation, kept up among his soldiers so stern and so pertinacious an enthusiasm, was again employed with not less complete success. Preaching and praying occupied a large part of every day. Eighteen clergymen of the Established Church and seven or eight nonconformist ministers were within the walls. They all exerted ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... It is curious, after writing the above, to find in a letter written by Foss Westcott, Bishop of Durham, to that pertinacious correspondent, the late Lady Victoria Welby, almost exactly the same sentiments I have here expressed. "If I could fill the Crucifix with life as you do," he says, "I would gladly look on it, but the ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... young, they say,—not above five or six and twenty,—but so reserved! They tried all they could to find out who she was and where she came from, and, all about her, but neither Mrs. Wilson, with her pertinacious and impertinent home-thrusts, nor Miss Wilson, with her skilful manoeuvring, could manage to elicit a single satisfactory answer, or even a casual remark, or chance expression calculated to allay their curiosity, or throw the faintest ray of light upon her history, ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... evidence; and action imperatively demanded amidst doubts and difficulties in which reason is not satisfied, and faith is required. To argue therefore, that God cannot have left man to such uncertainty, is to argue, as the pertinacious lawyer did, who, on seeing a man in the stocks, asked him what he was there for; and on being told, said, 'They cannot put you there for that.' 'But I am here,' was ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... of double X, which Ap-Llymry, who yielded to no man west of the Wrekin in brewage, never failed to press upon her at dinner and supper. He was also earnest, and sometimes successful, in the recommendation of his mead, and most pertinacious on winter nights in enforcing a trial of the virtues of his elder wine. The young lady's personal appearance, consequently, formed a very advantageous contrast to that of her quondam lover, whose physiognomy ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... colleagues appear to entertain a higher opinion of him than he deserves, and you hear of one or another saying, 'Oh, you don't know the Duke of Richmond.' He has, in fact, that weight which a man can derive from being positive, obstinate, pertinacious, and busy, but his understanding lies in a nutshell, and his information in a pin's head. He is, however, good-humoured, a good fellow, and personally liked, particularly by Stanley and Graham, who are of his own age, and have both the same ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... herself she practised small brutalities upon him, which had no effect. He just withdrew and came again next day with his big-dog smile, quiet and persistent as a tide. Shy he was, and singularly pertinacious. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... there is no small share of hardihood in my attempt: Bigotry, superstitious adherence to existing institutions, exclusive partiality to a sect, and pertinacious resistance to the increase of liberal information, are well-sounding epithets easily applied, and too grateful to the million to want popularity. Those who write with no higher motive than to please the prevailing taste, must beware of touching upon topics ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... market at an unseasonable time, when the city was threatened with a scarcity, they answered him with objections, urged with more force than he approved; and they would all have been put to death to a man, if Honoratus, who was at that time count of the East, had not resisted him with pertinacious constancy. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... been rendered impossible. Nevertheless, that one of the Northern generals to whom nothing ever seemed impossible, having cast the eye of desire upon this especial spot, now advanced upon it, and began operations in his silent, enduring, pertinacious way, which no men and no intrenchments could permanently withstand. His lieutenant, Sherman, made one desperate assault,—not, as it seemed, because there was a possibility of taking the place, but rather to demonstrate that it could not be taken. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... opposed the divorce of the Earl and Countess of Essex, and so had done his best to prevent the union of the favourite with the lady; but whatever opposition he had offered had been overcome; and it is difficult to suppose the revengeful passions so gratuitously pertinacious as to produce a deep assassination-plot from such a cause. So far as one can judge from the extremely disjointed notices of the evidence in the State Trials and elsewhere, it was very inconclusive. Sir Thomas ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... was certainly possible. When the lawyer had announced the news he had felt his heart beat a little faster. For, indeed, one is not always master of one's self; there are sudden and pertinacious emotions against which a man struggles ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... put the proper construction upon it, and then starting as from a reverie, he bowed and hurried out of the garden, the official person following him all the way, and overwhelming him with formal apologies for the necessary discharge of his duty. Nay, so pertinacious was he in his attempts to remove the offence which he conceived Durward to have taken, that he offered to bestow his own company upon him, to contribute to his entertainment until Quentin, internally cursing his formal foppery, found no better way of escape, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... life, merely because it escapes the rigours of our winter. Eternal summer must be a delight, but the cuckoo has to work hard for the privilege, and it must at times be harried to the verge of desperation by the small birds that continually mob it in broad daylight. This behaviour on the part of its pertinacious little neighbours has been the occasion of much futile speculation; but the one certain result of such persecution is to make the cuckoo, along with its fellow-sufferer, the owls, preferably active in the sweet peace of the gloaming, when its puny tyrants ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... themselves. And so it went on, one thing after another—a constant scene of bustle, hurry, and commotion. As de Sigognac and the tyrant strolled slowly along they were beset by beggars, more or less impudent and pertinacious, and by all sorts of odd characters, plying various extraordinary vocations for the amusement of the passers-by, for which they seemed to be liberally enough remunerated. Here was an improvisatore, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... down with you in that particular "'bus." At every street-corner we linger or stop. Suddenly the door is pulled open with a jerk and our enemy leaps in. He sees the seats are filled, but he does not hesitate. There is always room for him. Indeed, his "spirit rises with the occasion." He becomes pertinacious as he is offensive. He tramples upon more than one pair of feet in his struggle to reach the middle of the omnibus. The passengers patiently submit to the intrusion with that quiet good nature with which Americans ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various

... such great antiquaries as Spellman (see Gloss. in verbo DRENGES) and Dugdale, (see Baron. vol. i. p. 118,) it is proved by Dr. Brady (see Answ. to Petyt, p. 11, 12) to have been a forgery; and is allowed as such by Tyrrel, though a pertinacious defender of his party notions (see his Hist. vol. ii. introd. p. 51, 73). Ingulf, p. 70, tells us, that very early, Hereward, though absent during the time of the Conquest, was turned out of all his estate, and could not obtain redress. William even ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... jewels, which I was surprised to find had been respected, into the bosom of my dress; and, seeing a silver bell hard by upon a table, rang it loudly. The steward instantly appeared; I asked for food; and he proceeded to lay the table, regarding me the while with a disquieting and pertinacious scrutiny. To relieve myself of my embarrassment, I asked him, with as fair a show of ease as I could muster, if it were usual for yachts to carry ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... remained entirely independent of the tribunals and parliaments which sate at Westminster. The administration of Scotland was in Scottish hands; for no Englishman had any motive to emigrate northward, and to contend with the shrewdest and most pertinacious of all races for what was to be scraped together in the poorest of all treasuries. Nevertheless Scotland by no means escaped the fate ordained for every country which is connected, but not incorporated, with another country ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the child's pertinacious fancy for a night-ramble. But it happened that a light cloud passed over the daughter's spirit; she looked gravely into the fire and drew a breath that was almost a sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a little struggle to repress it. Then, starting ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... onward in time with the rhythmic sway of the deep "Rah-rah-rah!" that boomed across from the farther side. But the enemy was fast closing in about them. The Yates right half was plunging down from the long side, a pertinacious forward was almost at their heels. And now the Yates full was charging obliquely at them with his eyes staring, his jaw set, and determination in every feature and line. The hand on Joel's shoulder dropped, Blair eased his pace by ever ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour

... minutes before he is beset by a clamorous train of irate blue-tits, who go into an azure fume of minute rage; sparrows also chase him, as vulgarly insolent as himself, and robin redbreasts, persistent and perkily pertinacious, like spoiled children allowed to wear their ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... threw himself at full length from the water with open mouth, his pursuer still hanging to the jaw, the blood issuing from the wound and dyeing the sea to a distance around; but all his flounderings were of no avail; his pertinacious enemy still maintained his hold, and was evidently getting the advantage of him. Much alarm seemed to be felt by the many other whales around. These "killers," as they are called, are of a brownish colour on the back, and white on the belly, with a long dorsal fin. Such was the ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous

... tracing her, pressed upon him and rent his soul with fiercer throes than before. Muttering some hurried apology, he rose, staggered toward the door, and, to the amazement of the stoical footman, who was greatly scandalized thereby, the pertinacious stranger fairly reeled ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... argued for some time with a pertinacious gentleman; his opponent, who had talked in a very puzzling manner, happened to say, 'I don't understand you, Sir:' upon which Johnson observed, 'Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... Black Bess came home that day sweating properly, but with a marked diminution of lather and foam. Miss Clifford asked leave to ride her into the stable-yard, and after dismounting talked to her, and patted her, and praised her. An hour later the pertinacious beauty asked for a carrot from the garden, and fed Black Bess with it in ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... refused to take any share in it. He had never forgiven the insult put upon him by the King, for like most of his race, of whom it was said that they never forgave an injury and never forgot a kindness, he was a pertinacious man. Therefore he would not lift a finger in the King's cause. But still less would he help the Roundheads, whom he hated with a singular hatred. So time went, till at last, when he was sore pressed, Charles, knowing his great wealth and influence, brought himself to write a letter to this Sir ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... security of the frontier, by his intrigues among the Indians, was kept in close durance. Washington, who knew nothing of this, was shocked on visiting Williamsburg, to learn that La Force was in prison. He expostulated with the governor on the subject, but without effect; Dinwiddie was at all times pertinacious, but particularly so when he felt himself to be ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... therefore, proper to detract, if possible, from the power of Great Britain, to harm the revolutionary colonists on the great watery highway of the lakes and rivers, or to prevent such a united force of Colonial and Provincial inhabitants as might counterbalance, in a great measure, the pertinacious loyalists who were to discountenance American appeals for justice,—the warfare, before the declaration of American Independence, being "neither against the throne nor the laws of England, but against a reckless and oppressive ministry."[6] Efforts were, for such reasons, made to obtain possession ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... In the air it did all that was asked for it, but it came to earth—or rather to the surface of the lake—with a shock that put it out of commission. When Count Zeppelin's company estimated the cost of further repairs it gave a sigh and abandoned the wreck. Thereupon the pertinacious inventor laid aside his tools, got into his old uniform, and went out again on the dreary task of ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... again to Sir James Graham, and also for the first time to the Earl of Aberdeen, on the 30th of December. "The pertinacious resistance made at Sebastopol, and the possibility of events that may still further disappoint expectation," he said to Sir James, "have induced me to address Lord Aberdeen, saying that 'if it is the opinion ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... days monkish historians, whom Milton afterwards followed, ignored these poor early relations of ours and invented, as a more fitting ancestor of Englishmen, Brute, a fugitive nephew of AEneas of Troy. But, stroll on where we will, the pertinacious savage, with his limbs stained blue and his flint axe red with blood, is a ghost not easily to be exorcised from the banks of the Thames, and in some Welsh veins his blood no doubt flows at this very day. The founder of London had no historian to ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... may be much truth and justice in the rest of its remarks," returned the pertinacious Mr. Howel, "although it has ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... bed, and was retiring to rest herself, when the children cried out "Here they are again." The mother chid them and lay down, but as though in rebuke of her apparent indifference, they were on this occasion louder and more pertinacious than ever. Rest was impossible. The children kept up a continuous chatter, sitting up in bed to listen to the sounds. Mr. Fox tried the windows and doors, to discover, if possible, the source of the annoyance. The night being windy it suggested itself to him that it might ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd

... will doubt every time he finds an interest in questioning them: present motives will tell more home to his heart than those which are distant and at best uncertain. The vicious and the wicked are so common upon the earth, so pertinacious in their evil courses, so attached to their irregularities, only because there are but few governments that make man feel the advantage of being just, the pleasure of being honest, the happiness of being benevolent on the contrary, there is hardly any place where the most ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... made restless by the very fulness of my happiness. At breakfast the next morning, Jane questioned me on my somewhat haggard looks, and was inquisitive to know if anything had happened. Somehow she was unusually pertinacious; but I parried her inquiries. I was unwilling that others, as yet, should become sharers of my joy. But when she left upon her usual duties, I put on my best attire, with all the little novelties in dress which we had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... general manner, he was kind and gentle in a sick-room; only nervous disorders, the pet diseases of Mr. Simon Saunders, he could not abide. He made short work with them; frightened them away as one does by children when they have the hiccough; or if the malady were pertinacious and would not go, he fairly turned off the patient. Once or twice, indeed, on such occasions, the patient got the start, and turned him off; Mrs. Emery, for instance, the lady's maid at New Place, most delicate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various

... saveloys!" at the end of George Street, where the cheap eating-houses (sixpence a meal) were kept by Chinamen (Sun-kum-on's was not bad), is heard at regular intervals. I have listened for hours to this most pertinacious pedlar (I wonder whether he is dead or has made a fortune), while sitting on the rail of the old Duke of S- (she's dead, poor thing! a violent death on the coast of New Zealand), fascinated by the monotony, the regularity, the abruptness of the recurring cry, and so exasperated at the absurd ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... if it is opposed to perseverance, this is so either by excess or by deficiency. Now it is not opposed by excess: because the pertinacious also yield to certain pleasure and sorrow, since according to the Philosopher (Ethic. vii, 9) "they rejoice when they prevail, and grieve when their opinions are rejected." And if it be opposed by deficiency, it will be the same as effeminacy, which is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... way. He reappeared in various forms, always soliciting charity, more and more importunately every time, and always receiving the same denial. At last he appeared as an old woman, leaning on a stick, who was more pertinacious in her entreaties than the preceding semblances; and the carter, after asseverating with an oath that a whole shipload of beggars must have been wrecked that night on the coast, reiterated that he had nothing for her. 'Only the smallest coin, master,' said ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... was. "It is impossible to do it now. We must wait till next year," said his friends. "Nothing like trying: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. No time like the present," replied Mr. Perseverance, a pertinacious gentleman, who wanted to "strike when the iron was hot," and carry out his notion without delay. Accordingly, he caught up two sticks, and nailed them together, so as to get the right shape. Then he went down town,—the town being small, he had not far ...
— Gems Gathered in Haste - A New Year's Gift for Sunday Schools • Anonymous

... information for a set purpose—to bring the ANTIQUITIES up to date. Whatever failed to fit in with this programme, however novel, however interesting—it was ruthlessly discarded. In this and other matters he was the reverse of Keith, who collected information for its own sake. Keith was a pertinacious and omnivorous student; he sought knowledge not for a set purpose but because nothing was without interest for him. He took all learning to his province. He read for the pleasure of knowing what he did not know before; his mind was unusually receptive because, he ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... swinging his long-lashed whip the while, and then damned the six in mass. He would have made a dutiful overseer. The soldiers had shown quite as little consideration for the residences along the way. I came to one dwelling where some pertinacious Vandal had even pried out the window-frames, and imperilled his neck to tear out the roof-beams; a dead vulture was pinned over the door by pieces ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... came forth to meet the Adelantado, at the head of thirty maidens of her household, dancing and singing their native songs, and waving branches of the palm-tree, a variety of Old and New Testament pictures occurred to the mind. Their hospitality and pertinacious sheltering of fugitives was another Oriental trait. But, above all, the horrible oppression to which the Spaniards subjected them, the indignities and sufferings heaped upon them, were considered to fulfil the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... with childish profusion. Grenville, though strictly upright, was grasping and parsimonious. Pitt was a man of excitable nerves, sanguine in hope, easily elated by success and popularity, keenly sensible of injury, but prompt to forgive; Grenville's character was stem, melancholy, and pertinacious. Nothing was more remarkable in him than his inclination always to look on the dark side of things. He was the raven of the House of Commons, always croaking defeat in the midst of triumphs, and bankruptcy with ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... by a freshening breeze, pursued their way up the river. But although they had escaped for the moment, Phil and Dick still had plenty of cause for anxiety; for they had by this time been long enough in the wilds to have learned that when Indians are hostile their hostility is very bitter and pertinacious; and they could scarcely hope that, having mistaken them for Spaniards—who at that time were more feared and hated than any other earthly thing by the Indians— the Mayubuna would be satisfied with the issue of their first encounter ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation." The ecclesiastics, who surrounded his death-bed, assured him that such sins as he had been guilty of could only be expiated by the most liberal benefactions to the church. He had never forgiven Isabella for her pertinacious adherence to De Soto. In the grave he could not prohibit their nuptials. By bequeathing his wealth to the church, he could accomplish a double object. He could gratify his revenge by leaving his daughter penniless, and thus De Soto, if ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... celebrated author of The Rambler, who is of all others the oddest and most peculiar fellow I ever saw. He is six feet high, has a violent convulsion in his head, and his eyes are distorted. He speaks roughly and loud, listens to no man's opinions, thoroughly pertinacious of his own. Good sense flows from him in all he utters, and he seems possessed of a prodigious fund of knowledge, which he is not at all reserved in communicating; but in a manner so obstinate, ungenteel, and boorish, as renders it disagreeable and dissatisfactory. In short it is impossible ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... to the pleasant surprise and half welcome of the members; more often to the bewilderment and prostration of numerous victims; and in a few signal instances, to the gnashing of angry men's teeth. I know of no two more pertinacious incendiaries in the whole country; nor will they themselves deny the charge. In fact, this noise-making twain are the two sticks of a drum for keeping up what Daniel Webster called ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... honour of the occasion, Maurice ordered wine, and they remained sitting, after they had finished supper, listening to the rustling and swishing of the trees. The only drawback to the young man's happiness was the pertinacious curiosity of the girl who waited on them. She lingered after she had served them, and stared so hard that Maurice turned at length and asked ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... was born in 1377, the son of a well-to-do Florentine of good family who wished to make him a notary. The boy, however, wanted to be an artist, and was therefore placed with a goldsmith, which was in those days the natural course. As a youth he attempted everything, being of a pertinacious and inquiring mind, and he was also a great debater and student of Dante; and, taking to sculpture, he was one of those who, as we shall see in a later chapter, competed for the commission for the Baptistery gates. It was indeed ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... seen the swineherd painting with nature's own tints," said Master Swift, with a pertinacious adherence to his own view of things, which had always been characteristic of him, "I reckon you'd have thought he beat the shepherd boy. Not that I could pretend to be a judge of the painting myself, sir; what took MY mind was the inventive energy of the child. For maybe ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Tembu warriors—they were easily identifiable by the shape of their shields and spears and the general character of their war equipment—who had evidently been shot down during a most determined and pertinacious attack upon the house. The other half of the front portion of the garden presented a similar sight, the whole bearing mute but indubitable testimony not only to the implacable determination of the savages but also to the resolution of the ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... contented, or almost contented, were I sure of it. Hope is nearly as strong as despair, and greatly more pertinacious and enduring. You have made me see clearly that you never can be mine in this world: but at the same time, O Beatrice, you have made me see quite as clearly that you may and must be mine in another! I am older than you: precedency is given to age, and not to worthiness; I will pray for you when ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... she got no fun out of it as I did. It was an awful climb. When we got out of the gulch, C. was so confused that he took the wrong direction, and after an hour of vague wandering was only recalled to the right one by my pertinacious assertions acting on his weak brain. I was inclined to be angry with the incompetent braggart, who had boasted that he could take us to Estes Park "blindfold"; but I was sorry for him too, so said nothing, even though I had to walk during these meanderings to save my tired ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... over Edinburgh, up to the castle, to the university, to Holyrood, to the hospitals, and through many of the principal streets, amid shouts, and smiles, and greetings. Some boys amused me very much by their pertinacious attempts to keep ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... all their business arrangements with people whom they could not personally approach-himself interested by the large percentage which was the payment for his part of the business. The Jew was most pertinacious in ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray

... and other implements necessary for their escape, were transmitted secretly to the culprits by a friend from without. By these means they sawed a bar out of one of the prison-windows, and might have made their escape, but for the obstinacy of Wilson, who, as he was daringly resolute, was doggedly pertinacious of his opinion. His comrade, Robertson, a young and slender man, proposed to make the experiment of passing the foremost through the gap they had made, and enlarging it from the outside, if necessary, to allow Wilson free passage. Wilson, however, insisted on ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... sure that the answer of the uncle would be favorable, I thought we might go on at once, and not lose two days in the same spot. "No, it is our custom;" and every thing else I could urge was answered in the genuine pertinacious lady style. She ground some meal for me with her own hands, and when she brought it told me she had actually gone to a village and begged corn for the purpose. She said this with an air as if the inference must be drawn ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... consequence was a rush of some fifty excited people on to the platform, with earnest requests on the part of the proprietary to be "still." There was no more stillness for the rest of the evening. The fifty were pruned down to about fifteen of the most pertinacious, who would not move at any price; in fact, the others only descended on being promised that the dark sitting should be divided into two, and another committee appointed. The Indescribable Phenomenon took her seat on the camp-stool in the centre, where she was to remain clapping her hands, to show ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... deliver himself of his name, Miss Milroy looked accidentally in the horticulturist's pertinacious face, and instantly lost her hold on her gravity beyond recall. Allan, never backward in following a boisterous example of any sort, joined in her laughter with right goodwill. The wise man of the gardens showed no surprise, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... antiquity.——Tyranny in every form, shape and appearance, was their disdain and abhorrence; no fear of punishment, nor even of death itself, in exquisite tortures, had been sufficient to conquer that steady, manly, pertinacious spirit, with which they had opposed the tyrants of those days, in church and state. They were very far from being enemies to monarchy; and they knew as well as any men, the just regard and honour that is due to the character of a dispenser of the mysteries of the gospel of grace: But they ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams

... the man who had sought him in New York should track him to Florence. He might have an interest in this affair of Lady Chetwynde deep enough to inspire so pertinacious a search, so that the difficulty did not consist in this. The true difficulty lay in the fact that this man who had come to him first as the inquirer after Lady Chetwynde should now turn out to be the betrayer of Miss ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... aims of these tyrants and their horrid avarice and oppression, they were not satisfied with being evil tyrants to the natives, but also to their own proper sons, brothers and relations, in defiance of their own laws and statutes, they were the worst and most pertinacious tyrants with an unheard-of inhumanity. For it was enacted among themselves and by their customs and laws that the eldest legitimate son should succeed, yet almost always they broke the law, as appears by the Incas who are ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

... Median and then from the Scythian inroads. He had besieged for several years the strong Philistine town of Ashdod, which commands the coast-route from Egypt to Palestine, and was at this time a most important city. Despite a resistance which would have wearied out any less pertinacious assailant, he had persevered in his attempt, and had finally succeeded in taking the place. He had thus obtained a firm footing in Syria; and his successor was, able, starting from this vantage-ground, to overrun and conquer the whole territory. About the year B.C. 608, Neco, son of Psamatik ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson

... neither Ezekiel Cheever nor his son Thomas, who had charge of his mother's rights, could get to Salem; and the court granted administration to the widow. The Cheevers demanded a rehearing: it was granted; and quite an interesting and pertinacious law-suit arose, which was finally carried up to the General Court, who decided it in 1681. The widow does not appear to have been actuated by merely selfish motives, but sought to divert a portion of the landed ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... for not accompanying my pertinacious and unscrupulous acquaintance on his cruise against the Frankfort Israelites, when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... fortnight—cure the obsession, or at least get the upper hand of it. The treatment demands perseverance, but it emphatically does not demand an impossibly powerful effort. It is an affair of trifling pertinacious touches. ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett

... desiring Mr. Kenneth to get another servant to introduce him to the master. I could not hinder myself from pondering on the question—'Had he had fair play?' Whatever I did, that idea would bother me: it was so tiresomely pertinacious that I resolved on requesting leave to go to Wuthering Heights, and assist in the last duties to the dead. Mr. Linton was extremely reluctant to consent, but I pleaded eloquently for the friendless condition in which he lay; and I said my old master and foster-brother had a claim on my services ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... of mistresses, and when Elizabeth Charlotte invoked her aid against the machinations of a wanton, old Veuve Scarron changed her tone. Then in the midst of the discussion the King had a twinge in his gangrened knee, and signed Forstner's release, in order to be rid of this pertinacious princess. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... demanded her immediate presence in London.... But Johnson did not know the least tittle of this transaction, and he continued to direct his letters to Bath as usual, expressing, no doubt, an immense wonder at her pertinacious silence." So she told her daughters that she was going to London, whilst she deceived Johnson, who was sure to learn the truth from them; and he was wondering at her pertinacious silence at the very time when he was receiving letters from her, dated Bath! Why, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... doubt whatever that they would have succeeded in ultimately escaping from this pertinacious ghost, and poor Poopy would have had to make the best of her way to Sandy Cove alone, but for the fortunate circumstance that Corrie fell; and being only a couple of paces in advance of his companion, Bumpus ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... the very flowers, no doubt, which had lured me so near the same dangerous brink. It seemed impossible to go away and leave her, but it was cruel to delay. My feet felt like lead as I ran along those dark galleries and down the stone flights of giddy stairs. Just in the entrance stood one of those pertinacious sellers of old coins and bits of marble. I threw down a piece of silver on his little stand, seized a small tin basin in which he had his choicest coins, emptied them on the ground, and saying, in my poor Italian, "Lady—ill—water," I had filled the basin at the old stone fountain near ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... The pertinacious opposition of Angus to his doom irritated to the extreme the fiery temper of James, and he swore, in his wrath, that a Douglas should never serve him; an oath which he kept in circumstances under which the spirit of chivalry, which he worshipped[14], ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... much to-day," he opined, "low visibility—plafond only about a thousand!" Which cryptic sentence, by dint of pertinacious questioning, I found to mean that the clouds were about a thousand feet from earth and that it was misty. "Plafond", by the way, is aeronautic for cloud strata. Thus I stood with my gaze lifted heavenward until the Intelligence ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol

... keep him back and spoil his run. This will be further alluded to in the Chapter on Etiquette, and if a beginner wishes to be popular, I advise him strongly to adhere to the "Law." A strict code has been adopted, mainly as a result of the suffering from pertinacious runners, who put their standard higher than is ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse

... to be supported with a degree of earnestness which its opponents termed pertinacious, but not a single opinion was changed. It was brought forward in the new and less exceptionable form of assuming specific sums from each state. Under this modification of the principle, the extraordinary contributions ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... not him which eateth not judge him that eateth" (Rom. xiv. 3)! You see here how the Apostle blames those who, not from religious feeling, but in mere contempt, neglect and rail at ceremonial observances, and teaches them not to despise, since this "knowledge puffeth up." Again, he teaches the pertinacious upholders of these things not to judge their opponents. For neither party observes towards the other that charity which edifieth. In this matter we must listen to Scripture, which teaches us to turn aside neither to the right hand nor to the left, but to follow those right precepts of the ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther

... came forth, and to know its chief, he engaged to come to England in it, the captain and sailors not scrupling to promise him an introduction to King George. When the Santa Anna reached England, the crew had grown tired of him, used him roughly and harshly, and tried to put him off his pertinacious recollection of the promise of seeing the king, by telling him that King George's house could not be found; while he was worked beyond his strength, and scarcely ever suffered to go on shore. When, in fifteen days, the cargo was all discharged, the captain put him on board the Ann, to be taken ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... always does, especially if he is confined during the performance of his vocal exercises to a narrow city yard surrounded by brick walls which act as sounding-boards to carry the vibrations to the ears of a sleeper who is already restless with the summer heat and with the buzzing of early and pertinacious flies. To such a man, aroused and indignant, there comes a profound conviction that the urban rooster is far more vociferous than his rural brethren; that he can sing louder, hold on longer and begin again more quickly than the bucolic cock ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... "Pertinacious beggar!" I heard Dan mutter in his beard; and found myself marching down the lane again by Pearse's side. I asked him what he was good enough to mean by saying I was coming, without having asked me. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... sun rose after a more anxious night, for the attacks had been exceedingly pertinacious and harassing, while the mischief done amongst the attacking ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn

... him by the footman, he had more than once, on crossing the street, seen herself through the window, it was clear that his acquaintance was not courted. Jasper Losely, by habit, was the reverse of a pertinacious and troublesome suitor; not, Heaven knows, from want of audacity, but from excess of self-love. Where a Lovelace so superb condescended to make overtures, a Clarissa so tasteless as to decline them deserved and experienced his contempt. Besides, steadfast and prolonged ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of the Moorish territory of Andalusia, where it commanded the passes into Castile, became of vital importance to the latter kingdom. Its defense had accordingly been entrusted to the valiant order of the Templars, who, unable to keep their ground against the pertinacious assaults of the Moslems, abandoned it, at the expiration of eight years, as untenable. This occurred about the middle of the twelfth century; and the Castilian monarch, Sancho the Beloved, as the last resort, offered it ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... in England. His observations on that particular point are curious. In Ireland, he remarks, the sentiments of the lawyers have considerable weight in the discussion of political subjects, which, "whether it arises from the confident and pertinacious loquacity of gentlemen of that profession, or from the deference which is shown and felt for those in whose hands are entrusted the most interesting concerns of every family in the kingdom, and from their frequent intercourse ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... gets hold of a letter, worth, to it, from three to ten sous, and does not immediately know where to find the person to whom that letter is addressed, it displays a financial anxiety only to be met with in very pertinacious creditors. The post goes and comes and ferrets through all the eighty-six departments. Difficulties only arouse the genius of the clerks, who may really be called men-of-letters, and who set about to search for that unknown human being with as much ardor as the mathematicians ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... innovator who may seek to append his name to the long scroll of Shakespearean parasites by the display of a brand-new hypothesis as to the uncertain date or authorship of some passage or some play which has never before been subjected to the scientific scrutiny of such a pertinacious analyst. The more modest design of the present study has in part been already indicated, and will explain as it proceeds if there be anything in it worth explanation. It is no part of my ambition to loose ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... generous service. Where the race is to the slow you lay aside your winged gifts one by one and your ambition centers finally not on the Presidency but on some committee chairmanship clung to by a pertinacious octogenarian. ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... mothers would not hear of my searching the tents. Then I was compelled to make friends with the bevies of young squaws, who ogle newcomers to the Indian camps. Presently, I gained the run of all the lodges. Indeed, I needed not a little diplomacy to keep from being adopted as son-in-law by one pertinacious old fellow—a kind of embarrassment not wholly confined to trappers in the wilds. But not a trace of Diable and his captives did ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... he was earnest in his pursuit of learning; there was a singular harmony in the exercise of the physical, intellectual, and emotional faculties at his disposal. Julian Grenfell was a master of the body and of the mind, an unrivalled boxer, a pertinacious hunter, skilled in swimming and polo, a splendid shot, a swift runner, and an unwearying student. That an athlete so accomplished should have had time left for intellectual endowments is amazing, but his natural pugnacity led him to fight ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... chaffed her, and laughed at her, and called her jealous, and twitted her, no end. Well, you know, at last she got laughing herself, and we made it all up, and all that sort of thing, you know; still, she's very pertinacious, and even after we made up she teased and teased, till she got ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... that our fellow-voyagers, the little fish along-side, were sorely tormented and thinned out by the incursions of a pertinacious Chevalier, bent upon making a hearty breakfast out of them, I determined to interfere in their behalf, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... solicited the patronage of innumerable tarry mariners, until their horny hands had filled up the voting-papers and my own smelt to heaven of fish. It was a quarter to five, and dark, before I escaped from the attentions of a small but pertinacious group of inquirers who wanted to understand my exact attitude on the question of trawling within the three-mile limit, and proceeded at a hand-gallop back to Stoneleigh. (That odoriferous but popular vehicle, the motor-car, was still in the preceded-by-a-man-ten-yards-in-front-bearing-a-red-flag ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... about royalties, dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies, court balls and glittering functions, she devoured and learned by heart. An abominably vulgar little person, she was an interestingly pertinacious creature, and wrought night and day at acquiring an air of fashionable elegance, at first naturally laying it on in such manner as suggested that it should be scraped off with a knife, but with experience gaining a certain specious knowledge of forms. How the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... companion, Cosmo Waynflete urged on his steed in hopes of leaving the apparition behind; but the stranger quickened his horse also to an equal pace. And when the first horseman pulled up, thinking to lag behind, the second did likewise. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller against the sky, gigantic in height and muffled in a cloak, he was horror-struck to discover the stranger ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews

... in his conceits and courses. Briefly, from this proceeding men become unwilling to mark, unfit to apprehend, indisposed to embrace any good instruction or advice; it maketh them indocile and intractable, averse from better instruction, pertinacious in their opinions, and ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... streets a little improvised shrine, or it may be only a festooned print of the Madonna hung against the walls of some house or against the back of a chair, and tended by two or three children, who hold out to you a plate, as you pass, and beg for charity, sometimes, I confess, in the most pertinacious way,—the money thus raised to be expended in oil for the lamps before the Madonna shrines in the streets. The monasteries of nuns are also busy with processions and celebrations in honor of "the Mother of God," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... coronation officiated with the outward show of zeal, and did his best to ingratiate himself with the royal family. But his servility was requited with cold contempt. No creature is so revengeful as a proud man who has humbled himself in vain. Atterbury became the most factious and pertinacious of all the opponents of the government. In the House of Lords his oratory, lucid, pointed, lively, and set off with every grace of pronunciation and of gesture, extorted the attention and admiration even of a hostile majority. Some of the most remarkable protests which appear ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of two parties of pro and anti missionary leanings, with views on all island subjects in grotesque antagonism. So far, the former have left the undoubted results of missionary effort here to speak for themselves; and I am almost disposed, from the pertinacious aggressiveness of the latter party, to think that it must be weak. I have already been seized upon (a gentleman would write "button- holed") by several persons, who, in their anxiety to be first in imprinting their own views on the tabula rasa of a stranger's mind, have exercised an unseemly ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... St Kilda his reflections were of the same unpleasant nature, and he cast about in his own mind how he could get rid of this pertinacious friend. He could not turn him off openly, as Pierre might take offence, and as he knew more of M. Vandeloup's private life than that young gentleman cared about, it would not do to run ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... arguing with so pertinacious a disputant we were compelled humbly to submit. The horse had one stall—we took possession of the other. To make ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would allow, we collected all the hay and straw and reeds, so as to form a thick layer of dry materials between our bodies ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... firm, unbending, inelastic, stark, impliable, rigorous, unyielding, inductile; strong, violent, forcible, inopposable; pertinacious, obstinate, tenacious, uncompromising, incompliant; constrained, formal, starched, affected, unnatural, precise, prim, ceremonious, prudish, punctilious; cramped, graceless, inelegant; (Slang) high, immoderate, large. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... was viewed with distrust and jealousy. The restless spirit of fanaticism and faction, curbed within the narrow limits of colonial government, gladly seized on every occasion to display its blind and pertinacious zeal. The liberal temper, and impartial administration of governor Winthrop, had been often censured by the more rigid Puritans, and his open espousal of La Tour's cause, excited much discontent and animosity. Though avowedly a Hugonot, there was reason to believe La Tour embraced ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... my right of sitting next to her to Horace, and established myself on the other side of the table, between Mrs Leicester and her younger daughter; and a hard post I had of it. Mary would not talk at all, and her mamma would do nothing else; and she was one of those pertinacious talkers, too, who, not content with running on themselves, and leaving you to put in an occasional interjection, inflict upon you a cross-examination in its severest form, and insist upon a definite and rational answer to every question. However, availing myself of those legitimate qualifications ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... the last bell rang he saw a man rush along, to catch the train. It was the same man who had been watching him the whole evening, and Brian felt confident that he was being followed. He comforted himself, however, with the thought that this pertinacious follower might lose the train, and, being in the last carriage himself, he kept a look out along the platform, expecting to see his friend of the Esplanade standing disappointed on it. There was no appearance of him, so Brian, ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... it!' went on Gillian, feeling much injured for her hero's sake, and wearing what looked like a pertinacious pout. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that went in or out. If she had any purpose of losing herself in the thickets of fern, or copsewood, in the park, or holding unperceived conference under shelter of the chase, these plans were rendered impossible by the pertinacious presence of one or other of the Talbots, who acted ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... in all directions. Robinson got the horse at last at the plain, and I took special care to find a pair of hobbles for him for this night at all events. The flies were an intolerable nuisance, not that they were extraordinarily numerous, but so insufferably pertinacious. I think the tropic fly of Australia the most abominable insect of its kind. From the summit of the hill I ascended on Sunday, I found the line of mountains still ran on to the west, the furthest hills appeared fifty miles away. As they extend so far, and ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... poor peasantry here have been the victims of similar incursions, "the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through byeways." Yet though chased away from their homes, the populations returned, whenever possible, with pertinacious attachment to their devastated dwellings, and hence we have still the very names of the towns and villages perpetuated by a resident people after a lapse of almost thirty-three hundred years since the allotment ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... sufferings, "washing away his own iniquities." [460:4] We are told that by baptism "we are cleansed from all our sins," and "regain that Spirit of God which Adam received at his creation and lost by his transgression." [460:5] "The pertinacious wickedness of the Devil," says Cyprian, "has power up to the saving water, but in baptism he loses all the poison of his wickedness." [460:6] The same writer insists upon the necessity of penance, a species of discipline unknown to the apostolic Church, and denounces, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... of the oldest inhabitant, he had slowly gravitated on into his present position, on the old Ring principle, "weight must tell." I believe he had been bullied continuously for many years, and now, with a dull, pertinacious malignity, was biding his time, intending, on his accession to power, to inflict full reprisals on those below him; or, in his own expressive language, "to take it out of 'em, like smoke." He was ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... rising discontent and agitations of the children, came in to over-cloud the whole business in a mist of sick impatience and disgust. Return to Australia was never out of Susan's mind, never absent from her pertinacious foolish lips. Little Freddy harped upon it all day long, and so did his brother and sister. Nettie said nothing, but retired with exasperated weariness upon her own thoughts—sometimes thinking, tired of the conflict, why not give in to them? ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... him any was the children, about eighty of them, who always went along, too, and set in a circle around him when he played. I told him they'd soon tire of tagging after him, which he said he was mighty glad to hear; but if it was flies, they couldn't have been more pertinacious. I spoke to the king about it, and Old Dibs he complained to Iosefo, but it only seemed to whoop it up and add to the procession. The king said if he'd just flute in one place, he would put a taboo around it which neither children nor grown-ups would cross; but Old Dibs said ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... in Dorsetshire. The court was filled with indignation at this cruel sentence, and Tutchin prayed rather to be hanged at once. This privilege was refused, but as the poor prisoner, a mere youth, was taken ill with smallpox, his sentence was remitted. Tutchin became one of the most pertinacious and vehement enemies of ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... bosom, he cannot easily expel it,—even though personal interest should be on the side of such expulsion. It had become a settled belief with the Boltons that John Caldigate was a bigamist, which belief had certainly been strengthened by the pertinacious hostility of Hester's mother. Dick had heard something of all this, and thought that he would be able ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... nothing that had since happened had been of a nature to change his views. James, on the other hand, was fully determined to make no concession on that point. [484] As to other matters he was less pertinacious. He put forth a proclamation in which he solemnly promised to protect the Church of England and to maintain the Act of Uniformity. He declared himself willing to make great sacrifices for the sake of concord. He would no longer insist that Roman Catholics should be admitted into ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... certainly will, sooner or later—probably in about a fortnight—cure the obsession, or at least get the upper hand of it. The treatment demands perseverance, but it emphatically does not demand an impossibly powerful effort. It is an affair of trifling pertinacious touches. ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett

... the culprits by a friend from without. By these means they sawed a bar out of one of the prison-windows, and might have made their escape, but for the obstinacy of Wilson, who, as he was daringly resolute, was doggedly pertinacious of his opinion. His comrade, Robertson, a young and slender man, proposed to make the experiment of passing the foremost through the gap they had made, and enlarging it from the outside, if necessary, to allow Wilson free passage. Wilson, however, insisted on making ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... living lay figure, for the little cockle-shell ducked, and dived, and rocked, and tipped, and curtseyed, and tilted, as I knelt first on one side and then on the other fitting her, till I was almost in despair; however, I got a sort of pattern at last, and by dint of some pertinacious efforts—which, in their incompleteness, did not escape some sarcastic remarks from Mr. —— on the capabilities of 'women of genius' applied to common-place objects—the matter was accomplished, and the little Dolphin rejoiced in very tidy back and seat cushions, covered ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... Clyde," I said. "I suppose I'm just as lazy as the rest. I only came out to give my old doggy a walk and a dip, as I generally do every morning before breakfast. If it were not for him, I do not believe I would get up sooner than anybody else; but he's such a pertinacious fellow that he won't be denied his walk, always rousing me up at eight o'clock 'sharp.' Would you believe it, he brings my boots up to my door, and it is a trick he ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... minister as a Priest, then as Prophet foretold the approaching fate of that fair city, asking significantly, since the Romans dealt thus with Himself an innocent sufferer, what would they not do when exasperated by the pertinacious resistance of the Jewish ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... through, so as almost to know it by heart, that at length I returned to my Bible. All this time I had never asked Jackson to go on with his narrative; but now that my curiosity was appeased, I made the request. He appeared, as before, very unwilling; but I was pertinacious, and ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... to be noted, to understand the worst aims of these tyrants and their horrid avarice and oppression, they were not satisfied with being evil tyrants to the natives, but also to their own proper sons, brothers and relations, in defiance of their own laws and statutes, they were the worst and most pertinacious tyrants with an unheard-of inhumanity. For it was enacted among themselves and by their customs and laws that the eldest legitimate son should succeed, yet almost always they broke the law, as appears by the Incas ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

... all. It recurs only when Elsa's pertinacious inquisitiveness threatens to rupture their somewhat hastily arranged alliance. Then it sounds out sinister, menacing, and the effect, both dramatic and musical, is overwhelming. Another example is the phrase representing Lohengrin simply as a ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... insisted on the logical incompleteness of the theory so long as it was not backed by experimental proof that the cause assumed was competent to produce all the effects required. (See also "Lectures to Working Men" 1863 pages 146 and 147.) In fact, Darwin used to reproach me sometimes for my pertinacious insistence on the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... not the virtues of a stage-struck hero," thought Oldbuck to himself; and, however habitually pertinacious in his opinions, he must have been compelled to abandon that which he had formed in the present instance, but for a part of Caxon's communication. "The young gentleman," he said, "was sometimes heard speaking to himsell, and rampauging about in his room, just as if he was ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... did the gale from the south-west continue. The fourth day there was a change, the wind coming from the eastward. Roswell would now have gone out, had it not been for the apprehension of falling in with Daggett again. Having at length gotten rid of that pertinacious companion, it would have been an act of great weakness to throw himself blindly in his way once more. It was possible that Daggett might not suppose he had been left intentionally, in which case, he would be very apt to look for his lost consort in the vicinity of the cape. As for the gale, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... being ever realised; while it was quite evident the Company's benevolent views toward the Esquimaux could not be carried into effect. The extreme poverty and barrenness of their country, and their pertinacious adherence to their seal-skin dresses, which no argument of ours could induce them to exchange for the less comfortable articles of European clothing, were insurmountable obstacles. The Honourable Company, while they wished to supply the wants of the Esquimaux, still urged the ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... they could find to say to each other, and next became irritated because they were always so grave and silent with him. All this time, he was perpetually devising small new pleasures for the child. His thoughts ran, in a pertinacious way, upon the desolate life before her; and often he came back from his day's work loaded with the very thing Alice had been longing for, but had not been able to procure. One time it was a little chair for drawing the little sufferer along the streets, ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens

... than is common with boys,—which love was never lost, but grew with his advancing years. Among his fellows he was a hearty player, a forward fighter in boyish "bickers," and a teller of tales that delighted his comrades. He was sweet-tempered, merry, generous, and well-beloved, yet peremptory and pertinacious in pursuit ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... question was modified besides by other circumstances. England was, as she had but too often been, but never before in James's experience—harsh, overbearing, and unresponsive: while France, as was also her wont, was tender, flattering, and pertinacious. Henry refused or delayed to pay Queen Margaret a legacy of jewels and plate left to her by her father, and at the same time protected certain Borderers who had murdered a Scottish knight, and defended them against justice and James, while still ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... troubled as her poor little self? They did not know all they were doing; but if they had eyes, they must see a little of it. Why could she not have been allowed to keep her old free, simple feeling with everybody, instead of being hampered, and constrained, and miserable, from this pertinacious putting of thoughts in her head that ought not to be there? It had made her unlike herself, she knew, in the company of several people. And perhaps they might be sharp- sighted enough to read it; but, even if not, ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... and most zealous friends of the constitution. Where arms were expected and not found, a very new mode of trial was instituted. The suspected or accused person was suspended by the neck until the process of strangulation was nearly completed. He was then let down, and if he was still pertinacious, the touchstone was again tried, until he either confessed or accused others. In other cases, it was ascertained what quantity of arms should be brought in by a certain village or district—if the full quantity could ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous

... the Indians, was kept in close durance. Washington, who knew nothing of this, was shocked on visiting Williamsburg, to learn that La Force was in prison. He expostulated with the governor on the subject, but without effect; Dinwiddie was at all times pertinacious, but particularly so when he felt himself to be ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... really can't keep us away. We positively must come. My son insists. These lovers, you know, dear, are so pertinacious. Well," she added, looking hastily at Edith, "I suppose I must say good—morning; but, Miss Dalton, think of my boy. ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille

... life. It is never remitted or abated: resolves are necessitated upon imperfect evidence; and action imperatively demanded amidst doubts and difficulties in which reason is not satisfied, and faith is required. To argue therefore, that God cannot have left man to such uncertainty, is to argue, as the pertinacious lawyer did, who, on seeing a man in the stocks, asked him what he was there for; and on being told, said, 'They cannot put you there for that.' 'But I am here,' ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... himself at full length from the water with open mouth, his pursuer still hanging to the jaw, the blood issuing from the wound and dyeing the sea to a distance around; but all his flounderings were of no avail; his pertinacious enemy still maintained his hold, and was evidently getting the advantage of him. Much alarm seemed to be felt by the many other whales around. These "killers," as they are called, are of a brownish colour ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous

... poem, is to shrink up that greatness into very narrow limits. Yet this has been done by men of mark and ability, by Italians, by men who read the Commedia in their own mother tongue. It has been maintained as a satisfactory account of it—maintained with great labor and pertinacious ingenuity—that Dante meant nothing more by his poem than the conflicts and ideal triumphs of a political party. The hundred cantos of that vision of the universe are but a manifesto of the Ghibelline propaganda, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... those who heard him assented to all he said. The Baroness Banmann held up her hands in horror when she heard the tale, and declared the Church to be one grand betise. Mrs. Houghton, who was very attentive to the Marquis and whom the Marquis liked, was pertinacious in her enquiries after Popenjoy, and cruelly sarcastic upon the Dean. "Think what was his bringing ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... some American port. The capture of the British merchant ships kept the Molly supplied with the necessaries for her continued cruise, and served besides to calm the impatience of the men, who were beginning to complain of their captain's pertinacious clinging to the hope of taking the East Indiaman, which might already be safely harbored in English waters. There had been dark nights and foggy days in which she might well have passed them, so they reasoned. But Derry Duck said there was no moving the captain, and grumblers would do best to "keep ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... resulted in the treaty of peace; it was a period of 'painful anxiety and difficult labor:' Hamilton, Jefferson, and other of his eminent countrymen recognized warmly his services and his success: he did not altogether agree with Franklin, and was pertinacious in claiming all respect due to the Government he represented, assuring the British envoy that he would take no part in the business unless the United States 'were treated as an independent nation:' he drew up such a commission as would meet his views. While Hamilton gave Jay full credit ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... motions in the session of 1808, made by the same parties, were rejected by majorities somewhat reduced, and the question, on the whole, might be said to have recovered some of its former vantage ground, in despite of the bitter, pertinacious resistance of Mr. Perceval, in the one House, and the Duke ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... disease arising from indigestion is often very pertinacious, and afflicting; and attended with emaciation of the body from want of sufficient chyle. As the saliva swallowed along with our food prevents its fermentation, as appears by the experiments of Pringle and Macbride, some find considerable relief by chewing ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... given to him by the footman, he had more than once, on crossing the street, seen herself through the window, it was clear that his acquaintance was not courted. Jasper Losely, by habit, was the reverse of a pertinacious and troublesome suitor; not, Heaven knows, from want of audacity, but from excess of self-love. Where a Lovelace so superb condescended to make overtures, a Clarissa so tasteless as to decline them deserved and experienced ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... he also remembered that when he left Naples, Signorina Rossi was laboring away with the most pertinacious assiduity at cavatinas full of runs and scales and fiorituri generally; and he was quite willing to believe that such diligence had met with its due reward. But when the young lady modestly hinted that she had left her music in the hall below, and would like Leo to hear whether ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... steadfast, untiring, indefatigable, pertinacious, unremitting, indomitable. Antonyms: inconstant, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... particularly pertinacious on this point of completeness. What was once undertaken had to be finished, even if the inconvenience, tedium, vexation, nay, uselessness, of the thing begun were plainly manifested in the mean time. It seemed as if he regarded completeness ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... and so had done his best to prevent the union of the favourite with the lady; but whatever opposition he had offered had been overcome; and it is difficult to suppose the revengeful passions so gratuitously pertinacious as to produce a deep assassination-plot from such a cause. So far as one can judge from the extremely disjointed notices of the evidence in the State Trials and elsewhere, it was very inconclusive. Sir Thomas certainly died of some violent internal attack. Other persons ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... that, as Carlyle says, the wages of English working-men should be forced down further and further in every branch in which the Irish compete with him. And these branches are many. All such as demand little or no skill are open to the Irish. For work which requires long training or regular, pertinacious application, the dissolute, unsteady, drunken Irishman is on too low a plane. To become a mechanic, a mill-hand, he would have to adopt the English civilisation, the English customs, become, in the main, an Englishman. But for all simple, less exact ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... attacked with indiscriminate rage, and many of those who escaped were deprived of the use of their speech, without being secure from a return of the disorder. [91] The physicians of Constantinople were zealous and skilful; but their art was baffled by the various symptoms and pertinacious vehemence of the disease: the same remedies were productive of contrary effects, and the event capriciously disappointed their prognostics of death or recovery. The order of funerals, and the right of sepulchres, were confounded: those who were left without ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... mistress, claiming his entire time, exasperating him with fickleness, but still requiring that supreme devotion of which his nature was capable. It is possible that Miss Carmen saw this too, and so set about with feminine tact, if not to supplement, at least to make her rival less pertinacious and absorbing. Apart from this object, she zealously labored in her profession, yet with small pecuniary result, I fear. Local art was at a discount in California. The scenery of the country had not yet become famous; rather it was ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... with hands and arms, but rather helpless as to his legs, Tom Bodger was a splendid butt for the exercise of the boys' pertinacious tactics, and with mischief sparkling out of the young rascals' eyes they made their plans of approach and began to buzz round him like flies, calling names, asking questions, laughing and jeering ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... interest Lady Myrtle to hear about your school-fellows, my dear?' said Miss Mildmay, surprised and a little annoyed by Frances's rather pertinacious manner. 'These girls are very nice, I have no doubt; indeed I recollect Miss Scarlett speaking very highly of them; but no one doubts it. I think all your school-fellows must be nice girls—not only the Harpers. And the name ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... was rather mad, so they left me in peace, only posting one of the soldiers in a temple near by to keep watch and ward; but there was no need, for most of the people hereabouts are Tibetan, and they have little of the pertinacious curiosity of the Chinese, whether because of better manners or because less alert I do not know. And it was well I cut short my stay in the inn, for it was about the worst I had come across, as I took pains to inform ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... here, Sir, pursuing the allegory of David and Goliath, give you some of the 'stones' ('hard arguments' may be called 'stones,' since they 'knock down a pertinacious opponent') which I could 'pelt him with,' were he to be wroth with me; and this in order to take from you, Sir, all apprehensions for my 'life,' or my 'bones'; but I forbear them till you demand them of me, when I have the honour to ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... discover it," said Alice—for a moment put out of temper at the Doctor's pertinacious self-importance—"Guess my purpose, as you can guess at every thing else. It is enough to have to go through my task, I will not endure the distress of telling it over, and that to one who—forgive me, dear Doctor—might not think my agitation on ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... that it concerns me," returned Saracinesca, who was naturally pertinacious. "I am not inquisitive. I ask no questions. Giovanni has said very little about it to me. But I am not blind. He came to me one evening and said he was going to take you away to the mountains. He seemed very much disturbed, and I saw that there had been trouble between ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... saw was another fighting top. That pertinacious submarine had apparently surrounded the elusive Vulcan with ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... the scheme was vehement and pertinacious. The Old Company presented petition after petition. The Tories, with Seymour at their head, appealed both to the good faith and to the compassion of Parliament. Much was said about the sanctity of the existing Charter, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... that throughout these pages I have spoken paradoxically of the world war as primarily a struggle between the Latin and the Germanic ideal, ignoring the significance of Russia and of England. In spite of the heroic resistance of the French and the pertinacious thrust of the Italians against the steel wall in which Austria has bound them, the Latin forces engaged are obviously less than half of the Allied Powers. On the sea England is virtually alone. Nevertheless, I see the ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... then starting as from a reverie, he bowed and hurried out of the garden, the official person following him all the way, and overwhelming him with formal apologies for the necessary discharge of his duty. Nay, so pertinacious was he in his attempts to remove the offence which he conceived Durward to have taken, that he offered to bestow his own company upon him, to contribute to his entertainment until Quentin, internally cursing his formal foppery, found no better way of escape, then pretending ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... Molly Gaverick's had likewise annoyed her, and she fretted under the miserable sense of her inadequacy to the demands of a world she despised and yet hankered after. Then Sir Luke had been tiresomely pertinacious over some small dereliction on Bridget's part from the canons of Government House etiquette, which he had requested should not be repeated. Rosamond Tallant had been tiresome also and had made her feel that even ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... herself with a second, third, or nth choice. The only women who get their first choices are those who run in almost miraculous luck and those too stupid to formulate an ideal—two very small classes, it must be obvious. A few women, true enough, are so pertinacious that they prefer defeat to compromise. That is to say, they prefer to put off marriage indefinitely rather than to marry beneath the highest leap of their fancy. But such women may be quickly dismissed as abnormal, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... Biarritz, the old woman with her little black bag at once appears upon the scene. Some Frenchless friends in Paris, on one occasion, guilelessly seated in the gardens of the Palais Royal, took the collector simply for a pertinacious beggar-woman, and waved her airily off. She returned to the charge, of course, in indignant French, and grew angrier every moment as she found herself still loftily ignored. A warm fracas was in prospect, when a passing American fortunately cleared up the ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... the society, this discipline is resorted to. If expostulations are not successful, offenders are for a time restrained from participating in the holy communion, or called before the committee. For pertinacious bad conduct, or flagrant excesses, the culpable individual is dismissed from the society. The ecclesiastical church officers, generally speaking, are the bishops,—through whom the regular succession of ordination, transmitted to the United Brethren through the ancient church ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... in myriads spontaneously, kept up an increasing annoyance. At night this was ten-fold, for notwithstanding the gauze awnings, or bars, as they are called, which completely enveloped the bedstead, to the floor of the room, they found admittance with pertinacious audacity, and kept up a buzzing and humming about my ears that almost entirely deprived me of rest. This unceasing nuisance in the hot season, makes it difficult to keep one's equanimity of temper, and has, probably, much to do with that extreme irascibility shown by the southern inhabitants ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... hints of some deep, international scheme of which Ian Stafford was the engineer-in-chief, though she did not know definitely what it was. Both ambassadors had paid their court to her, each in a different way, and M. Mennaval would have been as pertinacious as he was vain and somewhat weak (albeit secretive, too, with the feminine instinct so strong in him) if she had not checked him at all points. From what Count Landrassy had said, it would appear that Ian Stafford's future hung in the balance—dependent upon the success ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... wretched fugitives were flying from the scene of massacre through a tempest, of whose pertinacious violence all the narratives speak with wonder. Exhausted, starved, half-clothed,—for most of them had escaped in their shirts,—they pushed their toilsome way amid the ceaseless howl of the elements. A few sought refuge in Indian villages; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... negro was delivered to a claimant under this process, more summary than any which the Fugitive-Slave Act provides. The colonel of a Massachusetts regiment showed some practical humor in dealing with a pertinacious claimant who asserted title to a negro found within his lines, and had brought a policeman along with him to aid in enforcing it. The shrewd colonel, (a Democrat he is,) retaining the policeman, put both the claimant and claimed outside of the lines together to try their fleetness. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... that kept on spattering about the rocks, every now and then striking up a shower of loose stones, waited, patiently watching a spot that he had marked down a couple of hundred yards away up the river to his left. For he had seen one of the most pertinacious of their aggressors draw back, apparently ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... separated them from the parent country, and the approach of every stranger was viewed with distrust and jealousy. The restless spirit of fanaticism and faction, curbed within the narrow limits of colonial government, gladly seized on every occasion to display its blind and pertinacious zeal. The liberal temper, and impartial administration of governor Winthrop, had been often censured by the more rigid Puritans, and his open espousal of La Tour's cause, excited much discontent and animosity. Though avowedly a Hugonot, there was reason to believe La ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... more pride in her leechcraft than becomes a Christian woman; she is even a little vain-glorious. For, to say nothing of her skill in compounding simples, she has occasionally brought down upon her head the sober remonstrances of her husband, by her pertinacious faith in the efficacy of certain spells in cases of intermittent. But there is no reasoning against her experience. She can enumerate the cases—"and men may say what they choose about its being contrary to reason, and all that;—it ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... pupillari. He was a man always difficult to convince of the impropriety of any thing on which he had once determined. He quitted my chamber unconvinced by what I had said: but the dedication afterwards appeared in accordance with my suggestion. I recollect being highly amused by the pertinacious ingenuity with which he defended his own view of the case. The fame of this work was not, however, confined to this country, but soon reached the United States of America, where it immediately met with the most flattering ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... undisguisedly enforced and maintained, with all the ability I possessed, the right of the whole of my fellow-countrymen to be fairly and freely represented, in the Commons House of Parliament. If there be any merit in what was then called a stubborn and pertinacious adherence to this great principle, I am only entitled to share that merit jointly with Mr. Hulme, Mr. Bamford, and the other brave and patriotic men who came from different parts of the country, as delegates. Without their manly support, this measure would have been ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... a different article, but vastly entertaining, and has been meat and drink to me for many a long evening. His manner is dry, brisk and pertinacious, and the choice of words not much. The point about him is his extraordinary readiness and spirit. You can propound nothing but he has either a theory about it ready- made, or will have one instantly on the stocks, and proceed to lay its timbers and launch it in your presence. "Let me see," ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... scheme as a child would have been with a new hobby- horse. Dreams at which even Macaenas might have laughed floated through her busy brain, and filled her kind heart with generous anticipations. On Thursday she informed Edna that she desired her presence at dinner, and urged her request with such pertinacious earnestness that no alternative remained but acquiescence, and reluctantly the governess prepared to meet a formidable ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... smell has been compared to that of ripe apricots. It is almost universally eaten in all countries where it is found, England excepted, where it is only to be met with at the "Freemason's Tavern" on state occasions, and at the tables of pertinacious mycophagists.[j] Trattinnick says: "Not only this same fungus never did any one harm, but might even restore ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... practised small brutalities upon him, which had no effect. He just withdrew and came again next day with his big-dog smile, quiet and persistent as a tide. Shy he was, and singularly pertinacious. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... woman, and helpless. She was not quite so bright in her intellect as she had been, and got muddled over things that had lately happened; but she had a clear memory for what was long past, and was very pertinacious in her opinions. She knew the private history of almost every family in the place, and who of the Trouts were buried under which old stones in the churchyard; and had more tales of ghosts, doubles, ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... laws. Her tribunals and parliaments remained entirely independent of the tribunals and parliaments which sate at Westminster. The administration of Scotland was in Scottish hands; for no Englishman had any motive to emigrate northward, and to contend with the shrewdest and most pertinacious of all races for what was to be scraped together in the poorest of all treasuries. Nevertheless Scotland by no means escaped the fate ordained for every country which is connected, but not incorporated, with another country of greater resources. Though in name an independent ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... yet steadily refused to take any share in it. He had never forgiven the insult put upon him by the King, for like most of his race, of whom it was said that they never forgave an injury and never forgot a kindness, he was a pertinacious man. Therefore he would not lift a finger in the King's cause. But still less would he help the Roundheads, whom he hated with a singular hatred. So time went, till at last, when he was sore pressed, Charles, knowing his great wealth and ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... educational, reformatory, religious, and political assemblies, sometimes to the pleasant surprise and half welcome of the members, more often to the bewilderment and prostration of numerous victims; and in a few signal instances, to the gnashing of angry men's teeth. I know of no two more pertinacious incendiaries in the whole country! Nor will they themselves deny the charge. In fact this noise-making twain are the two sticks of a drum for keeping up what Daniel Webster called ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... the way cleared and the man moved smartly on again, with every indication of one spurred on by an urgent errand—but went no more alone. Now a pertinacious shadow dogged him to the farther sidewalk, into the yawning vestibule of the railway station, on (at a trot) through its stupendous lobbies, even to the platform gates that were rudely slammed in his face by implacable destiny in the guise ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... earnest in his pursuit of learning; there was a singular harmony in the exercise of the physical, intellectual, and emotional faculties at his disposal. Julian Grenfell was a master of the body and of the mind, an unrivalled boxer, a pertinacious hunter, skilled in swimming and polo, a splendid shot, a swift runner, and an unwearying student. That an athlete so accomplished should have had time left for intellectual endowments is amazing, but his natural pugnacity led him to fight lexicons as he fought the wild boar, and ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... resigned, and Mr. Winston Churchill has been appointed Minister of Munitions. Many reasons have been assigned for his reinclusion in the Ministry. Some say that it was done to muzzle Mr. MacCallum Scott, hitherto one of the most pertinacious of questionists, who, as Mr. Churchill's private secretary, is now debarred by Parliamentary etiquette from the exercise of these inquisitorial functions. Others say it was done to muzzle Mr. Churchill. Contrary to expectation, Mr. Churchill has succeeded in piloting the Munitions ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... stiff—whenever the gale catches the house with a window open, and gets fairly into it. Would that we were not an attendant spirit here! It is too awful! This clamor of the wind through the lonely house; the Judge's quietude, as he sits invisible; and that pertinacious ticking of his watch!... ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... guarantee against its renewal. But all these attempts were in vain. The Queen refused any compromise; and on his side the King, whose superficial good humour was not incompatible with profound and pertinacious selfishness, did not scruple to expose her to every insult at Court. He threw himself with his usual cynicism into all the degraded pleasures of the libertine crew of his choice companions; openly pursued his intimacy with Lady Castlemaine, and taught his friends, as ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... the worshippers in either mode. Well, Drake, his hero, was a convinced Protestant; the bravest man he had ever met or dreamed of—fiery, pertinacious, gloriously insolent. He thought of his sailors, on whom a portion of Drake's spirit fell, their gallantry, their fearlessness of death and of all that comes after; of Mr. Bodder, who was now growing middle-aged in the Vicarage—yes, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... his humor, and avail themselves of it. He was one day disturbed by a pertinacious rattling and shaking at one of the doors, and bawled out in an angry tone to know the cause of the disturbance. "Sir," said the footman, testily, "it's this confounded French lock!" "Ah!" said the old gentleman, pacified by this hit at the nation, "I thought there was something ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... House, for I passed a night there, and none occurred"? Why should a noisy ghost (if there is such a thing) or a hallucinatory sound (if there is such a thing), be expected to be more punctual and pertinacious than a seismic disturbance? Again, the gentleman who opened the correspondence with a long statement on the negative side, cried out, like others, for scientific publicity, for names of people and places. But neither he nor his allies ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... floor, empty of the grain, and Baba Mustapha was by it alone making a lather, and he was twitching his mouth and his legs, and flinging about his arms, and Noorna heard him mutter wrathfully, 'O accursed flea! art thou at me again?' And she heard him mutter as in anguish, 'No peace for thee, O pertinacious flea! and my steadiness of hand will be gone, now when I have him safe as the hawk his prey, mine enemy, this Shagpat that abused me: thou abominable flea! And, O thou flea, wilt thou, vile thing! hinder ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... mulish, resolute, decided, heady, obdurate, resolved, determined, immovable, opinionated, stubborn, dogged, indomitable, persistent, unconquerable, firm, inflexible, pertinacious, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... with houses, the inhabitants of which seemed to live in the full enjoyment of the ample productions of their country. As they became better acquainted with the people, it was discovered that, amiable as the people appeared, they had many vicious habits. They were generally expert and pertinacious thieves, although some of the chiefs appear to have been exempt from this vice, or to have been ashamed of practising it ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

... circumstances, disasters, changes, difficult duties, and the like, can ever be received with tranquillity is, that they should be received in quiet faith. And, in like manner, the only way by which men can be made steadfast and immovable in brave, pertinacious adherence to the simple law of right, whatsoever temptations may try to draw them aside, and whatsoever frowns may gather upon the face of affairs so as to frighten them from the path of rectitude—the only way by which they can conquer ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... in front of her, made no reply, but with another attempt to shake off this pertinacious young man of the sea quickened her pace ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... any price the countenance of Marie, and to be admitted to her private assemblies, where alone she could carry out her more extended plan of ambition; while the wily Italian, rendered only the more pertinacious by difficulty, and anxious moreover to secure a post which would at all times enable her to remain about the person of the Queen, thought no price too great, even the dishonour of her royal foster-sister, to obtain her object, and thus a mutual promise was made; the Marquise ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... His heart began to sink within him; he endeavored to resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving

... this witness to Berenger's existence. There, then, the poor fellow had lain for three years, and his work during this weary time had been the scraping with a potsherd at the stone of his wall, and his pertinacious perseverance had succeeded in forming a hole just large enough to enable him to see the light of the torch carried by the gentlemen. On his side, he said, there was nothing but a strong iron door, and a heavily-barred window, looking, like that in the passage, into the fosse within ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... greatest fury, and rose to the surface, snorting and blowing in his impotent rage; but as the ambatch float was exceedingly large, and this naturally accompanied his movements, he tried to escape from his imaginary persecutor, and dived constantly, only to find his pertinacious attendant close to him upon regaining the surface. This was not to last long; the howartis were in earnest, and they at once called their party, who, with two of the aggageers, Abou Do and Suleiman, were near at hand. These men arrived with the long ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... by alms and faith," [460:3] and of the martyr, by his sufferings, "washing away his own iniquities." [460:4] We are told that by baptism "we are cleansed from all our sins," and "regain that Spirit of God which Adam received at his creation and lost by his transgression." [460:5] "The pertinacious wickedness of the Devil," says Cyprian, "has power up to the saving water, but in baptism he loses all the poison of his wickedness." [460:6] The same writer insists upon the necessity of penance, a species of discipline unknown to the apostolic Church, and denounces, with ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... order to sustain their ponderous annual load. Daniel Thorpe was the only accredited unfeathered biped who figured in the parish books as occupant of The Moors; nevertheless that swampy district could boast of one other irregular and forbidden but most pertinacious inhabitant—and that inhabitant ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford

... which the opposition to the Irish Commercial Propositions was directed, still continued to actuate Mr. Fox and his friends in their pertinacious resistance to the Treaty with France;—a measure which reflects high honor upon the memory of Mr. Pitt, as one of the first efforts of a sound and liberal policy to break through that system of restriction and interference, which had so long embarrassed ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... judgment and fiery indignation." The ecclesiastics, who surrounded his death-bed, assured him that such sins as he had been guilty of could only be expiated by the most liberal benefactions to the church. He had never forgiven Isabella for her pertinacious adherence to De Soto. In the grave he could not prohibit their nuptials. By bequeathing his wealth to the church, he could accomplish a double object. He could gratify his revenge by leaving his daughter penniless, and thus De Soto, if he continued ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... least one countrywoman of our own, vainly entreated him to accept their purses, for women are quick to recognise the temperament of the priest, and recognising they adore. A rich widow of Nantes besought him with pertinacious tenderness to accept not only her purse but her hand. Mirabeau's sister hailed him as an eagle floating ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... Bundle's was a sort of moral soothing-syrup which she kept to allay inconvenient curiosity and over-pertinacious projects in the nursery. ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... by the very fulness of my happiness. At breakfast the next morning, Jane questioned me on my somewhat haggard looks, and was inquisitive to know if anything had happened. Somehow she was unusually pertinacious; but I parried her inquiries. I was unwilling that others, as yet, should become sharers of my joy. But when she left upon her usual duties, I put on my best attire, with all the little novelties ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... appeared many minutes before he is beset by a clamorous train of irate blue-tits, who go into an azure fume of minute rage; sparrows also chase him, as vulgarly insolent as himself, and robin redbreasts, persistent and perkily pertinacious, like spoiled children allowed to wear their Sunday ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... mistresses, and when Elizabeth Charlotte invoked her aid against the machinations of a wanton, old Veuve Scarron changed her tone. Then in the midst of the discussion the King had a twinge in his gangrened knee, and signed Forstner's release, in order to be rid of this pertinacious princess. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... give up my right of sitting next to her to Horace, and established myself on the other side of the table, between Mrs Leicester and her younger daughter; and a hard post I had of it. Mary would not talk at all, and her mamma would do nothing else; and she was one of those pertinacious talkers, too, who, not content with running on themselves, and leaving you to put in an occasional interjection, inflict upon you a cross-examination in its severest form, and insist upon a definite and rational answer to every question. However, availing myself of those legitimate qualifications ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... intelligent companion and a tender friend, a prudent monitress, the most faithful of wives, and a mother as tender as children ever had the misfortune to lose. I met a woman, who, by tender management of my weaknesses, gradually corrected the most pertinacious of them. She became prudent from affection; and, though of the most generous nature, she was taught frugality and economy by her love for me. She gently reclaimed me from dissipation, propped my weak and irresolute nature, urged my indolence to all the ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... pertinacious, the King refused to believe in, the downfall of his long-cherished scheme; and even when the light was at last dawning upon him, he was like a child, crying for a fresh toy, when the one which had long amused him had been ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... an immense widening of the original programme. Further, Sir Evelyn Baring used the terms "evacuation" and "abandonment" as if they were synonymous; while in Gordon's view they were very different. As we shall see, his nature, at once conscientious, vehement, and pertinacious, came to reject the idea of abandonment as ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... of course disgusted by the pertinacious obstinacy of his son's letter, and for an hour or two swore to himself that he would not answer it. But it is natural that the father should yearn for the son, while the son's feeling for the father is of a very much weaker nature. Here, at ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... the motives of the writer form as important an ingredient in the analysis of his history, as the facts he records. Probability is a powerful and troublesome test; and it is by this troublesome standard that a large portion of historical evidence is sifted. Consistency is no less pertinacious and exacting in its demands. In brief, to write a history, we must know more than mere facts. Human nature, viewed under an induction of extended experience, is the best help to the criticism of human history. Historical characters can only ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... blocked up the roads, that neither Ezekiel Cheever nor his son Thomas, who had charge of his mother's rights, could get to Salem; and the court granted administration to the widow. The Cheevers demanded a rehearing: it was granted; and quite an interesting and pertinacious law-suit arose, which was finally carried up to the General Court, who decided it in 1681. The widow does not appear to have been actuated by merely selfish motives, but sought to divert a portion of the landed estate from the only legal heir, Ellen, the wife of Ezekiel Cheever, to other parties, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... Adelantado, at the head of thirty maidens of her household, dancing and singing their native songs, and waving branches of the palm-tree, a variety of Old and New Testament pictures occurred to the mind. Their hospitality and pertinacious sheltering of fugitives was another Oriental trait. But, above all, the horrible oppression to which the Spaniards subjected them, the indignities and sufferings heaped upon them, were considered to fulfil the divine curse which rested upon Jews! What a choice morsel of theology ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... events, seen this gentleman's father," replied Anton, annoyed with the pertinacious questioning of the trader, and with himself ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... head and body bent forward, his hands folded together. In the flat beneath, someone was jingling operetta on a piano not quite in tune; the pertinacious vivacity of the airs interfered with Harvey's desire to view things seriously. He had begun to wonder how large a capital Mrs. Frothingham had at her command. Was it not probable that she could as easily bestow fifteen hundred pounds as the half of that sum? But the ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... Tuesday, January 4th.—This is the PERTINACIOUS PRINGLE'S day. True it is also, to a certain extent, the Empire's. A Session opening in 1914 has entered upon a third year. After briefest Christmas recess Members called back to work. They come in numbers that crowd benches on both sides. Atmosphere electrical with that sense ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various

... for him, and the sailor seemed to go on his way. He reappeared in various forms, always soliciting charity, more and more importunately every time, and always receiving the same denial. At last he appeared as an old woman, leaning on a stick, who was more pertinacious in her entreaties than the preceding semblances; and the carter, after asseverating with an oath that a whole shipload of beggars must have been wrecked that night on the coast, reiterated that he had nothing ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... that a letter she found of great importance demanded her immediate presence in London.... But Johnson did not know the least tittle of this transaction, and he continued to direct his letters to Bath as usual, expressing, no doubt, an immense wonder at her pertinacious silence." So she told her daughters that she was going to London, whilst she deceived Johnson, who was sure to learn the truth from them; and he was wondering at her pertinacious silence at the very time when he was receiving letters from her, dated Bath! Why, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... answering or looking behind her. When she is gone, he goes down too, and returning with his cobweb-covered bottle, devotes himself to a leisurely enjoyment of its contents, now and then, as he throws his head back in his chair, catching sight of the pertinacious Roman pointing from ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens









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