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More "Pertinacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Stackpole,—"in their absurd opposition to all the old and tried forms of things, and rancorous dislike of those who uphold them; and in their pertinacity on every point where they might be set right, and impatience of hearing ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... in her sexual pertinacity, and in her secret glory or arrogance in the sexual goal. Combat her in her cock-sure belief that she "knows" and that she is "right." Take it all out of her. Make her yield once more to the male leadership: if you've got anywhere to lead to. If you haven't, best leave the woman ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... often enough to impress it on his memory, the rest, that is to say, everything pertaining to vocal art and dramatic delivery, would follow naturally. In this way he picked up any clerical errors there might be in the libretto, and that with such incorrigible pertinacity, that he uttered the wrong words with just the same expression as if they were correct. He waved aside good- humouredly any expostulations or hints as to the sense with the remark, 'Ah! that will be all right soon.' And, in fact, I very soon resigned myself and quite gave up trying to get ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... races. If the latter are the descendants of two or more closely allied species, these, with the exception of the common rabbit, have been exterminated in a wild state; and this is very improbable, seeing with what pertinacity this animal holds its ground. From these several reasons we may infer with safety that all the domestic breeds are the descendants of the common wild species. But from what we hear of the marvellous success in France in rearing hybrids between the hare and ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... softly and quietly, as if he did not really care for it but only wanted to see what it was like. He went down at once into deep water, and began the most dangerous and exasperating of all salmon-tactics, moving around in slow circles and shaking his head from side to side, with sullen pertinacity. This is called "jigging," and unless it can be ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... things to be overcome. He applied to the members of his family for funds, and the negotiations are to his family and subsequently to the diocese at large for funds. The negotiations are interesting, for the borrower is the only person who maintained his dignity unimpaired. With courteous pertinacity and a fitting show of anger, he got the supplies he needed. With indomitable energy he managed to arrange in perfect order the confused affairs of his diocese. Turning eagerly to the task of completing ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... seemed to have united them closely in the bonds of unity. Thus the party proceeded till they reached the governor's house. They in vain tried to keep out Queerface and the parrots, but the governor, hearing the disturbance, desired that all hands should be admitted. He was highly amused at the pertinacity with which the parrots and monkey stuck to their masters, and still more interested with the account Murray and Adair gave of their voyage. Indeed, they gained, as they deserved, great credit for the way in which they had ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... the incident with great mortification, and determined never again to play; which determination he adhered to through life. Colonel Burr not only abstained from playing at billiards, but with equal pertinacity he refused to play at any game for the purpose of ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... my own sensations, that the almost daily recurrence of my visions might ultimately lead to insanity, I came to the resolution of reducing my daily allowance of opium; and, confining myself, with the most rigid pertinacity, to a quantity not exceeding one third of what I had formerly taken, I became speedily sensible of a most essential change in my condition. A state of comparative health, mental and physical with calmer sleep and a more natural exercise of the organs of vision, succeeded. I have made many ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... ascended the estuary of the Oykel. The distance may be about sixty miles. On the other hand, we are informed by a Sutherland correspondent of a fact of another nature, which bears strongly upon the pertinacity with which these fine fish endeavour to regain their spawning ground. By the side of the river Helmsdale there was once a portion of an old channel forming an angular bend with the actual river. In summer, it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... Snagsby from the Sol's Arms. Before night his doubt whether he may not be responsible for some inconceivable part in the catastrophe which is the talk of the whole neighbourhood is almost resolved into certainty by Mrs. Snagsby's pertinacity in that fixed gaze. His mental sufferings are so great that he entertains wandering ideas of delivering himself up to justice and requiring to be cleared if innocent and punished with the utmost rigour of the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other men[1] have thought thus), as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... secretary's policy. Whether this policy was meant to destroy the Union, subvert the republic, and establish a monarchy upon its ruins, at any rate such must be the inevitable result of those mischievous measures. He urged this view of the subject with such pertinacity that Washington, either because he was impressed by so much earnestness, or because he was curious to know how the assertions could best be answered, sent them to Hamilton, with other objections of a similar character from other persons, and asked ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... which Hood faced the problem. Even at the close of November, when all hope of the arrival of the 5,000 Austrians was past, he refused to listen to David Dundas's advice for the evacuation of Toulon; and surely this pertinacity was consonant with the traditions of the British navy, and of the army in its better days; but out of this question arose a feud between army and navy which developed in Corsica with disastrous results. Ministers strove to ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... proper that this question shall be settled, I do not perceive why either Governor Gamble or the government here should care which way it is settled. I am perplexed with it only because there seems to be pertinacity about it. It seems to me that it might be either way without injury to the service; or that the offer of the Secretary of War to let Governor Gamble make vacancies, and he (the Secretary) to ratify the making of them, ought to ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... fertilizing experience, history presents few equals of the times when Horace lived. His lifetime fell in an age which was in continual travail with great and uncertain movement. Never has Fortune taken greater delight in her bitter and insolent game, never displayed a greater pertinacity in the derision of men. In the period from Horace's birth at Venusia in southeastern Italy, on December 8, B.C. 65, to November ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... his father credit for being a consummate and accomplished hypocrite, who found a mantle of piety a very convenient one under which to conceal his real character. He had himself inherited the old man's dogged pertinacity and commercial instincts, and was by nature unscrupulous and impatient of any obstacle placed in his way. He was now keenly alive to the fact that the existence of the firm depended upon the success of his suit, and he knew also how lucrative a concern ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the remaining six and offered to sell them at the same price that she had asked for the nine; and when he laughed at her and again refused, she went as before and burned three more books, and came back and asked still the same price for the three that were left. Then the king was struck by her pertinacity, and he consulted his augurs what this might be; and they bade him by all means buy the three, and said he had done wrong not to buy the nine, for these were the books of the Sibyl and contained great secrets. So the books were kept ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... bestowed on it, made but an incongruous whole with the dark, gloomy expression of his countenance. Because he was Lucy's father, I sought instinctively to meet him everywhere. At last he must have become aware of my pertinacity, for he gave me a haughty scowl whenever I passed him. In one of these encounters, however, I chanced to be of some service to him. He was turning the corner of a street, and came suddenly on one of the ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and bleeding from this prolonged and stubbornly-contested battle, Jackson's columns had by no means relaxed their efforts. The blows they could give were feebler, but they were continued with the wonderful pertinacity their chief had taught them; and nothing but the Chancellor clearing, and with it the road to Fredericksburg, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... the question twice again, adding threats at the same time; and if they still persevered I ordered them to execution. For I was persuaded that whatever the nature of their opinions might be, their pertinacity and inflexible obstinacy ought certainly to be punished. Others also were brought before me possessed by the same madness, but as they were Roman citizens I ordered them to be sent to Rome. As this crime spread while it was actually under prosecution, many fresh cases were brought up. An ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... his head as though sorrowful over her pertinacity. Then he got up and got a piece of wood, a stick of pitch pine, which he began to whittle carefully into fine slivers. These he collected carefully into a bundle while ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... was thrown off entirely; and, confident in the support of her royal mistress, the upstart favourite exhibited all the scorn and insolence which was in her nature. The Duchess expatiates with feminine pertinacity upon the stinging impertinences and insulting condescensions she had to endure from her lately exalted cousin. One instance she dwells on with bitter recollection, for it was the first time the minion of the Queen had dared to show her how little ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... together they were conferring with Baron Sonnino and the Premier. What were they offering? We know now that at this last moment of the eleventh hour Austria had wakened to the real gravity of the situation, and with Teutonic pertinacity and Teutonic dullness of perception made her first real offer—the immediate cession and occupation of the ceded territories she had set as her maximum, a thing she had refused all along to consider, insisting that the transfer be ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... dead. Like Grimes, he was a "good old man!" A true gentleman of the old school, he clung to many of the fashions of a by-gone period with a pertinacity, which, to the eyes of the thoughtless, savored somewhat of the ludicrous. It was only of late years that he relinquished his three-cornered hat; to breeches, buckles, and hair powder he adhered to the last. He was also partial to pigtails, though his earliest was shorn from his head by a dangerous ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... Canterbury, who had been a monk of Bec, in Normandy, and who had signalized himself at Rouen by his fierce opposition to long hair, was still anxious to work a reformation in this matter. But his pertinacity was far from pleasing to the King, who had finally made up his mind to wear ringlets. There were other disputes, of a more serious nature, between them; so that when the Archbishop died, the King was so glad to be rid of him, that he allowed the see to remain ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... be no ill-fortune; the real ill-fortune is only to be despicable. These faults of human character, wherever found, observe, belong to it as ill-trained—incomplete; confirm themselves only in the vulgar. There is no base pertinacity, no overweening conceit, in the Black Douglas, or Claverhouse, or Montrose; in these we find the pure Scottish temper, of heroic endurance and royal pride; but, when, in the pay, and not deceived, but ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Stair was obliged to consent to an interview between Lord Rutherford and her daughter. But she took care to be present in person, and argued the point with the disappointed and incensed lover with pertinacity equal to his own. She particularly insisted on the Levitical law, which declares that a woman shall be free of a vow which her parents dissent from. This is the passage of Scripture she ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... vessel had to get into her leader's wake, which would be virtually throwing the whole French line, again, two miles to leeward of the English. Nevertheless, the stragglers in the rear of the French continued to hug the wind, with a pertinacity that denoted a resolution to have a brush with their enemies in passing. The vessels were le Scipion and la Victoire, each of seventy-four guns. The first of these ships was commanded by a young man of very little professional ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... much cool faith and clearsightedness it needed! He reminded himself of Archbishop Parker who now held the rudder, and comforted himself with the thought of his wise moderation in dealing with excesses, his patient pertinacity among the whirling gusts of passion, that enabled him to wait upon events to push his schemes, and his tender knowledge of ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... voices as the long train came to a stand-still in the harbour station at Ostend. Selingman, with characteristic forcefulness, pushed his way down the narrow corridor, driving before him passengers of less weight and pertinacity, until finally he descended on to the platform itself. Norgate, who had followed meekly in his wake, stood listening for a moment to the confused stream of explanations. He understood well enough what had happened, but with Selingman ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... The prolix pertinacity with which this old aged man adheres to the opinion that he had formed, without any intelligible reason, is characteristic of an English peasant; but however absurd his mode of judging may be, and however confused and incongruous his ideas, his species of absurdity surely bears ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... apparent—namely, the face of death looking through the mask of life. Yet he did not loosen his arms from about her waist; on the contrary he clasped her even more closely, and kept his eyes fixed upon her with such pertinacity that it seemed as if he expected her to vanish from his sight ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... months he had given all his working time to this. His knowledge of orchestration had already been considerable, even remarkable. But he wanted to be sure of all the most modern combinations. He had toiled with a pertinacity, a tireless energy that had astonished his "coach." But the driving force behind him was not what it had been when he worked alone in the long and dark room, with the dim oil-paintings and the orange-colored curtains. Then he had been sent on by the strange force which lives ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... had become thoroughly sovereign of the sick-room, as a good nurse ought to be. The only alternative for the countess was to avoid her; but she was a pursuing phantom that met the proud lady at every turn, haunted her with untiring pertinacity. Madame de Gramont absented herself from her son's chamber, except when Mrs. Gratacap went to her meals; but little was gained by that, for the nurse was always flitting in and out of the drawing-room, or dining-room, at unexpected moments, and only the turning of the ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... rude to stare at a lady, for his education had not been got in places where ladies are often seen, or manners frequently discussed. But Beatrice did not seem at all disturbed by the scrutiny, though she was quite aware of its pertinacity. A woman who has beauty in any degree rarely resents the genuine and unconcealed admiration of the vulgar. On the contrary, as the young girl dismissed the men, she smiled graciously upon them both, and perhaps a little ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... it, decided that the future of Europe was not to be moulded by the imperial autocrat, but by the will of the princes and nations whom his obstinacy had embattled against him. Far from recognising the verdict, the great man struggled on until the pertinacity of the allies finally drove him from power and assigned to France practically the same boundaries that she had had in 1791, before the time of her mighty expansion. That is to say, the nation which in its purely democratic form had ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... three days—Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, last—the enemy disputing our advance with pertinacity wherever the ground favored them. They are reported to have had a force of 15,000 under command of General Evans, of Ball's Bluff fame. Their loss is heavy in killed, wounded and prisoners, five hundred of the latter having fallen into our hands. Our loss is one hundred and fifty ...
— Kinston, Whitehall and Goldsboro (North Carolina) expedition, December, 1862 • W. W. Howe
... was preponderant for several years; she was not a conspicuously wise woman, but one of spotless character. Her ambitions, personal and for her relatives, often caused much trouble, for she became the mouthpiece of her allies and her clients, for whom she "solicited recommendations with as much pertinacity as if she had been the most inveterate place hunter on her own account." Her favors were too much in one direction to suit the queen, for, much attached to the memory of her husband, the princess naturally sympathized with the Orleans faction. As ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... His noble nature felt that their ignorance was a sort of reflection upon them. They had not looked carefully enough for their lost friends. They had not shown sufficient pertinacity in their inquiries. They were willing and ready to retrace their steps, when, in crossing the suburb which leads to the gates of the town, upon a white wall which was at the corner of a street turning around the rampart, Athos cast his eyes upon a drawing in black chalk, which represented, ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and now to the rain which pelted the window-panes. She was two years younger than her companion, yet felt that she was immeasurably stronger. Often during their acquaintance a painful suspicion had crossed her mind; as often she had banished it, but now it haunted her with a pertinacity which she could not subdue. While her feet trod the chamber floor, memory trod the chambers of the past, and gathered up every link which could strengthen the chain of evidence. Gradually dim conjecture became sad conviction, and she was conscious of a degree of pain and sorrow ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the liberty, however, of warning that lady, sir," said Mr. Shanks, with the pertinacity of a parrot, which he so greatly resembled, "as her legal adviser, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... pinnaces displayed, as a mounted battery, against the fishful sea. With a view to this clambering ruggedness of life, all of these boats receive from their cradle a certain limber rake and accommodating curve, instead of a straight pertinacity of keel, so that they may ride over all the scandals of this arduous world. And happen what may to them, when they are at home, and gallantly balanced on the brow line of the steep, they make a bright show upon the dreariness of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... and one o'clock, the rain which had been pouring down steadily with true English pertinacity for two days, was gradually passing into a drizzle still more unpleasant,—a drizzle that soaked into the already soaked clay, that made the mud more slippery, that penetrated a man's clothing and beat softly but irritatingly against his face, and dripped ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... silent. Her pertinacity annoyed and yet piqued him. Being unmarried, he was not accustomed to opposition from a woman. He had no intention of allowing her to pay her brother's debt, and he wished she would drop the subject gracefully, now that he had ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... "The Arraignment and Triall of Anne Redferne."] This poor woman seems to have been regularly hunted to death by her prosecutors, who pursued her with all the dogged pertinacity of blood-hounds. Neither the imploring appeal for mercy, in her case, from her wretched mother, who did not ask for any in her own, nor the want of even the shadow of a ground for the charge, had the slightest effect upon the besotted prejudices of the judge ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... itself, exhibited a disposition splenetic almost to misanthropy, and an austerity of principle urged to unsocial ferocity. In his fury he renounced the idea of reforming the stage; he was for abolishing it entirely. He attacked the poets with "unconquerable pertinacity, with wit in the highest degree keen and sarcastic, and with all those powers exalted and invigorated by just confidence in his cause."[3] Thus arose a controversy which lasted ten years, during which time authors found it necessary to become more discreet. "Comedy (says Dr. Johnson) grew ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... somewhat inclined to have her own way. But then it must also be acknowledged that her way is pretty apt to be right. This wilfulness, or something that borders upon it, is shown alike in her impracticability to the Duke's solicitations, and in her pertinacity in soliciting his messenger. And it were well worth the while to know, if we could, how one so perverse in certain spots can manage notwithstanding to be so agreeable as a whole. Then too, if it seems rather naughty in her that she does not give the Duke a better chance to try his ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... light in wishing to have Lady Juliana invited to his house; but in fact it proceeded entirely from his besetting sin, obstinacy. He had propose her accompanying her daughter at the time of her marriage, and been overruled; but with all the pertinacity of a little mind he had kept fast hold of the idea, merely because it was his own, and he was now determined to have it put in execution. In a postscript to the letter, and in the same cordial style, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... merely to his fortune, but to the views and plans by which he imagined he could extend and perpetuate that wealthy inheritance. I did not understand how deeply my father's happiness was involved, and with something of his own pertinacity, had formed a determination precisely contrary, not conceiving that I should increase my own happiness by augmenting a fortune which I ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... grove in full summer foliage, or a meadow of so brilliant an emerald that it seemed to shine by its own lustre. As we approached the Lierfoss, the road was barred with a great number of gates, before which waited a troop of ragged boys, who accompanied us the whole of the way, with a pertinacity equal to that of the little ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... cause was their opposition to the will of an arbitrary tyrant; whereas those who suffered under Mary, were martyred because the Queen conscientiously believed in those principles to which she clung with such pertinacity."[404] One of the principal of these victims was Archbishop Cranmer, who had already caused several persons to suffer in the flames for differing from his opinions, and thus almost merited his fate. It is a curious fact that several Protestants came to Ireland during this reign, and settled ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... after he had tried, with that strange Greek pertinacity that understands no refusals, all the hotels and tourist agencies he had called at the day before, he became weary and disconsolate. The march had become a dirge; no longer it suggested happiness to ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... damsel strove with much pertinacity to kiss his hands; but Don Quixote, who was in all things a polished and courteous knight, would by no means allow it, but made her rise and embraced her with great courtesy and politeness, and ordered Sancho to look to Rocinante's girths, and to arm him without a moment's delay. Sancho ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... in Nellie's regime, continued to wear the common gray percales, and to eat off the common white crockery. And with a strange, bewitched pertinacity, the fine, decorative bits of china, shut away on their upper shelf in the safe ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the game as played to-day calls for agility and pertinacity more than heft. And we've got the boys who can do stunts, believe me, fellows!" ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... many burdens as were laid on it,—alluding to the table covered with wine-bottles. Then he spoke of the fitting up of the cabin with expensive woods,—of the brooch in Captain Scott's bosom. Then he proceeded to discourse of politics, taking the opposite side to Cilley, and arguing with much pertinacity. He seems to have moulded and shaped himself to his own whims, till a sort of rough affectation has become thoroughly imbued throughout a kindly nature. He is full of antique prejudices against the modern fashions of the younger officers, their moustaches ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... humblest apologies for presuming on a slight acquaintance, the Marrables appeared at Combe-Raven, to appeal to the young ladies for a "Lucy," and to the universe for a "Falkland," with the mendicant pertinacity of a ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... after Euroclydon, I found in the woods the hepatica —earliest of wildwood flowers, evidently not intimidated by the wild work of the armies trampling over New England—daring to hold up its tender blossom. One could not but admire the quiet pertinacity of Nature. She had been painting the grass under the snow. In spots it was vivid green. There was a mild rain,—mild, but chilly. The clouds gathered, and broke away in light, fleecy masses. There was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... found him a shabby, almost ragged applicant for employment at the stage-door of the Opera Comique. Repeated rebuffs failed to baffle his desperate pertinacity. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... left Kate with a lady and gentleman who manifested an interest in her, and went down to my dinner, and when I paid for it I paid for Kate's also. When I went on deck, I found that I was a lion, and the passengers insisted upon hearing me roar. They asked questions with Yankee pertinacity, and I finally told a select party of them that I had taken Kate out of her step-mother's house by the way of the attic window, but I was careful not to call any names, for if Mrs. Loraine behaved herself, I did not care to expose her to ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... all the earthquakes that have rumbled in Ecuador or toppled over the spires and dwellings of Peru could compare, in the matter of dogged pertinacity, with that earthquake which diurnally and hourly shocked little Gertie's dwelling, quivered the white dimity curtains of little Gertie's bed and shook little Gertie's frame. A graceful, rounded little frame it was; yet strong, and firmly ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... and was anxious to connect them with the circumstances of their utterance. There was one in particular which especially tormented him. "Go for a cruise on your own account; go for a cruise on your own account," his brain reiterated with merciless pertinacity. What did it mean? Where had he heard those words before, and who had uttered them? He felt absolutely certain that at some time or other he had heard that phrase spoken, and that it had some intimate connection with himself, that it somehow concerned him vitally. "There was something ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... the Malays renewed their attack with the greatest pertinacity, it being evident that their object was to capture the fort before the steamer could render help. They seemed to be roused to a pitch of mad fury by the resistance they encountered and their losses, ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... I should say that his judgment respecting the warmest place and the softest cushion in the room is infallible, his punctuality at meal-time is admirable, and his pertinacity in jumping on people's shoulders till they give him some of the best of what is ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... which I felt at the unlooked for popularity of the first part of the present story, was much lessened by the pertinacity with which many persons, acquaintance as well as strangers, would insist (both in public and in private) on identifying the hero and the author. On the appearance of the first few numbers of the present continuation ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... watched her in a gale of excitement, till the last thing was carried off, and Mrs. Ling began to shake out the napkins and fold them up. But then they came round Mr. Linden with their petition, urging it with such humble pertinacity, that he was fain at last to comply. It was only a child's Christmas hymn, set to a simple, bright, quick tune, which at first kept some of the smallest feet in a greater state of unrest than the older children thought ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... safe, and that it is drinkable. Allegra is prettier, I think, but as obstinate as a mule, and as ravenous as a vulture: health good, to judge of the complexion—temper tolerable, but for vanity and pertinacity. She thinks herself handsome, and will do ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... among the most effective instruments for promoting peace and harmony between nations whose interests, exclusively considered on either side, are brought into frequent collisions by competition. In framing such treaties it is the duty of each party not simply to urge with unyielding pertinacity that which suits its own interest, but to concede liberally to that which is adapted to the interest of the other. To accomplish this, little more is generally required than a simple observance of the rule of reciprocity, and were it possible for the statesmen of one nation by stratagem and management ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... nonchalance, or philosophy, or pertinacity—or what is it in me, that, after all, when La Fleur had gone down stairs, and I was quite alone, I could not bring down my mind to think of it otherwise than I had then ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... few occasions on which a stray human being crossed his path, his manner was such as by no means encouraged the curious. Mr. Stamps was the only individual who had seen the woman face to face. There was an unmoved pertinacity in the character of Mr. Stamps which stood him in good stead upon all occasions. He was not easily abashed or rebuffed, the more especially when he held in view some practical object. Possibly he held some such object in view when he rode up to the tumbled down gateway and asked for the draught ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the present Harvey to be gleaned from his earlier experiences, except the pertinacity that has had much to do with his irregular climb up the ladder. He was born in Peacham, Vermont, where as a boy after school hours he mounted a stool in his father's general store and kept books. At the end of the year his accounts were short a penny. Because of this he ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... them under his military kilt, in that pretty little skirmish wherein he first had the honour of exchanging stones and darts with our British ancestors; and from those days down to the present time has this garment maintained its ground, and proved its utility, with undying pertinacity. Now, we do not approve of the barbaric trews: that tying of them round the ankles, though it kept out the cold, was decidedly a Sawney practice: it militated against the curves of the leg, and destroyed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... behoveth thee not to show such pertinacity in grief. Do that, O best of kings, which the holy Vyasa has said. The Brahmanas, O mighty-armed one, and these thy brothers of great energy, stand before thee beseechingly like persons beseeching the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Ark, I put my little room in perfect order, my head growing heavy with pain. I felt that I must finish this task before I lay down, and there was another intention to which I clung with a painful pertinacity ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... monopoly of patronage confined to offices of importance or considerable emolument; it descended even to commissions in the army, and the disposal of small places which custom as well as expediency had delegated to the heads of those branches of service to which they belonged. His Majesty's pertinacity on these points frequently precipitated painful embarrassments of a personal nature, entailed much disagreeable correspondence, and sometimes produced misunderstandings and alienations of far greater moment than the paltry considerations in which ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... determination, pertinacity, persistence, steadfastness, constancy; resolve, purpose, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... a siege—this is a result which few, perhaps, would care to contend about. It is the only result for which Dr Thirlwall contends, who on this subject approximates as nearly as possible to the opinion of Mr Grote. That there was a siege, however, Dr Thirlwall maintains with considerable pertinacity; but it happens, curiously enough, that his argument precisely supplies the last link that was wanting to complete the sceptical view of the subject. Most persons, we apprehend, are disposed to adhere ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... hold mortgages on the very best plantations in the State, and offer themselves candidates for the Governorship. Indeed, Mr. McArthur says, one of these knights of the goose, not long since, had the pertinacity to imagine himself a great General. And to show his tenacious adherence to the examples set by the State, he dresses exactly as his grandfather's great-grandfather used to, in a blue coat, with small brass buttons, a narrow crimpy collar, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... stare, that she said to some one, "Who is that man whose eyes bode me no good?" This was the first occasion of their personal meeting, and it may be fancied that Berlioz followed up the introduction with his accustomed vehemence and pertinacity, though without immediate effect, for Miss Smithson was more inclined to ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... in all conscience. Our incessant vigilance was most certainly justified by the pertinacity of these mysterious prowlers, for as long as they surreptitiously sought to enter the house, my belief that the ruby lay hid somewhere beneath its roof was in a ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... cannon, under cover of darkness, on a lovely night in May, landed at this place. Soon after, they were attacked by a party of English regulars and militiamen, who drove them into a windmill and two strong stone houses, which they loopholed, and defended themselves with a pertinacity which one would have called heroism, had it been in a better cause. They finally surrendered, and were carried prisoners to Kingston, where six of them were hanged. Their leader, a military adventurer, a Pole of the name of Von Schoultz, was the first to be executed. He fought ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... exasperated with me, even although I were the innocent cause of his affliction. My worst fears were realized. We had hardly got seated, before a dull, bilious-looking old gentleman rose, and applied his auger with such pertinacity that we were all bored nearly to distraction. I dared not look at Thackeray, but I felt that his eye was upon me. My distress may be imagined, when he got up quite deliberately from the prominent place where a chair had been set for him, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... had revengefully sought to add a sting to his grief, during the last days of his mother's illness, by declaring that she would assert her right to attend the funeral. In spite of any thing he could do or say, she held with wicked pertinacity to her word, and on the day appointed for the burial forced herself—inflamed and shameless with drink—into her husband's presence, and declared that she would walk in the funeral procession ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... matter upon which he desired to see her was of the most vital importance, she at once angrily ordered him out again as soon as she understood that he had found a new physician whom he desired her to see. But if the Queen was self-willed, Malachi was the very incarnation of pertinacity; he protested, wheedled, entreated, and was indignant by turns, but all to no purpose until he happened to mention that the physician in question was a stranger from a far country beyond the Great Water; when, first commanding him to repeat his statement all over again, she suddenly developed ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Napoleon had just returned from Egypt, and was become First Consul; but he could not be expected to take the field till the following spring, and till then Massena was hopeless of relief from without—every thing was to depend on his own pertinacity. The strength of his army made it impossible to force it in such a position as Genoa; but its very numbers, added to the population of a great city, held out to the enemy a hope of reducing it by famine; and as Genoa derives most of its supplies by sea, Lord Keith, the British ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... phrases of length and Latinity, Like honorificabilitudinity, Where is the maid could resist your vicinity, Wiled by the impudent grace of your plea? Then your vivacity and pertinacity Carry the day with the divil's audacity; No mere veracity robs your sagacity Of perspicacity, Barney McGee. When all is new to them, What will you do to them? Will you be true to them? Who shall decree? Here's a fair strife to you! Health and long life ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the kindliness and scrupulous justice of Pliny. He acquits the Christians of all criminal practices; he bears testimony to the purity of their lives and their principles. What baffles and vexes him is their "pertinacity and inflexible obstinacy"—Neque enim dubitabam, qualecunque esset quod fateretur, pertinaciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem debere puniri. He could not understand, in other words, why, when the theory of the Roman religion ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... is really admirable in its way," Rupert said, on reading this news. "He has made up his mind that there is a fortune to be obtained by carrying off Maria van Duyk, and he sticks to it with the same pertinacity which other men display in the pursuit of commerce or of lawful trade, or that a wild beast shows in his tireless pursuit of ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... that had shone forth while we were there was the only intermission vouchsafed by the rain, which afterwards poured down with a steady vehemence and pertinacity seldom seen on the Ligurian Riviera. The effects of this rare continuance of wet weather were soon made impressively perceptible to the four as they emerged upon the open road, after passing the Lighthouse of Genoa and the long straggling suburbs of San Pier d'Arena, Pegli, and Voltri. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... created, real Brussels lace has maintained its value, like the precious metals and the precious stones. In the patterns of the best bone lace, the changeful influence of fashion is less marked than in most other branches of industry; indeed, she has adhered with wonderful pertinacity to the quaint old patterns of former times. These are copied and reproduced with that scrupulous uniformity which characterizes the figures in the Persian and Indian shawls. Frequent experiments have been tried ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... around him, was gradually dispersed by the light of the rising moon; and as he stood alone in that solitary place, the recollection of his interview with the strange priest on the preceding evening, recurred to his imagination with a pertinacity, which he vainly endeavored to resist. He looked carefully round, almost expecting to see the tall, ghost-like figure of the holy father again beside him; but there was no sound abroad, except the sighing of the wind and waves; ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... me to speak of the pertinacity of our weasels in hunting their prey, say a hare, as above, or a rabbit. On one occasion, as I was riding by the side of a strip of low whinbushes and long grass, a rabbit rushed out just in front of me, its fur apparently curled with perspiration, uttering a kind of suppressed cry, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... of them all was Mr. Gale, and, with a pertinacity which was almost proof against insult, he strove to force his company upon the indignant Mr. Wragg. Debarred from that, he took to haunting the road, on one occasion passing the house no fewer than fifty-seven times in one afternoon. His infatuation was plain to be seen of all men. Wise men ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... many miles along the banks of the Indus, in a broad belt of impenetrable jungle, at once impeding the navigation by preventing the tracking of boats, and presenting dangerous facilities for ambush. To these cherished game-preserves the Ameers clung with a desperate pertinacity, which might have moved the sympathy of an English sportsman—"admitting" (says the Bombay Times) "that we might strip them of their territory, occupy Hydrabad, or seize their persons without difficulty; but maintaining that they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... flippant volubility in a set form of heartless words, seemed to my startled mind so exceedingly terrible in unapproachable majesty, and so very angry with me in particular, that I became paralyzed with fear. I strove against this with characteristic pertinacity; I called to mind all the commonplace assurances respecting the sufficiency of a good intention, and magnified alike my doings and my sufferings. I persuaded myself it was only a holy awe, the effect of distinguished piety and rare humility, and that I was really an object of ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... "rocks the boat" of happiness at least once during a love affair—usually by trying to leap out of it before it lands in the port of Matrimony. All a man needs in order to win any woman is a little audacity, a little mendacity and plenty of pertinacity. ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... forget or forgive. She persisted in manifesting her displeasure, and recurred to the subject till her pertinacity wore out ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and familiarised himself with the best models of what used to be our boast—English clearness of thought and expression. He will then learn to ask rigidly for definitions, and not rest satisfied with half-meanings—or no meaning. To the naturally venturous pertinacity of young metaphysicians, few would be disposed to be more indulgent than ourselves. From the time of Plato downwards—who tells us that no sooner do they 'taste' of dialectics than they are ready to dispute with ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... all persons of ordinary information saw that the restoration of monarchy was certain, Milton knew it not, and put out a tract to show his countrymen a Ready and easy way to establish a free Commonwealth. With the same pertinacity with which he had adhered to his own assumption that Morus was author of the Clamor, he now refused to believe in the return of the Stuarts. Fast as his pen moved, events outstripped it, and he has to rewrite ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... was served on deck, but I went into the saloon. Jasper was there but not Grace Mavis, as I had half expected. I asked him what had become of her, if she were ill (he must have thought I had an ignoble pertinacity), and he replied that he knew nothing whatever about her. Mrs. Peck talked to me about Mrs. Nettlepoint and said it had been a great interest to her to see her; only it was a pity she didn't seem more sociable. To this ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... smoke massive pipes with great skill for their years), skirting the Bank of Ireland, and on to the River Liffey and the street which local patriotism defiantly speaks of as O'Connell Street, and alien patriotism, with equal defiance and pertinacity, knows ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... then you jump up and dress, and go to a ball, and leave your cold and your fever behind you, because the ball won't wait till you are well, and the bores will. So don't ask me to be unkind to Zoe, brooch-day," said Fanny, skipping back to her first position with singular pertinacity. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... shrine. It was true that he was a foreigner; it was true that his knowledge of the French language was incomplete and incorrect; but his sense of his own ability urged him forward, and his indefatigable pertinacity kept him at his strange task throughout the whole of his life. He filled volumes, and the contents of those volumes afford probably the most complete illustration in literature of the very trite proverb—Poeta nascitur, non fit. The spectacle of that heavy German Muse, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... become thoroughly sovereign of the sick-room, as a good nurse ought to be. The only alternative for the countess was to avoid her; but she was a pursuing phantom that met the proud lady at every turn, haunted her with untiring pertinacity. Madame de Gramont absented herself from her son's chamber, except when Mrs. Gratacap went to her meals; but little was gained by that, for the nurse was always flitting in and out of the drawing-room, or dining-room, at unexpected moments, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... the worst casuist out. She was seldom certain about her facts, and when she happened to be so, had not sufficient pertinacity or confidence to push her advantage. Her favorite argument was ever ad misericordiam. "I wish I could quite believe you," she said, plaintively; "but I can't, and it makes me very unhappy. You must see ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... fourpence to pay. Another kept it four months, and disgorged it only under threat of a writ; the threat was launched forth on Powells' formidable notepaper. At length there arrived a day when even Henry's pertinacity was fatigued, and he forgot, merely forgot, to send out the parcel again. It was put in a drawer, after a year of ceaseless adventures, and Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie discreetly forbore to mention it. During that year Henry's opinion on his work had fluctuated. There had been moments, days perhaps, ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... corruption of Mary's Cross), where fair Janet waited the arrival of the Fairy train, is said to have stood near the duke of Buccleuch's seat of Bowhill, about half a mile from Carterhaugh. In no part of Scotland, indeed, has the belief in Fairies maintained its ground with more pertinacity than in Selkirkshire. The most sceptical among the lower ranks only venture to assert, that their appearances, and mischievous exploits, have ceased, or at least become infrequent, since the light of the Gospel was diffused in its purity. One of their ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... Massa Will! aint dis here my lef eye for sartain?" roared the terrified Jupiter, placing his hand upon his right organ of vision, and holding it there with a desperate pertinacity, as if in immediate dread of his master's attempt at ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... 143; permanence &c (absence of change) 141; firmness &c (stability) 150. constancy, steadiness; singleness of purpose, tenacity of purpose; persistence, plodding, patience; sedulity &c (industry) 682; pertinacy^, pertinacity, pertinaciousness; iteration &c 104; bottom, game, pluck, stamina, backbone, grit; indefatigability, indefatigableness; bulldog courage. V. persevere, persist; hold on, hold out; die in the last ditch, be in at the death; stick to, cling to, adhere to; stick to one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to a case like this, could be as complete as that which is constantly presented in the New Court, the gravity of which is frequently disturbed in no small degree, by the cunning and pertinacity of juvenile offenders. A boy of thirteen is tried, say for picking the pocket of some subject of her Majesty, and the offence is about as clearly proved as an offence can be. He is called upon for his defence, and contents himself with a little declamation about the jurymen and his country—asserts ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... torrents. At half-past two o'clock Monsieur Desmarets reached the Treasury. At four o'clock, as he left the Bourse, he came face to face with Monsieur de Maulincour, who was waiting for him with the nervous pertinacity ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... became evident that they were seriously paying their addresses to the girls, I do not know; nor how long the struggle lasted between pride and conventional respectability on the part of the young men's families and the pertinacity ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... one that could thwart the desire of my cousin—I naturally deemed this a corroboration of his promise, and an earnest of his continued designs; and in this I was reassured by the prelate, Robert, Archbishop of Canterbury, who knew the most secret conscience of your King. Wherefore my pertinacity in retaining those hostages; wherefore my disregard to Edward's mere remonstrances, which I not unnaturally conceived to be but his meek confessions to the urgent demands of thyself and House. Since then, Fortune or Providence ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he had swum out of this danger unharmed; but this was to reckon without a blunder he had made, and without the pertinacity of Mr. Henry, who was now to show he had something ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Taylor was very ready to make this admission, because the party with which he was connected was not in power. There was then some truth in it, owing to the pertinacity of factious clamour. Had he lived till now, it would have been impossible for him to deny that his Majesty possesses the warmest affection of his people. BOSWELL. See ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... sat upon the throne of France, and seemingly believed himself to be the ruler of his kingdom, though a newly made Cardinal de Richelieu held a different opinion, and acted according to his conviction with great pertinacity and skill. ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... through precisely the same scene.... Then again—again—and even once again, at varying intervals. Each time I felt all the agonies of her death—and at each accession of her disorder I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive—nervous in a very unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness, I drank—God only knows how often or how much. As ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... to the adoption of so violent a measure I have no doubt—his pride and aristocratic principles would naturally make him so—but he is easily governed, constantly yielding to violence and intimidation, and it is not unlikely that the pertinacity of those about him, the interests of his party, and the prolongation of his power may induce him to sacrifice his natural feelings and opinions. It is very probable that, although he may have allowed himself to be at the head of those who are for the creation, he may have such misgivings and scruples ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... did. The delusion, if delusion it were, clung to her, haunted her, pursued her, week after week. To rid her of it, or to silence her, was impossible. She added no new facts to her first statement, but insisted that the long-lost dead was yet alive, with a quiet pertinacity that it was simply impossible to ridicule, frighten, threaten, or cross-question out of her. Clara was so thoroughly alarmed that she would not have slept alone for any mortal—perhaps not for any immortal—considerations. Winthrop and I talked the matter ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... of her exultation; it was a temple to the gods of Victory, a sort of triumphal arch. In her earlier days she had swallowed experiences that would have unmanned one of less torrential enthusiasm or blind pertinacity. But, of late years, her determination had told; she saw less and less of those mysterious persons with mysterious obstacles in their path and mysterious grievances against the world, who had once frequented her house on Prairie Avenue. In the stead of this ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... long, that I have the vanity to believe, that if I promise to guard your child as if she were my own, you will trust her with me," her grace urged, with a pertinacity that could not fail to be flattering. "She will be as safe under my care as were she under the observance of ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... him in high places, and the amount of interest that was being brought to bear on the authorities, there was little doubt but that he would be let out on bail in a day or two, even if the proceedings were not quashed altogether. Some delay, however, there was sure to be owing to the pertinacity of Mary Trent's assertion that she saw him struggling with Oliver on the stairs, but in the meantime his detention was allowed to press as lightly upon ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... best opinion in the world of our fashionable tailors, who are grown so rich that they hold mortgages on the very best plantations in the State, and offer themselves candidates for the Governorship. Indeed, Mr. McArthur says, one of these knights of the goose, not long since, had the pertinacity to imagine himself a great General. And to show his tenacious adherence to the examples set by the State, he dresses exactly as his grandfather's great-grandfather used to, in a blue coat, with small brass buttons, a narrow crimpy collar, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... who did not understand his feelings, thought, "he must be a good-natured fellow to speak so kindly to a child who had annoyed him very much." Lucy did not admit that she herself had been much annoyed by her little brother's pertinacity in interrupting conversation between her and Hector, although she might have done so ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... young king and his Flemish Stadtholder was never any warmth of feeling. When Orange, pursuant to his resolution formed in the French king's presence, spurred the States to demand the removal of the Spanish soldiers from the Netherlands, with a pertinacity dogged and changeless till the king, in sheer desperation, acquiesced in the just demand, though with a chagrin of spirit toward the instrument of his defeat which became settled hatred, and never lifted from his heart for a moment in those long succeeding years, when the king, like a recluse in ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... and grub and rummage in the big paper parcel, scratching about in the glittering mess of silk and embroidery with a pertinacity entirely gallinaceous. ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... manoeuvring, we were pretty close to her, and, lowering the dingy as quickly as possible, two men were ordered to pull to the strange smack, and, ascertaining her destination, to deliver the letters. This last action on our part took the poor craft by surprise; for it was curious to observe the pertinacity with which this little vessel avoided our boat, although we used every stratagem devised by seafaring men to allay the consternation of the weak: such as the waving of our caps, the hoisting of pacific signals, the lowering of our gaff-topsail, &c., &c.; nor could ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... sang through a part at rehearsals often enough to impress it on his memory, the rest, that is to say, everything pertaining to vocal art and dramatic delivery, would follow naturally. In this way he picked up any clerical errors there might be in the libretto, and that with such incorrigible pertinacity, that he uttered the wrong words with just the same expression as if they were correct. He waved aside good- humouredly any expostulations or hints as to the sense with the remark, 'Ah! that will be all right soon.' And, in fact, I very soon resigned myself and quite gave ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... of recent dangers, Cook now slowly found his way through the maze of reefs, by a route that no one has again followed, to the northern point of Australia, and was rewarded for his pertinacity by finding the channel now known as Torres Strait, which led him ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... before he admitted the truth of one word that I have said to you this evening. You must be prepared, therefore, to hear my opinions attacked with all the virulence of established interest, and all the pertinacity of confirmed prejudice; you will hear them made the subjects of every species of satire and invective; but one kind of opposition to them you will never hear; you will never hear them met by quiet, steady, rational argument; ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... of being pronounced monotonous, because of the pertinacity with which the attempt is made to force self-reflection. But this criticism can easily be endured, provided the attempt succeeds. Religious truth becomes almighty the instant it can get within the soul; and it gets within ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... for mail, and upon the few occasions on which a stray human being crossed his path, his manner was such as by no means encouraged the curious. Mr. Stamps was the only individual who had seen the woman face to face. There was an unmoved pertinacity in the character of Mr. Stamps which stood him in good stead upon all occasions. He was not easily abashed or rebuffed, the more especially when he held in view some practical object. Possibly he held some such object in view ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Poland, when Wuertemberg witnessed the birth of a man who was destined to achieve a revolution in science not less fertile in consequences, and still more difficult to accomplish. This man was Kepler. Endowed with two qualities which seem incompatible,—a volcanic imagination, and a dogged pertinacity which the most tedious calculations could not tire,—Kepler conjectured that celestial movements must be connected with each other by simple laws; or, to use his own expression, by harmonic laws. These laws he undertook to discover. A thousand fruitless attempts—the errors ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the princes of the race of Hohenstauffen the vigour of her Norman ancestry unweakened. This was a circumstance of no small moment in the history of Europe. Upon the fierce and daring Suabian stem were grafted the pertinacity, the cunning, the versatility of the Norman adventurers. Young Frederick, while strong and subtle enough to stand for himself against the world, was so finely tempered by the blended strains of his parentage that he received ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... funeral comes life again,—hard, cold, inexorable life, knocking with business-like sound at the mourner's door, obtruding its common-place pertinacity on the dull ear of sorrow. The world cannot wait for us; the world knows no leisure for tears; it moves onward, and drags along with its motion the weary and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... and the palm-branches sweeping across their eyes. In a short time, the whole cathedral presented the appearance of a forest of palm-trees, (a la Birnam wood) moved by a gentle wind; and under each tree a half-naked Indian, his rags clinging together with wonderful pertinacity; long, matted, dirty black hair both in men and women, bronze faces with mild unspeaking eyes, or all with one expression of eagerness to see the approach of the priests. Many of them had probably travelled ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... were six weeks old, in fine condition, and clung to the teats of their foster parent with wolf-like pertinacity. As long as she lay licking their little black bodies and dark chestnut heads, or permitted them to hide their sulky faces and ugly bare tails under her body, they lay quiet enough, but when she raised her emaciated form to stretch her legs, or to ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... play precisely as if the point had not been made," is a thought radical enough to send a shudder along Pennsylvania Avenue. Under this ruling, a single player in a game of eight might spend a half-hour in running and rerunning a single bridge, with dog-in-the-mangerish pertinacity, waiting his opportunity to claim the most mischievous run as the valid one. It would produce endless misunderstandings and errors of memory. The only vexed case which it would help to decide is that in which a ball, in running the very last bridge, strikes another ball, and is yet forbidden ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... situation of the collectivity for the present and for the immediate future. For these purposes the traits handed down from the predatory culture are less serviceable than might be. Although even in this connection it is not to be overlooked that the energetic aggressiveness and pertinacity of predatory man is a heritage of no mean value. The economic value—with some regard also to the social value in the narrower sense—of these aptitudes and propensities is attempted to be passed upon without reflecting on their value as seen from another point of view. When ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... were beginning to relax. As for Mary Wells, she gave her no peace; she kept instilling her mind into her mistress's with the pertinacity of a small but ever-dripping fount, and we know both by science and poetry that small, incessant drops of water will wear a ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... different sizes—indelible marks of the diabolical bargain. We went into a cottage close by, and had some boiled eggs and cider. The inmates were at their meal—a bowl of milk, into which they broke their buckwheat "galette." We were much struck with the jealous pertinacity of the Breton, to show he considers himself as of a different people and country to the rest of France, a feeling which more than three hundred years has not dissipated. Our driver would talk of Bretons and French as of distinct nations, and the Normans in this part of ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... unity. Thus the party proceeded till they reached the governor's house. They in vain tried to keep out Queerface and the parrots, but the governor, hearing the disturbance, desired that all hands should be admitted. He was highly amused at the pertinacity with which the parrots and monkey stuck to their masters, and still more interested with the account Murray and Adair gave of their voyage. Indeed, they gained, as they deserved, great credit for the way in which they had stuck to ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... both cases. They said this was a "local measure," and that they understood the interests of the Pacific coast better than men from the old States, while they begged and button-holed members with a pertinacity very rarely witnessed in any legislative body. They turned the business of log-rolling to such account that the amendment was defeated by a strong majority, while it proved the entering wedge to other and greater outrages ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... swindled in all the capitals of Europe. The respect in those happy days of 1817-18 was very great for the wealth and honour of Britons. They had not then learned, as I am told, to haggle for bargains with the pertinacity which now distinguishes them. The great cities of Europe had not been as yet open to the enterprise of our rascals. And whereas there is now hardly a town of France or Italy in which you shall not see some noble countryman of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... their violence and prejudice that apparently he always sincerely believed all persons who crossed his path to be knaves and villains of the blackest dye. But certain it is that whether he credited the tale or not he soon began to devote himself with all his wonted vigor and pertinacity to its wide dissemination. Whether in so doing he was stupidly believing a lie, or intentionally spreading a known slander, is a problem upon which his friends and biographers have exhausted much ingenuity ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... the stable; resisted all attempts to turn him out; reinstated him there, in spite of maid, and boy, and mistress, and master; wore out every body's opposition, by the activity of her protection, and the pertinacity of her self-will; made him sharer of her bed and her mess; and, finally, established him as one of the family as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... vacancy by removing an officer or accepting a resignation? Now, while it is proper that this question shall be settled, I do not perceive why either Governor Gamble or the government here should care which way it is settled. I am perplexed with it only because there seems to be pertinacity about it. It seems to me that it might be either way without injury to the service; or that the offer of the Secretary of War to let Governor Gamble make vacancies, and he (the Secretary) to ratify the making of ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Church had long reigned by the proud and absolute humour which she had assumed, of maintaining every doctrine which her rulers had adopted in dark ages; but this pertinacity at length made her citadel too large to be defended at every point by a garrison whom prudence would have required to abandon positions which had been taken in times of darkness, and were unsuited to the warfare of a more enlightened age. The sacred motto of the Vatican was, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... perhaps too much to say that her complacency was shaken. She was, withal, a person of resolution—of resolution taking the form of unswerving faith in herself, a faith persisting even when she was being carried beyond her depth. She had the kind of pertinacity that sever admits being out of depth, the happy buoyancy that does not require to feel the bottom under one's feet. She floated in swift currents. When life became uncomfortable, she evaded it easily; and she evaded it now, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... came to nothing, and the Inchbalds eventually went to Hull, where they returned to their old profession. Here, in 1779, suddenly and somewhat mysteriously, Mr. Inchbald died. To his widow the week that followed was one of "grief, horror, and almost despair"; but soon, with her old pertinacity, she was back at her work, settling at last in London, and becoming a member of the Covent Garden company. Here, for the next five years, she earned for herself a meagre living, until, quite unexpectedly, deliverance came. In her moments of leisure she had been ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... him to the gate, and giving him more hope of Sir Eustace's recovery than he felt; for he knew that nothing but the prospect of saving him was likely to inspire the yeoman with either speed or pertinacity enough to be of use. He fondly patted Brigliador, who turned his neck in amaze at finding it was not his master who mounted him, and having watched them for a moment, he turned to look round the court, which was empty, save for the bodies of those whom he ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mangle an apparently dead man. Since the forty she-bears came out of the wilderness and ate up a drove of small boys for guying a holy man, who was unduly sensitive about his personal dignity, the female of the ursine species, however, has been notorious for ill-temper and vindictive pertinacity, and she maintains that ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... rid of the boy's pertinacity, and to set forward on his return to the convent, without having any further interview with Christie the galloper, answered by giving the promise Edward required, mounted his mule, and set ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... warfare against Rangihaeata in the Cook's Straits district took longer to end. It was a series of isolated murders, trifling skirmishes, night surprises, marchings and counter-marchings. Their dreary insignificance was redeemed by the good-tempered pertinacity shown by our troops in enduring month after month of hardship and exposure in the rain-soaked bush and the deep mud of the sloughs, miscalled tracks, along which they had to crawl through the gloomy ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... In studying his life we are amused, we are almost scandalised, at his snake-like quality. He moves with serpentine undulations, and the beautiful hard head is lifted from ambush to strike the unsuspecting enemy at sight. With his protestations, his volubility, his torrent of excuses, his evasive pertinacity, Sir Walter Raleigh is the very opposite of the "strong silent" type of soldier which the nineteenth century invented for ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... made this vow to Allah Almighty that, as a punishment for this my unlucky greed and cursed covetise, I would require a cuff upon my ear from everyone who might take pity on my case and give an alms. On this wise it was that yesterday I pursued thee with such pertinacity.—When the blind man made an end of his story the Caliph said, "O Baba Abdullah! thine offence was grievous; may Allah have mercy on thee therefor. It now remaineth to thee to tell thy case to devotees and anchorites that they may offer up their potent prayers in ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... sting to his grief, during the last days of his mother's illness, by declaring that she would assert her right to attend the funeral. In spite of any thing he could do or say, she held with wicked pertinacity to her word, and on the day appointed for the burial forced herself—inflamed and shameless with drink—into her husband's presence, and declared that she would walk in the funeral procession to his ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... Royal, on the right on entering the "Color Court," has a carved and painted ceiling of 1540. Madame d'Arblay describes the pertinacity of George III. in attending service here in bitter November weather, when the queen and court at length left the king, his chaplain, and equerry "to freeze it ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... with flippant volubility in a set form of heartless words, seemed to my startled mind so exceedingly terrible in unapproachable majesty, and so very angry with me in particular, that I became paralyzed with fear. I strove against this with characteristic pertinacity; I called to mind all the commonplace assurances respecting the sufficiency of a good intention, and magnified alike my doings and my sufferings. I persuaded myself it was only a holy awe, the effect of distinguished piety and rare humility, and that I was really an object of the divine complacency ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... this from the other side, were in hopes that having recovered their young, the jaguars might give over their chase, and carry them off. But they were mistaken in this. The American tiger is of a very different nature. Once enraged, he will seek revenge with relentless pertinacity. It so proved. After delaying a moment with the second cub. Both left it, and sprang forward upon the trail, which they knew had been taken by ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... from the Sol's Arms. Before night his doubt whether he may not be responsible for some inconceivable part in the catastrophe which is the talk of the whole neighbourhood is almost resolved into certainty by Mrs. Snagsby's pertinacity in that fixed gaze. His mental sufferings are so great that he entertains wandering ideas of delivering himself up to justice and requiring to be cleared if innocent and punished with the utmost rigour of the law ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... and when he does vanquish and carry her captive by his bow and spear, he feels that he has gained a victory over no ignoble antagonist, and he becomes a hero in his own eyes. Though a woman of much will, still she is a woman of much reason; and if he has many vexations with her pertinacity, he is never without hope in her good sense; but alas for him whose wife has only the animal instinct of firmness, without any development of the judgment or reasoning faculties! The conflicts with a woman whom a man respects and admires are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... nations now confronting each other had, therefore, nothing in common, unless, perhaps, an excessive pertinacity of purpose. The new comers belonged to a stern, unyielding, systematic stock, which was destined to give to Europe that great character so superior in our times to that of southern or eastern nations. The natives possessed that strong attachment to their time-honored customs, so peculiar ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... had heard them before, and was anxious to connect them with the circumstances of their utterance. There was one in particular which especially tormented him. "Go for a cruise on your own account; go for a cruise on your own account," his brain reiterated with merciless pertinacity. What did it mean? Where had he heard those words before, and who had uttered them? He felt absolutely certain that at some time or other he had heard that phrase spoken, and that it had some intimate connection with himself, that it somehow concerned him vitally. "There ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... mud-markers known in the purlieus of Liecester-square, and at all denominations of "boots"—great, little, red, and yellow—as eight-and-sixpenny Bluchers. But the afore-mentioned drabs are strapped down with such pertinacity as to leave the observer in extreme doubt whether the Prussian hero of that name is their legitimate sponsor, or the glorious Wellington of our own sea-girt isle. Indeed, it has been rumoured that (as there never was a pair of either of the illustrious heroes) these gentlemen, for the sake ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... messengers with tobacco (the usual Indian credentials for such messengers) to Qu'Appelle to prevent the making of the treaty there. Besides the claims to the outside promises, preferred by the other Indians, they had an additional grievance, which they pressed with much pertinacity. To obtain their adhesion to Treaty Number One, the Commissioners had given them preferential terms in respect to their reserve, and the wording in the treaty of these terms enhanced the difficulty. The language used was as follows: "And for the use of the ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... friendlessness, the disabilities, and the disadvantages which surrounded his childhood and youth; the scanty opportunities, or rather the absence of all opportunity, of education; the destitution and loneliness amid which he struggled for the possession of knowledge; and the unflinching zeal and pertinacity with which he provided for himself the materials for intellectual growth, will heartily echo the popular judgment that he was indeed a man of genius, marked out from his cradle to inspire, animate, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... say there was one whose person was sacred from all such attacks. He was well mounted upon a strong, half-breed horse; rode always foremost, following the hounds with the same steady pertinacity with which he would have followed the enemy, his compressed lip rarely opening for a laugh when even the most ludicrous misadventure was enacting before him; and when by chance he would give way, the short ha! ha! ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... 1772. A grate Company of Guests assembled at Mt Vernon to celebrate Gen'l Washington's Birthdaye. In the Morning the Gentlemenn went a Fox hunting, but their Sport was marred by the Pertinacity of some Motion Picture menn who persewd them to take Fillums and catchd the General falling off his Horse at a Ditch. In the Evening some of the Companye tooke Occasion to rally the General upon the old Fable of the Cherrye Tree, w'ch hath ever been imputed an Evidence ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... of sunshine that had shone forth while we were there was the only intermission vouchsafed by the rain, which afterwards poured down with a steady vehemence and pertinacity seldom seen on the Ligurian Riviera. The effects of this rare continuance of wet weather were soon made impressively perceptible to the four as they emerged upon the open road, after passing the Lighthouse of Genoa and the long straggling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... means as soft as his peltry) to invest little Fritz's money, a goodly quantity of current coin of the realm, with the house of Al-Sartchild. Not a penny of it was he allowed to touch. So, by way of revenge for the Israelite's pertinacity, Brunner senior married again. It was impossible, he said, to keep his huge hotel single-handed; it needed a woman's eye and hand. Gideon Brunner's second wife was an innkeeper's daughter, a very pearl, as he thought; but ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the widow in scripture, and the most obdurate subjects of his quest have found it for their interest to give in, lest by his continual coming he should weary them. We forgive him; almost admire him for his pertinacity; only let him have no imitators. The tax he has levied must not ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... days, namely, the noteworthy charge brought against the Christians that they changed and altered their sacred books; the orthodox accused the unorthodox of varying the Scriptures, and the heretics retorted the charge with equal pertinacity. The Ebionites maintained that the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew was the only authentic Gospel, and regarded the four Greek Gospels as unreliable. The Marcionites admitted only the Gospel resembling that of Luke, and were accused by the orthodox of having altered that ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... temper, and character of his face altered as he answered her quickly and sharply—"If not, the fault lies with Sir Henry Harcourt, who, with some pertinacity, induced me to come here. But why is it wrong that I should ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the growth of the petty local tyrants, and limited their influence. For two or three years Clarendon was able to maintain this independent council; it was only when his vigilance failed, and when his attention was otherwise engaged, that Lauderdale's pertinacity was rewarded, and a pernicious system of local tyranny admitted. [Footnote: It is not unimportant to note that even Burnet's Scottish sympathies and confirmed Whiggism did not prevent his outspoken preference for Clarendon's plan ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Agatha knew her manager's pertinacity when once on the track of an object. Moreover, the humor of the situation passed from her mind, leaving only a vivid impression of the trouble and worry which were sure to follow such a serious breaking up of well established ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... beyond the stage of resenting Mrs. Ansell's gentle pertinacity. All her faculties were absorbed in the question as to how she could most effectually use whatever ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... triumphant, were the accompaniment to our meal, filling the pauses, enriching, as it seemed, the talk. But Coralie was deep in foie gras, and paid no heed to them. Wetter engaged in some vehement discussion with Varvilliers, who met him with good-humoured pertinacity. I had dropped out of the talk, and sat listening dreamily to Struboff's music. Suddenly Coralie laid down her knife and turned ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... literature. To discern the significance of men and books, to classify and explain them, is another matter. We have not, and we never shall have, a calculus sufficient for human life even at its weakest and poorest. Let him who conceives high hopes from the progress of knowledge and the pertinacity of thought tame and subdue his pride by considering, for a moment, the game of chess. That game is played with thirty-two pieces, of six different kinds, on a board of sixty-four squares. Each kind of piece has one allotted ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... to speak of the pertinacity of our weasels in hunting their prey, say a hare, as above, or a rabbit. On one occasion, as I was riding by the side of a strip of low whinbushes and long grass, a rabbit rushed out just in front of me, its fur ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... died, after a brief reign of eight years, his reputation was disputed over with singular pertinacity by ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... and flaring productions have objectionable features which are only too obvious, but they are conducted by the cleverest journalists in the world, and the invaluable journalistic instinct is apparent on every page of them. The splendid pertinacity and ingenuity of the American journalist in wringing copy out of any and every side of existence cannot fail to quicken the pulses of those who are accustomed to the soberer, narrower, sleepier ways of English newspapers. Fleet Street pretends to despise and contemn American methods, yet a gradual ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... in science not less fertile in consequences, and still more difficult of execution. This man was Kepler. Endowed with two qualities which seemed incompatible with each other, a volcanic imagination, and a pertinacity of intellect which the most tedious numerical calculations could not daunt, Kepler conjectured that the movements of the celestial bodies must be connected together by simple laws, or, to use his own expressions, by harmonic laws. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... marvellous from the familiar by putting the life-story of Hilda Lessways on a foreground behind which lies the already familiar story of Edwin Clayhanger. We remember Clayhanger living in the printing shop in the Potteries; his uncouthness, his shyness, his pertinacity; his desire to be an architect and to live the imaginative life, thwarted by his grim old father; and the manner in which Hilda dawned upon him, entered into his experience in a brief rapture of ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... practicability. Lastly, women on committees and elsewhere are not justified in keeping unduly in the background. When they have something worth contributing to the discussion, it is not modesty but lack of business capacity, which makes them silent. "Mauvaise honte" is as much out of place as undue pertinacity. Women who are unwilling or unable to assert themselves when necessary, are not in place at a co-educational University. Most women, however, will derive intellectual stimulus from the free interchange of opinion, possible only when ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... marked mental characteristics are clear insight, unconquerable pertinacity, dogged obstinacy, absolute honesty, and a sturdy sense of independence. Bjoernson has well remarked concerning his people: "Opinions are slowly formed and tenaciously held, and much independence is developed by the rigorous isolation of farm from ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... I gave myself most earnestly to the household tasks, going through them with dogged pertinacity, and accomplishing an amount of work which made my step-mother declare that Janet was coming back to her senses after all. It was only my effort to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... by his pertinacity. I had never liked Morton Harland. His reputation, both as a man of wealth and a man of letters, was to me unenviable. He did no particular good with his money,—and such literary talent as he possessed he squandered in attacking nobler ideals than he had ever been able to attain. ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... began to be sick after the collation. Rick, with his usual pertinacity, wanted to "stick it out," but his feelings overcame him, and he adjourned. He and Tony had eaten too much green-tinted candy. The participants in the raft-race were preparing for the contest, Charlie ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... come, and the moment for final decision was at hand. Mr. Ellsworth's conduct throughout had been very much in his favour; he had been persevering and marked in his attentions, without annoying by his pertinacity. Elinor had liked him, in the common sense of the word, from the first; and the better she knew him, the more cause she found to respect his principles, and amiable character. And yet, if left to her own unbiassed judgment, she would probably have refused him at first, with no other reluctance ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... a hundred ways, leading up from the most distant and innocent points to that which had kept me away so long. And since truth consists as much in not withholding as in telling, I was brought within measurable distance of lying by Aunt Jeanne's pertinacity, for which I think the blame should fairly ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... Light plunged into the river at Kelly's Ford, leading the advance. A strong detachment of Stuart's cavalry, consisting of pickets and reserves, opposed our crossing with dogged pertinacity, but finally, yielding to our superior numbers and to the deadly accuracy of our carbines, gave way. He then advanced in the direction of Brandy Station. The farther we advanced the stronger grew the ever-accumulating ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... Badajoz, and San Sebastian, and who were about to justify once more the tribute to the British soldier: "Give him a plain, unconditional order—go and do that—and he will do it with a cool, self-forgetting pertinacity that can scarcely be ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... presented as soldiers, would listen with a more patient ear to their claims when presented in another character. But this hope having been tried for five years without effect, was at last relinquished. The pertinacity with which all applications on the subject of reform were rejected, put it beyond doubt that reform was an object which by ordinary means could never be obtained. It was, however, a measure too big, when it had once gotten possession of the ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... really but be amused by Mrs. Potts's pertinacity, for, not yet relinquishing her purpose, she continued, in silence now, her lips compressed, her forehead beaded with moisture, to scale the difficult way, showing a resolute nimbleness amazing in one so ill-formed ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... determinedly to do something, and thinks of nought but his design, he must succeed despite all difficulties in his path: such an one may make himself Pope or Grand Vizier, he may overturn an ancient line of kings—provided that he knows how to seize on his opportunity, and be a man of wit and pertinacity. To succeed one must count on being fortunate and despise all ill success, but it is ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... did not change her views as to the wisdom and righteousness of her cause, and she continued to return blows at which the armies of the North reeled, stunned and bleeding. Mary was not permitted to exult very long, however, for the terrible pressure was quickly renewed with an unwavering pertinacity which created misgivings in the stoutest hearts. The Federals had made a strong lodgment on the coast of her own State, and were creeping nearer and nearer, often repulsed yet still advancing as if impelled by the ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... lovely night in May, landed at this place. Soon after, they were attacked by a party of English regulars and militiamen, who drove them into a windmill and two strong stone houses, which they loopholed, and defended themselves with a pertinacity which one would have called heroism, had it been in a better cause. They finally surrendered, and were carried prisoners to Kingston, where six of them were hanged. Their leader, a military adventurer, a Pole of the name of Von Schoultz, was the first ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... conscientiously reads them through. With this form of being "put to the question" I will have nothing to do. If it gives amusement to the reviewers, they are welcome to their sport. But they stab at the summer air, so far as any writer is concerned who has the pertinacity of purpose to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... Egypt, and was become First Consul; but he could not be expected to take the field till the following spring, and till then Massena was hopeless of relief from without—every thing was to depend on his own pertinacity. The strength of his army made it impossible to force it in such a position as Genoa; but its very numbers, added to the population of a great city, held out to the enemy a hope of reducing it by famine; and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... both in the individuals and the class? Would they not, on the strength of it, be continually assuming to sit in judgment on the proceedings and claims of their betters, even in the most lofty stations; and demanding their own pretended rights, with a troublesome and turbulent pertinacity? Would they not, since their improvement cannot, from their condition in life, be large and deep, be in just such a half taught state, as would make them exactly fit to be wrought upon by all sorts of crafty schemers, fierce declaimers, empirics, and innovators? Is it not, in short, too probable ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... puppy home. I imagine I had more pertinacity than the average Folk, or else I should not have succeeded. They laughed at me when they saw me lugging the puppy up to my high little cave, but I did not mind. Success crowned my efforts, and there was the puppy. He was a plaything such as none of ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... presumed to stick to the mind with much greater tenacity than a purely rational idea which has no visible symbol in the sensible world, and yet, even in regard to the events of history, the persistence and pertinacity of tradition is exceedingly feeble. The South Sea Islanders know not from whence, or at what time, their ancestors came. There are monuments in Tonga and Fiji of which the present inhabitants can give no account. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... a child, playing with exhaustless spirits at the most trivial games. Not for a moment would she listen to anything of a serious nature. Bennington, with the heavier pertinacity of men when they have struck a congenial vein, tried to repeat to some extent the experience of the last afternoon at the rock. Mary laughed his sentiment to ridicule and his poetics to scorn. Everything he said she twisted into something ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... cherished a very true affection for his great-aunt. Had she not been his confidant ever since his first term at Eton? Had she not, moreover, helped him on several occasions when creditors displayed an incomprehensibly foolish pertinacity regarding payment for goods supplied? He was burdened, too, by a prospective sense of his own uncommon righteousness. For, during the past five months, while he had been on leave at Brockhurst, assisting Katherine to master ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Wm. N. Whitely, the opponent of these extensions have urged with great pertinacity that the inventions are not novel. They allege that the same thing existed before in Hiram Moore's "Big Harvester" in Michigan—the Ambler Machine in New York—the Nicholson Machine in Maryland—and the ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... now against it is that the millionaires are for it. But it is enough to note here the reality of the ideal in men like Dr. Eder and Dr. Weizmann, and doubtless many others. The only defect that need be noted, as a mere detail of portraiture, is a certain excessive vigilance and jealousy and pertinacity in the wrong place, which sometimes makes the genuine Zionists unpopular with the English, who themselves suffer unpopularity for supporting them. For though I am called an Anti-Semite, there were really periods of official impatience when I ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... given by James Ford Rhodes in terms of personalities: "Three men are responsible for the Congressional policy of Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson, by his obstinacy and bad behavior; Thaddeus Stevens, by his vindictiveness and parliamentary tyranny; Charles Sumner, by his pertinacity in a misguided humanitarianism." The President stood alone in his responsibility, but his chief opponents were the ablest leaders of a ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... mother's bosom the babe learns his first lessons; from her smile he catches the glow of affection; and by her frown, or her gentle sighs he persuaded to give up what his ignorance or selfishness prompt him with pertinacity to retain. Happy where this sweet, this powerful influence is well directed,—where the mother's judgment guides ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... they made little distinction between Popery and Prelacy, between the Mass and the Book of Common Prayer. Unfortunately for Scotland, the prince whom she sent to govern a fairer inheritance had been so much annoyed by the pertinacity with which her theologians had asserted against him the privileges of the synod and the pulpit that he hated the ecclesiastical polity to which she was fondly attached as much as it was in his effeminate nature to hate anything, and had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... jaded and bleeding from this prolonged and stubbornly-contested battle, Jackson's columns had by no means relaxed their efforts. The blows they could give were feebler, but they were continued with the wonderful pertinacity their chief had taught them; and nothing but the Chancellor clearing, and with it the road to Fredericksburg, would satisfy ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... promised by its mistress with an opportunity of trying the ease of the carriage; another was delighted with the excellent training of her horses; in short, all had some particular claim to the distinction, which was urged with a warmth and pertinacity proportionate to the value of the prize to be obtained. Marian heard the several claimants with an ease and indifference natural to her situation, and ended ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... glanced back at the following car framed in the red glow from the opened fire-box door. It was surging and bounding alarmingly over the uneven track, not without threatenings of derailment. Ford was willing to give the president the full benefit of his unreasonable pertinacity; but there were others to be considered—and one above ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... noise as well as feasting was usually the order of the night. But on this great occasion that was all changed. The feasting was done in dead silence; and another very striking peculiarity of the occasion was that, while the six pairs of jaws kept moving with unflagging pertinacity, the twelve wide-open eyes kept glaring with unwinking ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... has been said in regard to the enervating effects of a southern climate, the inhabitants of the state of Louisiana have shown a pertinacity in maintaining their levee system which is almost unexampled. They have always asserted their rights to the lowlands in which they live, and have under the most trying circumstances braved inundation. They have built more than ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... strove with much pertinacity to kiss his hands; but Don Quixote, who was in all things a polished and courteous knight, would by no means allow it, but made her rise and embraced her with great courtesy and politeness, and ordered Sancho to look to Rocinante's girths, and to arm him without ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... either they or I can appeal. No man can speak with rational decision of the merits or demerits of buildings: he may with obstinacy; he may with resolved adherence to previous prejudices; but never as if the matter could be otherwise decided than by a majority of votes, or pertinacity of partisanship. I had always, however, a clear conviction that there was a law in this matter: that good architecture might be indisputably discerned and divided from the bad; that the opposition in their very nature and essence was clearly visible; and that we were all of us just as unwise ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... chasing a fly on the wall of a veranda, as is the habit of this insect at the end of summer and in the autumn. She dashed violently in flight at the flies sitting on the wall, which mostly escaped. She continued her pursuit with remarkable pertinacity, and succeeded on several occasions in catching a fly, which she killed, mutilated, and bore away to her nest. Each time she quickly returned ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Teddy's visit. She was treated with kindness, as the destined wife of a young chief; but the suit for her consent never was pressed by the chief, as it is in an Indian's code of honor never to force a woman to a distasteful marriage. The young brave, with true Indian pertinacity, could wait his time, confident that his kindness and her long absence from home would secure her consent to the savage alliance. She was denied nothing but her liberty, and her prayers to be returned ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... ornamental, we are useful. We pelt each other with a hearty vigour, and discharge volleys of confetti at every window where a fair English face appears. The poor luckless nosegay or sugar-plum boys look upon us as their best friends, and follow our carriages with importunate pertinacity. Fancy dresses of any kind are few. There are one or two very young men—English, I suspect,—dressed as Turks, or Greeks, or pirates, after Highbury Barn traditions, looking cold and uncomfortable. Half a dozen tumble-down carriages represent the Roman element. They are filled with ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... tropical America have described the ravages of the leaf-cutting ants (OEcodoma); their crowded, well-worn paths through the forests, their ceaseless pertinacity in the spoliation of the trees—more particularly of introduced species—which are left bare and ragged, with the mid-ribs and a few jagged points of the leaves only left. Many a young plantation of orange, mango, and lemon trees has been destroyed by them. Again and again ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... right; 'No man hath seen God at any time,' to which 'open confession' he might truly have added, 'none ever will,' for the unreal is always unseeable. Yet have 'mystery men' with shameless and most insolent pertinacity asserted the existence of God while ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... being unable to return to New Zealand arose in his mind 'with sickening pertinacity,' and it was characteristic of him that at the moment when there was every prospect of a complete disarrangement of well-laid plans, he found his one [Page 238] consolation in determining that, whatever happened, nothing should ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... natives, who were disposed to be rather troublesome, especially one old fellow, whose conduct annoyed me exceedingly. However, I very soon got rid of them; and after strolling for a short time within sight of us, they all went up the creek; but I could not help thinking, from the impertinent pertinacity of these fellows, that they had discovered my magazine, and taken all the things, more especially as they had been digging where our fire had been, so that, if I had buried the stores there as intended, they would ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... English Stage, I believe with no other motive than religious zeal and honest indignation. He was formed for a controvertist; with sufficient learning; with diction vehement and pointed, though often vulgar and incorrect; with unconquerable pertinacity; with wit, in the highest degree, keen and sarcastick; and with all those powers exalted and invigorated by just confidence ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... the penitent. The part that the worthy priest had to play was very embarrassing. Under the seal of confession he had been intrusted with a secret to which in his conversations with me he could make only indirect allusions, to bring me to understand that my pertinacity was a crime, and that the only honourable course was to yield. He hoped too much of me. Virtue such as this was beyond my power, and equally beyond ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... of ordinary information saw that the restoration of monarchy was certain, Milton knew it not, and put out a tract to show his countrymen a Ready and easy way to establish a free Commonwealth. With the same pertinacity with which he had adhered to his own assumption that Morus was author of the Clamor, he now refused to believe in the return of the Stuarts. Fast as his pen moved, events outstripped it, and he ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... henceforth by Irishmen, who revived an impoverished and exhausted people, stilled their dissensions, harmonized their conflicting plans, consolidated their chaotic forces, conducted a peaceful Parliamentary struggle in their behalf with incomparable pertinacity, coolness, and resources; and through storms and rough weather has held steadily on till even his enemies see now, in the very flush of their own temporary success, that in the end the victory of Parnell is sure. [Loud applause.] Great leaders both; great historic figures ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... slightly amused at the pertinacity of the third officer, and perhaps even more amused at the slight accent with which he spoke, which rendered rather needless his boast ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... was inclined to be jovial, and ordered the best in wines that the house afforded. Before starting from home they had drunk as much as was good for them; so that their potations here soon began to have a marked effect upon their tongues. The rain beat upon the windows with a dull dogged pertinacity which seemed to signify boundless reserves of the same and long continuance. The wind rose, the sign creaked, and the candles waved. The weather had, in truth, broken up for the season, and this was the first ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... has created, real Brussels lace has maintained its value, like the precious metals and the precious stones. In the patterns of the best bone lace, the changeful influence of fashion is less marked than in most other branches of industry; indeed, she has adhered with wonderful pertinacity to the quaint old patterns of former times. These are copied and reproduced with that scrupulous uniformity which characterizes the figures in the Persian and Indian shawls. Frequent experiments have been tried to improve these old patterns, by the introduction ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... tools and appliances, was also slight enough, ordinarily, to bring it within the reach of the common man. The stress fell on the acquirement of that special personal skill, dexterity and judgment that would constitute the workman a master of his craft. Given a reasonable measure of pertinacity, the common man would be able to compass the material equipment needful to the pursuit of his craft, and so could make his way to a livelihood; and the inviolable right of ownership would then serve to ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... from the representations of my physicians, and from some of my own sensations, that the almost daily recurrence of my visions might ultimately lead to insanity, I came to the resolution of reducing my daily allowance of opium; and, confining myself, with the most rigid pertinacity, to a quantity not exceeding one third of what I had formerly taken, I became speedily sensible of a most essential change in my condition. A state of comparative health, mental and physical with calmer sleep ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... honourable men—these excrescences he saw upon his soul, and that without their surgery it would never be divine. He remembered the prophetic warning of his father that "Eternal Justice calls us to exact account"; and the pertinacity of Retribution in the matter of the Golden Dog. He saw that the justice of this life and the next are one, and are absolutely complete in their demands. One great conclusion came to him with overwhelming force; he saw that it was the plan of Heaven that ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... righteousness; nor could all the railings she heard against them make her hate those who differed from her in religious opinions. Still she made no complaint. Entirely obedient to her father's will, she accommodated herself, as far as she could, to the rule of life prescribed by him. Aware of his pertinacity of opinion, she seldom or ever argued a point with him, even if she thought right might be on her side; holding it better to maintain peace by submission, than to hazard wrath by disputation. The discussion ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... whilst he sent another body of troops to make conquests in the vicinity, for the Rana, despairing of success, had fled to the jungles. But if he pressed the siege vigorously, the Rajputs defended themselves with equal courage and obstinacy. Never had Akbar met such sturdy warriors. As their pertinacity increased, so likewise did his pride and resolution. At length the breach was reported practicable, and on a night in the month of March, Akbar ordered the assault. He had a stand erected for himself, whence ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... attached to liberty, took his reserve for timidity, and these petty treasons for independence. The common cause was a cover for all. Partiality transforms the most sinister tokens into favour or indulgence. "He defends his principles," said she, "with warmth and pertinacity—he has the courage to stand up singly in their defence at the time when the number of the people's champions is vastly reduced. The court hates him, therefore we should like him. I esteem Robespierre for this, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... proceeded with slight resistance until the 18th of March, when his army appeared before Acre. Smith was then lying in the roads with two ships-of-the-line. The siege which ensued lasted for sixty-two days, so great was Bonaparte's pertinacity, and anxiety to possess the place; and in its course Smith displayed, not only courage and activity, which had never been doubted, but a degree of conduct and sound judgment that few expected of him. His division ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... enough to be in bed himself, and his purse was entirely empty. It was a terrible position, made worse, too, by the fact that his friends who had formerly aided him had turned from him, vexed with his pertinacity, and abandoned him to his fate. In his despair, he bethought him of a mere acquaintance who lived several miles from his cottage, and who but a few days before had spoken to him with more of kindness than he had received of late. This gentleman, he thought, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... feature of the Parsee dress is the hat, to which the community cling with a pertinacity that would be extraordinary, were it not common. Even the Parsee representative of "Young Bombay," dressed from top to toe in European costume, including a pair of shiny boots, cannot be induced to discard the abominable topee, or hat, distinctive of his race; though, perhaps, after ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... talk. Yes, there was something. Mr. Sefton, so he heard, meant to make the matter one of vital importance, and the higher officers of the Government were content to leave it to him, confident of his ability and pertinacity and glad enough to be relieved ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... fan, the usual number of butterflies, made before our eyes of little bits of tissue-paper, and kept them in the air during the remainder of the performance. I have a vivid recollection of the judge trying to catch one that had lit on his knee, and of its evading him with the pertinacity of a living insect. And, even at this time, Wang, still plying his fan, was taking chickens out of hats, making oranges disappear, pulling endless yards of silk from his sleeve, apparently filling the whole area of the basement with goods ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... a theatre. You have no more idea of George Douglass than a bear has of a lion. This mood of depression is only a cloud; it will pass and you will be glad to beg his pardon. My faith in him and in Lillian's Duty is unshaken. He has the artistic temperament, but he has also the pertinacity of genius. Come, let's all go to ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Combat her in her sexual pertinacity, and in her secret glory or arrogance in the sexual goal. Combat her in her cock-sure belief that she "knows" and that she is "right." Take it all out of her. Make her yield once more to the male leadership: if you've got anywhere ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... violent cold hastened the progress of debility into a confirmed malady. He sunk very fast. Aunt Sally, with the self-deceit of a fond and cheerful heart, thought every day that "he would be better," and Uncle Lot resisted conviction with all the obstinate pertinacity of his character, while the sick man felt that he had not the heart ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... seems to have been divided into two parties; the bishops and clergy, many of them foreigners, who applied themselves wholly to the study of the civil and canon laws, which now came to be inseparably interwoven with each other; and the nobility and laity, who adhered with equal pertinacity to the old common law; both of them reciprocally jealous of what they were unacquainted with, and neither of them perhaps allowing the opposite system that real merit which is abundantly to be found in each. This appears on the one hand from the spleen with which the monastic writers[e] ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... that expression with strange pertinacity. I must tell you again that there can not possibly be any thing in common between you and me. For my part, I consider you as my natural enemy. You are my jailer. I am your prisoner. That is all. I am at war ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... failing that of another, was fain to put up with his own as better than none. But Holden steadily resisted all the advances of the constable, refusing to reply to any question, or to take notice of anything he might say, until the latter, either wearied out by the pertinacity of his captive, or vexed by what he considered sullenness or arrogance, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
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