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More "Provocation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the English East India Company's forces. The latter at this time were composed of men of all nationalities, English, Germans, Swiss, Dutch, and even French. Many of them, and naturally the foreigners especially, were ready to desert upon little provocation. The hardships of service in a country where the climate and roads were execrable, where food and pay were equally uncertain, and where promises were made not to be kept, were provocations which the best soldiers might have found it difficult ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... Instead of being permitted to make the final, supreme sacrifice of his life for the honor of his enemy,—which would have revealed to the audience his possession of a clean white soul in spite of his bad character,—he had been made out a little fiend who would shoot you on the slightest provocation. The girl had been thrust into the background, and the hero had been made into a coward and a paltry villain; they were all desperadoes upon the screen. Never in his life had Bently Brown been made to suffer such an affront. Never had he dreamed that his work would be made a thing ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... and calm in times when his chum would show visible signs of great excitement. He had drilled himself to control his temper under provocation, until ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... argument. She really had given him little chance; impulse and instinct had worked upon her, causing her to jump at conclusions which, however well founded in fact, were without excuse in act. If he had kissed her, it wasn't without provocation, nor against her will; she had got no more than she asked for. The trouble was, she no longer wanted it. She had been the dupe of her own folly, by her own romantic bent and the magnetism of the man blinded to the essentially meretricious spirit clothed in ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... when he went into Madame Staubach's parlour, found that lady on her knees in prayer. He had entered the room without notice, having been urged to this unwonted impetuosity by the severity of the provocation which he had received. Madame Staubach raised her head; but when she saw him she did not rise. He stood there for some seconds looking at her, expecting her to get up and greet him; but when he found that such was not her purpose, he turned ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... affectionate, and the children singularly obedient and reverent to their parents: yet 'Spare the rod and spoil the child' is a precept totally disregarded. The children are never beaten, nor do the parents allow themselves to lose their tempers in rebuking them, however great the provocation may be—one remarkable result of the complete self-abnegation inculcated by their ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... might have shared the same unhappy fate with the first adventurers to Virginia. Many tribes besides that might no doubt have extirpated the colony, but it is probable the governor studied by every means to avoid giving them any provocation, and to conciliate their affection ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... little difference," said the King, "If you had seen her with his Highness, the murder would have seemed less cold-blooded, that is all. There would then have been something like a natural provocation ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... So even this fresh provocation did not result in any active interference with Sheen; but it was decided that he must be cut even more thoroughly ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... said Mark, rising, "don't stop there. If you must accuse yourself, pass judgment also. Class yourself where you have chosen with your eyes open to stand. Would you allow any amount of provocation and unhappiness to excuse a systematic fraud? Do you think that the thief brought up to sin has less or more excuse than you have? Are you the only person who has known a lonely childhood? Can you tell me here in this room that God never ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... the present purpose of Aurelian to spare me,' I answered, 'whatever provocation I may give him, I fully believe. He is true; and his word to that end, with no wish expressed on my part, has been given. But do not suppose that in that direction at least he may not change his purpose. Superstitiously mad as he now is, a mere plaything too in the bloody hands of Fronto—and nothing ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... to say more—to tell her the whole story of the encounter, and that the provocation he had received had lain entirely in hearing her despised. But it would have greatly distressed her, and he forbore. "You had better lie down. You are ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... moment of execution; and, when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen, who sometimes, too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of labour. Their usual pretences are, sometimes the high price of provisions, sometimes the great profit which their masters make ...
— Progress and History • Various
... This primitive disdain of "barbarians" is common among the school children and tends to make the foreign children more delinquent and anti-social than they would otherwise be. A very recent case sums up the situation. A gang of five Polish boys "beat up" a messenger boy, apparently without provocation. A Juvenile Protective officer visited the home of one of these young thugs for the purpose of talking with the mother and getting such information as would aid in keeping the boy from getting into ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... a figure that would do credit to the brush of a great artist. His appearance is that of a man who has been deprived of the power of looking at the world as a place of rest; he is a bundle of nerves, and at the slightest provocation bursts into a storm of irascibility. A tortured spirit lurks in his soul and is visible in ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... the last cable which bound him to the life of the past. They might not be able to prove upon him the robbery of the gold, but at least one witness had seen him shoot down Bully Bullen, and would doubtless swear that there had been no provocation beyond that of seeking to take into custody a man upon whose head a reward had ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... against over much laughing. Nothing gives a sillier appearance than spasms of laughter upon the slightest provocation. It soon grows into a very disagreeable habit. Smile frequently, if need be, but be moderate in laughter. A very little reasoning will serve to do this; and the reflection that few grown people laugh well will aid still farther in ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... than their fathers; scarcely had they taken possession of the inheritance which had fallen to them, "a land flowing with milk and honey... the glory of all lands," than when they beheld "every high hill and every thick tree... they offered there their sacrifices, and there they presented the provocation of their offering, there also they made their sweet savour, and they poured out there their drink offerings." Not contented with profaning their altars by impious ceremonies and offerings, they further bowed the knee to idols, thinking in their hearts, "We will ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... He says these troops showed "no attacking spirit at all. They did not come under heavy shell fire nor was the rifle fire very severe, but they not only showed no dash in attack but went back at slight provocation and went back a long way. Lots of the men lay down behind cover, etc. They went on when called upon to do so by Staff and other Officers but they seemed lost and under no leadership—in fact, they ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... happen? What was the provocation? Even in Caligula's days slaves were not thrown over cliffs without ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... hope. Caesar was as much admired in the world of fashion as he was detested in the Curia. He had no taste for the brutal entertainments and more brutal vices of male patrician society. He preferred the companionship of cultivated women, and the noble lords had the fresh provocation of finding their hated antagonist an object of adoration to their wives and daughters. Here, at any rate, scandal had the field to itself. Caesar was accused of criminal intimacy with many ladies of the highest rank, and Pompey was privately informed that his friend had taken advantage of his ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... require rehabilitation among those who knew him, or knew anything of him—the only people really concerned. His dreadful deed has long been condoned by all (and they are many) who knew the provocation he had received and the character of the man who ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Alien and Sedition Acts, whose constitutionality no Federalist judge ever doubted, but which Jefferson considered as clearly a violation of the fundamental compact, since they tended to drive certain states, as he thought, into "revolution and blood." Under this provocation Jefferson proclaimed that it was both the right and the duty of any state, which felt itself aggrieved, to intervene to arrest "the progress of the evil," within her territory, by declining to execute, or by "nullifying," ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... A rather similar action, under far less provocation, once made Jael the wife of Heber the most popular ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... Beside the provocation to sin by wantonly placing Himself in danger, so that the Father's love might be manifested in a miraculous rescue, or by refusing so to challenge the Father's interposition demonstrate that He doubted His status as the Beloved Son, there lurked ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... multitudinous rejoinders and counterblasts provoked by this thunder, Dryden, it is supposed, ascribed the authorship of one of the keenest to Shadwell. We are to conceive some new and immediate provocation as added to the old grudge, to call for a second attack so soon; for it was only a month later that the "MacFlecknoe" appeared; not in 1689, as Dr. Johnson states, who, mistaking the date, also errs in assuming ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... each other. Of course, it was I who was in the wrong; I ought to have considered. And I must say you have behaved most honorably throughout; you never showed the least sign of a wish to break the engagement, even when we had our little quarrels, and you may have received some provocation. But after all, Lionel, I think you must admit that our relations have not been quite—quite—what you might expect between two people looking forward to ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... Policy of the Ancient Egyptians. He takes a grim delight in smashing the English language into microscopic atoms at a single blow. He is more fond of women, horses, and prize-fighting than is good for him. He will steal when he is hungry, lie to save his skin, curse most terribly on trifling provocation, and spend, to his last sou markee, his hard-won ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... wives that they were obliged to do the housework, while the women attended to the trading." Under these circumstances it is perhaps not surprising to find the women described as "great shrews, who would on the slightest provocation drive their offending husbands out of the house."[68] This is a curious case of the despotic rule of women. Westermarck accounts for their position by the strict monogamy that is enforced, but I do not think this can be ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... suppress or regulate any gaming-house or game, licensed as provided for in this chapter." "Excusable homicide" is also defined by statute. It is allowable "when committed by accident or misfortune, in the heat of passion or sufficient provocation, or upon a sudden combat; provided that no undue advantage is taken, nor any dangerous weapon used, and that the killing is not done in a cruel or unusual manner." The laws could hardly have ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... bank—a Robinson Crusoe experience which carries an electric shiver with it yet, when one stumbles on it in print. They had been warned that the river Indians were as ferocious and pitiless as the river demon, and destroyed all comers without waiting for provocation; but no matter, Joliet and Marquette struck into the country to hunt up the proprietors of the tracks. They found them, by and by, and were hospitably received and well treated—if to be received by an ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... lightly about waiting on him. Nellie was a soft round little person with constant intimations of a childhood not long outgrown. Jeff judged she must be nineteen or twenty, but she had moments of being charmingly unsure of herself. The warm color came and went in her clear cheeks at the least provocation. ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... of a bully, who without provocation and without warning had struck down from behind a man who had not been prepared to defend himself. The victim's movements had been impeded by a heavy overcoat. He had been utterly and entirely unprepared ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... Dean had committed one of the gravest crimes against the provisions of the Mutiny Act. Without warrant or excuse he had struck, threatened, assaulted, etc., a superior officer, who was in the discharge of his duty at the time. No matter what the provocation—and in this case it would be held grossly inadequate—there could be only one sentence—summary dismissal from the army. Just as sure as shooting, if Burleigh preferred charges that boy ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... animated by his many debates. Indeed, "he sought the storms." Otherwise he would not, could not, have participated in these many verbal contests. Throughout them all, his basic strategy—that of provocation—was determined by the very real fact that he had many more enemies than allies, among them, for instance, such formidable antagonists as Swift and Richard Bentley.[10] To survive he had to acquire a tough resilience, ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... hinder the popular hatred from wreaking vengeance on the oppressor. You will teach by your example pardon of offences and Christian toleration to those who compare Italian patriotism to Islamism. At peace with all the Great Powers, and without provocation, I mean to banish from Central Italy a constant cause of trouble and discord. I wish to respect the seat of the Chief of the Church, &c." Whatever this king may have wished to do, he was compelled to obey the will of ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... Term, 9 Car. 1, in which he said, that poisoning another was murder at common law. And the statute of 1 Ed. 6, was but declaratory of the common law, and an affirmation of it. If one drinks poison by the provocation of another, and dieth of it, this is murder in the person that persuaded it. And he took this difference. If A. give poison to J.S. to give to J.D., and J.S. knowing it to be poison, give it to J.D. who ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... to the roots of her hair, but suppressed the retort which would have been in keeping with the provocation. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... with gloomy forebodings, that a sign of law is not necessarily a sign of poetry, and that, as a prophet of his own had laid it down, poetry should "transport" not "fix." At any rate, it is clear to any one who reads the book that the author was in a mood of deliberate provocation and exaggeration—not a favourable mood for art. The quiet grace of Sophocles is perhaps impossible to reproduce in English, but Mr Arnold's verse is more than quiet, it is positively tame. The dreary tirades of Polyphontes and Merope, and their snip-snap stichomythia, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... long time till his brilliant pupil was himself master of the subject, as well as a firm friend of the quarrelsome monk; and in their intercourse the seeds were no doubt sown of that implacable hatred against the Orsini which, under the great and just provocation of a kinsman's murder, ended in the exile and temporary ruin of the Colonna's rivals. No doubt, also, the abbot and the monk often strolled together in the Colonna gardens, and the future Pope breathed the high air of the Quirinal hill with a sense of relief, and dreamed of living up there, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... truer than her mother's experience; not only that the wounded man's eyes became brighter under the provocation of her presence, but it was evident that his naturally exuberant spirits were a part of his vital strength, and were absolutely essential to his quick recovery. Encouraged by Falkner's grave and practical assistance, which she could not ignore, Kate ventured to make an examination ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... will speak boldly; he struck me on the face before my own threshold, that the very walls cried shame to him. [LORENZO holds up again. 'Tis true, I gave him provocation, for the man's as peaceable a gentleman as any ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... sketches than wit and humor. New England ministers never held it a sin to laugh; if they did, some of them had a great deal to answer for; for they could scarce open their mouths without dropping some provocation to a smile. An ecclesiastical meeting was always a merry season; for there never were wanting quaint images, humorous anecdotes, and sharp flashes of wit, and even the driest and most metaphysical points of doctrine were often lit up and illuminated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... revolution whether they would have been revolutionists—their answers were at first evasive, circuitous, and unintelligible, but, by fixing them down precisely to the question, I at length drew from them a positive confession that no violence, no provocation on the part of the court, could prevail upon them to act with the continent. Such, I am afraid, is the creed and principles of the whole party great and small.—Sense, reason, argument, and eloquence, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... responsibilities as the former is stimulated. These two men are not exceptional, but typical. The extreme of slowness is indeed represented in one man whose tortoise pace in all matters dependent on the mind and will is oddly contrasted with his vigor and energy of manner. His movements are a provocation of delighted comments by his neighbors; I think partly because they are felt to be representative of what is latent in other men, and partly because he is surrounded by others more alert. Such men are the outcropping of a vein of degenerate will. It is not ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... flushed with wine when the provocation occurred, and this ought to prevent a fatal meeting. If Lane insulted Everett, it was because he was not himself. Had he been perfectly sober, he would never have uttered ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... just and right," and a strong attempt was made to array the organization by formal action to oppose the Government, and those especially who were impatient for the general uprising, thought it a timely opportunity and ample provocation, and felt confident that as the South manifested open hostility and presented a bold and united front instantly upon the firing of the first gun upon Fort Sumter, so would it be in all the States of the Northwestern league; they would at ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... with whimsical lines, with its faint-blue eyes that wandered from his hearer to the allurement of the window and back again, overhung the desk as he spoke, drawling in those curiously soft tones of his an unconvincing narrative of sore provocation and the subsequent fight. He was a man in the later twenties, lean and slack-limbed; the workman's blouse of coarse linen, belted about him, and the long Russian boots which he wore, gave him, by ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... that she had naturally a better voice than Nilsson, and that, if she could dry up for ever her fountain of tears, she might become a great artiste. For Ilka had the deplorable habit of crying on very slight provocation. The maestro, with his wild hair, his long, polished nails, and his frantic gesticulations, frightened and distressed her; she thought and spoke of him as a kind of curious animal, and nothing could persuade her that he and she ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... thousand little pin-pricks which were much more painful for a nature like mine than so many stabs with a knife. (At least I imagine so, as I have never had any.) I became irritable, bad-tempered on the slightest provocation, and was in fact ill. I had always been gay, and now I was sad. My health, which had ever been feeble, was endangered by ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... the bigger lad following in hot pursuit. Up and down the steep bush-grown slope they raced and twisted and dodged, coming sometimes to close quarters in a hurricane of squeals and smacks, rolling over and over like fighting kittens, and breaking away again to start fresh provocation and fresh pursuit. Now and again they would lie for a time panting in what seemed the last stage of exhaustion, and then they would be off in another wild scamper, their dusky bodies flitting through the bushes, disappearing and reappearing with equal suddenness. ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... mercy, and to stop the ear when God speaks, when he speaks such great things, so much to our profit, is a great provocation. ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... Georgia also would certainly secede. He then seemed to lose all interest in the Union, and merely desired to become a spectator of the contest, and not an actor. His efforts thenceforth were simply confined to making his fort secure against an assault. Hardly any amount of provocation could induce him to become ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... sort of pity, Half matron's kindness, and half coquette's shame; Proud yet quite blameful, when she heard their ditty She gave her soul poetical expression, And being clever too, as she was pretty, From her high casement warbled this confession,— Half provocation and one half repression:— ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... alarm at the approach of a military power whom they had already good reason to mistrust and dread; the Russian viceroys and generals on the frontier treated these Oriental kingdoms with high-handed arrogance, and gave ample provocation for the wars which speedily broke out with both of them. The annals of the next few years record many vicissitudes of fortune. The Russian armies achieved some brilliant victories, and suffered some heavy disasters. By disease ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... that one day when, for an experiment, he had tried to make his way into the gardens after the signal for closing had sounded, the Zouave had carelessly levelled his bayonet at him with the words: "Ne faites pas des betises!" This levelling of the bayonet on such trivial provocation was too tremendous, so I made up my mind one evening to try myself. The soldier on guard merely remarked politely: "Ferme, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... and spite of himself he smiled at the Marquess's discomfiture. Though he was in no humour for an intrigue his fancy was not proof against the romance of his surroundings, and it seemed to him that Miranda's eyes had never been so bright or her smile so full of provocation. No wonder Frattanto followed her like a lost soul and the Marquess abandoned Rome and Baalbec to sit at the feet of such a teacher! Had not that light philosopher after all chosen the true way and guessed the Sphinx's riddle? Why should today ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... fowling peeces with great shot the one, and the other with small. Priming our pistols, we went where our fancy first lead us, being impossible for us to avoid the destinies of the heavens; no sooner tourned our backs, but my nose fell ableeding without any provocation in the least. Certainly it was a warning for me of a beginning of a yeare and a half of hazards and of miseryes that weare to befall mee. We did shoot sometime and killed some Duks, which made one of my fellow ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... our viands and companions just the same as at dinner. It is impossible to give an idea of the "western men" to any one who has not seen one at least as a specimen. They are the men before whom the Indians melt away as grass before the scythe. They shoot them down on the smallest provocation, and speak of "head of Indian," as we do in England of head of game. Their bearing is bold, reckless, and independent in the extreme; they are as ready to fight a foe as to wait upon women and children with tender assiduity; their very appearance ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... bicycle as of some dreaded supernatural object; atnd although I am sometimes fairly at my wit's end to keep them at bay, I manage to avoid the necessity of shooting any of them. I have learned that to kill one of these dogs, no matter how great the provocation, would certainly get me into serious trouble with the natives, who value them very highly and consider the wilful killing of one little short of murder; hence my forbearance. When I arrive at a threshing-floor, and it is discovered ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... for "calf." This man would fall down any time and anywhere. Standing in the road or resting on his rifle, he would fall—fall while marching, or standing in his tent. I saw him climb on top of a box car and then fall without the least provocation backwards into a ten-foot ditch. But in all his falling he was never known to hurt himself, but invariably blamed somebody for his fall. When he fell from the car, and it standing perfectly still, he only said: ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... feel so, dear. I am very, very sorry for you, and very, very sorry for Nan (whom, you must remember, we may be slandering). I have always looked on unlawful love as a very great sin, though there may be great provocation ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... his home-country, where he is universally looked up to and ready to take immense trouble to settle fairly disputes between inferiors. Opposition from a direction making it savour of impertinence he stamped upon at once, without imagining the provocation or ideas from which it might possibly spring; he could not understand, for instance, that there might be two sides to the Chinese War. It is probable, too, that had not the Prince Consort intervened to ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... two of the high contracting parties, without direct provocation on their part, should be attacked by one or more of the great powers not signatory of the present treaty, and should become involved in a war with them, the casus foederis would arise simultaneously for ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... Bartley took the alarm, and literally collared him. "My good friend," said he, "you don't know the provocation. It is the affront to her that has made me forget myself. Affronts to myself from the same quarter I have borne with patience. But now this insolent man has forbidden his son to court her, and that to her face; ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... Eva," laughed her Aunt Elsie. "I am quite sure it would be only under great provocation that you would be guilty of very bad behavior; and equally certain that you will ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... for no other reason.... Over the killing of many freedmen nothing is done." General Sheridan cites cases in which our National soldiers wearing the uniform of the Republic have been deliberately shot "without provocation" by citizens, and the grand jury refused to find a bill against the murderers. Even in Virginia, General Schofield was compelled to resort to a military tribunal because "a gentleman" who shot a negro dead in cold blood "was instantly ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... English provocation.... Like a traitor of melodrama, the British government had been preparing the war for a long time, not wishing to show its hand until the last moment; and Germany, lover of peace, had had to defend herself from this enemy, the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... erosion of the gums and tongue with hemorrhage at the slightest provocation, following the long administration of dilute nitric acid. This was possibly due to the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... firearms, more fearless of the whites. The bush rangers too were, when first they began to send convicts here, more numerous than at present. I do not know that they were as desperate as they are now—not so ready to take life, without provocation. You see, there was a very much larger run of country open to them; and many convicts who escaped, and took to the bush, were content to have gained their freedom. Some of them took black gins, and never troubled the colonists again; beyond, perhaps, coming down to a station ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... in the nursery nor in the schoolroom is he likely to create any excitement or be received with any enthusiasm. To the world he can only recommend himself as one anxious to make it known on the smallest provocation and on any occasion or none that Queen Anne is dead. Open him where you will, and you find him full of this important news and determined on imparting it. Thus, in The Scold and ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... to China the indemnity growing out of the Boxer Rebellion. To Spain, conquered and helpless, she paid, entirely of her own free-will, $20,000,000 for the Philippines. She refused to annex Cuba. In spite of strong provocation she abstained from ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... dearly. Joan tried hard to be patient, but she had a quick temper, and occasionally forgot her good resolutions. This happened one day when her mother had gone to dispose of the dairy products. The provocation was certainly great. ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... much to be regretted, that after having seen us employed in getting what we wanted, in doing which every person was completely employed, and not the most distant appearance of insult, or any sort of provocation had been offered them, they could not have desisted from hostility until some kind of offence had been offered, a circumstance which, during the whole time, was most particularly guarded against in those ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... Non-co-operation continues with unabated vigour, even after my arrest, the Government must imprison others or grant the people's wish in order to gain their co-operation. Any eruption of violence on the part of the people even under provocation would end in disaster. Whether therefore it is I or any one else who is arrested during the campaign, the first condition of success is that there must be no resentment shown against it. We cannot imperil the very existence of a Government and quarrel with its attempt to save itself ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... himself a few miles below on the Mississippi. The young braves and squaws delighted in visiting his place and were always sure of a dance in the evening. One night in that year an Indian killed one of the habitues of the place, the provocation being unbearable. A few weeks after demand was made that he be given up, and he was at once surrendered and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... for the common run of our everyday experience; they are the common valuers of our thought and acts from hour to hour. The emotions, or more intense feeling states, are, however, the occasional high tide of feeling which occurs in crises or emergencies. We are angry on some particular provocation, we fear some extraordinary factor in our environment, we are joyful over some ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... he replied grimly. "I can stand as much as most men, but there are some things I won't stand. I'm not going to climb a tree for any man. However, I won't crowd things with Cross, though I know plenty of men that would, on that provocation. I'm all for peace and a quiet life. You won't think I'm afraid, ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... his peculiarities was his ready weeping. It was amazing to see so large a fellow draw down his chin and sob like a young child. He was easily frightened at night. Under observation he had peculiar episodes of behavior. Once in a school-room, without any known provocation, he suddenly began to cry and scream, picked up a chair and soon had the entire room cleared out. A moment afterwards he was found sobbing and bewailing his lot because he "never had a fair chance.'' On another occasion ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... last addition to the number. He knew Jake's affection for his young master, and the great strength of the negro would have rendered him useful in a hand-to-hand fight, but he was altogether unaccustomed to forest work, and his habit of bursting into fits of laughter on the smallest provocation, as is the manner of his race, enraged the scout to the last degree. Indeed, he had not left the fort above an hour when he ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... receiving new strength. Conscious were they of having acted a most dishonorable and deceitful part with one of whom, under ordinary circumstances, they were accustomed to stand in awe; but now they were more especially apprehensive of danger, because there was a provocation for seeking vengeance. They knew he had every means to involve them in a more signal overthrow than that which awaited himself. The only alternatives were, either to wrest the weapons of destruction from his hands, or render the possessor incapable of wielding them. They were driven ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... though he partakes in some degree of the Malayan vices, and this partly from the contagion of example, possesses many exclusive virtues; but they are more properly of the negative than the positive kind. He is mild, peaceable, and forbearing, unless his anger be roused by violent provocation, when he is implacable in his resentments. He is temperate and sober, being equally abstemious in meat and drink. The diet of the natives is mostly vegetable; water is their only beverage; and though they will ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... the Duchess of Connaught, whom he found rather a rough-looking soldier with a short, abrupt manner. He left bitter memories in France during the Franco-German War, was called the "Red Prince," he was so hard and cruel, always ready to shoot somebody and burn down villages on the slightest provocation—so different from the Prince Imperial, the "unser Fritz" of the Germans, who always had a kind word ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... their products, and importing what they wanted from abroad. War, then, was in the interest of the whole body of allies. And on the moral side their position was equally sound, for they were only acting on desperate provocation, and the common god of Greece had promised success to their arms. But to deserve that success, all must co-operate heartily, contributing freely from their private purses to raise a fleet which would make them a match ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... practical schoolgirl wisdom, but unfortunately Lettice preached a philosophy of stoicism to which Honor had not yet attained. At the least provocation her fiery Irish blood always asserted itself, and she would flare up, albeit she was conscious that, by so doing, she was affording her enemy the keenest satisfaction, and was providing amusement for the other girls, who ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... action before judgment, would look at his share in the matter. Dr. Harvey had asked for a famous Plymouth surgeon to be sent for, and this afternoon he had arrived. On his verdict as to Doughty's condition depended Ishmael's own fate, and he knew it. For, whatever the provocation, the fact remained that Ishmael had injured a schoolfellow in a wrestling match admittedly serious in its intent, and the discipline of the school had to be considered, all the more rigidly that many rumours, mostly untrue, had circulated ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... speaks of it as an appeal to the "arbitrament of the sword." In the late contest, in particular, there was no appeal by the seceding States to the arbitrament of arms. There was on their part no invitation nor provocation to war. They stood in an attitude of self-defense, and were attacked for merely exercising a right guaranteed by the original terms of the compact. They neither tendered nor accepted any challenge to the wager of battle. The ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... the most distressing ailments with which the human family is afflicted is asthma. Its symptoms are not to be mistaken. Suddenly and without apparent provocation the patient experiences the greatest difficulty in breathing. When warning is given, there is usually a sense of fullness in the stomach, flatulence, languor, and general nervous irritability. The countenance ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... was so situated that one year of moderation might not improbably be rewarded by thirty years of undisputed ascendency. Was it possible the politic and experienced Lewis would at such a conjuncture offer a new and most galling provocation, not only to William, whose animosity was already as great as it could be, but to the people whom William had hitherto been vainly endeavouring to inspire with animosity resembling his own? How often, since the Revolution of 1688, had it seemed that the English were thoroughly ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to look; the little boys busy playing marbles down some side street are too much absorbed in their game to run and see the show. This is a curious contrast to the rapidity with which a crowd will gather on the smallest provocation in a European city. Even a hearse, standing at a house-door in England, will draw a very respectable crowd, merely in order to see the door open and the coffin brought out. A funeral procession in India is of much greater possible interest, because ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... toward the welfare of mankind. For Moses was by temperament a moralist in whom such abominations as those practised in the worship of Moloch created horror. He knew that the god of Abraham would tolerate no such wickedness as this, because of the fate of Sodom on much less provocation, and he believed that were he to lead the Israelites, as he might lead them, he could propitiate such a deity, could he but by an initial success induce his congregation to obey the commands of a god strong enough to reward ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... language which we know him to have read in, and can prove him to have been influenced by, we come back to Montaigne's Essays, as by far the most important and the most potential for suggestion and provocation. ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... was his favourite. He was as good-natured as he was ugly, seldom misbehaving, even when tempted beyond doggish endurance by the proximity of dark skins and waving drapery. On one occasion, however, he did give way to anger; but it must be admitted that he had provocation. H—— had some black ducks which he had carefully reared to ornament the little lake in the garden. One afternoon, when Master Bob was taking his siesta in the neighbourhood of the kitchen, with his small white teeth protruding, ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... might have happened. Etchepare, a little the worse for drink, goes to Goyetche in order to ask him once more to wait for the payment of this debt. There is a dispute between the two men; old Goyetche was still a strong man; there may have been provocation on his part, and there may have been a struggle, with the tragic result you know of. In that case your husband's position is entirely different—he is no longer a criminal premeditating a crime; and the sentence pronounced against him may ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... this silly engagement. I see now that Charley never could have made me happy, and I know there is a good deal in my heart he never called out. I wish, however, I had not written him when I was in passion. No wonder he is thankful that he free from such a vixen. But, oh the provocation was terrible! ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... power of the Celtic mind is never more strikingly displayed than in the legends and fanciful tales which people of the humbler walks of life seldom tire of telling. Go where you will in Ireland, the story-teller is there, and on slight provocation will repeat his narrative; amplifying, explaining, embellishing, till from a single fact a connected history is evolved, giving motives, particulars, action, and result, the whole surrounded by a rosy wealth of rustic imagery and told with dramatic force an actor might envy. The following chapters ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... Caesar considered that neither ought ambassadors to be received to audience, nor conditions be accepted by him from those who, after having sued for peace by way of stratagem and treachery, had made war without provocation. And to wait till the enemy's forces were augmented and their cavalry had returned, he concluded, would be the greatest madness; and knowing the fickleness of the Gauls, he felt how much influence the enemy had already acquired among them by this one skirmish. ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... mountain came down and attempted to dispute it. The wild kindreds, as a rule, are most averse to unnecessary quarrels. Unless their food or their mates are at stake, they will fight only under extreme provocation, or when driven to bay. They are not ashamed to run away, rather than press matters too far and towards a doubtful issue. A bull moose and a bear are apt to give each other a wide berth, respecting each other's prowess. But there are exceptions to all rules, especially where bears, the most individual ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... were followed by counter-reprisals. Barns were mysteriously fired, hen-roosts robbed, horses unaccountably lamed, sheep feloniously sheared by unknown parties; the feeling widened and deepened, and had been handed down to the present generation with now and then a fresh provocation, on the part of one or the other, to renew and ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... adopted a daring expedient to accomplish this object, and, fastening his ships to the piles of the bridge, from which the Danes were raining down stones and beams, dragged it to pieces, upon which, on very fair provocation, Ottar, a Norse bard, broke forth into the following eulogy of King Olaf, the patron ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... is sufficient. Pam cawn tell you that while I don't deny being full of tricks as a boy, they weh not dirty, not low, and while father always taking Emmet's paht against me drove me to recklessness sometimes, I nevah did anything underhand or disgraceful. She knows what provocation I had, and exactly what happened. Let ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... that Marchant gave the provocation, which Savage and Gregory drew their swords to justify; that Savage drew first, that he stabb'd Sinclair, when he was not in a posture of defence, or while Gregory commanded his sword; that after he had given the thrust he turned pale, and would have ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... departure. Indeed, later in the day, the children felt honesty demanded they must own her to be "rather a brick," for she accepted Barbara's apology with good grace, and said that though, of course, she had been rude, she would not deny that there had been some provocation, and that if Barbara could find out anything more from Dick, she would be glad to ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... formed of a thick doubled leathern mantle of elk or buffalo skin, frequently with a cloak over it, on which the hoofs of horses were strung, makes an almost impervious cuirass. Their love for music, general lively dispositions, except from provocation, but determination in avenging insult or wrong, is testified ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... Washington was all his life a fighter. The entire American people is to-day a fighting people, prone to resort to force and prompt to take arms, the different sections of the population differing chiefly in regard to the nature and amount of the provocation which will move them to violence and combat. To this day nothing moves the admiration of the people so quickly as composure, ingenuity, and success in fighting; so that even in political contests all the terms and similes are drawn from ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... allow himself to act toward his slave, and, whatever cruelty he may deem it wise, for example's sake, or for the gratification of his humor, to inflict, he cannot, in the absence of all provocation, look with pleasure upon the bleeding wounds of a defenseless slave-woman. When he drives her from his presence without redress, or the hope of redress, he acts, generally, from motives of policy, rather than from a hardened ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... exhausted this subject," answered the Millionaire with the bruskness of a man whose nerves have worn thin; with the menace, too, of one who, having divorced his first wife, would divorce the second on small provocation. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... he not cursed the baby, lumping him among the Kittredges? Absalom went about for a time, with a hopeful anxiety in his eyes, searching for one of the younger Quim-beys, in order to involve him in a fight that might have a provocation and a result more to his mind. Somehow the recollection of the quivering and aged figure of his wife's father, of the smitten look on his old face, of his abashed and humbled demeanor before the court, was a reproach to him, vivid and continuously present ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... such objects to contemplate or effect. Unacquainted with the internal government of the country, and the daily management of the Chambers, he enjoyed the success of his Spanish war, as he called it, with tranquil pride,—ready, on provocation, to become active and bitter. He wanted exactly the qualities which distinguished M. de Villele, and he possessed those, or rather the instinct and inclination of those, in which M. de Villele was deficient. ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Jameson never asked for any of these things; she simply took them as by right of war, and nobody gainsaid her, not even Flora Clark. However, poor Emily Shaw was the one who displayed the greatest meekness under provocation. The whole affair must have seemed revolutionary to her. She was a quiet, delicate little woman, no longer young. She did not go out much, not even to the sewing circle or the literary society, and seemed as fond of her home as an animal of its shell—as ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hesitated, then, with a pretty confidence in her eyes, "For my sake please to pass provocation unnoticed. None will doubt your courage if you overlook and refuse ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... more moderate legislation. In general a considerable part of the economic lawmaking of the future will undoubtedly be called out by demands for action that is too violent to be taken except under great provocation. The dread of the extreme penalty insures a cautious policy in increasing charges which have been established under a transient regime of competition. Partial monopolies adhering to rates many of which were established under the pressure of competition—such ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... sending away my letter of reproof to my Lord, but I do not find him, but contrary do find my Lord come to Court, which I am glad to hear and should be more glad to hear that he do follow his business that I may not have occasion to venture upon his good nature by such a provocation as my letter will be to him. So by coach home, to the Exchange, where I talked about several businesses with several people, and so home to dinner with my wife, and then in the afternoon to my office, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Taffy King was not at the private dock when Lawford arrived. Mr. Israel Tapp was an irritable and impatient man. He "flew off the handle" at the slightest provocation. Many times a day he lost his temper and, as Lawford ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... turned out to be far less savage than his father, but quite as bibulous, a rotund hail-fellow-well-met, oily as an Esquimau, with round, twinkling eyes and a reservoir of questionable stories which he tapped on the slightest provocation. The guidebook called him "the innkeeper," which has a romantic connotation not altogether true to the hard facts of Frank's hostelry, and spoke of him as "a jolly, fat, rosy-cheeked young man, brimming over with animal spirits." He habitually wore a bright crimson mackinaw ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... never waited in vain, for the sorrow was very real, and generally ended in 'Do you think God can forgive me?' When Fanny's love of teasing had exasperated Coley into stabbing her arm with a pencil, their mother had resolution enough to decree that no provocation could excuse 'such unmanliness' in a boy, and inflicted a whipping which cost the girl more tears than her brother, who was full of the utmost grief a child could feel for the offence. No fault was lightly passed over; not that ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "He had great provocation. The Duchess de Valois had a young panther once which she had brought up from the milk. She was inquisitive, and used to try its temper. It was good sport, but one day she took away its food, gave ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thing that appeals to them is the big chance, win or lose, and have it over. Such a man doesn't speak the language of the group that was there gathered. Just looking at him, old Dykeman rasped, without further provocation, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... the boards and rafters continued to make unceasing complaint, now creaking uneasily as if under great provocation, anon groaning or yelling as though under insufferable torment. From the ceiling of Mrs Roby's room numerous small bits of plaster, unable to stand it longer, fell and powdered Mrs Roby's floor. The curtains ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... head and blush. Laws, as cruel in themselves as they were unconstitutional and unjust, have in many places been enacted against our poor unfriended and unoffending brethren; laws, (without a shadow of provocation on our part,) at whose bare recital the very savage draws him up for fear of the contagion,—looks noble, and prides himself because he bears not ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... suppose, have accompanied Browning through the garden to the gate of the villa, and there spoke her final words. Browning said something about the remorse which she would inevitably feel. Her father had, no doubt, given her great provocation, but if the end came before she had forgiven him and helped him, she would never be able to forgive herself. His words were of no avail. She had Goneril's heart. Pointing to a ditch at the side of the road, she answered, "I tell you, Mr. Browning, that if ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... shut up with Gippies who had no real faith in him, in the house of a Sheikh whose servants would cut his throat on no provocation at all; and not an eighth of a mile away was a horde of Arabs—a circle of death through which it was impossible to break with the men in his command. They must all die here, if they were ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and looked ready to carry his threat into execution on the slightest provocation, for he was growing up very fast and, in spite of his indolent ways, had a young man's hatred of subjection, a young man's restless longing to try ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... denying it altogether. If he were to say, what is no doubt the truth, that having been brutally beaten he put the rope across the road intending to punish and even injure his stepfather, but without any intention of killing him, I think under the circumstances of extreme provocation, and what interest we could bring to bear on the matter, he would get off the capital punishment, for the jury would be sure to recommend him to mercy. I shall privately let Green and Porson, who are evidently acting as his friends in the matter, know that I think it would be ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... this innocent girl; she suffers quite as much as you do,—perhaps even more, for she was betrothed to him years ago." My grief for Noemi, and my resentment against Antoine made me imprudent; I spoke unjustly, but the provocation was great. "You take her part!" she cried, repelling me indignantly. "Innocent— she innocent? Bah! She must have known he was married, for why else did he not marry her? Do you think me a child to be fooled by such a tale?" "No," answered I sternly, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... was at my grandmother's inquiring for me. She told him she had not seen me, and supposed I was at the plantation. He watched her face narrowly, and said, "Don't you know any thing about her running off?" She assured him that she did not. He went on to say, "Last night she ran off without the least provocation. We had treated her very kindly. My wife liked her. She will soon be found and brought back. Are her children with you?" When told that they were, he said, "I am very glad to hear that. If they are here, she cannot be far off. If I find out that any of my niggers ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... It is noteworthy that these Champion retorts are honourably free from the personalities of an age incredibly gross in the use of personal invective. Fielding's journal, even under the stinging provocation of the insults of the Apology, was still true to the standard set in the Prologue of his ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... commanded the forts in Charleston Harbor, until an absolute necessity for doing so should make itself apparent, lest it might unjustly be regarded as a menace of military coercion, and thus furnish, if not a provocation, at least a pretext for an outbreak on the part of South Carolina. No necessity for these reenforcements seemed to exist. I was assured by distinguished and upright gentlemen of South Carolina that no attack ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... encouraged his fellow colonists in the Christian virtue of forgiveness. One time a leading man of the Colony wrote him an angry letter, but this he sent back at once with the note appended: "I am not willing to keep such a provocation to ill-feeling by me." The offender, a man of great influence, replied immediately: "Your overcoming yourself, has overcome me." He became one of his warmest friends and from that time diligently assisted him ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller
... of the island led an easy life, therefore. Active was the brain that resisted the influences of so much leisure as most of these people had. But, under provocation even, Nature must be true. So true is she, indeed, that every violation of her dignities illustrates the meaning of that sovereign utterance, VENGEANCE IS MINE. She will not bring a thorn-tree from an acorn. Pray, day ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... citizens in the parts from which they came, and had manifested their patriotism by leaving their country for their country's good. The fifteen millions handed over to Mexico looks like a contribution to a conscience fund, and an atonement offered for an assault without provocation. The country gained Arizona, New Mexico, California and finally Texas, but it lost six thousand good men, the cost of the war, and all told, in negotiations, about thirty million dollars, besides. However, it is not always profitable to look ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... went it was the same. As soon as he mentioned the prison, doors of opportunity closed to him. Nobody wanted to employ a man tarred with that pitch. It did not matter why he had gone, under what provocation he had erred. The thing that damned him was that he had been there. It ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... the least among the strange things bred by the intense artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... suspicion with which steel is regarded are well understood. Not only is there a lack of uniformity in the product, but apparently the same steel will manifest very different results under slight provocation. Steel is very sensitive, not only to slight changes in chemical composition, but also to mechanical treatment, such as straightening, bending, punching, planing, heating, etc. Initial strains may be developed by any of these processes that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... herself or her looks could be called in question. These spoke for themselves, though I grant you she was a fiery little person and easily provoked. If any attack was made on her looks or her doings it was usually only for my provocation, as the knights in olden times flung down their gauntlets by way of challenge. But there were other matters relating to Carette, or rather to her family, which I could defend only with my fists, and not at all with my judgment ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... whilst breaking windows, stabbing watchmen, and beating passengers, do not fail to express a due zeal for the Protestant religion, and the liberty of the subject. Much of the interest also turns, it must be allowed, upon the Protestant scowerers aforesaid baffling and beating, without the least provocation, a set of inferior scowerers, who were Jacobites at least, if not Papists. Shadwell is thus described in the ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... a thing it had been had you converted some before you had killed any. Let me be bold to exhort you seriously to consider of the disposition of your captain, whom I love;—but there is cause to fear that by occasion, especially of provocation, there may be wanting in him that tenderness of the life of man made after God's image, that ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... we have heard much of, the fury of the blood which the benignity of the law allows for upon sudden provocation, is supposd to be of short duration—the shooting a man dead upon the spot, must have stoppd the current in the breast of him who shot him, if he had not been bent upon killing—an attempt to stab a second person immediately after, infers a total ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... of the lax code of the duellist. The expressions which he called upon him to avow or disavow, were vague, and were based upon the report of a person who specified neither time, place, nor the words. It was a loose matter of hearsay which was alleged—evidently a wanton provocation to a murderous duel. Burr demanded so broad a retraction from Hamilton of all he might have said, that compliance was impossible. It was an attempt to procure an indorsement of his character at the cost of the moral character ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... don't know the truth. It is not possible that you would consider me a proper person to visit Sylvia. I don't believe in your religion; I don't believe in anything that you would call religion, and I argue about it at the least provocation. I deliver violent harangues on street-corners, and have been arrested during a strike. I believe in woman's suffrage, I even argue in approval of window-smashing. I believe that women ought to earn their own living, and be independent and free from any man's control. I ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... the German Army, among the men, for he has the rare gift of inspiring his followers with a sense of personal loyalty. His troops idolize him. They break out into hearty hurrahs at the slightest provocation when they see him. It is lese-majeste, but none the less true, to say that they think as much of their General as of their Kaiser. They tell you proudly that he rode at their head when the City of Liege was taken ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... has made the professions that England has, does not with impunity, under however great provocation, betake itself to frustrating the objects for which it has been calling on the rest of the world to make sacrifices of what they think their interest. At present all the nations of Europe have sympathized with us; ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... out, and which could not fail to raise his suspicions as to his daughter's discretion. He was, as has been seen, a man wise in the ways of the world, and not at all liable to give way to sudden bursts of temper, great as might be the provocation. Instead, therefore, of rushing into his daughter's room, and accusing her of her misconduct, he kept his counsel, and said nothing whatever on the subject. It might have occurred to him that he should have been wiser had ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... all women; and remember that no provocation whatsoever can justify any man in not being civil to every woman; and the greatest man in the world would be justly reckoned a brute, if he were not ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... The provocation must be strong indeed that can rouse me to do this, even with an enemy. And if you can forgive an unintended offence as heartily as I do the way in which you have resented it, there will be nothing to prevent our meeting ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... how she would turn toward the door as he entered, with her way of arching eyebrows, in the manner of one about to recite the symptoms of a change for the worse—or at best to say "about the same" to everything in the universe. And when Kate Kerr spoke, she always whispered on the faintest provocation. ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... under every pretext—wavelets, forerunners of the tide. For now, you too have to improvise great armies, as we improvised ours in the first two years of war. And with you as with us, your unpreparedness stands as your warrant before history, that not from American minds and wills came the provocation to ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... revolution, were not directly responsible for the outbreak. The doctrines hung like a cloud upon the heights, and at critical moments in the reign of Lewis XV. men felt that a catastrophe was impending. It befell when there was less provocation, under his successor; and the spark that changed thought into action was supplied by the Declaration of American Independence. It was the system of an international extra-territorial universal Whig, far transcending the English model by its simplicity and rigour. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... attractive creature stood before him, at once smiling and bashful, in an attitude of provocation and fear, with hands clasped, then with arms again outstretched, beautiful, white, fragrant arms that showed below the short sleeves of her fine cambric blouse. Her fair hair was divided into two loose waves, whose rebellious curls played about at random. She had grey, almond-shaped ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... for Mr Inglis, in the charge of Fred, and then slipping off, after faring no worse than being in a most horrible fright, for Dick's teeth went no farther than through his trousers. As to Harry and Philip, they enjoyed the fun, as they called it, immensely, which can hardly be wondered at when the provocation they had received is taken into consideration; but I must do them the credit of saying that they would not have set the dog at poor Bill, and that they could not have stopped him if they had tried ever so hard, which, in the hurry-skurry ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... to order you out do not leave your posts, happen what may, but exercise prudence and be prepared leaving them to give the provocation. Answer them that you have no instructions given you with regard to what they ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... before the 'leech-gatherer, upon the lonely moor.' Let England look to it. These women, mothers of men, are abandoning her shores for foreign lands. When good and dutiful children desert the maternal home, what provocation must they have had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... backed away. The code was still on. A girl of his own kind he would have kissed in a moment at such provocation, or none. But he had an odd feeling of needing to protect this girl from herself as well as ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... seemed to indicate, that with kind treatment the Wombat might soon be rendered extremely docile, and probably affectionate; but let his tutor beware of giving him provocation, at least if he should ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... the Cross, carved out of wood. It was put up by one family, as a monument of devotion, and was now under the care of a miller dwelling in the neighborhood. Many passers-by still did reverence to it. This was a source of great provocation to a number of enthusiasts, who afterwards went over to the Anabaptists, and especially to Nicholas Hottinger, a shoemaker by trade, a man not without culture, possessed of some property, versed in the Scriptures and of a decided character, which, in connection with his natural eloquence, gave him ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... which viscount Rochford, the queen's brother, was chief challenger, and Henry Norris principal defender. In the midst of the entertainment, the king suddenly rose and quitted the place in anger; but on what particular provocation is not certainly known. Saunders the Jesuit, the great calumniator of Anne Boleyn, says that it was on seeing his consort drop her handkerchief, which Norris picked up and wiped his face with. The queen immediately retired, and the next day was committed to custody. Her earnest entreaties ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... more about it," interrupted Martin. "You had sufficient provocation for all your actions. And really, believe me, I am very glad I fell in with you. I am glad to be here. I have wanted to go to sea all my life. We are going to ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... a shot. After this, they took several vessels, and matters began to look much brighter. Phillips quickly developed into a most accomplished and bloody pirate, butchering his prisoners on very little or on no provocation whatever. But even this desperate pirate had an occasional "qualm of conscience come athwart his stomach," for when he captured a Newfoundland vessel and was about to scuttle her, he found out that ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... servant, sir," and curtsied with an air of perfect deference as she advanced towards him: she was not the woman to misbehave towards her betters, and fly in the face of the catechism, without severe provocation. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... he had ever seen, lovely little rows of pearls, and the biggest and brightest of dark eyes with wide lashes curling dramatically back. Even in the thrill and elation of the moment there was a spark of provocation in those eyes for the good-looking young man who stared down at her, and Billy would have been a very wooden young man, indeed, if he had not felt a tingling excitement in this unexpected capture, for all the destruction of his romantic plans. So this, he thought rapidly, was the foreign ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... then apparently had found no use for it. So Elisabeth in her heart of hearts was at war with Christopher—that slumbering, smouldering sort of warfare which is ready to break out into fire and battle at the slightest provocation; and this state of affairs did not tend to make life any the easier for him. He felt he could have cheerfully borne it all if only Elisabeth had been kind and had understood; but Elisabeth did not understand him in the least, and was consequently unkind—far more unkind than she, in her careless, ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... bare-headed, bare-legged, and often, with not a little of their sleek bodies gleaming through the innumerable rents of their garments, their eyes glittering like black beads, and their white teeth showing on the slightest provocation to mirth. Indeed, the majority of the young men and women were chattering and laughing much of the time, and only those well in the shadow of age worked on in a stolid, plodding manner. Mingled indiscriminately with the colored people were not a few white women and children, and occasionally a white ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... Mrs. Brown, sir—Fanny Sophonisba Brown, sir, who has left my bed and board without provocation, sir,—vide the Providence papers, sir,—left me, sir, because I didn't approve of her strong-minded goings on, sir, her woman's-rights meetings, sir, and her nigger colonizations, sir, and ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... state would prove that Laura Hawkins, the prisoner at the bar, a fiend in the form of a beautiful woman, shot dead George Selby, a Southern gentleman, at the, time and place described. That the murder was in cold blood, deliberate and without provocation; that it had been long premeditated and threatened; that she had followed the deceased-from Washington to commit it. All this would be proved by unimpeachable witnesses. The attorney added that the duty of the jury, however painful it might be, would be plain and simple. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had been nearly five to one, and yet had been unable to inflict defeat upon them. If they had been "broken," the whole of the French left would have assuredly perished. Thanks to their endurance and obedience in the face of great provocation and privation, the Allied armies were now free from the dangers that had threatened them. No one knew better than he did that they would continue to be as brave, as reliable, and as soldierly in the future, as they had been in the past, until final ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... neither at that time of his life nor any other was he animated by an undue or unreasonable jealousy of this sort such as he has sometimes been accused of; and if in 1755 he took occasion to resent with "honest and indignant warmth" a violation of his rights, there must have been some special provocation. ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... but an instant, when he read aright the meaning of the sounds of guns from the village. The explorers had been attacked by the Murhapas. King Haffgo must have given the order. He had violated his pledge for the first time in his life. Great was his provocation! ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... I thank you, Mrs. Perkins, for your expression of confidence. I wouldn't intentionally go into the house of another man and toss his Sevres up in the air, or throw his Royal Worcester down-stairs, except under very great provocation. (Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Bradley have by this time removed the bric-a- brac from the piano—an upright.) Now, boys, ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... honor with contempt. In my day I was the best shot in Eastern Virginia. I can kill a man in this cause as easily as I have broken either of a man's arms, at choice, in my courting days. Public opinion will clear me under this provocation, and I can acquit my own conscience, abhorrent as duelling is to me. My sons-in-law would leap to take the quarrel up, and rid the world ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... end it is necessary that the Baltic Fleet should commit an act of war, and that the Czar should be convinced that the provocation has come from the ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... never indulges this amiable disposition except with a really kind purpose, and entirely knowing what he is about. Fairservice, on the other hand, gradually falls into an unconscious fatality of varied blunder and provocation; and at last causes the entire catastrophe of the story by bringing in the candles when he has been ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... really cruel! but then, remember her provocation and that she was acting in self-defense. All this was easier for her than you might suppose, for the king's grasp of power, never very strong, was beginning to relax even what little grip it had. All faces were turned toward the rising sun, young Francis, duke of Angouleme, the king's distant ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... a mound of weeds burning, and they watched the fire until, in consequence, as she observed, of the smoke "getting up her nose," Miss Slowboy choked—she could do anything of that sort on the smallest provocation—and woke the baby, who wouldn't go to ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... memory require rehabilitation among those who knew him, or knew anything of him—the only people really concerned. His dreadful deed has long been condoned by all (and they are many) who knew the provocation he had received and the character of the man who ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... are greatly provoked, but not otherwise—may be a stronger deterrent than the prospect of more moderate legislation. In general a considerable part of the economic lawmaking of the future will undoubtedly be called out by demands for action that is too violent to be taken except under great provocation. The dread of the extreme penalty insures a cautious policy in increasing charges which have been established under a transient regime of competition. Partial monopolies adhering to rates many of which were established under the pressure of competition—such are the ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... apologized and agreed to pay an indemnity for American lives lost. The negotiations concerning the Lusitania continued to drag on, but otherwise relations between Germany and the United States had reached the point where peace could be maintained if no further accident or provocation intervened. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... six o'clock; the men were dropping off homeward one by one. The last to leave was a round-shouldered, blinking young man of nineteen or twenty, whose mouth fell ajar on the slightest provocation, seemingly because there was no chin to support it. Henchard called aloud to him as he went out of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Robert still stood on his guard, the feeling in his breast being—in spite of the terrible provocation he had received—that he had done wrong in striking his colonel's guest, and he kept cool and clear-headed, resolved not ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... Tientsin, the officials are trying to calm the people. It is feared that some violent action will take place, some hostile demonstration against the French which will throw the Chinese entirely in the wrong, no matter how great the provocation. If this happens, the sympathy of the world will be turned against the Chinese, and the officials are striving by all means to prevent such an outbreak. A quaint account of one of these indignation meetings was published in one ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... excitement, quite unlike his former methodical bearing. He had shown an inclination to testiness, and was less easily pleased than formerly. To one clerk he had shown a nasty spirit under very slight provocation, and was only endured in the store on account of his master, who was too good a customer for them to offend. Mr. Kelly, a grocer, went so far as to say he acted like a man with a grievance who burned to vent his spite ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... marched out, as said, leading the way across the plateau and into the valley coolly and deliberately, though under a terrific fire from above. The Boer guns, which were served with great courage, invariably gave tongue on the smallest provocation, and the ground was ploughed up in every direction with bursting shell. But fortunately few of the gallant Devons were hit. Later on they drew nearer the position, and the regiment, halted under cover of convenient ant-hills, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... flush of her cheek. This colour on her temples was just touched with a certain blueness where the flesh was thin over the fine veining underneath. Her eyes were light brown, and so wide open that on the slightest provocation the full disc of the pupil was disclosed; the lids—just a fraction of a shade darker than the hue of her face—were edged with lashes that were almost black. While these lashes were not long, they were thick ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... rising from all things, the freshness, the warmth, and the mysterious awakening of April and May, is the vast diffusion of sex murmuring, in whispers, their proposals of voluptuousness, till the soul stammers in answer to the giddy provocation. The ideal no longer knows what it ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... flesh of the potato was forced between the fingers of her glove. A horrible sticky mess! That is the worst of a high-class potato, cooked, as the Five Towns phrase it, "in its jacket." It will burst on the least provocation. There stood Mrs Swann, her right hand glued up with escaped potato, in the sober grandeur of Mrs Clayton Vernon's hall, and Mrs Clayton Vernon bearing down upon ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... rugged with the dried ink of abandoned attempts, of answers delayed longer than decency permitted, of letters begun with infinite reluctance, and put off suddenly till next day—till next week, as like as not! The neglected, uncared-for pen, flung away at the slightest provocation, and under the stress of dire necessity hunted for without enthusiasm, in a perfunctory, grumpy worry, in the "Where the devil is the beastly thing gone to?" ungracious spirit. Where, indeed! It might have been reposing behind the sofa for a ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... police haven't; nor will they, to the best of my belief. Now, look here, Captain Croker, this is a very serious matter, though I am willing to admit that you acted under the most extreme provocation to which any man could be subjected. I am not sure that in defence of your own life your action will not be pronounced legitimate. However, that is for a British jury to decide. Meanwhile I have so much sympathy for you that if you choose to disappear in the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... brushing the golden corn, was pathetic or comic as the humour might seize the beholder. As gay as any of the cicadas that keep the summer's jubilee in the sunny tree-tops, he sings songs that have nothing in common with psalms, and he needs little provocation to dance. French has become an awkward language to him, but his tongue is nimble enough both in Languedocian and Latin. When he hears that the evening soup is ready, he hurries the pig home, flourishes his stick above his head in imitation of the Arabs, and ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... furrowed with whimsical lines, with its faint-blue eyes that wandered from his hearer to the allurement of the window and back again, overhung the desk as he spoke, drawling in those curiously soft tones of his an unconvincing narrative of sore provocation and the subsequent fight. He was a man in the later twenties, lean and slack-limbed; the workman's blouse of coarse linen, belted about him, and the long Russian boots which he wore, gave him, by contrast with the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... was greatly given, and that while a Lad, to grievous {31a} Swearing and Cursing: yea, he then made no more of Swearing and Cursing, than I do of telling my fingers. Yea, he would do it without provocation thereto. He counted it a glory to Swear and Curse, and it was as natural to him, as to ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... voluntarily or otherwise, to fight our brethren, "whose cause was just and right," and a strong attempt was made to array the organization by formal action to oppose the Government, and those especially who were impatient for the general uprising, thought it a timely opportunity and ample provocation, and felt confident that as the South manifested open hostility and presented a bold and united front instantly upon the firing of the first gun upon Fort Sumter, so would it be in all the States of the Northwestern league; they ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... it in a martial hand; be curst and brief] Martial hand, seems to be a careless scrawl, such as shewed the writer to neglect ceremony. Curst, is petulant, crabbed—a curst cur, is a dog that with little provocation snarls ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... children lamenting and howling most dismally. The body was wrapped up in the jacket which he usually wore, and some pieces of blanketting tied round it with bines. The men were all armed, and, without any provocation, two of them had a contest with clubs; at the same time a few blows passed between some of the women. Boo-roong had her head cut by Go-roo-ber-ra, the mother of the deceased. Spears were also thrown, but ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... direction. I dearly loved God and fully realized my utter dependence upon him, but my love was not perfected. Then unfortunately I had a quick temper, which I found justification had not destroyed. It was materially repressed and generally held under control, but it was there and needed only the provocation to assert its presence; and sometimes, I am sorry to say, it brought me under condemnation and I had cause to repent and regain the sweet ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... trembled, and finally, to the great astonishment of the Professor, burst into tears. Now, no one ever had higher principles than Professor Merriman, but no man ever had a greater horror of tears. He could not bear what Rosamund had told him; he could not understand how, under any provocation, a girl could act as Rosamund had done; and yet, at the same time, her tears so maddened him that he would have done anything to get ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... the greatness of the provocation, Centralia, Wash., yesterday showed a calmness worthy of an American community. There were no farther attempts at lynching after the hanging of the secretary of the I.W.W. organisation on Tuesday night." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... have been useless to struggle, the boys did not attempt to get away. Both Sack Todd and Jimson were heavily armed, and Dick and Sam felt that they would shoot upon the slightest provocation. ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... by striking the first blow. He was much disliked in Louisbourg. He drank hard, cursed his subordinates when in his cups, and set the whole place by the ears. Moreover, many of those under him wished to avoid giving the British Americans any provocation, in the hope that the war might be confined to Europe. But none dared to refuse a legal and positive order. So in May his expedition left for Canso, where there was a little home-made British fort on the strait between Cape Breton and the mainland of Nova Scotia. The eighty fishermen in ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... suspicious of the bicycle as of some dreaded supernatural object; atnd although I am sometimes fairly at my wit's end to keep them at bay, I manage to avoid the necessity of shooting any of them. I have learned that to kill one of these dogs, no matter how great the provocation, would certainly get me into serious trouble with the natives, who value them very highly and consider the wilful killing of one little short of murder; hence my forbearance. When I arrive at a threshing-floor, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... of Eastern Mysteries, and Mistress of Omism to Riseholme. In fact the Guru was her August stunt; it would never do to lose him before the end of July, and rage to see all Riseholme making pilgrimages to Daisy. There was a thin-lipped firmness, too, about him at this moment: she felt that under provocation he might easily defy or desert her. She felt she had to yield, and so decided to do so in ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... surprise, after the letter from Professor Gray highly recommending you two lads, that you have so soon shown utter disregard for the rules, the standing, the decency of our institution by carrying and drawing a deadly weapon, a pistol, and on slight provocation. This ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... company to the Lake, in the spring of 1819, when being encamped in the neighbourhood of the long Sault rapid, the Algonquin sprang upon his unsuspecting companion, and cleft his skull with his tomahawk, without the least apparent provocation; then dragging the body to the water's edge, he cut it up into small pieces, and threw them in. He next despatched the woman, and mutilated her body in the same savage manner, having first committed the most horrible barbarity on her person; (the recital ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... The disbandment of the army in the summer of 1783, before the British troops had evacuated New York, was hastened by the impossibility of paying the soldiers and the dread of what they might do under such provocation. Though peace had been officially announced, Hamilton and Livingston urged that, for the sake of appearances if for no other reason, the army should be kept together so long as the British remained ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... fellow-residents. No less than three people are "smashed,"—the Old Man of Whitehaven "who danced a quadrille with a Raven;" the Old Person of Buda; and the Old Man with a gong "who bumped at it all the day long," though in the last-named case we admit that there was considerable provocation. Before quitting the first "Nonsense-Book," we would point out that it contains one or two forms that are interesting; for instance, "scroobious," which we take to be a Portmanteau word, and "spickle-speckled," a favorite form of reduplication with Mr. Lear, and of which the ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... before others at least, a gentlemanly demeanor. But this was gradually giving way to the pressure of a constant thorn in his flesh, and the consciousness of his own baseness. He could swear, threaten, and almost strike at slight provocation now. He never really attempted the latter, but once, and it was then I told him I should shoot him, if ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... father's opposition to the work of God and to the solemn league and covenant, which had caused the blood of the Lord's people to be shed, and the idolatry of his mother, the toleration of which in the king's house could not fail to be a high provocation against him who is a jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children; to declare that he had subscribed the covenant with sincerity of heart, and would have no friends nor enemies but those who were friends or enemies to it; to acknowledge the sinfulness ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... is what I am," said the cabman. "You know I've been in trouble, and I don't deny but what I struck the blow, and where was I to get evidence of my provocation? So I turned to and took a cab, and I've driven one for three year ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The provocation has undoubtedly been intense. It was proved in an article of studied moderation and exquisite taste that the time had come to revise our estimates of bygone grandeur and substitute for the devotion to a Queen of tarnished fame and disastrous tendencies the spontaneous and chivalrous worship of her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... that my brother, in whose character and scholarship I had taken so much pride, who stood so high in his class, should have been reported to the Faculty for this vulgar and wicked offence." John said, with great contrition: "I am exceedingly sorry. It was under circumstances of great provocation. I have never been guilty of such a thing before. I never in my life have been addicted to profanity." "Damnation, John," interposed the professor, "how often have I told you the word is profaneness and not profanity?" It is ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... place promise finality; it must be in the nature of a final settlement of the demands made on behalf of Ireland, and not be a mere provocation to the revival ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... of his own language only, albeit not without a smattering of others; and among the books in his own language which we know him to have read in, and can prove him to have been influenced by, we come back to Montaigne's Essays, as by far the most important and the most potential for suggestion and provocation. ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... mastered this piece of intelligence after six readings, but he refrained from comment, beyond thanking God, in thought, that he could mind his own business under excessive provocation to do otherwise. He considered it no meddling, however, to remember that Mrs. Daniel J. Bines, widow of his late employer, could appear neither young nor beautiful to the most sanguine of newsgatherers; nor to remember that he happened to know she ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... Ireland are such that I will get out of the country as soon as I can; for if I expressed my sentiments I should soon be put into jail for Fenianism!'" This was in 1867 while Fenianism was rampant. Of course he did not approve of it, but the sights he saw taught him its awful provocation. And once when unduly pressed with the dictum of an author whose range of power was not high enough to overcome Father Hecker's objections, he said: "I am not content to live to be the echo of dead men's thoughts." But it was not by skill in the thrust and parry of argumentative fence that Father ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... Spanish Government had instituted a fleet of coastguards among the islands to intercept and destroy the pirates. This fleet for some time had been under the charge of an experienced, trusted, and efficient officer named Pedro Menendez de Avils. No doubt the provocation was great, and the new piracy was not to be endured. The home government of Spain had been kept informed of the Huguenot encroachments in Florida, a country which had long ago been granted to Ponce de ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... beaten and bruised by the natives. The wounded man had been employed cutting rushes for thatching, and one of the others was a convalescent from the hospital, who went out to collect a few vegetables. All these people denied giving any provocation to the natives: it was, however, difficult to believe them; they well knew the consequences that would attend any acts of violence on their part, as it had been declared in public orders early in the month, that in forming ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... sort of a dance she led him out there in Manila, I've heard. Never mind that, now. What I want you to know is how he behaved—with what quiet dignity, steady patience, and sweet temper under constant provocation and mortification, he conducted himself. Then that fellow Ruthven turned up—and—Selwyn is above that sort of suspicion. Besides, his scouts took the field ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... as she promised, Fanny descended with Redbud,—her arm laced around the slender waist of that young lady, as is the wont with damsels,—and ready to give battle to our friend Verty, upon any additional provocation, with even greater ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... is written (Wis. 14:11): "The creatures of God are turned to an abomination; and a temptation to the souls of men." But a temptation usually denotes a provocation to sin. Since therefore creatures were made by God alone, as was established in the First Part (Q. 44, A. 1), it seems that God is a cause of sin, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... met a young male badger in the furze, attacked him vigorously, and left him more dead than alive. At another time, he even turned his rage against his sire. The old badger was by no means unwilling to resent provocation: he, too, felt the hot, quick blood of spring in his veins. The fight was fierce and long—no other wild animal in Britain can inflict or endure such punishment as the badger—and it ended in victory ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... excellent and practical schoolgirl wisdom, but unfortunately Lettice preached a philosophy of stoicism to which Honor had not yet attained. At the least provocation her fiery Irish blood always asserted itself, and she would flare up, albeit she was conscious that, by so doing, she was affording her enemy the keenest satisfaction, and was providing amusement for the other girls, who enjoyed "hearing ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... of each other how to injure, not how to benefit society and themselves. There are, for instance, certain crimes which a man may commit under the influence of strong passions, aroused in moments of great temptation, such as rape; or of great provocation, such as manslaughter; or committed under the pressure of misfortune, or to avoid, impending ruin, such as forgery or embezzlement, which do not necessarily prove the criminal to be of habitually depraved habits, or generally of a violent and vicious ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... provocation.... Like a traitor of melodrama, the British government had been preparing the war for a long time, not wishing to show its hand until the last moment; and Germany, lover of peace, had had to defend herself from this enemy, the worst ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... thar:—well, whar's the harm? Didn't he fling me, and kick me, and bite me into the bargain, the cursed savage? and ar'n't you got him ag'in as good as ever? And besides, didn't that etarnal old Bruce fob me off with a beast good for nothing, and talk big to me besides? and warn't that all fa'r provocation? An didn't you yourself sw'ar ag'in shaking paws with me, and treat me as if I war no gentleman? 'Tarnal death to me, cut me loose, or I'll haunt you, when I'm a ghost, I will, 'tarnal ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... occasionally at Claybrook and sometimes at Mary Louise in a far-off, absent-minded way. And then they would ask each other whose deal it was and "How were the honours?" and then they would be at it again. Claybrook laughed at the slightest provocation, and seemed to pay a little too obsequious attention to whatever Thompson had to say, and after a while the conversation narrowed down entirely to the two men, with Mrs. Thompson contracting a glassy ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... track of steam when she has reached her terminus, never troubling the brains afterwards; a merit that it shares with good wine, to the joy of the Bacchanalians. As to this wit, it is warlike. In the neatest hands it is like the sword of the cavalier in the Mall, quick to flash out upon slight provocation, and for a similar office—to wound. Commonly its attitude is entirely pugilistic; two blunt fists rallying and countering. When harmless, as when the word 'fool' occurs, or allusions to the state of husband, it has the sound of the smack of harlequin's wand upon clown, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... enough," said Godfrey, turning to me; "and I must say that it's a good one. He realises that there wasn't provocation enough to cause a man like Swain to commit murder, with all his senses about him; but his presumption is that the crime was committed while Swain was in a dazed condition and not wholly self-controlled. Such a ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... others laughed approvingly, with the exception of M. de Chalusse, whose manner became more and more frigid, and whose lips wore a constrained smile, as if he had resolved to keep his temper despite all provocation. It seemed to me that he was suffering terribly, and I afterward learned that I had not been mistaken. Far from imitating the old gentleman's manner, he bowed to me very gravely, with an air of deference that quite abashed me, and ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... of the corregidora's bands, kissed them repeatedly, bathed them with tears, and said, "Senora mia, the gitano who is in custody is not in fault, for he had provocation. They called him a thief, and he is none; they gave him a blow on the face, though his is such a face that you can read in it the goodness of his soul. I entreat you, senora, to see that justice is done him, and that the senor corregidor is not too ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... he disliked all four. Christina found it very difficult to preserve the gravity essential to a heroine's appearance when she saw the long strides and bent brows of her lover. A smile was ready, on the slightest provocation, to make a dimple in her beautiful cheek, and all the biting she bestowed on her lips only made them redder and rosier. Adolphus had no inclination to smile, and could not believe that any body could see the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... first place, the tension with the French Government, which lasted for twenty-one years and which might at any moment have become very serious, was never allowed to go beyond a certain point. In spite of a good deal of provocation, a policy of conciliation was persistently adopted, with the result that the conclusion of the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904 became eventually possible. It is on this particular feature of my Egyptian ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... and Musard had not only brought sharply back to her all the past horror and agony of the murder, but had caused a poignant renewal of her apprehensions about her nephew's health. She realized that he was a changed being, moody and irritable, and liable to sudden fits of excitement on slight provocation. She felt that Musard had been rather inconsiderate to forget Phil's illness and cause him to get excited by ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... that of killing Captain Alexander Schaw, the Master of Sinclair was found guilty, and sentenced to suffer death. He was, however, recommended to the mercy of the Duke of Marlborough, in consideration of the provocation which he had received,—the prisoner having declared that, not only on that occasion, but upon several, and in different regiments, Captain Schaw had defamed him; that he was forced to do what he did, and that he ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... Monarchy prompted France to this generous Declaration in Favour of the Son, 'tis highly probable the Gallick Sword wou'd have rusted in the Scabbard, as it was lock'd up by the Treaty of Reswick, nor had it been now drawn but upon a more beneficial Provocation, than restoring King James, for if it was the Interest of France to let the Father sit down quietly with the Title, nothing cou'd supervene to give the Son the Reality. Upon this Basis the War was renewed again on both Sides, and the Juggle was kept on ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... which is without a chief; that is, being divided into families, under several chieftains, without any particular patriarch of the whole name. And this is a great reproach, as may appear from an affair that fell out at my table, in the Highlands, between one of that name and a Cameron. The provocation given by the latter was, "Name your chief." The return of it at once was, "You are a fool." They went out next morning, but having early notice of it, I sent a small party of soldiers after them, which, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... that had been committed, Mr. Henley declared that a codicil to his will, depriving his daughter absolutely of all interest in his property, had been legally executed that day. For a time, Mountjoy's self-control had resisted the most merciless provocation. All that it was possible to effect, by patient entreaty and respectful remonstrance, he had tried again and again, and invariably in vain. At last, Mr. Henley's unbridled insolence triumphed. Hugh lost his temper—and, in leaving the ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... De Quincey's testimony to its existence at the time (a month or so later) when he made Coleridge's acquaintance may, subject to the usual deductions, be accepted as trustworthy; and, of course, for aught we know, it may then have been already of some years' standing. That the provocation to it on the husband's part may be so far antedated is at least a reasonable conjecture. There may be nothing—in all likelihood there is nothing—worth attention in De Quincey's gossip about the young lady, "intellectually very ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... way, and to trust him as a really kind and liberal employer. And, unluckily, he did not always heed the rating so loudly given, or rather he did not set his mind to comprehend what lay a little out of his usual beat, and thus gave additional provocation, though still Captain Carbonel bore with him, and would not have rejected him in favour of the far smarter carpenter at Downhill, on any of ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... declared that he was the only man capable of conciliating the Dutch and bringing the war to a happy issue. Others asserted that his again taking up the reins of Government would be considered by the Afrikander Bond—which was very powerful at the time—as an unjustifiable provocation which would only further embitter those who had never forgiven Rhodes ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... of the proscribed playbook or any insidious plea for it. The immense oddity resides in the almost exclusively typographic order of the offence. An English, an American Gyp would typographically offend, and that would be the end of her. THERE gloomed at me my warning, as well as shone at me my provocation, in respect to the example of this delightful writer. I might emulate her, since I presumptuously would, but dishonour would await me if, proposing to treat the different faces of my subject in the most completely instituted colloquial form, ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... said Yram. "He is the gentlest creature living till some great provocation rouses him, and I never saw him hate and despise any one as he does the Professors. Much of what he said was merely put on, for he knew the Professors must yield. I do not like his ever having to throw any one into that horrid place, no more does he, but the ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... Miss Rivers. Will you warn your stepsister, not under any provocation whatever, to speak the ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... a report from one of our stoolies in the store. Bayne thought he was due for a commendation; instead, he got an eat-out. Of course, it was a fact that Pelton'd hit him, and we can't have Literates punched around, regardless of provocation. So we voted to fine Pelton ten million for beating Bayne up, and to award him ten million for losses resulting from unauthorized withdrawal of Literate services. We ordered a new crew of Literates to the store, ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... acquire a good seat over a country. Their slipshod style is neither graceful, nor does it enable them to give their horse any assistance, if he happens to make a mistake; for they are certain to tumble off, if they receive any unusual provocation. ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... the most insolent and revolting expressions. Repentigny turns him out of his chamber. Philibert, continuing his outrageous shouts, ends by delivering the officer a violent stroke of his cane. Monsieur de Repentigny then, as one might well do on such sudden pain and provocation, drew out his sword and ran him through the body, so that he died a couple of days afterwards. That, sir, is your assassination without cause! Then the Sovereign Court of course was obliged to order his decapitation in effigy—not ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... in rushed the authorities with summary punishment. The prisons of the period were full of mechanics whom serfdom or poverty had stung on to commit some crime or other. However trifling the offence, or whatever the justifiable provocation, the law made no trades-union memorialized Congress to limit the hours of labor of those employed on the public works to ten hours a day. The pathos of this petition! So unceasingly had the workers been ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... was an orator, but, with the recklessness of a gamester, he threw his life away. He said profound and beautiful things, but he lacked application. He was uneven, disproportioned, saying ordinary things on great occasions, and now and then, without the slightest provocation, uttering the sublimest and most ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Treaty of Shimonoseki, all but absolutely annexing the country. After the Boxer revolt Admiral Alexieff, who was governor of the Russian possessions in the Far East, embarked on a dangerous policy of provocation towards Japan. He had an ill-informed contempt for the hardy islanders. He underrated their power of resistance, and felt sure that the mere fact that the Russian fleet outnumbered theirs would secure the ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... two sorts of murder; the distinction between them it is of essential importance to bear in mind: (1) murder in an affray, or upon sudden and unexpected provocation; (2) murder secretly, with a deliberate, predetermined intention to commit the crime. Under the first class, the question usually is, whether the offense he murder or manslaughter, in the person who commits the deed. Under the second class, it is often a question ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... this statement, I make it because truth compels me, and for no other reason.... Over the killing of many freedmen nothing is done." General Sheridan cites cases in which our National soldiers wearing the uniform of the Republic have been deliberately shot "without provocation" by citizens, and the grand jury refused to find a bill against the murderers. Even in Virginia, General Schofield was compelled to resort to a military tribunal because "a gentleman" who shot a negro dead in cold blood "was instantly acquitted by one of the ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... is free from perturbation [Greek: atarachos], is not impelled by passion, but guided by reason; is angry when he ought, as he ought, with whom, and as long as, he ought: taking right measure of all the circumstances. Not to be angry on the proper provocation, is folly, insensibility, slavish submission. Of those given to excess in anger, some are quick, impetuous, and soon appeased; others are sulky, repressing and perpetuating their resentment. It is not easy to define the exact mean; each case must be ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... Athenian fleets, the inland towns would be prevented from exporting their products, and importing what they wanted from abroad. War, then, was in the interest of the whole body of allies. And on the moral side their position was equally sound, for they were only acting on desperate provocation, and the common god of Greece had promised success to their arms. But to deserve that success, all must co-operate heartily, contributing freely from their private purses to raise a fleet which ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... European persuasion of America's triviality. I would not like to be an American travelling in Europe now, and those I meet here and there have some of the air of men who at any moment may be dunned for a debt. They explode without provocation into excuses ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... larger and fiercer than the Archangel variety, owing no doubt to the genial influence of the Gulf Stream. Both types are however sufficiently ferocious, and, save when rendered comatose by excess of nutrition, will attack human beings without provocation. The female of the species, if disturbed while accompanied by her young, will invariably charge with such fury that only by an exceptional combination of skill and courage can she be driven off. The shrill and vibrating ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... been better; but how atrocious has been their conduct towards their neighbour! If we go back no further than to the Restoration, we find Louis XVIII. forming the Holy Alliance, and attacking Spain without a shadow of provocation, for the avowed purpose of crushing her liberties and giving absolute power to the most detestable of modern tyrants. We find Charles X. invading a dependence of his ally, the Sultan, and confiscating a province to revenge a tap on the face given by the Bey of Algiers to a French ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... one who had foiled his most adroit temptations, and resisted wrong in a way that was simply heroic, first showing something very like vanity and selfishness, and then temper and passion on what seemed but slight provocation. He did not realize, as many do not, that the petty vexations of life will often sting into the most humiliating displays of weakness one who has the courage and strength to be a martyr. Generals who were as calm and grand in battle as Mont Blanc in a storm ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... buried her in the shadiest corner of the cloisters, and put up a memorial brass setting forth all the virtues for which she was not particularly noted, and entirely omitting to mention her saving grace of patience under great provocation. ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... III are the two greatest and most sincerely religions of the medieval Popes, and they carried the power of the Papacy to a height which excites the amazement of the modern historian. But they were at the same time the most militant of the Popes, and on the least provocation they set armies—even the most barbaric and ferocious troops in Europe—in motion to carry out their imperial commands. They arrogated the power of deposing monarchs, and thus encouraged civil war and the ambitions ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... discretion. Only the other day Jane, you know my married sister, and I were talking about you. She was extremely distressed. I assured her that you must be very far away or very deeply buried somewhere not to have given a sign of life under this provocation." ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... grappling and hammering manifestations of the day. There is a greater mastery in control, than in the exercise of power. An angry man may evince more energy than he who keeps calm in the heat of provocation, but the latter is the man of most power. In the common circumstances of life we must act, and act lawfully; but to bear and suffer is alone the test of virtue, for there come hours of pain and mental anguish when all action is vain, when motion of limb ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... uncle; who took care to propagate it with an indiscretion peculiar to himself; for I heard it in three different companies, before I knew any thing of it from herself; and when I did, it was so repeated, as you, my dear, would hardly have censured her for it, the provocation considered." ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... not accompany him, and at the moment when Henri put his head out of the window to look once more at the gardens of the hotel, he encountered the white eyes of Cristemio, with whom he exchanged a glance. On either side there was a provocation, a challenge, the declaration of a savage war, of a duel in which ordinary laws were invalid, where treason and treachery were admitted means. Cristemio knew that Henri had sworn Paquita's death. Henri knew that Cristemio would like to kill him before he killed Paquita. Both ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... look and manner were void of provocation, except as one, himself rudely disposed, might discover it in the humility somewhat ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... fists, ready to fight, now, at any further provocation. Even good-natured Tom looked about for some sort of club. But Dick ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
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