"Combative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the two men were antitheses. Jonson was exceedingly combative and quarrelsome, and seems to have taken a chief part in all the bitter disputes of his time between actors and men of letters. He killed one actor in a duel and attacked Marston and Dekker in "The Poetaster"; they replied to him in the "Satiromastix." ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... diametrically opposed in temperament. Presley was easy-going; Annixter, alert. Presley was a confirmed dreamer, irresolute, inactive, with a strong tendency to melancholy; the young farmer was a man of affairs, decisive, combative, whose only reflection upon his interior economy was a morbid concern in the vagaries of his stomach. Yet the two never met without a mutual pleasure, taking a genuine interest in each other's affairs, and often putting ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... hirsute appendage showed a very large mouth with very thin lips, generally compressed into an expression of remarkable obstinacy. His nose was both broad and long and his grey eyes were bright and aggressive in their glance. As a matter of fact Mr. Ambrose was combative by nature, but his fighting instincts seem to have been generally employed in the protection of rights he already possessed, rather than in pushing on in search of fresh fields of activity. He was an active man, fond of walking alone and able to walk any distance he pleased; a charitable ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... succeed in setting them up for worship? Fortunately, as yet we cannot do so. We may, if we will, shut our eyes to the vast outside masses of aliens to our civilization, now powerless because we still, with a higher material development, retain the masculine combative virtues which are their chief possession; but, even if we disregard them, the ground already shakes beneath our feet with physical menace of destruction from within, against which the only security is in constant readiness ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... Bridgeboro, once, last and always, his attitude was uniformly combative toward older boys, high school boys in particular, and toward high schools generally. He would be chary of the privileges he granted to these "big fellers" whom he knew so well how to "handle." But in the light of the camp-fire he saw visions of huge war profits ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... history of this combative sort; with masculinity and humanity identical, in the average mind; there is something alien, unnatural, even revolting, in the claim of woman to her share in the work and management of the world. Against it he brings up one ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... Saxham who has gone down of his own choice to the muddiest depths of moral and physical decadence, and come up of the strength of his own will from among the hideous things that hang suspended and drifting in the primeval sludge, than he ever was of the man before his fall. His is a combative nature, and the great blow he has sustained this day in the wreck and ruin of his raft of hope has left him quivering to the centre of his being with resentment ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... short time after this matter had been so satisfactorily arranged that Smith met one morning at the office door the gloomy face of the once optimistic and combative Cuyler. The mind of the young Vice-President had been so cheerfully inclined by the events of the last fortnight that he had almost forgotten there still ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... out by practical methods were to them difficulties to be mastered by hard work, and hard work was pleasure to the Lamptons; it was their form of enjoyment. They were not imaginative; they were combative; they enjoyed a fight which ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Thomas Carlyle—stubborn, combative, mystical—which appear in the present paper, will amply repay the closest scrutiny. These hands are unwontedly realistic, and emphasize their distinctiveness in every vein and wrinkle. They appear to be themselves endowed with each of those various qualities ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... but defies it: the voyageur was careless of danger, because he counted it as nothing; he gave it no thought, because it only affected himself; and he valued not his own safety and comfort, so long as he could serve the cause by forgetting them. Mere courage is combative, even pugnacious; but the voyageur fought only "the good fight;" he had no pride of conquest, save in the victories of Faith, and rather would suffer, himself, than inflict suffering upon others. Mere courage is restless, impatient, purposeless: but the voyageur was content ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... trials he was invariably the victor, and it must be admitted that he loved fighting as well as he liked playing ball or fishing. He gave and received hard knocks, and even at that early age showed evidence of the combative, aggressive courage that became so marked a feature ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... Possessing a combative nature, he engages constantly in political strife which is marked by the sharpest controversy, and it is, therefore, perhaps only his intimate friends who know the real manly, generous kindliness of his disposition and ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... wrought its greatest destruction in places of densest representation of the chestnut species. It is in the outlying districts of scant frequency that the danger of infection from chestnut trees from the forest is least to planted trees, and likewise, there it is that combative measures should be most successful. Obviously, the farther from the center of the native range trees can be planted, the less ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... if obtained immediately after the declaration of war, as to include a possibility of a Spanish preponderance." The present writer guards himself from being understood to accept fully this extensive programme for a fleet distinctly inferior in actual combative force; but the general assumption of the author quoted indicates the direction of effort which alone held out a hope of success, and which for that reason should have been vigorously followed by ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... could tell when Captain La Roche would take it into his head to pounce down upon us and pick up a stray bird, should the frigate be at a distance. He would have had no chance, however, with the Indiamen, whose officers were in a very combative mood. Not long before a very gallant action had been performed by a squadron of them in the Eastern seas—indeed, no country ever possessed a body of officers in her mercantile marine equal to those of ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... unwitting breach of the rules, wondering what there was in the air of Ascalon that made people combative. Even this fresh-faced girl, not twenty, he was sure, was resentful, snappish without cause, inclined to quarrel if a word got crosswise in a man's mouth. As he turned these things in mind, casting about for some place to stow his bag, the girl smiled across ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... the delicate tensity of the relations between Zalapata and Atlamalco. They had been at war before, with the advantage at times on one side and then on the other, the final result being no decisive change in their mutual strength or in their combative propensities. The addition of a "gunboat" to the power of Atlamalco naturally made her more aggressive and demonstrative. President Bambos dreamed of acquiring two similar engines of war, when he would proceed to wipe his hated rival off the earth; but the ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... there be no mistake about one thing. Here prayer is a power. Here God can indeed work miracles. A man with the light of God in his heart can defeat vicious habits, rise again combative and undaunted after a hundred falls, escape from the grip of lusts and revenges, make head against despair, thrust back the very onset of madness. He is still the same man he was before he came to God, still with his libidinous, vindictive, ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... according to Persian usage. He married a woman of the land and united eighty of his officers to daughters of the Persian nobles. He aimed to extend his empire to the farthest limits of the ancient kings and advanced even to India, warring with the combative natives. After his return with his army to Babylon (324), he died at the age of thirty-three, succumbing to a fever of brief ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... 1743. The only result was an angry explosion, as, indeed, might have been foreseen; for Bolingbroke was not likely to be well-disposed to the clever parson whose dexterous sleight-of-hand had transferred Pope to the orthodox camp; nor was it natural that Warburton, the most combative and insulting of controversialists, should talk on friendly terms to one of his natural antagonists—an antagonist, moreover, who was not likely to have bishoprics in his gift. The quarrel, as we shall see, broke out ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... that he was raised on a farm. Father Penney took a hasty bite in the buttery, and soon disappeared to rescue his goods from the highway. He was always considered something of a drawback to the matrimonial prospects of his daughters; for, as his nose indicated, he had a firm, not to say combative, disposition, and frequently insisted upon having not only the last but the first word upon every subject, so that Fannie regarded his going in the light of ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Wolfstein. They were surrounded by young men. She looked hard at the American's pale face, saying to herself, "Is that like me? Is that like me?" Her conversation with Robin Pierce had made her feel excited. She had not shown it. She had seemed, indeed, almost oddly indifferent. But something combative was awake within her. She wondered whether the American was consciously imitating her. What an impertinence! But Miss Schley was impertinence personified. Her impertinence was her raison ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... unconscious judgment of his acquaintance. But about the mouth and chin of this man there was a something of softness, perhaps in the play of the lips, perhaps in the dimple, which in some degree lessened the feeling of hardness which was produced by the square brow and bold, unflinching, combative eyes. They who knew him and liked him were reconciled by the lower face. The greater number who knew him and did not like him felt and resented,—even though in nine cases out of ten they might express no resentment ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... whose military trappings were made particularly plain. It was all characteristic enough. The Reformer's figure stood for the stalwart Protestantism of the Prussian character, still living and militant in a way hard for us to imagine; the portraits of the royal soldiers stood for its combative loyalty, ready to meet anything for king and fatherland; and the head of Christ for its zealous faith, which, however it may have cooled away among some classes of the people, was still intense in the nation at large. I visited the best school for girls in Berlin, and it was singular ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... I found I had all these, and when my reason and my honesty raised any doubt or suggested a "but" to this fabulous inventory of my qualities, my combative and paradoxical ego at once found a plain, decisive answer which admitted of ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... the end of all argument. Not having a combative nature, nor a taste for debate, Honor adjourned to the store cupboard and gave Kareem ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... often observed the likeness of certain men to certain animals, and of certain dogs to men. Now, I never looked at Rab without thinking of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller. The same large, heavy, menacing, combative, sombre, honest countenance, the same deep inevitable eye, the same look—as of thunder asleep, but ready—neither a dog nor a man to be ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Persons of a combative disposition take just the opposite course from this, and adopt opinions merely because they are opposed to some particular person or to some class of persons. Such persons fancy themselves very independent, and announce their opinions ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... alcohol lasted. He was cheerful, communicative, conciliatory, nobody's remarks upset him, nothing seemed worth getting angry about. Fray Diego, on the contrary, who, in his normal condition, was always a jovial, jocose priest, turned into a very devil for disputing and nagging, and he betrayed a combative disposition that nobody would have suspected under his round, placid ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... his stately figure as he drew himself up to his full height, and greeted Leigh with a suavely condescending bow and smile, while Aubrey in turn glanced him up and down with a pleasurable consciousness of his intellectual appearance, and evident combative temperament. ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... disappointment up and down the Rhine when time passed and the Count made no warlike move. It was well known that the Countess was much averse to war, notwithstanding the fact that she was indebted to war for her stalwart husband, and her peaceful nature was held to excuse the non-combative life lived by the Count, although there were others who gave it as their opinion that the Count was really afraid of the Baron, who daily became more and more obnoxious as there seemed to be less and ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... dear, against the unworthy persons, and give me a combative desire to stand between Mr Boffin and all such persons. Why? Because, in my lower nature I am more worldly and less delicate. Not being so magnanimous as Mr Boffin, I feel his injuries more than he does himself, and feel more capable ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... under-spirit will emerge when you least expect it, during the darkest trials and in the most pressing danger. The universal sense of humour came as a tonic to Clerambault, and his character, scarcely freed from the conventions in which it had been bound, took on suddenly a vital complexity. Good, tender, combative, irritable, always in extremes—he knew it, and that made him worse—tearful, sarcastic, sceptical, yet believing, he was surprised when he saw himself in the mirror of his writings. All his vitality, hitherto ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... theatrical critic and political writer, he had entered the field of literature with such an eagerness for combat that a rumbling noise arose about him wherever he appeared. Like his own Thorbjoern in 'Synnoeve Solbakken,' he displayed in early youth the combative tendency of the athlete; but like his Sigurd in 'Sigurd Slembe,' he fought not merely to practice his strength, but from genuine though often mistaken love of truth and justice. At all events, he understood thoroughly who to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... to yield high, or even serious poetry, and Baldinucci's tale of shabby trickery cannot be compared, even for grotesque humour, with the powerful grotesquerie of Holy-Cross Day, while it wholly lacks the great lift of Hebraic sublimity at the close. The Epilogue returns to the combative apologetics of the title poem; but, unlike that, does attempt some reply to the cavils of the discontented. They cannot have the strong and the sweet—body and bouquet—at once, he tells them in effect, and he chooses ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... something, I say, about these things, and about Johnny himself, which makes it difficult for me to remember that, when Johnny is awake, he not unfrequently displays traits of character not to be compared with anything but the cunning of an Indian warrior, combined with the combative qualities ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... is the usual method by which the human mind estimates values. We would measure the strength of two men by pitting them against each other in physical encounter; in the same way, we are prone to measure the combative effect of weapons by pitting them in conflict against other weapons. But modern warfare is of so complex a nature that direct comparisons fail, and only a careful analysis of military experience determines the potentiality of a weapon ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... beard, and very long red hair, might have been seen stepping ashore, with a book and an umbrella under his arm, and wending his way up the lane, followed by Tite, carrying a corpulent carpet-bag. There was a combative air about the little man, who stared with a pair of small, fierce eyes, through a pair of glaring spectacles at every one he met. He was dressed in a shabby black suit, that hung loosely on his lean figure. This, with a broad, rolling collar, a pair of russet brogans, and a common straw hat, turned ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... blessed spirit that was known to communicate nothing but good. There, then, they sat contemplating one another, each, as it were, in the exercise of some particular power, which, in this case, appeared to depend altogether on the expressions of the eye. The gaze was long and combative in its character, and constituted a trial of that moral strength which each, in the peculiar constitution of his being, seemed to possess. After some time, however, Woodward's glance seemed to lose its concentrative power, and gradually ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... tenderfeet—lacking in grit, will power, self-assertion, and the ability to deal with men. We were easily crowded to the wall, easily cheated, always ready to take a back seat, timid, complying, undecided, obstinate but not combative, selfish but not self-asserting, always the easy victims of pushing, coarse-grained, designing men. As with Father, the word came easy but the blow was slow to follow. Only a year or two ago a lightning-rod man made my brother Curtis and his son John have his rods put upon their barn ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... most harmless and yet one of the most striking of these illusions in a private asylum which has specialized, if I may so express myself, upon men of letters. The case was harmless and even benign, for the poor fellow was not of a combative disposition to begin with, was of too careful and dignified a temperament to show more than slight irritation if his delusion were contradicted. This misfortune, however, very rarely overtook him, for those who came to visit ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... opened for himself the door of the front room downstairs. There he found Florence and Mountjoy Scarborough. Mrs. Mountjoy was still up-stairs in her bedroom, and was palpitating with fear as she thought of the anger of the two combative lovers. To her belief, Harry was, of the two, the most like to a roaring lion, because she had heard of him that he had roared so dreadfully on that former occasion. But she did not instantly go down, detained in her bedroom by the eagerness of her fear, and by the ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... can," said John, biting his lip with that resolute half-combative air which I now saw in him at times, roused by things which continually met him in his dealings with the world—things repugnant alike to his feelings and his principles, but which he had still to endure, not having risen high enough to oppose, ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... cried Denis, as the brave animal was seen butting and then trampling on the carcase of the lion. "We had better let her enjoy her victory without interference; for probably, being in a combative mood, she may run a muck at us, and we shall be under the painful necessity ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... aren't going to sit down and let 'em frisk you that way, are you, Dad?" cried Bud, surprised at what he thought was the supine and non-combative attitude of his parent. ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... her own, settled herself deliberately opposite her visitor, and was soon complaining in her shrill voice of the loneliness of the place and the damp of the climate. Melrose never once looked at his wife. He was paler than usual, with an eager combative aspect, quite new to Netta. He seemed for once to be unsure of his ground—both to expect attack, even to provoke it—and to shrink from it. His eyes were fixed upon Lady Tatham, ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Chandler is very combative in his attitude toward others, yet his innate sincerity draws one close to him after becoming acquainted with him. A little incident which will illustrate this trait, occurred in the Senate of the United States some years ago. Mr. Chandler ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... Smith, you talk to me in a way I don't like"; and Mr. Tescheron glared as he became more combative than he had ever been in his dealings with this prosperous leech. "I don't care to have you threaten me in this underhanded manner. Perhaps I have been a fool to have placed so much confidence in you from the ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... The combative pretensions of the governor had received a severe shock. He was beaten, and Drake, like a true sportsman, asked him and his suite to dine with him, and with an air of Spanish dignity he accepted. The occasion was memorable ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... with no objections, and seemed to be going to oust all the others, thanks, perhaps, to the combative and restive character of its promulgator, who bore criticism badly, and whom no one cared to incense, his sword being even ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... years of xenophobic Communist rule and established a multiparty democracy. The transition has proven challenging as successive governments have tried to deal with high unemployment, widespread corruption, a dilapidated physical infrastructure, powerful organized crime networks, and combative political opponents. Albania has made progress in its democratic development since first holding multiparty elections in 1991, but deficiencies remain. International observers judged elections to be largely free and fair since the restoration of political ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... good speech after two or three failures. All who knew him, his whole party, had been aware of his failure; and his one good speech had been regarded by many as no very wonderful effort. But he was a man who was pleasant to other men,—not combative, not self-asserting beyond the point at which self-assertion ceases to be a necessity of manliness. Nature had been very good to him, making him comely inside and out,—and with this comeliness he ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... thought it was not what it was. He talked to poor Catholics, rich Catholics, middle-class Catholics, and elusive, wellborn, penniless, neatly dressed, successful Catholics; also to pompous, vain Catholics; humble, uncertain Catholics; sneaking, pad-footed Catholics; healthy, howling, combative Catholics; doubtful, shoulder-shrugging, but devout Catholics; fixed, crabbed, and dangerous Catholics; easy, jovial, and shone-upon-by-the-heavenly-light Catholics; subtle Catholics; strange Catholics, and (quod tibi manifeste absurdum videtur) intellectual, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... than to the generous but vain efforts often attempted by the French magistracy in favor of sound doctrines of government. The Parliament of Paris fell sitting upon curule chairs, like the old senators of Rome during the invasion of the Gauls; the political spirit, the collected and combative ardor, the indomitable resolution of the English Parliament, freely elected representatives of a free people, were unknown to the French magistracy. Despite the courage and moral, elevation it had so often shown, its strength had been wasted in a constantly useless strife; it had withstood ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Even when sympathy with another rouses feelings on first sight, a struggle always takes place, whose duration discounts the total sum of conjugal infidelities. It would be an insult to French modesty not to admit the duration of this struggle in a country so naturally combative, without referring to at least a twentieth in the total of married women; but then we will suppose that there are certain sickly women who preserve their lovers while they are using soothing draughts, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... said to be obvious; but I have the greatest fear that, when the time comes, it will be cast aside as timid and cowardly. So strong are the combative propensities of man that he would rather fight a losing battle than not fight at all. It is most difficult to persuade people that by fighting they may strengthen the enemy, yet that would be so here; since a losing battle—especially a long and ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... table. Her blue dress, cut like a blouse, was held in at the waist by a narrow girdle knotted loosely. Although the child was arguing vigorously, with intense animation, there was such grace in her gestures, such charming vibrations in her voice, that it was impossible to resent her combative attitude. ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... Halloway reached a logical conclusion which convinced even the combative and unwilling that the present depends largely upon the past, while the future will be determined, for the most part, by the conditions of the present. "The future," he cried, leaning forward with an expression ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... the bulk of its attention. It is to be hoped that St. Wilfrid's, which stands on the opposite side, will act as a healthy counterpoise—will, at any rate, maintain its own against such formidable odds. The building in Chapel-street, dedicated to the old Angle-Saxon bishop—St. Wilfrid- -who was a combative sort of soul, fond of argumentatively knocking down obstreperous kings and ecclesiastics and breaking up the strongholds of paganism—was opened seventy-six years ago. It signifies little how it looked then. Today it has a large appearance. There is nothing ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... He had lost. This creature was not human. The last fine instinct of the human had fled. It was a brute, sluggish and stolid, impossible to move—just the raw stuff of life, combative, rebellious, and indomitable. And as he contemplated his brother he felt in himself the rising up of a similar brute. He became suddenly aware that his fingers were tensing and crooking like a thug's, and he knew the desire to kill. And his reason, turned traitor at ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... combative mood he retraced his steps and found himself outside the High Gear Dance Hall, fortified for another possible encounter with the inquiring and obviously sympathetic Montague girl. He entered and saw that she was not on the set. The bar-room ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... letters from the Crimea there are frequent references to his eldest brother, Henry Gordon, a man of whom it may be said here that the best was never publicly known, for during a long and varied career, first in the combative branch of the army as an officer of the 59th Regiment, and then as a non-combative officer in the Ordnance Department, he showed much ability, but had few opportunities of special distinction. In several of General Gordon's transactions Sir Henry was closely mixed up, especially with the Congo ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... enjoyable to browse. Even a complete outsider should find at least a chuckle on nearly every page, and much that is amusingly thought-provoking. But it is also true that hackers use humorous wordplay to make strong, sometimes combative statements about what they feel. Some of these entries reflect the views of opposing sides in disputes that have been genuinely passionate; this is deliberate. We have not tried to moderate or pretty up these ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... measurements. I could not reach to measure it ten feet from the ground; but at five feet I made its girth, in July, 1907, twenty-four feet nine inches. Probably it was not much less when Cobbett was a little boy. That independent, combative mind would not accept another's measurements, and if he remembered the tree as a little tree, then a little tree he was right in remembering. Since his day the signs of decay have set in; the oak is still superb, but a Jubilee sapling has been planted as a neighbour. Centuries ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Himself said: "I am not come to send peace on earth, but a sword." His teaching can never be adduced as an argument against the universal law of struggle. There never was a religion which was more combative than Christianity. Combat, moral combat, is its very essence. If we transfer the ideas of Christianity to the sphere of politics, we can claim to raise the power of the State—power in the widest sense, not merely from the material aspect—to the highest degree, with the object of the ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... unmistakable manner.' It would astonish outsiders if they could hear the remarks sometimes addressed by the British barrister to his learned brother—especially on circuit. The bar, he concludes, 'are a robust, hard-headed, and rather hard-handed set of men, with an imperious, audacious, combative turn of mind,' sometimes, though rarely, capable of becoming eloquent. Their learning is 'multifarious, ill-digested and ill-arranged, but collected with wonderful patience and labour, with a close exactness and severity of logic, unequalled anywhere else, and with ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... questions far in advance of the demands of the times, which occupied her restless mind. Now the Queen's attention was wholly absorbed by events—hard, cruel facts—which she must resist or turn to her own advantage. Her life had become a conflict, and Charmian felt that she was by no means combative. The hard, supple, keenly polished intellect of Iras now asserted its value, and the elderly woman told herself that she was in danger of being held in less regard than her younger companion. To resign her office would have given her peace of mind, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the threshold of the prison, than even in the procession and spectacle that have been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then, she was supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a separate and insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet which, therefore, reckless of economy, she might call up ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mood that had troubled her of late, Alexander was very combative. She was not willing to surrender her code—not willing yet to be treated ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... has caused in them any physical or moral deterioration which interferes with their fighting capacity. The soldiers of these civilized peoples are just as ready for hand-to-hand encounters with cold steel as any barbarians or savages have ever been. The primitive combative instincts remain in full force and can be brought into play by all the belligerents with facility. The progress of the war should have removed any delusions on this subject which Germany, Austria-Hungary, or any one ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... experienced observer who now chanced at a week-end to see him board the Manchester express at Euston would have been able to predict from his appearance that he would leave the train at Knype. He was an undersized man, with a combative and suspicious face. He regarded the world with crafty pugnacity from beneath frowning eyebrows. His expression said: "Woe betide the being who tries to get the better of me!" His expression said: "Keep off!" His expression said: "I am that I am. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... was like his childhood. As a student of higher mathematics his combative tendencies were not at all changed. "At recreation he was very fond of roller-skating, which in his case gave rise to many disputes and much pugilism. Having no respect for boys who would not play, he would skate into the midst of their group, pushing them about, seizing ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... and the "EPILOGUE" deal with public opinion in its general estimate of poets and poetry; and they expose its fallacies in a combative spirit, which would exclude them from a more rigorous definition of the term "critical." In the first of these Mr. Browning speaks under the mask of Shakespeare, and gives vent to the natural irritation of any great dramatist who sees his various characters identified with himself. He repudiates ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Fleda had no more trouble with her uncle and Barby. Each seemed to have a wholesome appreciation of the other's combative qualities, and to shun them. With Mrs. Rossitur, Barby was soon all-powerful. It was enough that she wanted a thing, if Mrs. Rossitur's own resources could compass it. For Fleda, to say that Barby had presently a perfect understanding with her, and joined to that, a ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... inspires. No! Character and circumstance alike unfitted Leonard for the strife of the thronged literary democracy; they led towards the development of the gentler and purer portions of his nature,—to the gradual suppression of the more combative and turbulent. The influence of the happy light under which his genius so silently and calmly grew, was seen in the exquisite harmony of its colours, rather than the gorgeous diversities of their ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Tate was even duller in books than Perdue. During his early years at Tuskegee he seemed unable to grasp the most rudimentary information. His native dullness was made unpleasant and aggressive by a combative disposition. He was constantly trying to prove to his exasperated teachers that he knew what he did not know. He was almost twenty-five years of age when he reached the Institute and entered the lowest primary grade. He had the greatest ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... about the prison, feeling strong enough now to cope with temptation. That very morning he had received a New Testament from a colporteur, and now, out of regard to Isa Marlay's faith, maybe—out of some deeper feeling, possibly—he read the story of the trial and condemnation of Jesus. In his combative days he had read it for the sake of noting the disagreements between the Evangelists in some of the details. But now he was in no mood for small criticism. Which is the shallower, indeed, the criticism that harps on disagreements in such narratives, or the pettifogging that strives to reconcile ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... the room was like the space cleared for a sparring-match. The old combative instinct of the primitive man arises in the most civilized, and makes him delight in a fight. Brady looked amused; Winifred a little apprehensive; Mr. Anstice preserved a dignified neutrality; and Miss Standish ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... that had lain back, were now pricked forward; he had once, in his palmy, coltish time, been a battle charger, and, perhaps, some memory of those martial days, the waving of plumes and the clashing of arms, reawoke his combative spirit of old. Or, possibly his brute intelligence penetrated the dwarf's knavish pusillanimity, and, changing his tactics that he might still range on the side of perversity, resolved himself from immobility ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... called a degenerate. Physically and morally he had yielded his claim to any share in that province of the sun, that his race had conquered and annexed only to find it antipathetic to its needs. Combative effort was grown impossible to him, as in time it will grow to you all. You drop from the world like dead flies from a wall. He could not physic his soul with woods, and groves, and waters. To his perceptions, life ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... Varl were one race among hundreds that had fallen before the fierceness and the greed of men. But unlike most others, the Varl were not combative. Therefore they ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... suspended by his change of belief. Whether he had any feeling that his life was precarious, or his own time short, I do not know. He never said as much to me. He had, of course, used hard words of the Church which he had left, and had said things which were not wholly impersonal. But, combative though he was, he had no touch of rancour or malice in his nature, and he visibly rejoiced in any sign ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the door, stood beside it and leaned away over so that he could peek out and not be seen Voices came from the house—the voice of the Old Man; to be exact, high-pitched and combative. The Kid looked up the bluff, and the trail lay empty in the afternoon sun. Still, he did not like to take that trail. Doctor Dell might come riding down there almost any minute. The Kid did not want to meet Doctor Dell ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... the Schola with a firm hand and unwearying care, despite his varied activities as composer, professor, and Kapellmeister; and he is one of the surest and most reliable guides for a young school of French music. And if his mind is rather given to abstractions, and his moods are sometimes rather combative, and certain prejudices (which are not always musical ones) make him lean towards ideals of reason and immovable faith—and if at times his followers unconsciously distort his ideas, and try to dam the stream which flows from life itself, I am convinced it is ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... this clear-sighted, non-combative humour which Americans love and prize, and the absence of which they reckon a heavy loss. Nor do they always ask, "a loss to whom?" Charles Lamb said it was no misfortune for a man to have a sulky temper. It was his friends who were unfortunate. And ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... gentle, yielding, and submissive, or had her father, Tom Bays,—husband to the Chief Justice,—been more combative and less amenable to the corroding influences of henpeck, I doubt if Madam Bays would ever have attained a dignity beyond that of "Associate Justice." That strong sense of domineering virtue which belongs to the truly just must be fed, and it waxes fat on an easy-going husband and a loving, ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... eyes and ears of both the educated and uneducated in the composer's art. We have a vision of close pages embodying the most unequivocal and drastic of musical "realism." The full audacity and mastery of a certain sort of genius are represented in his vast works. They bespeak, too, the combative musician and reformer. Berlioz took the kingdom of music ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... sympathised and agreed with their portentous activities. One school of psychologists inclined to minimise this participation, but the balance of evidence goes to show that there were massive responses to these suggestions of the belligerent schemer. Primitive man had been a fiercely combative animal; innumerable generations had passed their lives in tribal warfare, and the weight of tradition, the example of history, the ideals of loyalty and devotion fell in easily enough with the incitements of the international mischief-maker. The political ideas of the common man ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... that he knew lunched at half-past one, excluding a Cabinet Minister, who lunched punctually at a quarter past two, and three Treasury clerks and one novelist who lunched at one; accordingly, at half-past one, he presented himself in Berkeley Square, to be informed by a sedately combative butler that luncheon was at two o'clock but that Barbara was believed ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... declare and register their ambition at the Bureau of Police. Government so gets something like a list of the men who aspire; who wish to mount. It must be very useful. There are our water tournaments at St. Cloud and at Boulogne-sur-Seine; where they who have informed the police of their combative propensities, may thrust at each other with long-padded poles from boats which are being rowed forcibly into collision. We are not much of water-birds, but when we do undertake boating, we engage in the work like Algerine pirates. We ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... of feet in the passage, the door-handle turned softly, and a little girl came in. She was a sweetly-pretty child, with that rare combination of dark-lashed brown eyes and golden hair. Here, if anywhere, was Laurence Stanninghame's soft place. His other progeny was represented by two sturdy boys, combative of instinct and firm of tread, and whose gambols, whether pacific or bellicose, were apt to shake the rattletrap old semi-detached and the parental nerves in about equal proportions; constituting, furthermore, a standing bone of parental contention. This little one, however, having ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... there is all the difference in the world between Hazlitt and Addison, or Lamb and Steele. The Tatler and the Spectator leave you with a sense of artifice; Hazlitt and Lamb leave you with a grip of a real personality—in the one case very vigorous and combative, in the other set about with a rare plaintiveness and gentleness, but in both absolutely sincere. Addison is gay and witty and delightful but he only plays at being human; Lamb's essays—the translation into print of ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... of Charles W. Furse was frequently heard, but in it a suspicion of an Academic note unfamiliar in our midst, so that, young as he was, combative, enthusiastic, "a good fellow" as they say in England, still in his Whistler and rebel period, his friends predicted for him the Presidency of the Royal Academy. The first time I ever saw him was the year he was showing at the New English two large upright, full-length portraits ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... painfully. Her delicacy was outraged, but, too, her combative instinct was roused ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... States, and the enforcement of the laws." This party gathered nearly all the peaceable elements of the community; it assumed a deprecatory attitude between angry contestants, and of course received the abuse and contempt of both; it was devoid of combative force, yet had some numerical strength. The Republicans especially mocked at these "trimmers," as if their only platform was moral cowardice, which, however, was an unfair statement of their position. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... sought a remedy in the ecclesiastical court of Arches. The judge decided against him. The case then came on appeal before the judicial committee of the privy council, and here a majority with the two archbishops as assessors reversed the decision of the court below. The bishop, one of the most combative of the human race, flew to Westminster Hall, tried move upon move in queen's bench, exchequer, common pleas; declared that his archbishop had abused his high commission; and even actually renounced communion with him. But the sons of Zeruiah were too hard. The religious ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... self-reproachfully, in his mildest voice, "I find, do what I can, I have at bottom a combative spirit that will rise upon occasion. I had thought 'twas long since quelled. But I fear no man is always and altogether his own master. I saw even General Washington, at Monmouth—but no matter for that. Especially of late, I have found my demon of wrath—to speak figuratively—too much ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... intently; the perspiration was trickling down his nose; and around him, in silent expectation and suspense, were grouped Gogo and Mimsey and my three cousins, and a good-humored freckled Irish boy I had quite forgotten, and I suddenly remembered that his name was Johnstone, that he was very combative, and that he lived in the Rue Basse ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... combative nature; and coming to himself, and not understanding clearly the cause of his prostration, he presently arose. Of the worshippers in sight, he alone was then standing, and the sonorous music ringing on, he was beginning to doubt the propriety of his action, when a number of women, unobserved ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... according to their respective force, to one or the other form of maritime hostilities against commerce which have been indicated. To this procedure combats on the high seas were merely incidental. Tradition, professional pride, and the combative spirit inherent in both peoples, compelled fighting when armed vessels of nearly equal strength met; but such contests, though wholly laudable from the naval standpoint, which under ordinary circumstances cannot afford to encourage retreat from ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Ashe's hard knuckles had peeled away the skin. He still had a most un-Christian satisfaction in the belief that he had given as good as he had got. He was not ashamed of having fought. He would fight again, any time, anywhere, for Sophie Carr. He did not ask himself whether the combative instinct once aroused might not ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... obsolete the pattern of his rifle was: Too much skill in shooting or drill was a perilous thing, and he did not mean to acquire it, For fear of alarming peace-loving Emperors and such-like by display of a combative spirit; Regular armies tended to that: and in view of the state of international conditions he Meant to cut down our own to the minimum consistent with Guaranteed Efficiency,— Being convinced as he was that an army recruited and trained on a properly peaceful principle Would be wholly (and ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... possessed with a disagreeable feeling that a malignant, ill-wishing presence hovered near. I shifted in my seat uneasily. I looked up. There stood, in the doorway, the lusty young farmer who was in for stealing the bales of cotton. He wore an evil, combative leer on his face. He was "spoiling" for a quarrel—just for the mere sake of quarrelling—that I could see. But ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... not by temperament vindictive; he was irascible, as the vain are—combative, aggressive, turbulent, by the impulse of animal spirits; but the premeditation of vengeance was foreign to a levity and egotism which abjured the self-sacrifice that is equally necessary to hatred as to love. But Guy Darrell had forced into his moral system ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and tender almost to weakness. We find in him a union of the intensest sympathy with the weak and helpless, and a comprehension of the flaws and defects which make up their character, which seems at times merciless and almost heartless. We find in him remarkable combative power, united to a desire to use that power purely and simply for the defence and protection of those who are unable to protect and help themselves. We find a man who can deal heaviest blows, who ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... swelling into vehemence, marks also Roosevelt's political essays, and yet he had time for reflection, and if you examine closely even some of his combative passages, you will see that they do not spring from sudden anger or scorn, but from a conviction which has matured slowly in him. He had not the philosophic calm which formed the background of Burke's political masterpieces, but he had the clearness, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... himself as anxious that Mrs. Percy Parrott should accumulate enough from the sale of milk to buy screens before flytime as that lady herself since Essie sustained his interest by daily account of the addition to the screen fund. He was still thinking of the combative Mrs. Tutts when he opened a book and sat ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... to the subject of Larry's religion, and the combative fervour of Major Dick's Protestantism might ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... say such things. Elvira, stop—stop!" Miss Berry stepped forward. Mrs. Tidditt was bristling like a combative bantam and Elvira was shaking from head to feet and crooking and uncrooking her fingers. "There mustn't be any more of this," declared Elizabeth. "Esther, you must apologize. Stop, both of you, please. Remember, Cap'n Kendrick ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... true to the instincts of their "back woods" progenitors, were kind-hearted, independent, and brimful of courage. Driven from their homes and firesides by a hostile foe, they became a "storm center" in battle. They were combative and pugnacious, and defeat had no effect upon their order, and they were ever ready to turn and strike a foe or charge a battery. Their courage at Chickamauga is distinguished by showing the greatest per cent of killed and wounded ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... caution. He was one of those statesmen whom modern critics, on the watch for the partially obsolete and with the complexity of present problems always before them, tend to depreciate. He had the first quality which is necessary for popularity: he was readily intelligible. In addition he was prompt, combative, and magnanimous; shrewd, but never subtle; sensible, but not imaginative. He had no ideas which he wished to carry out; he did not like ideas. He wanted England to dominate in Europe and to use her power good-naturedly ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... themselves thoroughly acquainted with the great controversy between the pure Church to which it was their own happiness to belong, and that corrupt association which called itself Catholicism. I had rather a bold and combative disposition, and was by no means unwilling to take a share in ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... civilization, proves that there must be a reason for it in the physical constitution of man. Its effect, when habitually used, is slightly narcotic and sedative, not stimulating—or if so, at times, it stimulates only the imagination and the social faculties. It lulls to sleep the combative and destructive propensities, and hence—so far as a material agent may operate—it exercises a humanizing and refining influence. A profound student of Man, whose name is well known to the world, once informed me that ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... on the map of Gall, occupying a region of intellectual, inventive and literary capacity. This is the most outre and absurd of all Gall's locations. Placing this selfish and grasping propensity in the front lobe which belongs to intellect, when it really belongs to the selfish, adhesive, and combative elements of the occiput, is an error of so extravagant a character as to show that Gall had no correct psychology in his mind, and no capacity or desire to construct a harmonious system. Spurzheim's location, much farther back, is somewhat less erroneous, but both are thoroughly false, and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... it is of literature; and why should oral discussion be less attractive than written? Dr. Johnson used to express unbounded contempt for all talk that was not discussion; and Robert Louis Stevenson has given us frankly his view: "There is a certain attitude, combative at once and deferential, eager to fight yet most averse to quarrel, which marks out at once the talkable man. It is not eloquence, nor fairness, nor obstinacy, but a certain proportion of all these that I love to encounter in my amicable adversaries. They ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... Smith, the Quaker Bible reader and lay evangelist, and writer of cheerful counsel, I found several celebrities among her other guests. Miss Willard and Walt Whitman happened to be present. Whitman was rude and aggressively combative in his attack on the advocate of temperance, and that without the slightest provocation. He declared that all this total abstinence was absolute rot and of no earthly use, and that he hated the sight of these women who went out of their way to be ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... I rejoined by refusing to grant his request. So he waited until five, that is one half of my volumes had been distributed to subscribers, and revenged himself by placing them for review in the hands of the "Lane-Poole" clique which, as the sequel proved could be noisy and combative as setting hens disturbed when their nest-egg was threatened by ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... disbelieved in what he called the soap-bubble theory, that somewhere in us there is something like a bubble, which controls everything, and is everything, and escapes invisible and gaseous to some other place after death. Consequently he never went to church. He was not openly combative, but Eastthorpe knew his heresies, and was taught to shudder at them. His professionally religious neighbours of course put him in hell in the future, but the common people did not go so far as that, although they could not believe him saved. They somehow confounded his denial of immortality ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... pencil drawing in the Vienna Academy by the Viennese painter, Johann Scheffer von Leonhardshoff; the date must be prior to 1810, and the age somewhere about twenty. The head is remarkable, almost abnormal; the outlook on the world is inquiring, querulous, and combative; the penetrative eyes seem in search after undiscovered truth; the pursed-up mouth is prepared for protest; the attenuated nose and contracted nostril betray austerity and acerbity; the whole aspect is that of nervous irritability. The ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... then Byron was really of a most passionate nature. But as we have proved that Lord Byron was not inconsistent, as Moore declares, except in cases where this want of consistency did not interfere with his character as a man, and, on the other hand, that no one had a less combative disposition, we are forced to arrive at the conclusion that if Byron had one dominant passion, it was most decidedly not that of "combativite." It is impossible to deny that if in his early youth signs ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... own Ariston and Kerykos as against Meleager and Menippus and Theodorus of Gadara, that the Gerasenes concerned themselves. They were busy now with the controversies about Homoiousia and Homoousia, with the rivalry of the Eutychians and the Nestorians, with the conflicting, not to say combative, claims of such saints as Dioscurus of Alexandria and Theodoret of Cyrus. But trade continued brisk, and the city was as rich and as proud as ever. In the seventh century an Arabian chronicler named it among the great towns of Palestine, and ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... a certain attitude combative at once and deferential, eager to fight yet most averse to quarrel, which marks out at once the talkable man. It is not eloquence, not fairness, not obstinacy, but a certain proportion of all of these that I love to encounter in my amicable adversaries. They ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... men. Robust, alert, florid, with square forehead, heavy brows, and keen blue eyes, he looked determined and fearless. His courage, however, was not the rashness of an impetuous nature. It was rather the proud self-confidence of a rugged character which obstacles roused to a higher combative energy. He was not eloquent; not even ornate in diction. But his voice, his words, and his delivery were all adequate. Besides, he possessed the incomparable gift of reserved power. During his career of ten years in the State Senate he was unquestionably the strongest man in the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... beginning or end, which (I may remark) he cannot imagine either. But the letter ends with something much more ominous than bad metaphysics. Here, in the middle of the "Clarion," in the centre of a clean and combative democratic sheet, I meet again my deplorable old acquaintance, the scientific criminologist. "The so-called evil-doer should not be punished for his acts, but restrained." In forty-eight hours I could probably get ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... and sat up. His combative spirit, which was perhaps his chief characteristic, was ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... telltale insignia. He was tall and straight and decidedly blond, and he smiled pleasantly as he fanned himself with his straw hat. Where his brown hair parted there was a cowlick that flung an untamable bang upon his forehead, giving him a combative look that his smile belied. He was a trifle too old for a senior, Sylvia reflected, soberly studying his lean, smooth-shaven face, but not nearly old enough to be a professor; and except the pastor of the church which she attended, and the physician who had been called to see her in her childish ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... of perfumes had led her towards a dream. She was not combative, and she would be alone in the garden. As they walked towards it in the sun, through narrow ways where idle Arabs lounged with happy aimlessness, Batouch talked of Count Anteoni, the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... excepting the United States, there is no country in the world whose existing government would not be overturned in a month, but for its standing armies, maintained at an enormous and destructive cost to those whom they are destined to overawe—so rampant and combative is the spirit of discontent wherever nominal free labor prevails, with its extensive privileges and its dismal servitude. Nor will it be long before the "free States" of this Union will be compelled to introduce the same expensive machinery, to preserve order among their "free and ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... began taking off his coat and spitting on his hands, to show that the matter could only be settled by a bout at fisticuffs. Deerfoot had extended his hand to Fred and he smiled at the combative Irish lad, who put up his fists and began dancing about him in the ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... giving a spirit of concession. The location is marked Har. for Harmony. It embraces a group of organs of harmonious tendency, such as Friendship, Politeness, Imitation, Humor, Pliability and Admiration, as the Combative group is hostile, stubborn, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... and a combative look came into his eye at this unconscious challenge. This woman was too aggressively confident. A small lesson. He could return the jewels by post. It would ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... facing each other in irreconcilable yet confused antagonism. Both were still excited and combative from their late physical struggle, but with feelings so widely different that it would have been impossible for either to have comprehended the other. In the figure that had apparently risen from the dead to confront him, Demorest only ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... Naval life was a rough affair in those days. Jerrold's most remarkable experience seems to have been bringing over the wounded of Waterloo from Belgium; which stamped on his mind a sense of the horrors of war that never left him, but is marked on his writings everywhere, in spite of a certain combative turn and an admiration of heroes which also belonged to him. To the last, he had an interest in sea matters, and spoke with enthusiasm of Lord Nelson. But the literary use he made of his nautical experience ended ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various |
