"Exacting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all kinds of poetry alike there was one point on which they were rigidly exacting; the adaptability of the subject to the kind of poetry selected, and the careful ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... it that the moment any body wants to render you a service, or manifest some token of friendship, he commences by striking at the very root of your digestive functions? Is it not exacting a little too much of human nature to require a man to consider himself a large sponge, in order that hospitality may be poured into him by the gallon? When a person of pliant and amiable disposition visits a set of good fellows, and they take some ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... that "satisfaction should be given to the claims of the Boers, without prejudice always to the rights of the natives and English residents." On July 25th, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach reminded the House of the necessity for exacting the necessary guarantees, and of ensuring the tranquillity and security of the English possessions.[8] He reminded the House of the position of those 3,700 Boer petitioners who had asked for annexation, and of the British residents who had invested capital in the Transvaal, upon the guarantee ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... lost no time in exacting his waltz. It was the third on the programme, and the band were beginning to warm to their work They were playing a waltz by Offenbach—"Les Traineaux"—with an accompaniment of jingling sleigh-bells—music that had an almost maddening effect on ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... Thousands of stars were twinkling in the sky, and the eyes of Micheline and Pierre were lifted toward the dark blue heavens seeking vaguely for the star which presided over their destiny. She, to know whether her life would be the long poem of love of which she dreamed; he, to ask whether glory, that exacting mistress for whom he had made so many sacrifices, would at least comfort him for ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... Coeur-de-Lion's discomfiture of the 'septemvirate of quacks' is hymned; and the finale is quite Attic. I do not know whether the thing has ever been attempted as an actual show. Though rather exacting in its machinery, it ought ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... kept for relieving them, so that they may be again deposited with a second set of those honourable usurers; and when they shall have been circulated in this manner through a variety of hands, we will extort money from each of the pawnbrokers, by threatening them with a public prosecution, for exacting illegal interest; and I know that they will bleed freely, rather than be exposed to the infamy attending such an accusation." The scheme was feasible, and though not very honourable, made such an impression upon the needy borrower, that he assented ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... glowing as the warm blood that pulsed through her rounded graceful form. She wore a fleecy fabric, topaz-coloured, with black lace trimmings; yellow roses gemmed her hair, and topaz and ruby ornaments clasped her throat and arms. An Eastern queen she looked, exacting universal homage, and full of fiery jealousy whenever her eyes fell upon one who stood just opposite. Irene's dress was an airy blue tulle, flounced to the waist, and without trimming, save the violet and clematis clusters. Never ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... vengeance to his breast. It was in the days of the early gold finds, and Fortune showered on Dudgeon her compensation for the injury of Love. All that came to him he took and treasured, until he had enough for his purpose. Then he returned to Waroona, and set about exacting the full measure of his revenge upon ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... improvement been rapid, their untrained zeal might perhaps have flagged. Had the mental symptoms, by their obscurity, baffled them or defied them on every side, their lack of systematic, scientific training for such a task might have made them discouraged: but delicate and exacting as the work was, their love and enthusiasm, their insight and patience, their cleverness and ingenuity, triumphed over all obstacles; and luckily for their youth and comparative inexperience, they were rewarded ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... In the midst of peace and the commonplaces of drill and manoeuvres there must be dangerous and trying work where the only distinction is service for the cause—our cause of three million against five. Find a task for me, no matter how mean, thankless, or dangerous, Lanny. The more exacting it is the more welcome, for the better will be my chance ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... not value men of this sort so much as men of some other sorts. It was long, at any rate, before Dunham—whom people always called Charley Dunham—found the woman who thought him more lovely than every other woman pronounced him; and naturally Miss Hibbard was the most exacting of her sex. She required all those offices which Dunham delighted to render, and many besides: being an invalid, she needed devotion. She had refused Dunham before going out to Europe with her mother, and she had written to take him back after she got there. ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... of the deanery of the city of Norwich was committed to custody, on one occasion, by the itinerant justices, for exacting hallidays toll by his sub-dean in too high a manner; but on his proving that he took of every great boat that came up to the city on a holiday 1d. only, and of each small one a halfpenny; of every cart 1d., and of every horse or man laden an halfpenny; and of all ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851 • Various
... children is thus, in various ways, seriously faulty. It errs in deficient feeding; in deficient clothing; in deficient exercise (among girls at least); and in excessive mental application. Considering the regime as a whole, its tendency is too exacting: it asks too much and gives too little. In the extent to which it taxes the vital energies, it makes the juvenile life far more like the adult life than it should be. It overlooks the truth that, as in the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... don't care if my metaphors are mixed. It's tragic, anyhow. And the principal tragedy is that Blais Rochefort isn't really cold—at least, I don't think he would be if properly approached—he is merely beautifully lucid and intelligent and exacting in a way no American understands, least of all a petted girl who has no family and who is very rich. He expects, you see, an equal lucidity from his wife. He's not to be won over by the fumbling and rather selfish and pretty little tricks that are all most of us know. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of the tale called Martin Chuzzlewit, grandson to old Martin. His nature has been warped by bad training, and, at first, he is both selfish and exacting; but the troubles and hardships he undergoes in "Eden" completely transform him, and he becomes worthy of Mary Graham, whom he marries.—C. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... false because their inherent weakness renders them incapable of truth. Oh! I know the catalogue of their good qualities. They are often pitiful, self-devoting, generous; but they are so by fits and starts, just as they are cruel, remorseless, exacting, by fits and starts. They have no constancy—they are too weak to be constant even in evil; their minds are all impressions; their actions are all the issue of immediate promptings. Swayed by the fleeting impulses of the hour, they have only one persistent, calculable ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Stanley's attitude was much like Jacob's. That smooth-skinned and smooth-tongued patriarch said that if God would guarantee him a safe journey, feed him, clothe him, find him pocket money, and bring him safe back again—well, then the Lord should be his God. Stanley was not so exacting, but his attitude was similar. He asked God to give him back his people (a few short, killed or starved, did not matter), and promised in return to "confess his aid before men." Give me the solid pudding, he says, and I will give you the empty praise. And now he is safe ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... little body, bearing, as she had, responsibilities all too heavy for a child. Lila and Doyle had found that she was an exacting mistress, and often even Austin had been puzzled to know how to curb and direct her authoritative inclinations. The coming of the three little ones had not been so hard, for the natural mother-instinct in her enjoyed ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... frequent impression; and, therefore, it will be proper, when logick has been once learned, the teacher take frequent occasion, in the most easy and familiar conversation, to observe when its rules are preserved, and when they are broken; and that afterwards he read no authors, without exacting of his pupil an account of every remarkable exemplification or breach of the laws ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... appears to have been employed as a pickaxe in uprooting the aquatic plants and liliaceous roots on which the creature seems to have lived. The head, which measured about three feet across,—a breadth, sufficient, surely, to satisfy the demands of the most exacting phrenologist,—was provided with muscles of enormous strength, arranged so as to give potent effect to the operations of this strange tool. The hinder part of the skull not a little resembled that of the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... to us austere and exacting; unsparing in condemnation, and unrelenting in her demands on those she loves. Many of her letters are in a strain of exhortation that rises into rebuke. The impression at first is unpleasant. We are tempted to feel this unfailing candour captious; to resent the note of authority, equally ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... evening in January, 1394, and in the Princess's bower, or bedroom, stood Maude, re-arranging a portion of her lady's wardrobe. The Duchess had been that day more than usually exacting and precise, much to the amusement of Bertram Lyngern, at present at Langley in the train of his master. The door of Constance's bower was suddenly opened and dashed to again, and the Princess herself entered, and began pacing up and down the room like a chafed lioness—a habit ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... that to some small extent it modifies the shape, the fur or feather, the colouring, the outward accessories. To go farther would be to fly in the face of facts. If the surroundings become too exacting, the animal protests against the violence endured and succumbs rather than change. If they go to work gently, the creature subjected to them adapts itself as best it can, but invincibly refuses to cease to be what it is. It must live in the form of the mould whence ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... as usual, and the complexities of accounts were as little congenial to him as notarial complexities had been three and twenty years previously. It is, however, one of the characteristics of times of national break-up not to be peremptory in exacting competence, and Rousseau gravely sat at the receipt of custom, doing the day's duty with as little skill as liking. Before he had been long at his post, his official chief going on a short journey left him in charge of the chest, which happened at the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... necessary he would have unhesitatingly followed the glorious example of the Swiss hero of Sempach, who gave his life to his country six hundred years ago.... He was too stately in his manners and too exacting in his discipline—that power which Carnot calls 'the glory of the soldier and the strength of armies.' A brief anecdote will illustrate the strictness of his discipline. While on duty he always required officers to be dressed according ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... altogether her fault, whatever the outcome, she was in a mood to quarrel with the whole wide world; and she schooled herself to treat with Staff on terms of toleration only by exercise of considerable self-command and because she was exacting a service of him. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... had a certain amount of the generosity which belongs to strength. To children, and the kind of pretty, undecided women who rank as children, he was wonderfully considerate. But it was quite possible that were he married to a sensible, companionable wife he might be exacting. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... what you are thinking of, Jane," he said kindly. "But indeed, my dear, such a wife as mine, and such sorrows as she has helped me to bear, would have been wasted indeed, if by God's grace they had not made me less exacting and impatient than I used to be.— Barbara," he added after a pause, "I beg your pardon if I have spoken hastily, or done you injustice. All you have done has been conscientious; and if I spoke ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... less than six weeks from the beginning of the war it was ended and the treaty made, a surprising achievement for the first campaign of an eighteen-year-old warrior. The treaty was favorable to Frederick, Charles exacting nothing for himself, but demanding that the Duke of Holstein should be repaid the expenses ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... she loved Le Gardeur; but there was no depth in the soil where a devoted passion could take firm root. Still she was a woman keenly alive to admiration, jealous and exacting of her suitors, never willingly letting one loose from her bonds, and with warm passions and a cold heart was eager for the semblance of love, although never feeling its ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... with its first lines his heart, lately so buoyant, turned to lead. It began by saying that doubtless Mr. Brand's duties on the municipal art commission would demand more time and attention than he could bestow upon them in justice to his own exacting private affairs and that therefore whenever he wished to tender his resignation it ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... and Vermont law. When he lifted his head to ask who giveth this woman Archie bestowed Sally upon Abijah with just the touch of grace and dignity he had long noted as the accepted manner of giving a woman in marriage in the most exacting circles. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... uncompromising challenge of a bright sun, Billy began to be uneasily suspicious that she had been just a bit unreasonable and exacting the night before. To make matters worse she chanced to run across a newspaper criticism of a new book bearing the ominous title: "When the Honeymoon Wanes ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... insuperable obstacles and opposition prevent the consummation of our task, we shall hardly be excused; and if failure can be traced to our fault or neglect we may be sure the people will hold us to a swift and exacting accountability. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... against writing for the papers be rather a nice one to observe during 1921? It is quite on the cards that one's duties to the State (not too inadequately paid for) ought to be sufficiently exacting to preclude journalism at all. There's a question of dignity too, although I hesitate to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 29, 1920 • Various
... his eyes on the page, she did not speak. The life had gone out of him. He wondered at himself for being so fagged. Yet it had been a good deal of a strain, that anguish of a creature he was not allowed to help; it was exacting a heavy penalty. He found his mind dwelling on it, look by look, word by word, and finding no relief except in the thought of Tenney in the river pasture, chopping. If that came to pass, the woman would be safe for hours ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... proposition was to organize all the cattlemen on the Cheyenne and Arapahoe reservation into an association for mutual protection. By cooeperation we could present a united front to our enemies, the usurpers, and defy them in their nefarious schemes of exacting tribute. Other ranges besides ours had suffered by fire and fence-cutters during the winter just passed, and I returned to find my fellow cowmen a unit for organization. A meeting was called at the agency, every owner of cattle on the reservation responded, and an association ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... lover; and his enthusiastic, earnest wooing, was very different from Mr. Grayson's calm, dignified manner. He caused our quiet Effie a deal of entertainment, however; for when he was an acknowledged lover, like all such ardent dispositions, he showed himself to be an exacting one. Her calm, cold manner would set him frantic at times; and he would vow she could not love him; but these lovers' quarrels instead of wearying Effie, seemed to produce ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... with fine engravings and paintings illustrative of the Victorian era; it teemed with mementoes and memorials of past incidents, travels and friendships in the lives of the Royal couple; it contained rooms suited for every purpose required in the exacting life and multifarious public duties of its occupants. The Prince's study, where only intimates were admitted, has been described as the room of a hard-working man of business. When at Marlborough House, His Royal Highness ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... for marketing the product. During the latter part of the course the school should be able to turn out first-class work. The familiarity with trade standards the pupils obtain through practice on garments which must meet the exacting demands of the buying public has a distinct educational value. The Manhattan Trade School for Girls in New York City and other successful schools in the country operate on this basis. There is reason to believe that there would be little difficulty ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... program, merely drew her wrap closer about her shoulders and sat more erect. At the end of the concerto the applause was generous enough to satisfy the most exacting virtuoso. Diotti unquestionably had scored the greatest triumph of his career. But the lady in the box had remained silent and ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... evening benediction. Two hour-long sermons a week and a Wednesday evening discourse were very well in their way, but by no means met all the requirements of those steadfast old ladies whose socialities were both exhaustive and exacting. Indeed, it is doubtful if there do not exist even now, in most country parishes of New England, a few most excellent and notable women, who delight in an overworked parson, for the pleasure they take in recommending their teas, and plasters, and nostrums. The more frail and attenuated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... an important stage in the history of French poetry. With him and his contemporaries the long, formless narrations of the trouvres give place to complicated and exacting kinds of verse. He was perhaps by nature a moralist and satirist rather than a poet, and the force and truth of his historical pictures gives him a unique place in 14th-century poetry. M. Raynaud fixes the date of his death in 1406, or at latest, 1407. Two years earlier ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... not know such a feeling existed in this dark world," he muttered, rather to himself than as if answering me. "He forgives me without exacting any promise. Alas! he knows not what he ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... education she had pinched herself to give him, but had disturbed all the habits of her life by removing her from her normal surroundings to the depressing exile of a factory-settlement. However much he blamed himself for exacting this sacrifice, it had been made so cheerfully that the consciousness of it never clouded his life with his mother; but her self-effacement made him the more alive to his own obligations, and having placed her in a difficult situation he had always been careful ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... he was particularly bland and condescending in his manner to me, and particularly pompous and exacting in his manner to Jack, and this, more than anything else, convinced me the latter was right in ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... University, Evanston, Ill. Was admitted to the bar and practiced law in Chicago for twelve years, when he gave up this profession and came to New York to become a stock-broker. Although Mr. O'Hara has followed this exacting occupation for the past ten years, it has not prevented him from writing and publishing several volumes of poetry, largely classic in theme, and handled with an adequate and beautiful art. "The Poems of Sappho", 1907, built upon the authentic fragments, ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... necessary by the demands of the patients. This is giving good big doses of something with a horrid smell and taste. There are plenty of people who don't believe the doctor does anything to earn his money, if he does not pour down some dirty brown or black stuff very nasty in flavor. Some, still more exacting, wish for that sort of testimony which depends on internal convulsions, and will not be satisfied unless they suffer torments and expel stuff enough to quiet the inside of Mount ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... of February the vessel arrived. The war-conch was heard, and the savages were seen flying in all directions; but, as there was no intention of exacting a revenge, means of communication were at last arranged, and it was discovered that these two good men had furnished a cannibal feast, but that their skulls and many of their bones had been preserved, and these were recovered and carried on board ship. The Erromangans ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... privileges, but of himself; not loading with burdens, but making him a beast of burden; not restraining liberty, but subverting it; not curtailing rights, but abolishing them; not inflicting personal cruelty, but annihilating personality; not exacting involuntary labor, but sinking him into an implement of labor; not abridging his human comforts, but abrogating his human nature; not depriving an animal of immunities, but despoiling a rational being ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... that he had shaved his beard at her request not long ago, and that when she did not like the effect as much as she had hoped, he had meekly grown a mustache for her sake; it did seem as if a man could hardly do more to please an exacting ladylove. ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... be denied; they were not his ordinary boots, nor did he ever wear such trousers as he saw above them! Always a careful and punctiliously neat person, he was more than commonly exacting concerning the make and polish of his boots and the set of ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... were not numerous enough, under the climatic conditions, to do all their own duty. In such circumstances, when two parties are working together to the same end, but under no common control, each is prone to think the other behindhand in his work and exacting in his demands. "Why don't Lord Hood land 500 men to work?" said Colonel Moore, the general's right-hand man. "Our soldiers are tired." Nelson, on the other hand, thought that Moore wanted over-much battering done to the breach of a work, before he led the stormers to it; and Hood, who ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... sister's hand an affectionate squeeze, which satisfied the hungry and exacting heart of its small ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... have got Decima into her room, and I must be up and down with her. I don't like leaving Lucy alone the first day she is in the house; she will take a prejudice against it. One blessed thing, she seams quite simple—not exacting." ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... attainments are due to differences in environment, it might be said that this itself is testimony to the superiority of the race that has the more complex and exacting environment. This is not by any means clearly the case. The "culture" or civilization which a race exhibits is a very uncertain index of its gifts or its capacities. The culture found in a race is, it may be said without exaggeration, largely a matter of accident or circumstance ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... knights fight for their lady-loves, but always in stories that are so well told that the taste for good reading is cultivated unconsciously as the boy reads. Treasure Island is bloody enough for the most exacting boy, and it bears many a reading, for it is so charmingly told that long after the cry, "Pieces of eight, pieces of eight," has ceased to make the welcome chills run up and down the boy's back, he returns to the story for the pleasure he finds in the style of Stevenson. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... neither they nor their fathers were able to bear it. Was it any marvel that from such a system men should turn to Him who cried, "Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for My yoke is easy, and My burden is light"? But if Christ's law of love is simpler it is also far more exacting than the old law which it superseded. It has meshes far finer than any that Pharisaic ingenuity could weave. Rabbinical law can secure the tithing of mint and anise and cumin, the washing of cups and pots, and many such like things; it can regulate the life of ritual and outward observance; ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... glimpses of the bright young girl who was pouring the vigour of her life into the lad fighting for his own, but these snatches and glimpses only exasperated him. There was no opportunity for any lengthened and undisturbed converse, for on the one hand the hospital service was exacting beyond the strength of doctor and nurses, and on the other there was serious trouble for Superintendent Strong and his men in the camps along the line, for a general strike had been declared in all the camps and no one knew ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... several sleepless nights, and a sleepless night was one of the few things he simply could not stand. Thoughts of her had seemed to unfit him for his work, to weaken his nerves, to act, in various ways, to his disadvantage. She had been exacting in her demands upon his nature. They were not uttered demands, or demands which he could formulate, but he had been conscious of them always. He had been obliged to pause and ask himself at every thought, at every step—"What would Sara say to this?" It was a tyranny—if not ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... to the bridge in triumph so far as the possession of a very wet cap was concerned, but rather low in his mind at having had to pay the exacting bargee a shilling out of his somewhat scanty store of pocket-money, he found John ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Culch. You are naturally exacting on that point, but have the goodness to leave my first impressions alone, and—er—frankly, PODBURY, I see no necessity (now, at all events) to take that ridiculous—hum—penance too literally. We are travelling together, and I imagine that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... Capulets, this time crossed by no lovers' hands. Mrs. Lawrence was highly indignant, Miss Barry vexed and sore disappointed. They went the even tenor of their way, however, while the poor self-made invalid at Hope Terrace grew more querulous and exacting. Fred took a week at Saratoga to restore his wounded vanity, and then settled himself at a hotel in New York, wondering if he had not better read a little law to pass away the winter. Mrs. Minor was a queen of fashion, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... was becoming fierce and bitter; much was written for and against the Cid; the public remained faithful to it; the cardinal determined to submit it to the judgment of the Academy, thus exacting from that body an act of complaisance towards himself as well as an act of independence and authority in the teeth of predominant opinion. At his instigation, Scudery wrote to the Academy to make them the judges in the dispute. "The cardinal's desire was plain to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... published, to his astonishment, and he was 'to be taken on at a salary of—a week.' Let us avoid pecuniary chatter, and merely say that the sum, while he was on trial, was not likely to tempt many young men into the career of journalism. Yet 'the work will be very exacting, and almost preclude the possibility of my doing anything else.' Now, as four leader notes, or, say, six, can be written in an hour, it is difficult to see the necessity for this fatigue. Probably there were ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... be proposed, and let us be contented to lead on the ductile minds of children to a love of their duty, by obliging them with such: we may tell them what we expect in this case; but we ought not, I humbly conceive, to be too rigorous in exacting it; for, after all, the inducement will naturally be the uppermost consideration with the child: not, as I hinted, had it been offered to it, if the parent himself had not thought so. And, therefore, we can only let the child know his duty in this respect, and that he ought to give a preference ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... of duty, in domestic as well as business affairs, he did not even consider the possibility of disappointing the exacting old lady to whom he owed his being. "Mother cares for so few people," he used to say, not without a touch of filial pride in the parental exclusiveness, "that I have to be with her rather more than if she were more sociable"; and with smiling resignation he ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... Thuggee reached its zenith during the anarchic period of the decline of the Mughal Empire, when only the strongest and most influential could obtain any assistance from the State in recovering property or exacting reparation for the deaths of murdered friends and relatives. Nevertheless, the Thugs could hardly have escaped considerable loss even from private vengeance had they been compelled to rely on themselves for protection. But this was not the case, for, like the Badhaks and other robbers, they ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... the whole of our time at the workshop. We are not only 'prentice-carpenters but 'prentice-men—a trade whose apprenticeship is longer and more exacting than the rest. What shall we do? Shall we take a master to teach us the use of the plane and engage him by the hour like the dancing-master? In that case we should be not apprentices but students, and our ambition is not merely to learn carpentry but to be carpenters. Once or twice ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... every phase of the situation, Kitchener stuck to his guns, keeping to himself his plans for the reconquest of the Soudan. He wrought and watched while he waited, selecting and surrounding himself with able officers, and exacting from each diligence and obedience in the discharge of their duties. The Dongola campaign and the fortuitous one of the Atbara against Mahmoud greatly strengthened his position. There might be further delay, ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... never very large, had been shattered by early dissipation. Naturally of a proud and somewhat exacting temper, he actively felt the mortifying consequences of his poverty. The want of what he felt ought to have been his position and influence in the county in which he resided, fretted and galled ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... essential point at once by saying that gathered here, in these pages, are my best recipes, truly "tried in the fire," the actual working results of many years' teaching and lecturing, brought "up to the minute" in the interests of that exacting domestic economy now, as rarely before, ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... them that the Princess was waiting for them here. Their natural disappointment at finding I was mistaken will make the test of their good nature an even more exacting one. My own impression is that the Yellow Prince will ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... been taken up at Chortiatis and Nihor." "Yesterday the landing of British reinforcements continued, amounting to 15,000. The guns and munitions were out of date. The position of the Allies' battleships has been changed. They are now inside the harbor." The most exacting German General Staff could not ask for better service than that! When the Allies retreated from Serbia into Salonika every one expected the enemy would pursue; and thousands fled from the city. But the Germans did not pursue, and the reason may have been because their spies ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... No more the human voice Shall vex our joys in middle air With prayer; No more Shall they adore; And we, who ne'er for ages have adored The prayer-exacting Lord, To whom the omission of a sacrifice Is vice; We, we shall view the deep's salt sources poured 170 Until one element shall do the work Of all in chaos; until they, The creatures proud of their ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... investigations, the object of which is to penetrate the secrets of the future. Of the means by which I endeavor to alleviate suffering and to enlighten doubt, it is impossible to speak intelligibly within the limits of an advertisement. I can only offer to submit my system to public inquiry, without exacting any preliminary fee from ladies and gentlemen who may honor me with a visit. Those who see sufficient reason to trust me, after personal experience, will find a money-box fixed on the waiting-room table, into which they can drop their ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... Tarleton was trying to get on with urgent correspondence or to frame questions to be asked of witnesses, and so take up his unfortunate secretary's time that it was almost impossible for him to get his work finished for the next meeting. He made the most exacting demands upon his overworked staff, showing as little consideration for them as he did grasp of the mass of detail they had to get through between committee meetings. Indeed, had it not been for the industrious energy of Klein, who had relieved him of practically all the routine ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... popular, but, don't you see, it will never become as—er—exacting on the fellows that play it. You can play golf without having to go into training ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... always at the cattle-estates where he worked, and how this man treated him kindly until he was big enough to be set to work shepherding sheep and driving cattle, and doing anything a boy could do at any place they lived in, and that his owner and master then began to be exacting and tyrannical, and treated him so badly that he eventually ran away and never saw the man again. And from that time onward he lived much the same kind of life as when with his master, constantly going about ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... uncontrollable cowboys, free for the time from the exacting work of the range, were sweeping down on the town, determined to do their part in the observance of ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... does not merely imply a longer range, but a greater deadliness, and therefore makes more exacting claims on the moral of the soldier. The danger zone begins sooner than formerly; the space which must be crossed in an attack has become far wider; it must be passed by the attacking party creeping or running. The soldier must often use the spade ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... with Archie Raymond, or else he fell in love with her; anyhow they became engaged, although I demurred a little, on account of his inability to support a wife. But I gave way in time, for he was a thoroughly good fellow, and one of the sort who was bound to rise when he got a chance. Mary was exacting, however—I told you she had been spoiled—and Archie wasn't the sort to be led about on a string like a lapdog; so ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... perpetually apologizing. With certain limitations it didn't matter an atom whom Cecily married. So that he was sound and decent, with reasonable prospects, her simple requirements and ours for her would be quite met. There was the ghost of a consolation in that; one needn't be anxious or exacting. ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... student until Commencement Day. The "cleanliness that is next to godliness" is one of the Tuskegee ideals, and a student can scarcely commit a more serious misdemeanor than to appear slovenly, either in dress or manners. The facilities and requirements for bathing are quite as complete and exacting as the equipments in the laboratories and recitation-rooms. The result is that Tuskegee has the reputation of being one of the most cleanly and sanitary institutions in ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... year of 1859 was remarkably for its crowd of tourists, and added that 1860 proved very quiet. It does not sound quiet to hear that she had just enjoyed a horseback ride with Mr. Browning; but Americans and English certainly did have rich enjoyment in Italy in those days, and grew exacting. The jottings of the diary stir the imagination quite pleasantly, beginning January 16, 1859: "Mr. Browning called to visit us. Delightful visit. I read Charlotte Bronte for the second time.—Mrs. Story sent a note to my husband to invite him to ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... the doctor came. He had been detained. Very sorry to disoblige Mrs. Ritson, but fact was old Mr. de Broadthwaite had an attack of lumbago, complicated by a bout of toothache, and everybody knew he was most exacting. Young person's baby ill? Feverish, restless, starts in its sleep, and cough?—Ah, croupy cough—yes, croup, true croup, not spasmodic. Let him see; how old? A year and a half? Ah, bad, very. Most frequent in second year of infancy. Dangerous, highly so. Forms ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... out to groom the horses. Having brought no brushes or currycombs with them, they were obliged to content themselves with rubbing the animals down with handfuls of grass; but they "went through the motions," as Bob expressed it, and that was all the most exacting officer could have expected ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... about here today except the strange coincidence. The officials of the Board of Trade have been most exacting in seeing that every compliance has been made with existing regulations. As the matter is to be a 'nine days wonder', they are evidently determined that there shall be no cause of ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... generosity of mankind, that what had been done by a player without solicitation, could not now be effected by application and interest; and Savage had a great number to court and to obey for a pension less than that which Mrs. Oldfield paid him without exacting any servilities. Mr. Savage, however, was satisfied, and willing to retire, and was convinced that the allowance, though scanty, would be more than sufficient for him, being now determined to commence a rigid economist, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... complained that he cared only for the pleasures of his age. Two days a week, said the Spaniard, were devoted to single combats on foot, initiated in imitation of the heroes of romance, Amadis and Lancelot;[87] and if Henry's other innocent and honest pastimes were equally exacting, his view of the requirements of State may well have been modest. From the earliest days of his reign the general outline of policy was framed in accord with his sentiments, and he was probably consulted ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... the rules on the Allington estate; imperious to their wives and children, but imperious within bounds, so that no Mrs Dale had fled from her lord's roof, and no loud scandals had existed between father and sons; exacting in their ideas as to money, expecting that they were to receive much and to give little, and yet not thought to be mean, for they paid their way, and gave money in parish charity and in county charity. They had ever been steady supporters ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... seeing her daughter's unhappiness and wishing to protect her from the thing that had so saddened her own life, encouraged Helen to find what relief she could in the pleasures that kept her so many hours from home. John, occupied by the exacting duties of his new position, needed apparently nothing more. Indeed, to Helen, her brother's attitude toward his work, his views of life and his increasing neglect of what she called the obligations of their position in Millsburgh, were more and more puzzling. She ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... very just remark. The general held similar views. He considered snow in winter proper; sultriness in summer legitimate; frosts in the autumn the same, and rains in spring not objectionable. He was not an exacting man. And I call to mind now that he always admired thunder. You remember, child, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... such men magical powers. Nor, what is worse still, the co-existence of both cases in the same mind, as in fact happened here. For this same obstinate friend of ours, who treated all medical pretensions as the mere jest of the universe, every 'third day was exacting from his own medical attendants some exquisite tour-de-force, as that they should know or should do something, which, if they had known or done, all men would have suspected them reasonably of magic. He rated the whole medical body as infants; and yet what he ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of flood and field,' fill the pages with peculiar interest, and carry the reader to the end with a sigh that the end is come.... As a story of the early colonial days it is bound to almost surfeit the mind of the most exacting lover ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... immediately, in the attempt to leave the mill without encountering his father. Clayton, he knew, would be staying late, and would be exacting similar tribute to the emergency from the entire force. Also, he had been going about the yard with contractors most of the afternoon. But Graham made his escape safely. It was two hours later when his father, getting into the limousine, noticed the absence of the boy's ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... exigencies." This is plain speaking; after this, it is no wonder that the Rajah's wealth and his offence, the necessities of the judge and the opulence of the delinquent, are never separated, through the whole of Mr. Hastings's apology. "The justice and policy of exacting a large pecuniary mulct." The resolution "to draw from his guilt the means of relief to the Company's distresses." His determination "to make him pay largely for his pardon, or to execute a severe vengeance for past delinquency." That "as his wealth was great, and the Company's ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... had no desire to forgive Lord Trowbridge,—that life in this world, as it is constituted, would not be compatible with such forgiveness,—that he would not, indeed, desire to injure Lord Trowbridge otherwise than by exacting such penalty as would force him and such as he to restrain their tyranny; but that to forgive him, till he should have been so forced, would be weak and injurious to the community. As to that, he had quite made up his mind, in spite of all doctrine ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... pleased to find his arms about her wrinkled neck, and his boyish kiss pressed upon her cheek. She assured Roland the first thing, that there was no need of his worrying about the future, because she had determined to make him her heir, regardless of whether he ever came into the money left under such exacting ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... poet, and sang the Ossianic loves of the heroes of his dreams, their chivalrous joys, and the sorrows of the absent fatherland, his dear Poland always ready to conquer and always defeated. But without these conditions—the exacting of which for his playing all artists must thank him for—it was useless to solicit him. The curiosity excited by his fame seemed even to irritate him, and he shunned as far as possible the nonsympathetic world when chance ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... profession do you refer? If to the Burgling branch I would ask, 'Has he the iron nerve, the indomitable will, above all has he the brain power for this exacting craft? Can he stand the exposure to the night air, the exposure before an Assize jury, and the rigours of the Portland stone quarries?' If so, let him take a course of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... the truth of this must be evident to any one who looks about him. If the human mind, ordained by an omniscient Creator, had been intended to be what it has become, exacting, inquiring, agitated, tormented—so different from mere animal thought and resignation—would the world which was created to receive the beings which we now are have been this unpleasant little park for small game, this salad patch, this wooded, rocky and spherical kitchen garden where ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... innocent amusements which form a natural outlet for exuberant spirits, it will be well if we can do justice to the nobility of aim, and the greatness of self-sacrifice, to which their austerity was due. We must remember that the aim of the Puritans was a godliness far more exacting than that which we seek, and requiring a proportionate sacrifice of immediate pleasure. We must remember, too, that the amusements of that time were in large part brutal, like the bear-gardens; and licentious, like most of the theatres. Puritanism could only exist among men filled to an uncommon ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... city bred, a merchant by instinct, a Jew in religion, and a strictly honest and exacting business man. Asher Aydelot had been a country boy and was by choice a farmer. He was a Protestant of the Methodist persuasion. It must have been his business integrity that first attracted Jacobs to him. Jacobs was a timid man, and no one else in Kansas, not even Doctor ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... given just cause for complaint by his eagerness to enrich himself at the expense of the West India Company. During the administration of Kieft occurred the long and doubtful conflict with the natives detailed in the succeeding chapter. Arbitrary and exacting, he drove the Indians to extremities, and involved the Dutch settlements in a war which for a time threatened their destruction. Not till 1645 was peace re-established, and in 1647 the unpopular governor ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... new knowledge can be used in a further advance, watching continually for fresh footholds by which to climb higher still. Of Shelley it has been said that he was a poet for poets: so Darwin was a naturalist for naturalists. It is when his writings are used in the critical and more exacting spirit with which we test the outfit for our own enterprise that we learn their full value and strength. Whether we glance back and compare his performance with the efforts of his predecessors, or look forward along the course which modern research is disclosing, we shall honour most in him ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... not found her position at Mrs. Wentworth's the most agreeable in the world. Mrs. Wentworth was moody and capricious, and at times exacting. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... dangerous," he resumed. "Although you are probably both wrong, you can persuade yourselves you are right. Then while I was glad to hear about your wedding, I'll admit that I saw some difficulties. Helen has a strong will and is sometimes rather exacting, while you're an obstinate fellow and a little too practical. I must wait until I know more than I do now, but might be of some use as a peacemaker. Isn't it possible to compromise? Can't you ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... it lived only in the hearts of its worshippers. The hearts changed; the men changed. The once loving and devoted servants went out armed with fire and iron, and conquering the fear of their own hearts became a calculating crowd of cold and exacting masters. The sea of the past was an incomparably beautiful mistress, with inscrutable face, with cruel and promising eyes. The sea of to-day is a used-up drudge, wrinkled and defaced by the churned-up wakes of brutal propellers, robbed of ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... powers had for some time been imminent. Louis XIV. had become more and more exacting in his demands on the Duke of Savoy, until the latter felt himself in a position of oppressive vassalage. Louis had even intimated his intention of occupying Verrua and the citadel of Turin; and the Duke, having previously ascertained through his cousin, Prince Eugene, the willingness ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... to her betrothed, or sewing on her bridal outfit. Such is the result of employing those who have been brought up to do their own work. That tall, fine-looking girl, for aught we know, may yet be mistress of a fine house on Fifth Avenue; and if she is, she will, we fear, prove rather an exacting mistress to Irish Bridget; but she will never be threatened by her cook and chambermaid, after the first one or two have ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe |
