"Inflexible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the author of those eloquent and forcible appeals to the government, which prepared them by degrees for submission to terms of peace, never expected by any who knew the haughtiness and inflexible pride of the ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... Governor-General to have mercy upon the two unfortunate nobles. If their lives could not be spared, he prayed him at any rate to grant delay. With tears and earnest supplications the prelate endeavored to avert or to postpone the doom which had been pronounced. It was in vain. The sentence, inflexible as destiny, had been long before ordained. Its execution had been but hastened by the temporary triumph of rebellion in Friesland. Alva told the Bishop roughly that he had not been summoned to give advice. Delay or pardon was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... wishes that the great city had shown itself less inflexible against the army augmentation, and that it had set off this augmentation against unlimited and effectual convoys. I am not of this opinion. I think they would thereby put a dangerous weapon into the hands ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... had to submit themselves to more frequent absences than ever on his part. He made business a pretext for shutting himself up in his study, but it was really in order to spend the time with the Princess, who remained inflexible. ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... Mr. B. Some day, perhaps, he may read this letter and realise how extremely awkward an inflexible standard of morality can make things for one's neighbours. The last sentence of all has a pathetic ring, as of a Utopian throwing up the sponge: "I think much better to add little serpent-like wisdom to upright manhood and thus found ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... those days," says Mrs. Stowe, "was the Catechism. Sunday lessons were considered by the mother-in-law as inflexible duty, and the Catechism as the sine qua non. The other children memorized readily, and were brilliant reciters, but Henry, blushing, stammering, confused, and hopelessly miserable, stuck fast on some sand-bank of what is required or forbidden by this or that commandment, his mouth ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... it takes effect on a decently large scale and shrewdly within the flexibilities of the law or with the connivance of its officers. Governing international endeavours of this class there is no law so inflexible that it can not be conveniently made over to fit particular circumstances. And in the absence of law the felt need of a formal justification will necessarily appeal to the unformulated equities of the case, with some such outcome as alluded to above. All that, of course, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... boundary. An analysis of the voting in the House of Representatives reveals no clear-cut sectional divisions, though it forecasts a time when slavery might split parties along sectional lines. In New England and the Middle States public opinion had not yet crystallized into inflexible opposition to the spread of slavery; but the Northwest was distinctly in favor of a restriction upon Missouri. The Southwest and the South were a unit in desiring the admission of Missouri ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... feeding on beetles, larvae, roots, and even small snakes. The apar, commonly called mataco, is remarkable by having only three moveable bands; the rest of its tesselated covering being nearly inflexible. It has the power of rolling itself into a perfect sphere, like one kind of English woodlouse. In this state it is safe from the attack of dogs; for the dog not being able to take the whole in its ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... distinguish two very different domains. One of these is INSTINCT properly so called, the unconscious impulse that presides over the most wonderful part of what the creature achieves. Where experience and imitation are of absolutely no avail, instinct lays down its inflexible law. It is instinct and instinct alone that makes the mother build for a family which she will never see; that counsels the storing of provisions for the unknown offspring; that directs the sting towards the nerve-centres of the prey and skilfully paralyses it, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... things himself, or even know how much she trusted him; and Vandeloup knew that whatever he did those calm dark eyes were on him, and that the least slip or neglect on his part would bring Madame Midas to his side with her quiet voice and inflexible will to put him ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... greatest of these was the company formed by the Lebaudy Brothers, wealthy sugar manufacturers. Their model was semi-rigid, that is, provided with an inflexible keel or floor to the gas bag, which was cigar shaped. The most successful of the earlier ships was 190 feet long, with a car suspended by cables ten feet below the balloon and carrying the twin motors, together with passengers ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... generosity of your soul, you have not cast me by. You have endured a thousand wrongs for me. That is no merit of mine. But I still think of my father, whose commands I am defying and that against every convention and all laws. He is of inflexible character, and I fear that his wrath will grow double at the sight of me. Where, then, shall we two, floating with the current, come to our anchorage? How shall I ensure our happiness, when my father has broken with ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... incredulously, and replied, "You do not know the inflexible determination of my father on this point; neither can I conceive what documents you could place before him ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... not inconsistent with that reputation for inflexible honour which, in successive eras of his life, procured for the Duke of Wellington the confidence of the Indian government, of the British army, and ultimately of the whole English nation. It is taken from the excellent detailed ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... Miss Jones's bedroom, afforded greater opportunities for laughter and jokes without so much danger of being pounced upon. Her fish, however, refused to swallow the tempting bait, and Beatrice Elliot, whom she also sounded on the subject, was equally inflexible. ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... finally completed. The conquest of space went on, from moon ship to planet ship to star ship. But Earth became increasingly rigid in its institutions. A civilization more inflexible than anything produced by medieval Europe punished any opposition to existing customs, habits, beliefs. These breaches of the social contract were considered major crimes as serious as murder or arson. They were punished ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... the only way. I will plant certain inflexible prohibitions which will forever destroy your self-will in regard to certain courses of action—they will be ones which you might at some time feel to be wise, but which I know to be ultimately destructive. In return, I can give you a measure of sanity greater ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... agonised aspect, with handkerchiefs held convulsively before their mouths, were seen to rush wildly towards the dentist's door, then pause for a moment, stricken by a sudden terror, and anon feebly pull the handle of an inflexible bell. Cabs had been heard to approach that fatal door—generally on wet days; for there seems to be a kind of fitness in the choice of damp and dismal weather for the extraction of teeth. Elderly ladies ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... least equal, I should hope, to our wishes; but anything else which you may think mysterious about me I cannot unravel until you are indissolubly mine." It was a point of no slight difficulty; Emily entrusted its decision entirely to her mother. Her mother saw that the stranger was inflexible in his purpose, and she saw also that her child's happiness was inextricably linked with him. What could she do? It had been better perhaps they had never known him; but knowing him, and thinking of him as they did, there was but one ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... that time, throughout Christian Europe, unquestioned, and confirmed by prejudice and pride beyond all the power of argument or of religion to set them aside, or invalidate them. The law of chivalry, sterner and more inflexible than that Mosaic code requiring an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, which demanded a human life as the sacrifice for every rash word, for every wrongful action, was the law paramount of every civilized land in that day, and in France ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... Elizabeth remained inflexible, and, as Alexis yet persisted in his prayers, she earnestly and proudly said: "Alexis Razumovsky, I command you to remain here. You will obey the ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... endeavours to extinguish it, exposed his hands, in the first instance, to the operation of considerable heat; and he afterwards, for some time, remained without gloves, in the open air. When taken on board the ship, his hands presented a strange appearance. They were perfectly hard, inflexible, and colourless; possessing a degree of translucency, and exhibiting more the external character of pieces of sculptured marble, than of animated matter. They were immediately plunged into the cold bath, where they were continued more than two hours, before their flexibility could be restored. ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... was married to Mr. Cockburn, the son of Dr. Cockburn, an eminent and learned divine of Scotland, at first attached to the court of St. Germains, but obliged to quit it on account of his inflexible adherence to the Protestant religion; then for some time minister of the Episcopal church at Amsterdam, and at last collated to the rectory of Northaw in Middlesex, by Dr. Robinson bishop of London, at the recommendation of Queen Anne. Mr. Cockburn, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... God and His righteousness?" Laura Filbert's clear glance was disturbed by a ray of curiosity, but the inflexible quality of her tone ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... life, for he was truly the interpreter, who stood between God and her; she would have considered herself wicked if she had ever dared even to think him austere, though as certainly as he was an upright man, so surely was he hard, stern, and inflexible. But for three years the moan and the murmur had never been out of her heart; she had rebelled against her husband as against a tyrant, with a hidden, sullen rebellion, which tore up the old landmarks of wifely duty and affection, and poisoned the fountains whence gentlest ...
— Lizzie Leigh • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to be allowed to remain at home instead of attending the lecture, but on this point Mrs. Waltham was inflexible. The girl could not offer resolute opposition in a matter which only involved an hour or two's endurance. She sat in pale silence. Then her mother broke into tears, bewailed herself as a luckless being, entreated her daughter's ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... don't expect a preacher to know about stocks or a stockbroker to have a soul; but we think the woman who is at the head of a family is a rank failure unless she is a pretty good doctor and trained nurse and dressmaker and financier. She must be able to settle disputes among the children with the inflexible impartiality of a Supreme Justice; she must be a Spurgeon in expounding the Bible to simple souls and leading them to heaven; she must be a greater surgeon than Dr. Lorenz, for she must know how to kiss a hurt and make it well; she must be a Russell ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... there was dead silence. Roger sat leaning forward, his eyes not upon her, but upon the fire. In his white face there was no hint of weakness; there was, rather, pride, obstinacy, the ruggedness of inflexible purpose. ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... innovation as an attack upon their dearest interests, and resisted it with persecution, or turned away with disgust and scorn. There were persons both among the ecclesiastics and laymen, to whom this would not apply; but the inflexible opposition of the hierarchy, as a body, to all efforts for propagating the evangelical religion, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... most curious feature of this scenery. Their houses, rarely more than one story high, are walled, paved, and often roofed with the inflexible material which once was ruinous fire, and is now the servant of the men it threatened to destroy. The churches are such as might be raised in Hades to implacable Proserpine, such as one might dream of in a vision of the world turned into hell, such as Baudelaire ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... on this subject.... We consider it a matter of high moment, involving the most interesting and affecting consequences. Shall we, by lukewarmness or neglect, give the enemies of our institutions the triumph of reproaching us with indifference.... With a want of that virtue ... that inflexible spirit of perseverance, without which the tree we have nourished, and hoped to bring to maturity, may erect its barren and useless branches before us, a gloomy monument of our indolence? With what ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... I must write—my last sovereign has long since been transferred to the safe keeping of mine hostess, to whom I have the honor to be obliged. I just caught a glance of her inflexible countenance this morning in passing the parlour door; and methought I could perceive the demon aspect of suspicion again spreading his corrosive murky hue over her furrowed front. The enlivening appearance of my golden ambassador had for a few ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... resolved and steady to his Trust, Inflexible to Ill, and obstinately just, May the rude Rabble's Insolence despise, Their senseless Clamours and tumultuous Cries; The Tyrant's Fierceness he beguiles, And the stern Brow, and the harsh Voice defies, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... neither; fancy that you are the district judge, giving sentence on a knotty piece of law; show neither sentiment, pride, nor anger. Be quite cold, inflexible and determined; and, above all things, do not move from your seat; and I think you will find your lover will take his answer: but if he do not—repeat it all over again, with a little more emphasis, and rather slower ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... against it"; and that this power belongs to the executive, it being "impossible to foresee and so by laws to provide for all accidents and necessities that may concern the public, or make such laws as will do no harm if they are executed with inflexible rigor." Nor, continues Locke, is this "undoubted prerogative" ever questioned, "for the people are very seldom or never scrupulous or nice in the point" whilst the prerogative "is in any tolerable degree ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... understanding. What changes, therefore, experience and suffering had wrought in those early, untried speculations! The ideals remained, but they made for swords, not peace; the sweetness of the dream had become an inflexible law of conscience; the doctrine of a transcendent disdain of this world, accepted in solitude by the obscure youth brought up in a provincial town, had exacted its tax to the uttermost farthing from the man who struggled now with the rich and powerful ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... first perceived by Christopher Columbus, in that transcendent voyage of discovery which gave a new hemisphere to the industry and intelligence of civilized man;—an incident then so alarming to him and his company, that, but for the inflexible and persevering spirit of this intrepid and daring mariner, it would have sunk them into despair, and buried the New World for ages upon ages longer from the knowledge of the Old. Centuries have again ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... startling force. It came full of a world of suppressed feeling. Irony, bitterness, harsh, inflexible purpose. These things and others, which were beyond McDowell's estimation, rang in that sharp exclamation. Steve laughed, and even to the Superintendent there was something utterly hateful in the sound that ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... repeated the question twice, and threatened them with punishment; if they persisted, I ordered them to be at once punished: for I was persuaded whatever the nature of their opinions might be, a contumacious and inflexible obstinacy certainly deserved correction. There were others also brought before me possest with the same infatuation, but being Roman citizens I directed them to be ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... evening when they parted. His reply to her entreaty that he would come back to her had been exactly what she had feared—as gentle as he himself had been when they stood face to face in the old drawing-room at Brackenhill, and as inflexible. If she could forget him—if she could learn to care for Captain Fothergill or Walter Latimer—what a bright, easy, sunshiny life might yet be hers! No, ten thousand times, no! Better to suffer the weariness of dread and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Rome, and went to the village of Tibur near by. This caused great embarrassment: no religious services could be held, and scarce any state ceremony properly conducted. The senate thereupon sent an embassy to induce them to return,—in vain: the angry musicians were inflexible. The wily ambassadors then called the inhabitants of Tibur to their aid, and these pretended to give a great feast to welcome the flute-players. At this feast the musicians were all made very drunk; and, while asleep from the effects ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... come here to tell me at least for whom he made these ornaments, he would refuse to come, since he would probably fear it was some commission; and he never will make anything for me on any account. And yet he has, it seems, dropped something of his inflexible obstinacy some time ago, for I hear that he now labours more industriously than ever, and delivers up his work at once, though still not without much inward vexation and turning away of his face." De Scuderi, who was greatly concerned that the ornaments should, if it could possibly be managed, come ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... it is to be observed that regulations are a general guide to conduct, and though they mean what they say they are not utterly inflexible. One must not be like the half-wit described by Col. George F. Baltzell to his trainees during World War I. Joe had attached himself to the Confederate command of the Colonel's father, whose last chore before turning in was to post the boy. One night in a Virginia Tidewater operation, ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... Mr. Gladstone's reply was in fact an extremely simple and a highly honourable one. While carefully abstaining from laying down any theory of political affairs as under all circumstances inflexible and immutable, yet he thought that one who had borne such solemn testimony as he had borne in his book, to a particular view of a great question, ought not to make himself responsible for a material departure from it, without at least placing himself openly ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... object that there are certain patriarchal families whose legislation of love is inflexible in the matter of two beds and an alcove, and that, by this arrangement, they have been happy from generation to generation. But, the only answer that the author vouchsafes to this is that he knows a great many respectable people who pass their lives ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... world of inflexible compensations. Nothing is ever given away, but everything is bought and paid for. If, by exclusive and absolute surrender of ourselves to material pursuits, we materialize the mind, we lose that class ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... acuteness of casuistry. It is related, that he who devised the oath of abjuration, profligately boasted, that he had framed a test which should 'damn one half of the nation, and starve the other.' Upon minds not exalted to inflexible rectitude, or minds in which zeal for a party is predominant to excess, taking that oath against conviction may have been palliated under the plea of necessity, or ventured upon in heat, as upon the whole producing more good ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... in thought. She did not waste time in regrets, in fruitless lamentations. She knew that life was inflexible and that all the arguments in the world will not arrest the cruel logic of its inevitable progress. She did not ask herself how that man had succeeded in deceiving her so long—how he could have sacrificed the honor and happiness of his family for a mere caprice. ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... take this umbrella wherewith the head may be protected and my rays warded off. This pair of sandals is made of leather for the protection of the feet. From this day forth the gift of these articles in all religious rites shall be established as an inflexible usage!'" ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Sir. Nothing is good but what is consistent with truth or probability, which this is not. Juvenal, indeed, gives us a noble picture of inflexible virtue:— ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... of these air raids is an inflexible determination of the British people rather to die in death grips with German militarism than to live and let it survive. The best chance for the aircraft was at the beginning of the war, when a surprise development might have had astounding results. That chance ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... objected that this proposed method of analysis assumes that religions begin and develop under the operation of inflexible laws. The soul is shackled by no fatalism. Formative influences there are, deep seated, far reaching, escaped by few, but like those which of yore astrologers imputed to the stars, they potently incline, they do not coerce. Language, pursuits, habits, geographical position, and those subtle mental ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... only child takes after me, not her, in face and carriage, in all things else she resembles my Saint. She is as merry, as light-hearted, as pure and good, as she was. She has the same humble, pious Faith; the same strong, inflexible will of abiding by Right; the same hearty, outspoken hatred of Wrong, abhorrence of Wrong. She has the same patience, cheerfulness, and obedience in her behaviour to those who are set in authority over her; and if I am by times angered, or peevish, or moody, she bears with my infirmities ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... hanged himself. With difficulty, but with inflexible resolution, he had accomplished his purpose by fastening the rope round his neck and lifting his legs off the ground, so that he was actually found ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... resolv'd and steady to his trust, Inflexible to ill, and obstinately just, May the rude rabble's insolence despise, Their senseless clamours, and tumultuous cries; The tyrant's fierceness he beguiles, And the stern brow, and the harsh voice defies, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... the unhappy passion at first confided to Pen became notorious and ridiculous to the town, was carried to the ears of his weak and fond mother, and finally brought under the cognizance of the bald-headed and inflexible Foker senior. ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... This was a man, who, under his pleasant exterior of a landed gentleman, was rigid and inflexible. He had already borne a great deal, remember; but this was disgrace, an indelible stain upon a stainless name. Therefore this father, who was at the same time a just and good man, disinherited his favorite child and eldest son. House, slaves, lands, money, the great ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... wiry, thin, and precise, his manner matched his appearance. He had martinet written on every square foot of his figure. His moustache was fiercely waxed, his shirt-collar inflexible, his backbone stiff, while his shoulder-blades met flat and even behind. He held his chin a little up in the air, and his walk was less a march than ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... slave sped upon the errand, David laid a hand on Kaid's arm, and whispered to him earnestly. Kaid's savage frown cleared away, and his rage calmed down; but an inflexible look came into his face, a look which petrified the ruined Achmet ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that so much distinction, talent, and grandeur of soul could have sprung from all the vices, from the cruelty and corruption which one would fain attribute now to the Southern people? The laws of inflexible logic refute these false imputations. And—strange coincidence—while Southern men presided over the destinies of the Union, its gigantic prosperity was the astonishment of the world. In the hands of Northern men, that edifice, raised with so much care and labor by their predecessors, comes ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... reverence for his work, the Jews, doubtless on account of my Greek predilections, antagonistic to Judaic asceticism. My love for Hellas has since declined. Now I understand that the Greeks were only beautiful youths, while the Jews have always been men, powerful, inflexible men, not only in early times, to-day, too, in spite of eighteen hundred years of persecution and misery. I have learnt to appreciate them, and were pride of birth not absurd in a champion of the revolution ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... was illy received by the old and tried friends of Crawford throughout the State. They knew him. His stern, inflexible character and indomitable will were sure to rally about him a party; and his personal bravery and devotion to his friends would greatly aid in keeping and inspiring these. His position now was one of strength, with the capacity to increase it, and the material was abundant; yet there were formidable ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... it; for his word was a sufficient guarantee that he would; his integrity was consequently respected, and his resolution, when he expressed it, was seldom disputed by his companions, who knew that in general it was inflexible. After what we have said, it is scarcely necessary to add that he was ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... but she threw a light pack upon her back and went on into the forest. She had made her decision, and he knew she would adhere to it with the inflexible obstinacy of ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... bloodshot, started from their sockets. His whole frame twitched, and his fingers writhed. But he was in the presence of a man infinitely his superior. Two eyes, like those of a snake, burned two holes through him. An overmastering, inflexible presence confronted one weak and passionate. The ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... crystal drops, withering the palms; and following her stern beckon, the thirsty pilgrim re-trod the sands of surrender, more intolerable than before, because the oasis was still in sight. Duty! Rugged incorruptible Spartan dame, whose inflexible mandate is ever: "With your shield, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... other idolatry, and upon the attitude of mind of the hero-worshipper as essentially immoral; who think it is better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains; who look upon the observance of inflexible justice as between man and man as of far greater importance than even the preservation of social order, will believe that Mr. Eyre has committed one of the greatest crimes of which a person in authority can be guilty, and will strain every nerve to obtain a declaration that their belief ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... young man was inflexible, Grey returned grimly to the room, but not until he had noticed, with some surprise, that Jim, immediately on leaving the house, darted off at a quick run through the rain and darkness. Preoccupied with this, and perhaps still ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... pleasanter to ride about with pretty girls than to sit alone and draw a picture of their house. I began to feel sorry for my companion: the thought of our riding gaily off, and leaving him at work, made him seem pathetic. My appeals, however, made no impression upon his inflexible sense of duty, and I soon ceased trying to persuade him to join us, and began to speculate, instead, as to whether all four sisters would accompany me, or whether only two or three of them ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... testimony. When, however, I pass from facts to theories, and am asked to account for those facts, then I hesitate. There are some here, I know, who will say that the spiritualist like the lady who hesitates is lost—who think me as heterodox for doing so, as the inflexible old ladies and the omniscient apothecaries did on account of my even deigning to look into the evidence of such phenomena. I feel really that I have set myself up like an animated ninepin to be knocked ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... patriotic man was known to his former opponents, English and Irish, they literally rushed to his relief, for all believed him to be an honest man and a pure patriot. Among the first in the work of kindness was Lord Brougham, an inflexible and terrible opponent. May the generosity of the deed be ever recorded to his honour! Colonel Perceval, one of the chief ringleaders of the Irish Orangemen was another; he sought the bedside of the sufferer, and consoled his closing hours. Proffers of aid on a large scale ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... th' coort, bendin' a stern, inflexible look on th' pris'ner. 'This is a coort iv justice. We ar-re disposed f'r to grant ivry indulgence; but, if outsiders persist in intherferin' with these proceedin's,' he says, 'we'll expel thim fr'm th' r-room. What does th' prisoner think ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... Newell's conditions were inflexible. He would "see the thing through" for his daughter's sake; but he stipulated that in the meantime there should be no meetings or farther communications of any kind. He agreed to be ready when Garnett called for him, at the appointed hour ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... quick-witted American began to realise that there was far more in the case than, at a first glance, met the eye; it quickly resolved itself, in fact, into a struggle between the priesthood and the laity; and it needed but a single glance at the fanatical high priest's stern, inflexible expression to assure oneself that he was not at all the sort of person to yield without a struggle. To add to the difficulty, Earle had no means of knowing what sort of a backing the priests would be likely to have, should the struggle for supremacy become an ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... on the quarter deck, utter quietly the words: "Man the windlass," and that the schooner springing into life would run a hundred miles out to sea before sunrise, deceived his struggling will. Nothing easier! Yet, in the end, this young man, almost ill-famed for his ruthless daring, the inflexible leader of two tragically successful expeditions, shrank from that act of savage energy, and began, instead, ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... affairs was very unusual, and Nick chafed under it. It indicated that he was up against men as good as himself, and his vain work of the past ten days served only to aggravate him, and embitter his grim and inflexible determination to unearth ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... during the last ten days inside the straits, a general attack was delivered by the British and French fleets on Thursday morning upon the fortresses at the Narrows. At 10:45 A.M. the Queen Elizabeth, Inflexible, Agamemnon, and Lord Nelson bombarded forts J, L, T, U and V, while the Triumph and Prince George fired at batteries F, E and H. A heavy fire was opened on the ships from howitzers and ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... phrase, which bound up his friend with his good fortune, Pecuchet had found quite natural. For the union of these two men was absolute and profound. But, as he did not wish to live at Bouvard's expense, he would not go before he got his retiring pension. Two years more; no matter! He remained inflexible, and ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... of taking wholesome exercise in the open air. This, however, he did not do. A few days after this, my other clerks being absent, and being in a great hurry to dispatch certain letters by the mail, I thought that, having nothing else earthly to do, Bartleby would surely be less inflexible than usual, and carry these letters to the post-office. But he blankly declined. So, much to my ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... portrait of his wife, now the Marquise de Noriolis, but once Fanny Lear the adventuress—a woman who has youth, beauty, wealth, everything before her, if it were not for the shame which is behind her: gay and witty, and even good-humored, she is inflexible when she is determined; hers is a velvet manner and an iron will. The name of Fanny Lear may sound familiar to some readers because it was given to an American adventuress in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... obdurate Eo, itum go exit, initial Error, erratum wander erroneous, aberration Facio, feci, factum make, do manufacture, affect, sufficient, verify Fero, latum carry transfer, relate Fido trust, believe confide, perfidious Finis end confine, infinity Flecto, flexum bend reflection, inflexible Fluo, fluxum flow influence, reflux Fortis strong fortress, comfort Frango, fractum break infringe, refraction *Frater brother fraternity, fratricide Fugio, fugitum flee centrifugal, fugitive Fundo, fusum pour refund, profuse, fusion Gero, gestum carry belligerent, gesture, digestion ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... dangerous entrance to the little bay bears obliquely to the right with a serpentine movement, and there encounters a mountain rising some twenty-five hundred feet above sea-level, the base of which is a vertical palisade of solid rock more than a mile and a half long, the inflexible granite nowhere yielding to clefts or undulations until it reaches a height of two hundred feet above the water. Rushing violently in, the sea is driven back with equal violence by the inert force of the mountain ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... of age, Mademoiselle de Champignelles gave promise of what she would ultimately become. It was easy to see in her a living piety, an unalterable good sense, an inflexible uprightness, and one of those souls which never detach themselves from an affection under any compulsion. The old father, enriched by his extortions in the army, recognized in this charming girl ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... used by carpenters for a brace or stay. Stower, in Bailey's Dictionary, is a stake; Halliwell spells it stoure, and says it is still in use. Forby connects the Norfolk word stour, stiff, inflexible, applied to standing corn, with this word, which he says is Lowland Scotch, and derives them both from Sui.-G. stoer, stipes. A yeather or yadder seems to be a rod to wattle the stakes with. In Norfolk, wattling a live fence ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... resolution. The two men also differed as much in mind as in appearance. Curtis stood for all the force and feeling that make for liberal progressive principles; Conkling, the product of a war age, of masterly audacity and inflexible determination, represented the conservative impulse, with a cynical indifference to ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... it being specially ordered that the fire should be lowered, in order to prolong their agony. But they died as conquerors. Their constancy was unshaken, their peace unclouded. Their persecutors, powerless to move their inflexible firmness, felt themselves defeated. "The scaffolds were distributed over all the quarters of Paris, and the burnings followed on successive days, the design being to spread the terror of heresy by spreading the executions. The advantage, however, in the end, remained with the gospel. ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... the observance of the Mosaic ritual,—a zeal which had been sharpened in the persecutions and sorrows of exile. The era of the "hagiocracy," of the supreme influence of the priesthood and the rigid adherence to the law, with an inflexible hostility to heathen customs, ensued. The spirit of which prophecy had been the stimulant, and partially the fruit, declined. The political independence of the land was gone for ever. The day of freedom under the Maccabees, after the insurrection ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... novel, or in a comic opera. The gentleman with a helmet there, who regards us so benignly, will presently earn a shilling by calling me a hansom. Yet in effect he does me a far greater service. He stands for a multitude of cold Anglo-Saxon laws, adamant, incorruptible, inflexible—as certain as the laws of Nature herself. I am quite aware that by this time I ought to be lying in a dark cellar with a gag in my mouth, or perhaps in the river with a dagger in my chest. ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... you didn't come home earlier, Ralph," she said. "I am quite ashamed of my inconsistency. It's nice to think oneself inflexible, isn't it? And then it's humiliating to resolve on a certain course ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... impressions of distant lands to Mrs. Penniman, upon whom he contented himself with bestowing a memento of his enviable experience, in the shape of a velvet gown. But he conversed with her at some length about matters nearer home, and lost no time in assuring her that he was still an inflexible father. ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... and poetic kind, one cannot but observe, for a philosopher of so strictly a logical turn of mind, one whose thoughts were running on abstractions so entirely, to construct; his continued preference for these new scholastic terms, and his inflexible adherence to a most profoundly erudite mode of expression whenever he approaches 'the part operative' of his work, is indeed calculated to awe and keep at a distance minds not yet prepared to grapple formally with those ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Empire, that he might be allowed to go even as a common volunteer, and rejoin his former comrades with his knapsack on his shoulder; but these petitions were refused, the will of the Emperor was inflexible, and to each new application he only replied, "Let him wait." The inhabitants of Besancon, who considered Colonel Delelee as their fellow-citizen, interested themselves warmly in the unmerited misfortunes of this brave officer; and when an occasion presented itself ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... rappings did actually cease at school. As her father was a man well-to-do in circumstances and annoyed by the occurrence, he silenced the gossip about the matter as well as he could, and gave an inflexible denial to the request for a seance which came from friends who by chance heard of it. My brother Paul, who was a fellow-foreman in the iron works, got permission, however, for a seance at which he and I only were to be present with the girl. The phenomena were so strange that I got permission ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... orgy of debauched democracy that succeeded the initial stages of the revolution, should soon split. For a long time the Jacobins had seemed to shrink from a contest with him, probably because they hoped to win him over to their excesses. Finding him inflexible, when at last they controlled the government, they vowed his destruction, and he was deprived of his command. They proposed that a price should be set upon his head and that "chaque citoyen put courir sus"—that is to say, that any one ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... and her niece are welcome," and Lady Warner made a deep curtsy, not like one of Lady Fareham's sinking curtseys, as of one near swooning in an ecstasy of politeness, but dignified and inflexible, straight down ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... one of my guns," he announced ironically. "He'd've got the contents of the other, only he chose to play the fool and into my hands. Now I guess you understand,"—and turning his head he fixed her with an inflexible glare, chill and heartless as steel,—"that one squeal out of you will be the last. Oh, I've got no scruples; arrest to me means a living death. I'll take a shorter course, by preference, and—I'll take you with ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... Francis knew how to show an inflexible severity toward the idle; he even went so far as to dismiss a friar who refused to work.[5] Nothing in this matter better shows the intentions of the Poverello than the life of Brother Egidio, one of his dearest companions, ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... cold, to fatigue, to the insidious whispering of mere flesh. He was a man without temptation, with an untroubled allegiance to a duty that involved an endless, exacting labor; and for those reasons he was austere, withdrawn from the community of more fragile and sympathetic natures. At times his inflexible integrity oppressed John Woolfolk. Halvard, he thought, was a difficult man to ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... smile still curved the statue's lips, in terrible contrast to the inflexible purpose of ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... the departure of her unwelcome visitor, enduring the dust that rose from his horse's hoofs with the patience of inflexible determination. Then, when she had seen him go and the swirling dust had begun to settle again, she turned inwards and proceeded to wash the glass that the Boer had used with an expression ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... less; if these rates are not paid the transportation is refused. And as in these times transportation is necessary in the world's intercourse, the men who control it have the power to stand as an inflexible barrier between individuals, groups of individuals, nations and international peoples. The very agencies which should under a rational form of civilization be devoted to promoting the interests of mankind, are used as their capricious self-interest incline them ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... appeared at first sight to be worthy of praise, on a closer inspection it was found to be something nearer akin to vice than to virtue. He was liberal, it is true, but without thought, with no measure and no discrimination. He was sometimes inflexible in will; but this was through obstinacy rather than a constant mind; and what his flatterers called goodness deserved far more the name of insensibility to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... particulars respecting the Warrington brank. "Hanging up in our museum," says Mr. Beamont, "may be seen a representation of a withered female face wearing the brank or scold's bridle; one of which instruments, as inflexible as iron and ingenuity can make it, for keeping an unruly tongue quiet by mechanical means, hangs up beside it; and almost within the time of living memory, Cicily Pewsill, an inmate of the workhouse, and a notorious scold, was seen wearing this disagreeable ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... splendid gardens. Here these bold speculators cast off the burden of their counting-rooms and the atmosphere of their city houses, which are built closely together without open spaces, often without court-yards,—a vice of construction with the increasing population of Havre, the inflexible line of the fortifications, and the enlargement of the docks has forced upon them. The result is, weariness of heart in Havre, cheerfulness and joy at Ingouville. The law of social development has forced up the suburb of Graville like a ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... whatever in the inflexible purpose, which it was quite terrific even to me to contemplate, and from the power of which I had always felt convinced it was impossible for this ...
— Hunted Down • Charles Dickens
... occupied, haunted by the appealing face he had himself seen fade away with him when there was no other watcher by the bed, arose before his mind. Its close air was secret. The gloom, and must, and dust of the whole tenement, were secret. At the heart of it his mother presided, inflexible of face, indomitable of will, firmly holding all the secrets of her own and his father's life, and austerely opposing herself, front to front, to the great ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... the slightest notice of the chorus of protestations. She merely turned away with such an air of inflexible determination that even the ardent Lily refrained from pressing her ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... that behind the German princes and princelings and Junkers there is the resolve of a united people. Behind the Prussian machine there is the driving power of tremendous spiritual and moral forces, of an inflexible purpose, of a compelling idealism, of a mystical creed accepted with more than Mohammedan fanaticism. It is that national purpose, it is those spiritual forces, which explain the unconquerable pride of the German people, as evil and as lofty as the pride of Satan in "Paradise Lost." It is these ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... god in the latest temple was of the same form as when represented on monuments of the earliest date; and King Menes would have recognized Amun, or Osiris, in a Ptolemaic or a Roman sanctuary. In sacred subjects the law was inflexible, and religion, which has frequently done so much for the development and direction of taste in sculpture, had the effect of fettering the genius of Egyptian artists. No improvements, resulting from experience and observation, were admitted in the mode of drawing the human ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... which she had under the left breast, and which was fringed with a few fair hairs that shone like gold. So beautiful was she that he was tempted at the hazard of his life to take his place by her side in the bed; but, remembering what he had heard of her inflexible obduracy in such affairs, he did not venture; but quietly replaced the bedclothes; and having passed the best part of the night very much at his ease in her room, he took from one of the lady's boxes a purse, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... stir up curiosity in other men. I am very secret, and I have less difficulty than most men in holding my tongue as to what is told me in confidence. I am most particular as to my word, and I would never fail, whatever might be the consequence, to do what I had promised; and I have made this an inflexible law during the ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... some extent account for the excess of cruelty which blind frenzy inflicted on the inflexible martyr to his faith, it is certainly more difficult to explain the severity exercised upon the more pliable, whom the arguments of ghostly advisers, or the terrors of the Place de Greve, had induced to recant. Generally the judge did nothing more in their behalf ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... afterwards consulted whether means might not be found to engage the commander of the Italian armies in the royal interest. "It will be but lost time to attempt it," said Pichegru. "I knew him in his youth—his character is inflexible—he has taken his side, and he will ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... the Union during the war. Moreover, he always emphatically affirmed, in public as well as private utterance, that no plan of reconstruction he had ever put forth was meant to be "exclusive and inflexible," but might be ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... be so happy as to cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of all ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... a short little lady, with a compact, inflexible figure that was, so to speak, square, with rounded-off corners—square, and solid, and heavy. She had eyes that were as black and round and bright as a sparrow's, a full, red mouth, and graying hair, abundant and crinkly, which stood out around her countenance ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... passionate entreaties to seek the hand of Mireio for him, comes upon this evening scene. The interview of the two old men is like a Greek play; their wisdom and experience are uttered in stately, sententious language, and many a proverb falls from their lips. Ramoun has inflexible ideas as to parental authority: "A father is a father, his will must be done. The herd that leads the herdsman, sooner or later, is crunched in the jaws of the wolf. If a son resisted his father in our day, the father would have slain him perhaps! Therefore the ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... character in that respect had reached my ears even among the thick-lipped inhabitants of Central Africa." I own I did wonder whether this could be true. "'Justum et tenacem propositi virum!' Nothing can turn him from his purpose, or induce him to change his inflexible will. You know him, and I know him, and he is well known throughout England. Persuasion can never touch him; fear has no power over him. He, as one unit, is strong against a million. He is invincible, ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... At least they will be my standard of conduct in the path before me. I then declared that if the desire of those of my countrymen who were favorable to my election was gratified "I must go into the Presidential chair the inflexible and uncompromising opponent of every attempt on the part of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia against the wishes of the slaveholding States, and also with a determination equally decided to resist ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... Guernsey ranks. Major Davey moved his party over an area—at about 11 in the morning of a warm, sunny Sunday—coming in for a spell of shelling extraordinary in intensity. A labour unit retired because of the exigencies of the precarious situation. Inflexible, the Normans carried ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... manner cloaked a quibbling mind, for he was in truth a hard judicial wrangler. But if he boldly contested the rights of others, he certainly yielded none of his own; he attacked his adversary at the right moment, and wearied him out with his inflexible persistency. His merits were those of the Scapins of ancient comedy; he had their fertility of resource, their cleverness in skirting evil, their itching to lay hold of all that was good to keep. In short, he applied to ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... crushing, annihilating retort, the grand and solemn eloquence, and the devout appeals, which render immortal the controversial works of Milton. But he, too, has left his foot-prints on his age; he, too, has written for posterity that which they "will not willingly let die." As one of the inflexible defenders of English liberty, sowers of the seed, the fruits of which we are now reaping, he has a higher claim on the kind regards of this generation than his merits as a poet, by ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... The equally inflexible demands of Variety are satisfied by presenting this self-same leading thought in ever new and changing aspects,—not by exchanging the thought itself for a new one at each successive angle. This latter faulty process would naturally ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... of Gyges was cold, soft, and small; nevertheless those slender fingers clasped it with a bruising force, as the fingers of some statue of brass animated by a prodigy would have done. The rigidity of an inflexible will betrayed itself in that ever-equal pressure as of a vice—a pressure which no hesitation of head or heart came to vary. Gyges, conquered, subjugated, crushed, yielded to that imperious traction, as though he were borne along by ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... if I must make you. I have been very patient—for me," he added, with an odd smile flitting across his face, "but my patience is exhausted. Choose quickly." Insensibly he drew her closer to him till his arm felt like an inflexible steel band about her, and she thought with a shudder of the coils of a great serpent closing round its victim. She made a final effort to conquer herself, but between her and the broad chest so close to her she seemed to see a horse's head held low in agony, blood and foam dripping from his ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... security in all who heard it. The countenance of the captain, however, was that which induced men to accord to him a position of superiority in whatever sphere of action he chanced to move. It was not so much a handsome as a manly and singularly grave face, in every line of which was written inflexible determination. His hair was short, black, and curly. A small moustache darkened his upper lip, but the rest of his face was closely shaven, so that his large chin and iron jaw were fully displayed. His eyes were of that indescribable blue colour which can exhibit ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... Without looking up, however, she could tell presently that the letter had been read through. Such being the case, and no conversation coming of it, her curiosity was violent. Her aunt's face, too, was an index of something extraordinary. That inflexible woman, instead of alluding to the letter in any way, folded it up, and renewed her dictation. It became a contest between them which should show her human nature first. Mrs. Mel had to repress what she knew; Mrs. Fiske ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the honour to inform you. A vizard is a contrivance for concealment, whether in silk and pasteboard or in an inflexible visage—whether in a woman who wants to disguise her features, or in a man who wants to hide his heart—whether in a masquerader or an assassin. For example, when I hear a hypocrite talk of his honesty, an intriguer of his conscience, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... Tarquin would give up his throne, put an end to the war, and only ask for his own property and that of his relatives and friends, upon which to live in exile. Many were inclined to agree to this, and amongst them Collatinus, when Brutus, an inflexible and harsh-tempered man, rushed into the Forum, calling out that his colleague was a traitor, who wished to furnish the tyrant with the means of continuing the war and recovering his throne, when he ought rather to grudge him ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... other reply than that of taking the suspicious Benedick in his arms, and throwing him headlong out of the window. Luckily he fell upon a dunghill! In the year 1789, upon a clergyman's complaining to him of the inflexible determination of a great lord to hunt upon his grounds—"Mettez-lui une messe dans le ventre"—repiled [Transcriber's Note: replied] Rive. The clergyman expressing his ignorance of the nature of the advice given, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the moonlight to-night ... shall we?" whispered Gaga. Sally nodded, making her voice quaver by the motion. Gaga could not see her face; but Sally knew that even if he had done so he would have been quite unable to read her thoughts, which were dry and inflexible. He remained by her side until she had finished the song, and then fiercely pressed her head back until he was able by stooping to kiss her lips from above. His hand was under her chin. He kissed her many times, oppressively—little ravenous pecks that were febrile ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... the steps and stood with his sunny smile upon his face and his sombrero brim trailing the dust. It seemed to Valencia that the don was displeased; he read it in the set of his head, in the hardness that was in his glance, in a certain inflexible quality of ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... Pere inflexible et jaloux, Votre Fils est mort pour nous! Aussi, je reste envers Vous Si bien sans rancune, Que je voudrais, sans facon, Faire, au seuil de ma prison, Quelque petite oraison ... ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... germ, under latent forms which the magic of the calculus converts into explicit forms. The gross value which our mind confided to the equation it returns to us, without loss or gain, in coins stamped with every sort of effigy. And here precisely is that which constitutes the inflexible rigour of the calculus, the luminous certainty before which every cultivated mind is forced to bow. Algebra is the oracle of the absolute truth, because it reveals nothing but what the mind had hidden in it under an amalgam of symbols. We ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... simple task; but to find himself in a constant state of antagonism to a powerful, active, and vindictive majority in a debating body, constituted of such material as then made up the House of Representatives, wore hardly even upon the iron temper and inflexible disposition of Mr. Adams. "The most insignificant error of conduct in me at this time," he writes in April, 1837, "would be my irredeemable ruin in this world; and both the ruling political parties ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... "and the one universally considered most valuable will be adopted; and the literature of all other nations being translated into it, they will gradually drop all other tongues. Brother Stiles thinks it will be the Hebrew. I am not clear on that point. The Hebrew seems to me too inflexible, and not sufficiently copious. I do not think," he added, after some consideration, "that it will be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... that the author had before him in the conception of NOTRE DAME DE PARIS was (he tells us) to "denounce" the external fatality that hangs over men in the form of foolish and inflexible superstition. To speak plainly, this moral purpose seems to have mighty little to do with the artistic conception; moreover it is very questionably handled, while the artistic conception is developed with the most consummate success. Old Paris lives for us with newness of life: we have ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the great Law often enough;—have you ever thought enough of them to know the difference between these two appointed means of Distress? The first, the Thorn, is the type of distress caused by crime, changing the soft and breathing leaf into inflexible and wounding stubbornness. The second is the distress appointed to be the means and herald of good,—Thou shalt see the stubborn thistle bursting, into glossy purple, which outredden, all ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... her favours. Barraclough spoke French very indifferently—as indifferently, indeed, as Mademoiselle spoke English, but that did not prevent them from getting on very well together. As I have explained, Barraclough was a tall, handsome fellow, lean and inflexible of face, with the characteristic qualities of his race. His eyes admired the lady profoundly, and he endeavoured to keep pace with her wits, a task rendered difficult by the breaches in two languages. This vivacity was crowned by exhibitions of ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... till mid-day, for his mother would not have him wakened. Mariotte served the spoiled child's breakfast in his bed. The inflexible and semi-conventual rules which regulated the hours for meals yielded to the caprices of the chevalier. If it became desirable to extract from Mademoiselle du Guenic her array of keys in order to obtain some necessary ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... house, after sending his secretary to the commissary of police of the section. In the meantime, both the police agents and the girl entreated him to let them out, as the whole was merely a badinage; but he remained inflexible, and they were all three carried by the real police ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... halls and school-houses, the Sunday meetings at the gates of the chapels were still more arduous. On each Sunday, during the period between the death of Daniel Prendergast and the election of his successor, did young Mr. Coppinger, with chosen members of his "Commy-tee"—he had learnt to accept the inflexible local pronunciation—splash from chapel to chapel, to meet the congregations, and to shout platitudes to them. Larry began to feel that no conviction—however fervently held—could survive the ordeal of being slowly yelled to a bored crowd from the front seat of a motor car. He ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... least of the evidences on which their creed is based. Facts and testimony are not, except in very rare instances, the ground-work of faith. It is an imperative law of God's Economy, unyielding and inflexible as Himself, that man shall accept without question the belief of those among whom he is born and reared; the faith so made a part of his nature resists all evidence to the contrary; and he will disbelieve even the evidence of his own senses, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... and defense; if a spirit of equity and humanity toward the aboriginal nations of America, and a disposition to meliorate their condition by inclining them to be more friendly to us, and our citizens to be more friendly to them; if an inflexible determination to maintain peace and inviolable faith with all nations, and that system of neutrality and impartiality among the belligerent powers of Europe which has been adopted by this Government and so solemnly sanctioned by both Houses of Congress ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... with the recollection of the absurd and humiliating circumstances of personal degradation,[A] to which their pride and folly had subjected him, while they professed to espouse his cause. As a man of pleasure, he hated their stern and inflexible rigour, which stigmatised follies even more deeply than crimes; and he whispered to his confidents, that "presbytery was no religion for a gentleman." It is not, therefore, wonderful, that, in the first year of his restoration, he formally reestablished ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... propositions which were made to you on my part by the Dean of Hereford, might have seemed more satisfactory in your eyes." Then, regaining his native confidence, he proceeded with more assurance in speech and manner; for the cold inflexible looks of the Archbishop irritated him. "If these proposals can be amended, my lord, let me know in what points, and, if possible, your pleasure shall be done, even if it should prove somewhat unreasonable. I would have peace, my lord, with Holy Church, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... sums, like old Marlowe's, gone like his, and ruin would overtake half a dozen poor families, though the bulk of the loss would fall upon his senior partner, who was a hard man, of unbending sternness and integrity. If old Marlowe proved a man of the same inflexible ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... rebellion were ruthlessly profaned and dissipated. I knew that there was much selfishness, peculation, and "Hessianism" in the Federal lines, but I had imagined a lofty patriotism, a dignified purpose, and an inflexible love of personal liberty among the Confederates. Yet here were men who knew little of the principles for which they staked their lives;—who enlisted from the commonest motives of convenience, whim, pelf, adventure, and foray; and who repented, after their first misfortune, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... they are the same in substance; the love of present or future pleasure, of action, reputation, money, power; selfishness, but selfishness distinguished by a superficial external propriety, and gilded over with the splendour of military honour, of courage inflexible, yet light, cool and unassuming. These are not imaginary heroes, but genuine hired men of war: we do not love them; yet there is a pomp about their operations, which agreeably fills up the scene. This din ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... first in the Peter and Paul fortress and then in the Schluesselburg. There be suffered from scurvy and all his teeth fell out. His health gave way completely, and he found almost all food impossible to assimilate. "But, if his body became enfeebled, his spirit remained inflexible. He feared one thing above all. It was to find himself some day led, by the debilitating action of prison, to the condition of degradation of which Silvio Pellico offers a well-known type. He feared that he might cease to hate, that he might feel ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... was made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half-maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter |
