"Insolent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... England was advantageously distinguished from most of the neighbouring countries. A: peculiarity equally important, though less noticed, was the relation in which the nobility stood here to the commonalty. There was a strong hereditary aristocracy: but it was of all hereditary aristocracies the least insolent and exclusive. It had none of the invidious character of a caste. It was constantly receiving members from the people, and constantly sending down members to mingle with the people. Any gentleman might become a peer. The younger son of a peer was but a gentleman. Grandsons of peers yielded precedence ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... spell of Africa that grip men even in sleep. The curt engine blasts became in my dreams the panting of enormous beasts that fought. A dream-continent waged war on itself, and bled. I saw the caravans go, thousands long, the horsed and white-robed Arab in the lead—the paid, fat, insolent askaris, flattering and flogging—slaves burdened with ivory and other, naked, new ones, two in a yoke, shivering under the askari's lash, the very last dogged by vultures and hyenas, lean as they, ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... when the cardinals began to look with dismay and bitter repentance on their own work. "In Urban VI," said a writer of these times (on the side of Urban as rightful pontiff), "was verified the proverb—None is so insolent as a low man suddenly raised to power." The high-born, haughty, luxurious prelates, both French and Italian, found that they had set over themselves a master resolved not only to redress the flagrant and inveterate abuses of the college and of the hierarchy, but also to force on his reforms ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Germany, And why? because thou hadst existed only For the Emperor. To the Emperor alone 140 Clung Friedland in that storm which gathered round him At Regenspurg in the Diet—and he dropped thee! He let thee fall! He let thee fall a victim To the Bavarian, to that insolent! Deposed, stript bare of all thy dignity 145 And power, amid the taunting of thy foes, Thou wert let drop into obscurity.— Say not, the restoration of thy honour Hath made atonement for that first injustice. No honest good-will was it that replaced thee, 150 The law of hard necessity ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... dusk, I sat on the sofa in a state of pleasure, smelling my fingers. Tom began to howl, she came down and took him up to pacify him, I followed her down to the kitchen, she called me an insolent boy (an awful taunt to me then), threatened to tell my mother, to give notice and leave, and left the kitchen, followed by me about the ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... never re-establish myself,' said Siegmund as he closed behind him the dining-room door and went upstairs in the dark. 'I am a family criminal. Beatrice might come round, but the children's insolent judgement is too much. And I am like a dog that creeps round the house from which it escaped with joy. I have nowhere else to go. Why did I come back? But I am sleepy. I ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... somehow. "That's nobody's business," she snapped at once, with a sort of insolent defiance. "He was my benefactor; he took me when I hadn't a shoe to my foot, when my family had turned me out." The President reminded her, though very politely, that she must answer the questions directly, without going off into irrelevant ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... pressure on Germany and Austria, then he merely confirms what this country has hitherto believed—Sir Edward Grey acted rightly. Where else should he have exerted pressure except in the quarter from whence a provocative, insolent challenge ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... indignation, and resolved to revenge the injury in a more cool and contemptuous manner. Thus determined, he set on foot an inquiry into the particulars of Jumble's parentage and education. He learnt that the father of this insolent tutor was a brick-layer, that his mother sold pies, and that the son, in different periods of his youth, had amused himself in both occupations, before he converted his views to the study of learning. Fraught with this intelligence, he composed the following ballad in doggerel rhymes; ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... sensible, really loving people devise some way of making most tasks less repulsive, of lessening the burdens of those tasks that couldn't be anything but repulsive? Was this stupid system, so cruel, so crushing, and producing at the top such absurd results as flashy, insolent autos and silly palaces and overfed, overdressed women, and dogs in jeweled collars, and babies of wealth brought up by low menials—was this system ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... lady will forget all about this wedding by to- morrow," thought the steward; "and here am I worrying myself for nothing! As for that insolent fellow, we must tie him down if it comes to that, we must let the police know . . . Ustinya Fyedorovna!" he shouted in a loud voice to his wife, "heat the samovar, my good soul . . ." All that day Tatiana hardly went out of the laundry. At first she had started crying, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... nothing of courtesans when I heard of Aspasia, who sat on the knees of Alcibiades while discussing philosophy with Socrates. I expected to find something bold and insolent, but gay, free, and vivacious, something with the sparkle of champagne; I found a yawning mouth, a fixed eye, ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... summons, called a meeting on their own account and passed a resolution, signed by seventy-one of their people, which they forwarded to the Council. In this document they offered to take the oath on the conditions offered by Wroth. This the Council considered 'insolent and defiant,' and ordered the arrest of the deputies. On September 16 Charles Landry, Guillaume Bourgois, Abraham Bourg, and Francois Richard were brought before the Council, and, on refusing to take the oath except on the terms ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... Beauchamp, while Mr. Tuckham led Miss Halkett over the garden. Cecilia considered that his remarks upon Nevil were insolent. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... soon you will be a much wiser soldier and, in the ranks," said Beverly hotly. The smile instantly receded from the insolent fellow's face, for there was a world of prophecy in the way she said it. Somehow, he was in a much more respectful humor when he returned to the hall and stood in the presence of the tall, flushed stranger with the ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... only a gross rudeness toward the main body of men, who justly reverence the name of God, and detest such an abuse thereof; not only further an insolent defiance of the common profession, the religion, the law of our country, which disalloweth and condemneth it, but it is very odious and offensive to any particular society or company, at least, wherein there is any sober ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... sympathy, and takes such pains to make him agreeable on the whole, and relates with such approval the admiration which empty-headed idiots express for him when he has jumped his horse over some very perilous fence or thrashed some insolent farmer, that it is painfully apparent what is the writer's ideal of a grand and imposing character. You know the kind of man who is the hero of some novels,—the muscular blackguard,—and you remember what are his unfailing characteristics. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... when he chose he could win over his bitterest enemies. Women followed him as children followed the Pied Piper; he courted none, but was courted by all. He would glance aside with those black, slanting eyes, shrug in his insolent fashion, and turn away. And they would follow. God knows how many of them followed—whether through the dens of Limehouse or the more fashionable salons of vice in the West End—they followed—perhaps down to Hell. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... demand, and regarded it as not only injurious to the royal dignity, and to his sister, but also to himself; therefore to anticipate his father, he said, "Sir, I hope your majesty will forgive me for daring to ask, if it is possible your majesty should hesitate about a denial to so insolent a demand from such an insignificant fellow, and so scandalous a juggler? or give him reason to flatter himself a moment with being allied to one of the most powerful monarchs in the world? I beg of you to consider what you owe to yourself, to your own blood, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... however, the people of the house, who were listening at the door, heard all that passed, and declared on oath that so far from mentioning the Gefe Politico, I merely told the officer that he, the officer, was an insolent fellow, and that I would cause him to be punished. He subsequently confessed that he was an instrument of the Vicar General, and that he merely came to my apartment in order to obtain a pretence for making a complaint. He has been dismissed from his situation and the Queen [Regent] has expressed ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... would it not be highly presumptive and insolent on our part to demand of others that they deliver into our keeping, without price, property which they have purchased with their own money, and of which we have had the use and benefit for a third of a century? Until we shall be ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... where, walking on with the speedy and active step, which his recovery from fatigue now permitted him to exercise according to his wont, he solaced his angry purposes, by devising schemes of revenge on the insolent country coquette, from which no consideration of hospitality was in future to have weight enough ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... of the wife of Count Ceprano and the daughter of Count Monterone. The latter appears before the Duke and Rigoletto, and demands reparation for the dishonor put upon his house, only to find himself arrested by order of the Duke, and taunted in the most insolent manner by the buffoon, upon whom he invokes the vengeance of Heaven. Even the courtiers themselves are enraged at Rigoletto's taunts, and determine to assist in Monterone's revenge by stealing Gilda, the jester's daughter, whom they suppose to be his ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... call Impudence, and have taken Notice that it exerts it self in a different Manner, according to the different Soils wherein such Subjects of these Dominions as are Masters of it were born. Impudence in an Englishman is sullen and insolent, in a Scotchman it is untractable and rapacious, in an Irishman absurd and fawning: As the Course of the World now runs, the impudent Englishman behaves like a surly Landlord, the Scot, like an ill-received Guest, and the Irishman, like a Stranger who knows he is not welcome. There is ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and all their mules and horses, retaining only the medicine-buffaloes (the oxen) to draw their wagons. By this time the oxen have been yoked to the teams and the teamsters stand whip in hand ready for the order to start. Old Chase trembles with rage at the insolent demand. "Not a grain of powder to save my life," he yells; "put out boys!" As he turns to mount his horse which stands ready saddled, the Indians leap upon the wagons and others rush against the men who make a brave fight in their defence. Mary, who sees her father ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... after her death Theophil was at the theatre that evening. The bright lights and the music pierced him as with swords. Once more he saw that apple-tree thick with blossom in the hot sun. Yet his fancy found grim spells to lay the insolent ghost of life, and death ever at his side whispered that all this light and music and dancing was for but a little while; that those gay rouged faces, so confident in laughing beauty, and all those nimble shapes, were to the eye that had looked ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... beast. He is a miser, mean, deceitful, avaricious, spiteful, everything that's wicked. He is ruining you, and he will ruin Dick, too. He threatens that, when he dies, we may find all his wealth left to charities. Charities, indeed, when we have to pinch and screw to satisfy insolent tradesmen, and the everlasting hunger of a lot of cringing, crawling loafers and vagabonds who ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... she said. "Oh, shame! I hate a man who apologizes. Never apologize for what your friend called 'side.' Never! It's a man's business to be insolent and overbearing until he meets with a stronger. Now, you bad boy, listen ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... cutting—was evident upon it. Their first impulse was toward caution. Suspecting a trap, they circled warily about the body. Then, reassured, their rage blazed up. Their own quarry had been killed before them, their own hunting insolently crossed. However, it was man, the ever-insolent overlord, who had done it. He had taken toll as he would, and withdrawn when he would. They did not quite dare to follow and seek vengeance. So in a few moments their wrath had simmered down; and they fell savagely upon the ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... followed by Macomer, wrapped in a dark velvet dressing-gown, his face white and twitching, his usually smooth grey beard unbrushed, and his grey hair in disorder. With drawn lids he looked at Veronica, and in his terror he tried to smile, but there was something at once cowardly and insolent in the expression—there was something else, too, which the young girl did not understand, a sort of vacancy of the brow and unnatural weakness of ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... She sat on the high stoop. A spray of insolent ivy bobbed against her right ear. A ray of impudent moonlight flickered upon her nose. But ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... threw back his head with a movement of impatience, and looked down at her from under his eyelids—in effect weary and a little insolent. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... only way to escape civil war is by the election of over a hundred and twenty Republican Representatives to the Fortieth Congress. The courageous, whom it was intended to defy, it has only exasperated into more strenuous efforts against the insolent renegade who had the audacity to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... who in thunder that insolent bounder is. By Jingo! I have half a mind to go after him and tweak his pigtail soundly. Why, he looked at us as though we were dirt beneath his feet— as though we had no business to be alive. ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... not like to those of the king of Fraunce: for as muche as they be perilous, and insolent like unto ours, but I would kepe them like unto those of the auncient Romaines, whom created their chivalry of their own subjectes, and in peace time, thei sente them home unto their houses, to live of their owne trades, as more largely before this reasoning ende, I shal dispute. So that ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... place in Ithaca during his absence, she shewed him that his way to his wife and throne did not lie so open, but that before he were reinstated in the secure possession of them, he must encounter many difficulties. His palace, wanting its king, was become the resort of insolent and imperious men, the chief nobility of Ithaca and of the neighbouring isles, who, in the confidence of Ulysses being dead, came as suitors to Penelope. The queen (it was true) continued single, but was little better than a state-prisoner in the power of these men, who under a pretence of ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... ceremony into the courtyard of the ancient and dilapidated mansion, which presented on that morning a scene of bustle which it had not exhibited for two reigns. Officers of the Earl's household, liverymen and retainers, went and came with all the insolent fracas which attaches to their profession. The neigh of horses and the baying of hounds were heard; for my lord, in his occupation of inspecting and surveying the manor and demesne, was of course provided with the means of following his pleasure in the chase ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... tones, and a look Of concentrated insolent challenge, the Duke Address'd to Lord Alfred some sneering allusion To "the doubtless sublime reveries his intrusion Had, he fear'd, interrupted. Milord would do better, He fancied, however, to fold up a letter The writing of which was too well known, in fact, His remark as he ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... time Egypt preferred not to meddle in their affairs. When, however, the "lords of the sands" grew too insolent, the Pharaoh sent a column of light troops against them, and inflicted on them such a severe punishment, that the remembrance of it kept them within bounds for years. Offenders banished from Egypt sought refuge with the turbulent kinglets, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... wood,"—a young colony of pheasants, that he dignified by the title of a "preserve." This colony was audaciously despoiled and grievously depopulated, in spite of two watchers, who, with Bolt, guarded for seven nights successively the slumbers of the infant settlement. So insolent was the assault that bang, bang! went the felonious gun,—behind, before, within but a few yards of the sentinels,—and the gunner was off and the prey seized, before they could rush to the spot. The boldness and skill of the enemy soon proclaimed him, to the experienced ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she did know. The rough appeal thrown out in those two words found a way through her armour, which his insolent mastery had only dented and bruised. It gave her a better conceit of herself. This was a big man, and he recognised something of his own quality in her. At any rate, she would stand up to him. She would not be ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... Solid North did not restore the Negro governments at the South. The North had rallied to rebuke an insolent South; to show the Democrats of that section that the United States Treasury should be protected, and that the honor of the nation would be maintained unsullied. If the South would not pay its honest debts there ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... fought, or durst not fight again, I my suspected counsel should refrain; For I wish peace, and any terms prefer, Before the last extremities of war. We but exasperate those we cannot harm, And fighting gains us but to die more warm: If that be cowardice, which dares not see The insolent effects of victory, The rape of matrons, and their childrens cries,— Then I am ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... in such haste 't would be to cudgel some manners into thy big carcase, Master Insolent; but come now, prythee be a good lad and bring me to the governor, the captain, and the elder, for time and tide are pressing, and I would ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... Griggs was convinced that he was right. He knew the man well, and all his kind. The long speech of complaint, with its peculiar tone, half insolent, half of injured innocence, was to cover the fellow's embarrassment. Griggs answered him in ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... Chauvelin all along was the motive which had induced Sir Percy Blakeney to play the role of menial to Jean Paul Marat. Behind it there lay, undoubtedly, one of those subtle intrigues for which that insolent Scarlet Pimpernel was famous; and with it was associated an attempt at theft upon the murdered body of the demagogue...an attempt which had failed, seeing that the supposititious Paul Mole had been searched and nothing suspicious ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... gross fellow—that he and his world were better in every respect than the exclusive circles which listened to Sir William Fraser's bon mots and tags from the poets. Certainly there was nothing deprecatory about John Bright. He could be quite as insolent in his way as any aristocrat in his. He had a habit, we are told, of slowly getting up and walking out of the House in the middle of Mr. Disraeli's speeches, and just when that ingenious orator was leading up ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... as an uncle should greet his nephew, and as a vassal should greet his lord. And he represents unto thee that he waxes heavy and feeble, and is advancing in years. And the neighbouring chiefs knowing this, grow insolent towards him, and covet his land and possessions. And he earnestly beseeches thee, Lord, to permit Geraint his son to return to him, to protect his possessions, and to become acquainted with his boundaries. ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... steps and into the theatre. There was, of course, scarcely any one there. The Michailovsky is not a large theatre, but the stalls looked extraordinarily desolate, every seat watching one with a kind of insolent wink as though, like the Nevski ten minutes before it said, "Well, now you humans are getting frightened, you're all stopping away. We're coming back ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... star, and believing herself ill-used by fortune, she was generally content to appear an ugly creature. She did not, however, intend to abandon the struggle, for she had vowed that she would some day make the whole town burst with envy, by an insolent display of happiness and luxury. Had she been able to act her part on a more spacious stage, where full play would have been allowed her ready wit, she would have quickly brought her dream to pass. Her intelligence was far superior ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... no use to them whatever. One of them begged some meat, and, when it was refused, said to my men, "You may as well give it, for we shall take all after we have killed you to-morrow." The more humbly we spoke, the more insolent the Bashinje became, till at last we were all feeling savage and sulky, but continued to speak as civilly as we could. They are fond of argument, and when I denied their right to demand tribute from a white man, who did not trade in slaves, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... of the Billings Expedition, some excuse is given for the conduct of Billings on the ground that Ledyard had been insolent to the Russians. ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... standing opposite Annesley. He stared with insolent incredulity. "'Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Smith.' A ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... aptitude. The boy had saved the printing office from disaster. And Darius had proved his satisfaction therein, not by words certainly, but beyond mistaking in his general demeanour towards Edwin. And after all that, a letter—mind you, a letter!—proposing with the most damnable insolent audacity that he should be an architect, because he would not be 'happy' in the printing business! ... An architect! Why an architect, specially? What in the name of God was there to attract in bricks and mortar? He ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... quiet? I was as sorry as a dog that I ventured to let fall a disrespectful word, and took the lesson to heart. I will never slander you again. If the box on the ear had been all, I should not so much have cared—I'm used to that; but the insolent fellow forced me to go out with him, because I had attacked your good name. As I soon learned, this madman was a lover of your Madonna when she was a girl, and now he was fighting for the honor of the Madonna's husband. That is a piece of good luck which could ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... well it suits me to carry my head high, and what a pitiful mien I shall have while scenting the dust of your carpets! Oh! sire, I regret sincerely, and you will regret as I do, the old days when the king of France saw in every vestibule those insolent gentlemen, lean, always swearing—cross-grained mastiffs, who could bite mortally in the hour of danger or of battle. These men were the best of courtiers to the hand which fed them—they would lick it; but for the hand that struck them, oh! the bite that ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... completely ignorant of what had caused the quarrel, were uneasy for the consequences. After dinner bitter words were again exchanged between the two young men, and Musters used such coarse, insolent language that Lord Byron could ill restrain his indignation. Anger flashing from his eyes expressed itself as warmly in words. In this frame of mind he retired to his room, and remained long shut ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... couldn't tear them away from the piano at The Towers. Isn't it wonderful how simple and pleasant they are considering their lineage? Actually living in that little dog-hole of a Hillview. I always think Miss Bathgate's such an insolent woman; no notion of her proper place. She looks at me as if she actually thought she was my equal, and wasn't she positively rude to you, Muriel, when you ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... think I'll tamely submit to open robbery by such insolent rascals as you, you're mistaken, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Andrew. He dismounts from Billy the pig, and, insolent brat, screws an imaginary eyeglass into his eye, which he contrives to keep contorted, and assuming a supercilious expression and a languid manner, struts leisurely towards us, with his hands in his pockets, ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... exaggeratedly obsequious, holding their hands along the crease in the seam of their trousers with their fingers close together—at strict attention. If their rank were superior to mine, they were defiant and insolent. Nevertheless, they showed themselves more communicative than their comrades of the line service. Most of them spoke French—well enough, though not perfectly. All of them had been in Paris, and one ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... only once.—I mean,—yes I mean that.—I saw her as the king's wife only once. She was a handsome woman, with a certain insolent disdain of those about her which indicated that she knew her own charms, and perhaps counted too much on ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... earlier. It was witty and damaging in the highest degree, and each man as he read it had vowed vengeance. Falloden had been especially mocked in it. Some pompous tricks of manner peculiar to Falloden in his insolent moods, had been worked into a pseudo-scientific examination of the qualities proper to a "blood," with the happiest effect. Falloden grew white as he read it. Perhaps on the morrow it would be in Constance Bledlow's hands. The galling memories of the evening just over were ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... think my father wrote of that to Dr. Courtenay." (I smiled at the recollection, now.) "Then his Grace persisted in following me everywhere, and vowed publicly that he would marry me. I ordered him from our house, since my father would not. At last one afternoon he came back to dine with us, insolent to excess. I left the table. He sat with my father two hours or more, drinking and singing, and giving orders to the servants. I shut my door, that I might not hear. After a while my mother came up to me, crying, saying that Mr. Manners would be branded with dishonour and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... asked him to change the position of a class in the Sabbath school to accommodate the singing, and received an answer not so insolent in tone as before, but, with the connected circumstances, equally clear for me to understand that I must propose no move, make no suggestion whatever about the school, leaving everything in that line to him. I could open ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... flowers shrivelled and kissing were lost? Without the pulsing waters, where were the marigolds and the songs of the brook? If my veins and my breasts with love embossed Withered, my insolent soul would be gone like flowers that the ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... further preface to the point in question, I have to inform your Grace that the Irish convicts are become so turbulent, so dissatisfied with their situation here, so extremely insolent, refractory, and troublesome, that, without the most rigid and severe treatment it is impossible for us to receive any labour whatever from them. Your Grace will see the inconvenience which so large a proportion of that ignorant, obstinate, and depraved set of transports occasion ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... "You are insolent," the inquisitor said, coldly. "It is rash to threaten men in whose power you are. These walls reveal no secrets, and though the town were full of your English pirates, yet would your doom be accomplished; without a possibility of rescue, and without your fate ever becoming known, ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... the penalties one always has to pay for a woman's fame,' I said to myself, one day, as I sat sipping my chocolate, while I was forced to overhear from a neighboring alcove an insolent young dandy tell of various scenes, betraying passionate love on both sides, which he had probably manufactured to make himself of consequence. One story he told I felt sure was false, and yet I would rather it had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... tingling ears, and hot cheeks, and a knitted brow. As the letter went on, and as the woman's sense of wrong grew hot from her own telling of her own story, her words became stronger and still stronger, till at last they were almost insolent in their strength. Were it not that they came from one who did think herself to have been wronged, then certainly they would be insolent. A sense of injury, a burning conviction of wrong sustained, will justify language which otherwise ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... There are three boys in advance, this time, and all abreast,—Hans, Peter, and Lambert. Carl soon breaks the ranks, rushing through with a whiff. Fly, Hans; fly, Peter: don't let Carl beat again!—Carl the bitter, Carl the insolent. Van Mounen is flagging; but you are as strong as ever. Hans and Peter, Peter and Hans: which is foremost? We love them both. We scarcely care which is ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... skin showing through the clotted tufts of coarse, clay-colored hair which unevenly clothed their bodies, came plunging irregularly through the brook and gathered in confused masses along the foot of the slope, jabbering shrilly to each other and making insolent gestures toward the silent company at the top. The hair of their heads was stringy, coarse and scant, and of an inky blackness, in contrast to the abundant locks of the Hillmen, which were for the most part of a dark brown or ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... he cried in that language; "the other may be good enough to be insolent in; let us have our ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... that confidence now, and it may avail something!" answered Agnes, always insolent and disrespectful to the woman before her; "that I have some of your precious blood in my veins, you have taken plenty of opportunities to impress upon me, but it shall not prevent my seeking happiness ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... all this would have on him, in the unspeakable misery it would inflict upon his vain, insolent, self- indulgent organization; and she marveled how he would ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... sent back an insolent answer, saying that he would not withdraw anything he had said, and that he would prove his words in mortal combat within twelve days, two miles from the walls of Andria. In fixing this date he knew that Bayard was ill at the time with a quartan fever. But the Good Knight would not let such ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare
... wrath against his neighbor all the morning. There had been a tone in Heathcote's voice when he gave his parting warning as to the fire in Medlicot's pipe which the sugar grower had felt to be intentionally insolent. Nothing had been said which could be openly resented, but offense had surely been intended; and then he had remembered that his mother had been already some months at the mill, and that no mark of neighborly courtesy had been shown to her. The Heathcotes had, he thought, chosen ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... doubt, but very dirty. It is pervaded by streams, which crop up among the houses, and flow through dark alleys and vaulted passages, rarely coming into daylight, and suggesting all manner of dark crimes. The red-legged French kettledrums are, if possible, more insolent here than in other places, and it is evident that the dogs are not yet reconciled to the annexation, for the guard swept through the streets amid a perfect tornado of howls from the negligent scavengers of the place. ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... fixity of purpose, too! I can imagine the regrets your withdrawal will cause, in certain quarters. I only hope that it will not discourage those who accompanied you to the altar, and shared your enthusiasm at the time." He had spoken throughout with studied slowness and an insolent nicety ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... for the crimes of exercising undue and pernicious influence upon the mind of the Queen, and the abolition of certain ancient rites and customs connected with the worship and honour of the great god Kuhlacan. And I warn ye beforehand, oh insolent white stranger, that it will be useless for ye to resist my demands; for though ye have some five hundred soldiers at your back, I have here as many thousands to support me, while in your rear there are thousands more who are pledged to help me. Therefore, seeing that ye are hemmed in, front and ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... Such annoying and insolent meddling on the part of governments no longer exists. There can be no such thing among an enlightened people. As the mass of mankind, or we will say their leaders or representatives, become more ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... employment of the Afghan Governor of Khorasan, by whom he was at first raised to rank and command, as a reward for his valor in actions with the Usbegs, and afterward degraded and punished with the bastinado on account of his insolent ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the schoolmaster's altered and insolent manner awakened, and asked again why he had not sent ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... however, brought a little scornful smile into her eyes. It was singularly easy to forgive Gregory that, for she now saw him as he was—shallow, careless, shiftless, a man without depth of character. He had a few surface graces, and on occasion a certain half-insolent forcefulness of manner which in a curious fashion was almost becoming. There was, however, nothing beneath the surface. When he had to face a crisis he collapsed like a pricked bladder, which was the first simile she could think of, though she admitted that it was not a ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... "Do you think you have a right to insult a poor general like me because, being a happy rival of Soulanges, you cannot even turn on your heel without alarming Madame de Vaudremont? Or is it because I came only a month ago into the Promised Land? How insolent you can be, you men in office, who sit glued to your chairs while we are dodging shot and shell! Come, Monsieur le Maitre des Requetes, allow us to glean in the field of which you can only have precarious possession from the moment ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... did—that would be ill-bred and ludicrous; we simply smile and utter delicate mockeries. In the plays that best please our golden youth nothing is so certain to win applause and laughter as a sentence about the treachery or greed of friends. Do those grinning, superlatively insolent cynics really represent the mighty Mother of Nations? Ah, no! If even the worst of them were thrust away into some region where life was hard for him, he would show something like nobility and manliness; ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... as he met a certain tacit submissiveness in his wife. But her new and unexpected line of conduct completely bewildered him. It shocked him. Then her absolute disregard for her duties as a wife angered him. When Mr. Pontellier became rude, Edna grew insolent. She had resolved never ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... over the world from periods beyond historic record, but colleges have not yet learned of their existence. They are now becoming familiar to millions, from the emperor to the beggar, and still the colleges plod on in sanctified ignorance where the priest rules, or in insolent dogmatism where the medical professor rules. Is there anything in the way of demonstration that can overcome this pachydermic stupidity?—doubtful! Clairvoyants have described diseases, described distant places, described things in public, while ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... both take part in the festival," said Keraunus, decidedly. "Caesar shall see that I shun no sacrifice in his honor, and if he notices you, and I bring my complaint against that insolent architect before him—" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of them, that I might have rescued the three men, for I saw no fire-arms they had among them; but it fell out to my mind another way. After I had observed the outrageous usage of the three men by the insolent seamen, I observed the fellows run scattering about the island, as if they wanted to see the country. I observed that the three other men had liberty to go also where they pleased; but they sat down all three upon the ground, very pensive, and looked like men in despair. This put me ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... Carolina as from Massachusetts. His authority should be admitted as fully in Virginia as it is in New York, in Georgia and Alabama as in Pennsylvania and Ohio. This can follow only from his reelection; and it can follow only from his reelection by a decisive majority. That insolent spirit which led the South to become so easy a prey to the Secession faction, when not a tenth part of its people were Secessionists, should be thoroughly, emphatically rebuked, and its chief representatives severely punished, by extorting from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... did not know its meaning, and how could she inspire it in a man of the world. No, I did not love her—could not love a maid, unripe and passionless, and overpert at times, flouting a man like me with her airs and vapors and her insolent lids and lashes. Lord! but she carried it high-handed with me at times, plaguing me, teasing, pouting when my attention wandered midway in the pretty babble with which she condescended to entertain me. ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... resumed his seat by Natalie he saw a burly, broad-shouldered figure hurrying along the sidewalk; he saw under the wide, stiff-brimmed hat, a red face with an insolent, all-conquering expression, and fat lips rolling a big cigar. There followed after, a young breed staggering under the weight of a Gladstone bag, which matched its owner. Arrived at the stage, Nick Grylls flung a thick word of greeting to the bystanders, and taking ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... 'Is there anything still I ought to sell?' If so he had missed the chance—there would certainly be a slump in the city to-morrow. He swallowed this thought with a nod of defiance. That ultimatum was insolent—sooner than let it pass he was prepared to lose money. They wanted a lesson, and they would get it; but it would take three months at least to bring them to heel. There weren't the troops out there; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... ball, with the sack, with the hoop, with wrestling, with hurling at the stake. They say, moreover, that grinding poverty renders men worthless, cunning, sulky, thievish, insidious, vagabonds, liars, false witnesses, etc.; and that wealth makes them insolent, proud, ignorant, traitors, assumers of what they know not, deceivers, boasters, wanting in affection, slanderers, etc. But with them all the rich and poor together make up the community. They are rich because they want nothing, poor because they possess nothing; and consequently ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... notice with what haughty derision the managers had perceived the fears of their importance, which were felt even by the very counsel of their prisoner. Mr. Windham, too, who himself never looks either insolent or deriding, must be sure what I meant for his associates could not include himself. He did not, however, perfectly welcome the remark; he still only gave me his profile, and said not a word,-so I went on. Mr. Hastings little thinks what a pleader I am ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... scorns, Saint Priest, who every album's page With blunted pencil-point adorns. Another tribune of the ball Hung like a print against the wall, Pink as Palm Sunday cherubim,(84) Motionless, mute, tight-laced and trim. The traveller, bird of passage he, Stiff, overstarched and insolent, Awakens secret merriment By his embarrassed dignity— Mute glances interchanged aside Meet punishment for ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... of this sentence to be aware that it was highly insolent; and the flush on De Vayne's cheek showed that he too had ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... of an old friend, into a paradise of delight, where I had been feasting my ideas by anticipation, with spending several days; this idea I say made me so ill, that I could not get the better of it; joined to that also was, I believe, the irritation of finding at my heels this insolent spy, a very fit subject, certainly, to outwit, if I had had the desire, but who did his duty with an intolerable mixture of pedantry and rigor*: I was seized with a nervous attack in the middle of the ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... dispute was incidental to the Osiandric conflict. Its author was Francesco Stancaro (born in Mantua, 1501), an Italian ex-priest, who had emigrated from Italy on account of his Protestant views. Vain, opinionated, haughty, stubborn, and insolent as he was, he roamed about, creating trouble wherever he appeared, first in Cracow as professor of Hebrew, 1551 in Koenigsberg then in Frankfort-on-the-Oder, next at various places in Poland, Hungary, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... rings, his low forehead,—all these personal details, which might have seemed grotesque in many men, were rendered terrible in him by two small eyes set in his head like those of a pig, expressive of insatiable covetousness, and of insolent, half-jovial cruelty. These ferreting and perspicacious blue eyes, glassy and glacial, might be taken for the model of that famous Eye, the formidable emblem of the police, invented during the Revolution. Black silk gloves ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... almost black now, looked straight into Reedy's flushed, insolent face, "I'm going across ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... sought, there was an end to his ambition. This view is confirmed by the Apology he wrote and published for his act. It remains one of the most pregnant, bold, and brilliant pieces of writing which we possess in favour of tyrannicide from that epoch of insolent crime and audacious rhetoric. So energetic is the style, and so biting the invective of this masterpiece, in which the author stabs a second time his victim, that both Giordani and Leopardi affirmed it to be the only true monument ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... 'Encolpius, Encolpius,' at the top of my voice. A naked youth at the other end, who had lost his clothes, was bawling just as loudly and no less angrily for Giton! As for myself, the slaves took me for a maniac, and mimicked me in the most insolent manner, but a large crowd gathered around him, clapping its hands in awe-struck admiration, for so heavy and massive were his private parts, that you would have thought that the man himself was but an appendage of his own member! ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... my poetical compositions and publications simply as the instruments of that sympathy between myself and others which the ardent and unbounded love I cherished for my kind incited me to acquire. I expected all sorts of stupidity and insolent contempt from those.... These compositions (excepting the tragedy of The Cenci, which was written rather to try my powers than to unburden my full heart) are insufficiently.... Commendation then perhaps they deserve, even from their bitterest enemies; but they have not obtained any corresponding ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... the most insolent invader of domestic peace is the centipede. The water system of the city banished the mosquito; but it introduced the centipede into almost every dwelling. St. Pierre has a plague of centipedes. All the covered drains, the gutters, the crevices of fountain-basins ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... to Heaven I had stayed at home. I got insolent glances from the youths, and the cold shoulder from the ladies. Elspeth smiled when she saw me, but turned the next second to gossip with her little court. She was a devout lover of horses, and had eyes for nothing but the racing. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... us, and we look instinctively towards the Pavilion for the soldiers of Philip, or glance with apprehension at the door of the Palais de Justice for the sinister form of Peter Titelmann the Inquisitor. Around this very square marched the procession of the Holy Office, in all the insolent blasphemy of its power, and on these very stones were kindled the flames that were to destroy its victims. But all these have gone; the priest and his victim, the swaggering bravo and the King he served, have gone to their account, and Furnes is left, the record of a time ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... what seemed the voice; and unprofane Have dedicated to melodious ends All of myself that least ignoble was. For though of faulty and of erring walk, I have not suffered aught in me of frail To blur my song; I have not paid the world The evil and the insolent courtesy Of offering it my baseness for a gift. And unto such as think all Art is cold, All music unimpassioned, if it breathe An ardour not of Eros' lips, and glow With fire not caught from Aphrodite's breast, Be it enough to say, that in Man's life ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... Caraffa Chapel of S. Maria sopra Minerva at Rome and in the Strozzi Chapel of S. Maria Novella at Florence than in the Carmine. The "Triumph of S. Thomas Aquinas" and the "Miracle of S. John" are remarkable for an almost insolent display of Roman antiquities—not studied, it need scarcely be observed, with the scientific accuracy of Alma Tadema—for such science was non-existent in the fifteenth century—but paraded with a kind of passion. To this delight in antique details ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Charley too careless to be prudent. Once I caught his glance as it crossed with Bruce's scowl. There was an expression on his pleasant face that few men had ever seen there, approaching nearly to an insolent defiance. Looking at those two, a child might have known that between them there ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... to a child king, his nephew Eadwig. Eadwig was swayed by a woman of high lineage, AEthelgifu; and the quarrel between her and the older counsellors of Eadred broke into open strife at the coronation feast. On the young king's insolent withdrawal to her chamber Dunstan, at the bidding of the Witan, drew him roughly back to his seat. But the feast was no sooner ended than a sentence of outlawry drove the abbot over sea, while the triumph of AEthelgifu was crowned in 957 by the marriage ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... hang upon thy skill? If thou shouldst fail, our annual hostage for the divine Altara would be twelve instead of six of our maidens. Further, the dog-conceived Jereboam would wax unbearably overweening and insolent. Nay, there is too much at hazard! Though outnumbered we will give ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... to those who bear the image of Christ, he descends step by step. They first mock, or deride them by mimicry; second, flout, or treat them with contemptuous sneers, both by words and actions; third, scoff at them with insolent ridicule, sometimes accompanied by a push or blow; fourth, taunt, revile, upbraid, bully, and challenge them: all these produce, fifth, hate, abhorrence, and detestation, leading inevitably to, sixth, persecution—to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... those whom his conscience tells him to be innocent; and it is a barbarous morality alone, which pretends that he may make himself a passive tool of slaughter. But next, the analogy assumes, (what none of my very dictatorial and insolent critics make even the faintest effort to prove to be a fact,) that God, like man, speaks from without: that what we call Reason and Conscience is not his mode of commanding and revealing his will, but that words to strike ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... power within her, it was overmatched by his brutal resolution to take his wife away. No argument, no irony, no appeals, can long withstand the iteration of a dogged phrase. "I've come for my wife," Sedgett said to all her instances. His voice was waxing loud and insolent, and, as it sounded, Mrs. Sumfit ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Adderly's object was more to get away from the traders' arguments than to answer me; and I returned the insolent challenge of his unconcealed yawn in the faces of the elder men by drawing a chair up to the company of McTavishes and Frobishers and McGillivrays and MacKenzies and other retired veterans of ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... disappointed. The new masters of the fort had little patience with the Indian idlers, who loafed about at the most inconvenient times in the most inconvenient places, always begging, and often sullen and insolent. They frequently ordered them in no mild terms to be off. The chiefs received cold looks and short answers where they had looked ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... "Insolent barbarian!" he cried hotly. "The next letter I send him shall be delivered by the commander of my army on the ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... she had left her elephant, which was gone. And she uttered a loud cry, and stood, aghast with rage and disappointment. And she opened her mouth to curse the author of the mischief, and was on the very verge of saying: Sink into a lower birth, thou insolent destroyer! when Maheshwara stopped her in the very act, guessing her intention, by putting his hand upon her mouth.[4] And he exclaimed: Say nothing rash, O angry one, for Nandi did not do it on purpose, after all. And a good servant does ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... she gasped, and gritted her teeth afterwards. "This, then, is what he meant—that insolent one! 'After the fiesta will I send the answer'—so he told that simpering maid who took my letter and the rose. And the answer, then, is my rose and my letter returned, and no word else. Madre de Dios! That he should flout me thus! Now will I tell Jose ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... impatiently beneath a sycamore at the foot of the garden, saw no beauty in earth or air or sky. A thousand suspicions common to a jealous nature, a vague superstition of the spot, filled his mind with distrust and doubt. "If this should be a trick to keep my hands off that insolent pup!" he muttered. But, even as the thought passed his tongue, a white figure slid from the shrubbery near the house, glided along the line of picket-fence, and then stopped, midway, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... him several days later, when he came with a sucking pig and four jars of rice. On this occasion the captain heard that the chiefs were waiting in the village of Buyguey in order to kill the Spaniards. Chief Ybarat was so insolent that he could not be induced to bring provisions either by requests or threats; and, as our men lacked food, it was determined to go out to obtain rice, by orderly means, among the Tanbobos; it was brought from the village of Bantal and the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... high degree of merit in any case; but those qualifications deserve still greater praise when they are found in that condition which makes almost every other man, for whatever reason, contemptuous, insolent, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... than the Creator, ... being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affections, unmerciful." An awful picture, but sustained by the evidence of the Roman writers of that day as certainly no ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... away and there was a silence in the room. The others began to feel uncomfortable as Millar looked slowly from one to the other of them. One or two essayed conversation, and his cutting, insolent replies sent them scurrying from the room. In a few moments only he and Elsa remained in the apartment. From the adjoining ballroom came the strains of music and the sound of dancing and bright ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... their houses, as we passed, and bawled after us Queitze-fan-quei, which, in their language, are opprobrious and contemptuous expressions, signifying foreign devils, imps; epithets that are bestowed by the enlightened Chinese on all foreigners. It was obvious, that the haughty and insolent manner in which all Europeans residing at, or trading to, the port of Canton are treated, had extended itself to the northern frontier of the province, but it had not crossed the mountain Me-lin; the natives of Kiang-see being a quiet, civil, and inoffensive people. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... earlier. The precise purport of the Golden Bull is somewhat doubtful. By some the instrument has been understood to have comprised a virtual surrender on the part of the crown in the interest of a class of (p. 447) insolent and self-seeking nobles with which the country was cursed. By others it has been interpreted as a measure designed to strengthen the crown by winning the support of the mass of the lesser nobles against the few greater ones.[647] The ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... cannot contain himself. He thinks Prussia was too insolent and wants to "avenge himself." Did you see that a gentleman has proposed in the Chamber the pillage of the duchy of Baden! Ah! why can't I ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... grievances, and inflicted his anger on all who came near him, only varying the manifestation of it to suit the position in which he chanced to find himself. With his wife he was overbearing; with his brother he was insolent; with his apprentice he was sullen; and with his associates at the old Falcone he played the demagogue. The reason of these phases was very simple. His wife could not oppose him, Don Paolo would not wrangle with him, Gianbattista imposed upon him by his superior ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... have just such a fellow always with me, as wise as Solomon, if I would only heed him; but as insolent as Shimei, cursing, and throwing stones and dirt, and behaving as if he had the traditions of the "ape-like human being" born with him rather than civilized instincts. One does not have to be a king to know what it is to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... lazy and disrespectful abbreviation. If you say "Pardon me," let your manner indicate a dignified apology. "I beg your pardon," is sometimes only the insolent preface to a flat and angry contradiction. In most phrases of compliment, the words derive their real significance from the ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... Providence, we feel our obligations to the sister Colonies. By their liberality, they have greatly chagrined the common enemies of America, who flattered themselves with hopes that before this day they should starve us into a compliance with the insolent demands of despotic power. But the people, relieved by your charitable contributions, bear the indignity with becoming patience and fortitude. They are not insensible of the injuries done them as men, as well as free Americans; but they restrain ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... months of flatteries. Andoche Finot, the self-made man in question, stiff, taciturn, cold, and dull-witted, possessed the sort of spirit which will not shrink from groveling before any creature that may be of use to him, and the cunning to be insolent when he needs a man no longer. Like one of the grotesque figures in the ballet in Gustave, he was a marquis behind, a boor in front. And this high-priest of commerce ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... Buckingham's heart; he, in his impatience, addressed himself to the princess, in a low tone of voice: "For Heaven's sake, madame, I implore you to hasten your disembarkation. Do you not perceive how that insolent Duke of Norfolk is killing me with his attentions ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is denounced as a dangerous enemy; his appeal "as an insolent outrage to the man who was deservedly the object of the grateful affection of the whole people of America;" "as a rude attempt of a beardless foreign stripling, whose commission from a friendly power was his only title to respect, not supported by a shadow of right on his part, and not ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... people in one of the first canoes, after coming as near as they durst, threw towards us some cocoa-nuts. I went into a boat and picked them up, giving them in return some cloth and other articles. This induced others to come under the stern, and alongside, where their behaviour was insolent and daring. They wanted to carry off every thing within their reach; they got hold of the fly of the ensign, and would have torn it from the staff; others attempted to knock the rings off the rudder; but the greatest ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... man that could dress English sheep-akin as it should be; and indeed it is now as good in all respects as kidd; and, he says, will save 100,000l. a-year that goes out to France for kidds'-skins. He tells me that at this day the King in familiar talk do call the Chancellor "the insolent man," and says that he would not let him speak himself in Council: which is very high, and do show that the Chancellor is like to be in a bad state, unless he can defend himself better than people think. And yet ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... the path, his keen face and insolent eyes triumphant. He was too absorbed in his own emotion especially to note hers. Besides, she had always been receptive rather than ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... retarded—to keep us from dashing into the big game with every fibre quivering, and our souls afire to finish it up! Berlin's hope is that while America grows sleek with too much optimism, Germany will grow stronger to prolong her insolent and murderous campaign. Open your columns, Amos, and shout these truths broadcast—for therein will rest the salvation of our country! Germany poor in food or munitions?—fiddle-sticks! The German ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... hand and inefficient police regulations on the other, and no question is asked or expected of him. When he protests, when he cries out against this flagrant nullification of the very first principles of a republican form of government, the insolent question is asked: "What are you going to do about it?" And here lies ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... perfect of my life. Lucy's sweetness to me, the beauty of the place, the wild excitement of riding over fences and the perfect certainty I had that I would ride better than any one in the whole world gave me an insolent confidence which no ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... very lowest baseness of his character.—It is poor Olivia speaks. "Thus each day I grew more pensive, and he more insolent, till at last the monster had the assurance to offer me to a young baronet of his acquaintance." This scene is not fit for picture; it is seemingly nothing but successful villany, and of too gay ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... demandable of the obliged, and may be, with some reason at least, from expectation, paid to the rich and liberal from the necessitous; but that men should be allured by the glittering of wealth only to feed the insolent pride of those who will not in return feed their hunger—that the sordid niggard should find any sacrifices on the altar of his vanity—seems to arise from a blinder idolatry, and a more bigoted and senseless superstition, than any which the sharp eyes ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... lust of conquest in all times, and has driven the conquerors back with trailing battle-flags. "So shall it be with yours!" he had declaimed. "You may carry them to the loftiest peaks of the Cordilleras; they may float in insolent triumph in the halls of Montezuma; but the weakest hand in Mexico, uplifted in prayer, can call down a power against you before which the iron hearts of your warriors shall be turned into ashes!" It must have been a terrible ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... in as comforting a manner as I could. The truth is, I hadn't the heart to irritate the girl by another of my smart replies. I had only noticed her temper at first. I noticed her wretchedness now—and wretchedness is not uncommonly insolent, you will find, in humble life. My answer melted Limping Lucy. She bent her head down, and laid it on the top of ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... him; "not particularly insolent, Harry. If you will observe more closely you will see that Marian does not exactly object to his caresses—quite the contrary, I would say, I told you that you should not permit Spring ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... my father go pale with anger. "You're an insolent girl!" he cried. "And I have a good mind to give you a good whipping, to teach you to ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... Nottingham! his pride is past enduring; This insolent, audacious man, forgets His honour and allegiance;—and refused To render up his staff of office, here, ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... mouth we had passed, was believed to penetrate deep into the opposite hills; and that the surface of the amphitheater was depressed beneath that of the lagoon. But all over the lowermost hillsides, and sloping into the glen, stood grand old groves; still and stately, as if no insolent waves were throbbing in the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... footsteps never be done? The insolent feet Thronging the street, Forsaken now of the ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... go to the next room, it had a gunny sack door, too, the First and Second Lieutenants were in there. They told me to go on to the next room that the Captain's headquarters was in the other room. I had my mittens and overcoat on, and he said, "you pull off your hat, you insolent puppy, and salute me." I replied to the Captain's kind words of greeting that, "I will not salute you, but excuse me, I should have had manners enough to have removed my hat." He told me that he "would put the irons" on me. I answered him that I did not think he would do such an unmanly ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... existed of the city of San Carlos, is a coat of arms painted on fine parchment, with an enormous cross erected on the bank of the Meta. The Guahibos, who, it is said, are some thousands in number, have become so insolent, that, at the time of our passage by Carichana, they sent word to the missionary that they would come on rafts, and burn his village. These rafts (valzas), which we had an opportunity of seeing, are scarcely three feet broad, and twelve feet long. They carry only two or three ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... all. At length eleven struck in the harsh tones of the prison-clock. A few minutes after, we heard the sound of bolts drawing, and bars unfastening. The jailer entered—drunk, and much disposed to be insolent. I thought it advisable to give him another bribe, and he resumed the fawning insinuation of his manner. He now directed us, by passages which he pointed out, to gain the other side of the prison. There we were to mix with the debtors and their mob of friends, and to await his joining ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... policemen's chorus sotto voce; but before the end, with a swift remorse, induced by the dignity of Kilbride's bearing in humiliating disaster, he swooped upon the insolent instrument and stopped its tinkle by touching the lever with one revolver-barrel while sedulously covering the Sub-Inspector with the other. The sudden cessation of the toy music, bringing back into undue prominence all the little bush noises which had filled the air before, brought home ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... arch. Outside it there were more than a dozen armed men lounging, and a lot of others looked down at us through the ruined loop-holes of the wall above. Their leader challenged our numbers at once, and refused admission. Judging by Anazeh's magnificently insolent reply it looked at first as if he intended fighting his way in. But that turned out to be only his diplomatic manner—establishing himself, as it were, on an eminence from which he could make concessions ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... them. In a few minutes Mr Green, one of the gentlemen, happened to turn about; immediately one of them snatched away his sword and ran to a little distance, waving it round his head with a shout of triumph. Seeing this, the rest became extremely insolent, and more savages came to join them from the other side of the river. It therefore became necessary to check them, and Mr Banks fired with small-shot at the man who had taken the sword. The shot had only the effect of stopping his shouts and ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... hand I have tamed the necks of mighty kings, defeating with stronger arm their insolent pride. Thence take red-glowing gold, that the troth may be made firm by the gift, and that the faith to be brought to our wedlock ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... a man has done great services, it may be some alleviation of lighter faults; but then they ought to be urged as such,—with modesty, with humility, with confession of the faults, and not with a proud and insolent defiance. They should not be stated as proofs that he stands justified in the eye of mankind for committing unexampled and enormous crimes. Indeed, humility, suppliant guilt, always makes impression in our bosoms, so that, when we see it before us, we always ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke |
