"Irrepressible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... marches on alternate days, reached, and, with the exception of two European and two native regiments, were concentrated at MOODKEE, twenty miles from Ferozepore. How easy it is for us to describe, in a single sentence, the results of the irrepressible spirit and indefatigable exertions of those gallant men! In seven days they had traversed, over roads of heavy sand, a distance of upwards of one hundred and fifty miles, while their perpetual toil allowed them scarcely leisure to cook what scanty food they could procure, and hardly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... been the Council's regulation of the irrepressible freshmen-sophomore rivalry, which long took the course of medieval hair-cutting forays, sometimes, as in 1904, carried on even within the sacred precincts of the Library. The reform came through the establishment in 1908 of a series of inter-class contests. Particularly picturesque ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... British armies had beaten French in Germany and America, and British fleets had conquered French and Spanish with complete ease. The power of the Empire seemed beyond challenge. Yet within this Empire itself there lay already the seeds of a discord which was soon {10} to develop into an irrepressible contest, leading to civil war; then, for a generation, to drive the separated parts into renewed antagonism, and finally to cause a second war. Between the North American colonies and the mother ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... Scripture is inspired"—not merely Jewish or Christian Scripture, but all sacred writing. All the writings of every age which are looked upon as Scripture, which men from age to age reverence and honor as such, were not of man's invention, not of man's device, but came from some irrepressible influence acting on the soul from within. The poet before quoted ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... children about. Eddy and Winny Heron, restless, irrepressible in their young teens, sprawled at their mother's feet and hung over her in attitudes of affection. One very small Levine trotted to and fro on fat legs over the lawn. The other, too small to run, could ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... saw him eying me two or three times with a shrewd look in his eyes (your American is an irrepressible trader) as though I might possibly be some would-be purchaser ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... utterance, in spite of all my efforts to restrain them. I sat down again, and gave free vent to my irrepressible grief. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... at this moment, and inside my castle. It comes from the irrepressible throats of my cook and my housemaid, who have more joy in the language of the plantation than you could have in the songs of St. Angelus. The only person in this castle out of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... this characteristic which makes Whitman an irrepressible figure in literature; he will not down for friend or foe. He escapes from all classification, and is larger than any definition of him that has yet been given. How many times has he been exploded by British and American critics; how many times has he been labeled and put upon ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... if you will have no Christian blood in your house, you must sweep me out," answered Belasez, with a mixture of dignity and irrepressible amusement. ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... with as deep an interest as if they were wandering through an old baronial mansion with cards of invitation from its absent owner. The reception-room, the comedor or dining-room, the out-houses round the patio or court-yard, are carefully inspected by the throng, who are irrepressible even in respect to the dormitory assigned for the use of the bridegroom, and that allotted to the bride, and situated in quite ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... that before three days were over the irrepressible Barty had made a complete conquest of my small family. My sister (I hasten to say this) has loved him as a brother ever since; and as long as my parents lived, and wherever they made their home, that home has ever been his—and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... The irrepressible Jinnee was at the bottom of this, of course. He remembered now having made that unfortunate remark the day before about the limited ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... had been listening to the discussion "with all her ears"—anything connected with the mysterious personality of the absent head of the house was beginning to have a special fascination for her—gave an irrepressible ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... knees and thank Him yourself, Henri Marais," screamed the irrepressible Vrouw Prinsloo. "I give thanks for the safe return of Allan here, though it is true they would be warmer if he had left this stinkcat behind him. Allemachte! Henri Marais, why do you make so much of this Portuguese fellow? Has he bewitched you? Or ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... house drearily. It ran down into the tubs placed to catch it, dripped from the mossy pump, and drummed on the upturned milk pails, and upon the brown and yellow beehives under the maple trees. The chickens seemed depressed, but the irrepressible bluejay screamed amid it all, with the same insolent spirit, his plumage untarnished by the wet. The barnyard showed a horrible mixture of mud and mire, through which Howard caught glimpses of the men, slumping to and fro without ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... "drill" garments entirely clean, but that he had, apparently by the same operation, morally cleansed himself, and left every stain and ugly blot of his late misdeeds and reputation in his bath. His face, albeit scratched here and there, was rosy, round, shining with irrepressible good-humor and youthful levity. His large blue eyes were infantine in their innocent surprise and thoughtlessness. Dripping yet with water, and panting, he rested his elbows lazily on the bank, and became instantly absorbed with a boy's delight in the movements of the gopher, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... Baker Institution, threw the dormitory window wide to them, went out to seek them. They brought her a new stirring of vitality, something deep within her leaped up responding to the voucher the evenings brought that presently they would bring something new and different. She vibrated to an irrepressible pulse of accord with that: it made her hand strong and her brain clear for the unimportant matters that remained within the scope of the monotonous moment. Her spirits gained an enviable lightness, she began again to see beautiful, touching things in the life that carried her ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... The child took the cue instantly. He looked hastily at his work, broke into an irrepressible giggle, rubbed the figures out, without a word, and began again. And the whole class entered into the joke with the gusto of fellow-fools, for ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... months the excitements of the great political world concern this biography little. There was strife between Davis and Douglas in the Senate. At a meeting strong against slavery, Seward regained courage from the occasion and roused the North with grave and earnest words about the "irrepressible conflict." The "underground railway," or chain of friendly houses by which fugitive slaves were stealthily passed on to Canada, became famous. Methodist professors riotously attempted to rescue an arrested fugitive at Oberlin. A Southern grand jury threw out ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... but has never dared to assert herself, or, to speak more truly, has only known to assert herself in the wrong direction. False voices there have been without number, but not even yet has true womanhood been able, in spite of its irrepressible longings, to utter that clear, free, elevated speech that shall yet stir the keenest pulses of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the harbor, no supplies could be expected. Of all this, however, he gave no intimation, but, firm and self-possessed, submitted to the same fare with the meanest soldier, exposed himself to as great fatigue, and often underwent greater privations. At the same time his fixed resolution and irrepressible zeal in the defence and protection of his people, nerved him to further and ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... success she had ever been proud of and who carried herself, though with the most good-natured fraternisings, as one native to an upper air. She had called herself in moments of early penitence for irrepressible suspicion a little presumptuous prig: so strange did it seem to her at first, the impulse of criticism in regard to her bright protectress. But the revolution was over and she had a desolate, lonely freedom which struck her as not the most cynical thing in the world only because Selina's ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... blood can't stand up agin Mis' White," said Marty one day, in an irrepressible confidence to Mercy. "An' the queerest thing is, that she'll never let go on you. There ain't nothin' to hender my goin' away any day, an' there hain't been for twenty year; but she sez I'm to stay till she dies, an' I don't ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... go into town, I was afraid of any one's seeing and recognizing me. I was conscious of an irrepressible agitation in my manner. Also, I was afraid of any violent change in my habits, such as going to a place of amusement, or walking from home in order to fatigue myself. At the hall door it waited till I mounted the steps, and when the door was opened ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... voice was irrepressible. She had been alone for weeks with the conventional gloom that made an obsession of the shadow of death which enveloped the house. All voices and footsteps had been subdued to harmonize with the grief of the mistress of ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... suddenly seized with the whim to get her to promise to come to the Palazzo Zuccari and receive the mysterious little clock dedicated to her namesake. Hearing his audacious words, she frowned, wavering between curiosity and prudence; but as he, nothing daunted, persevered in the attack, an irrepressible smile quivered on her lips. Under the shadow of her large hat with its white plumes, and with her lace-flounced parasol as a ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... back. How long he had stood there she did not know, nor did he say. The muttered exclamations which had escaped her, the irrepressible cry of despair she had given when she first recognised the identity of the "stranger" may have reached him where he sat at the other end of the room, and drawn him insensibly forward till he could overlook her shoulder as she read, and taste with her the horror of these revelations which yet were ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... American lady who is said to have turned missionary and come, broken-hearted, to the distant East because her lover had died a few days before they were to be married, they are an audience of people each with a more or less adventurous history. It is perfectly natural that it should be so; it is the irrepressible spirit of adventure that is either directly or indirectly responsible for their ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... a fool, or both together, to interfere between an American and her property." Her coolness vanished, however, when the alcalde turned round to the girl and told her that she was free to leave her mistress when she liked; and when she heard the irrepressible cheering of the crowded court-hut at the alcalde's humanity and boldness, and saw the slave's face flush with delight at the judge's words, she became terribly enraged; made use of the most fearful threats, and would have ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... England. This is found in the portraits of certain of Chaucer's pilgrims—the knight, the squire, and the yeoman; and in the special prologues to the various tales. The knight, as the representative of European chivalry, comes to us in name at least from the German forests with the irrepressible Teutons. Chivalry in its rude form, however, was destined to pass through a refining and modifying process, and to obtain its name in France. Its Norman characteristic is found in the young ecuyer or squire, of Chaucer, who aspires to equal his father in station ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... do as he chose with his property. The facts that Mark's mother, Mary, had a house of her own, and that Barnabas, her relative, is specially signalised as having sold his property, prove that it was not universal. It was an irrepressible outcrop of the brotherly feeling that filled all hearts. Christ has not come to lay down laws, but to give impulses. Compelled communism is not the repetition of that oneness of sympathy which effloresced ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... by that irrepressible fellow, the laughing jackass, at early dawn, and on looking out from their leafy bower they found that the ground ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... taste and the same spirit of perseverance. Accident brought me one morning in contact with a set of the New Dugdale's Monasticon, bound in blue morocco, and most gorgeously bound and gilded, lying upon the table of Mr. James Bohn—a mountain of bibliopegistic grandeur! A sort of irrepressible awe kept you back even from turning over the coats or covers! And what a WORK—deserving of pearls and precious stones in its outward garniture! "Who was the happy man to accomplish such a piece of binding?"[477] observed I. "Who BUT John ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... irrepressible note of youth about him, which called forth a species of "mothering" from every woman of his acquaintance, Alan Stair was a man to whom people instinctively turned for counsel. A child in the material things ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... had also been looking for something to do, and, wandering to the other end of the studio, saw before him my breakfast-things neglected, unremoved. "I say, can't I be useful HERE?" he called out to me with an irrepressible quaver. I assented with a laugh that I fear was awkward, and for the next ten minutes, while I worked, I heard the light clatter of china and the tinkle of spoons and glass. Mrs. Monarch assisted her husband— they ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... to whom I had not been introduced. During the hour that Laurier spoke this man continued to lean over the table so as to catch a view of his fascinating face. He interested me almost as much as did the speaker. I had never sat beside such an irrepressible vitality. Like a bird to a succession of swinging boughs, he hung upon the golden utterances of his old chieftain and political mentor concerning a subject so poignantly dear to the experiences of one and the ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... bit of it. In fact, the queer old fellow said he was willing to abdicate in Tom's favor, and now, I suppose, Tommy-boy is King of the Pipes," and Helen, the irrepressible, grinned. ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... his light nervous arm the snaky head of the slaughtered Gorgon. His name is Perseus, and you may read his story, not in the Greek mythology, but in the memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. Glancing from one of these fine fellows to the other, I probably uttered some irrepressible commonplace of praise, for, as if provoked by my voice, a man rose from the steps of the loggia, where he had been sitting in the shadow, and addressed me in good English—a small, slim personage, clad in a sort of black velvet tunic (as it seemed), and with a mass of auburn ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... I was stopping for and talking about, and why I didn't get on with the game. His spirits were irrepressible. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... with a burning ambition to become a writer. Like Ibsen's Master-Builder, there was a troll in his blood, which drew him away to the continent on inland voyages with a canoe and lonely tramps with a donkey; these gave him material for books full of brilliant pictures, shrewd observations, and irrepressible humour. He contributed various articles to magazines, which were immediately recognised by critics like Leslie Stephen as bearing the unmistakable mark of literary genius; but they attracted almost no attention from the general reading ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... do my work, and nothing else." Then catching a glimpse of Mrs. Mumpson's dress, and fearing he should laugh outright, he turned abruptly on his heel and went to his room, where he was in a divided state between irrepressible ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... become his guest at White-nights. It was just then that Marius felt, as he had never done before, the value to himself, the overpowering charm, of his friendship. "More than brother!"—he felt—like a son also!" contrasting the fatigue of soul which made himself in effect an older man, with the irrepressible youth of his companion. For it was still the marvellous hopefulness of Cornelius, his seeming prerogative over the future, that determined, and kept alive, all other sentiment concerning him. A new ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... never seen before—the look of a man who had work of his own, and had learned something of the perplexity and suffering of responsibility. The other was Amroth, who was looking at the two with an air of irrepressible amusement. When I entered, Lucius rose, and ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Some of Lincoln's immortal words were cut into the stone at his feet, and never did a distracted town more sorely need the healing of "with charity towards all" than did Chicago at that moment, and the tolerance of the man who had won charity for those on both sides of "an irrepressible conflict." ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... with the true interests of liberty and humanity. Witness the offensive form in which the fugitive slave law was passed, and its execution enforced in the North, wholly regardless of the natural and irrepressible sympathies of a humane people; and, on the other hand, the unnecessary and sinister excitement deliberately aroused and kept up, in the extreme Southern States, on this subject of fugitives, although it is well known that no considerable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... statesmanship and political prescience, but how far he fell short of comprehending the real magnitude of the crisis then impending, was shown by his prediction that the war would last but ninety days. His famous dictum about the "irrepressible conflict" did ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... audience to get up and dust,' cried the irrepressible Jack, whose wit was very apt to be of a slangy character. 'Now let us settle the interior, or ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... think she was right; not because he was wrong, but because, as I firmly believe, she did it from no personal motives whatever, although in her modesty she doubted herself. I believe it was from pure regard for the man and for the truth, urging her to an irrepressible utterance. If so, should we not say that she spoke by the Spirit? Only I shudder to think what utterance might, with an equal outward show, be attributed to the same Spirit. Well, to his own master every one standeth or falleth; ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... had hitherto enjoyed. Henceforth her position was to be like that of the other colonies with royal governors. But her history did not thereby lose its interest or significance, though it became, like the history of most of the colonies, a dismal record of irrepressible bickerings between the governor appointed by the crown and the legislature elected by the people. In the period that began in 1692 and ended in 1776, the movements of Massachusetts, while restricted and hampered, were at the same time forced into a wider orbit. She was brought into political ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... room—of the dark and tattered draperies which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and at length there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... upon her, is quite worthy of her husband, and who is always, it will be remembered, so impassioned in her declaration that, come what may, she never will desert Mr. Micawber! With Traddles, and his irrepressible hair, even a love-lock from which had to be kept down by Sophy's preservation of it in a clasped locket! With Mr. Peggotty, in fine, who, in his tender love for his niece, is, according to his own ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... sheen, and were then speared. As little noise as possible was made; but though the men bit their lips instead of crying out when they missed their fish, there was a continuous ring of their weapons on the stones, and every irrepressible imprecation was echoed up and down the black glen. Two or three of the gang were told off to land the salmon, and they had to work smartly and deftly. They kept by the side of the spears-man, and the moment he struck a fish they grabbed ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... him, however, that we owe our temporary rest. It is to that irrepressible and indefatigable unit, the Boy Scout. Charles, I believe we'd all be lying out in the rain at this moment but for that assistance. The equipment of the Boy Scout on billeting duty consists of a piece of white chalk and a menacing demeanour. Thus armed, he knocks at every likely door, wishes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... absolved her.... Why had she not answered them? Why had she stood there dumb? The blow to her pride had been too deep, had been dealt too unexpectedly—for one miserable moment she had thought first of herself! Ah, that importunate, irrepressible self—the moi haissable of the Christian—if only one could tear it from one's breast! She had missed an opportunity—her last opportunity perhaps! By this time, even, a hundred hostile influences, cold whispers of vanity, of selfishness, ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... not the only source of trouble and unrest. There are older and deeper sources—in the misery of nations and in man's irrepressible ambition for ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... very magnificent," said Nora. There was in her voice the slightest touch of sarcasm, which she would have given the world not to have uttered; but it had been irrepressible. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... my remembrances to your mother." Then he passed out. As he disappeared the irrepressible Alaric called ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... you can depend upon," said the irrepressible Linda before Marian had time to speak. "It is sure to be on the sunny side. Every living soul in California is looking for ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... if the presence of others cannot be avoided, it is at least necessary to require of them absolute silence. Parents, and sometimes teachers, have an almost irrepressible tendency to interrupt the examination with excuses for the child's failures and with disturbing explanations which are likely to aid the child in comprehending the required task. Without the least intention of doing so, they sometimes practically ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... Pandava, who was the soul of Krishna, became dumb, when Janardana (in reply addressed that son of Pritha) saying, 'Thou art mine and I am thine, while all that is mine is thine also! He that hateth thee hateth me as well, and he that followeth thee followeth me! O thou irrepressible one, thou art Nara and I am Narayana or Hari! We are the Rishis Nara and Narayana born in the world of men for a special purpose. O Partha, thou art from me and I am from thee! O bull of the Bharata race, no one can understand the difference ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... generator could be repaired in three-quarters of an hour. But certain scraps of talk that came to his ears amid the clink of glasses, from one of the shadowy saloons, had stung into vague activity his old, irrepressible hunger for the companionship of his own ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... that language was of little consequence if the spirit was only right, startled new-comers by blandly greeting them with "good-morning, damn you," and other remarks of an equally mixed order. A second irrepressible being held that all the emotions of the soul should be freely expressed, and illustrated his theory by antics that would have sent him to a lunatic asylum, if, as an unregenerate wag said, he had not already been in one. When his spirit soared, he climbed trees and shouted; when ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... the irrepressible conflict be- tween sense and Soul. Mortal thought wars with this sense as one that beateth the air, but Science outmasters it, and ends the warfare. This proves daily that "one [30] on ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... walled in by bayonets, and still further isolated from the people around by the impassable moat of mutual hatred. It was a city obeying the articles of war, governed by despotic authority, and yet occasionally revealing, in full force, the irrepressible democratic element. At periods which could almost be calculated, the military populace were wont to rise upon the privileged classes, to deprive them of office and liberty, and to set up in their place commanders of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... never lived with barbarous, savage folk," said Dennet—and therewith she burst into an irrepressible fit of laughter, trying in vain to check it, for a small and mischievous elf, freshly promoted to the office of scullion, had crept up and pinned a dish-cloth to the substantial petticoats, and as Mistress Headley whisked round to see what was the matter, like a kitten after its tail, it ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... poured out his soul, in four columns of The Planet, the exuberant, irrepressible soul of the Celt. He did it in an hour and twenty minutes. As he said himself afterwards (relating his marvellous achievement) he was sustained by one continuous inspiration; his passionate pen paused neither for punctuation nor for thought. The thoughts, he said, were there. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... fugitives were full in view, and there were women among them. Their horses were obviously flagging, and the dark line which denoted the brink of the now flooded river was still some distance in front. Barely, however, had the troopers given vent to their irrepressible joy at the prospect of so important a capture, with the loot which would almost certainly accompany it, when one of them, happening to look behind, uttered a cry of surprise and disgust. The pursuers were themselves pursued, ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... deceived. She knew him, not only as a persistent and irrepressible lover, but as one full of guile, adroit in tricks, fertile in expedients. He was one who could not take "No" for an answer—at least not from her. When she repulsed him she seemed to grow in his eyes only the ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... said the irrepressible Massachusetts. "Call her a Harvest Hamper, and braid her lovely ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... startled by such a burst of irrepressible passion from the man who had told him that, though friends were found only once in a life, sweethearts were as plentiful ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his finest and tenderest sostenuto passages, Josephine sneezed—and such a sneeze! you might have heard it out in the lobbies. An audible titter ran round the house. I saw Madame de Marignan cover her face with her handkerchief, and yield to an irrepressible fit of laughter. As for the tenor, he cast a withering glance up at the box, and made a marked pause before resuming his song. Merciful powers! what crime had I committed that I should be visited with such a punishment ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... Verna, the irrepressible, was in the control room of the Sirius, quarreling adroitly with Brandon and deftly flirting with Crowninshield. Glancing into the control screen she saw the planet in its end block, then studied ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... himself by counting on joys which, had he been less incorrigibly addicted to imaginative illusions, he should never have expected. Sometimes he has framed ideals which could be fulfilled, but only at the expense of a large proportion of natural and irrepressible human desires. Such, for example, have been the one-sided ascetic ideals of Stoicism or Puritanism, which in their attempt to give order and form to life, crush and distort a considerable portion of it. The same is true of mysticism which ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... An irrepressible giggle came from Sally. Peggy bit her lips to keep back her laughter, and cast down her eyes quickly. The youth had included both in his speech, and, during the meal that followed, his few remarks were characterized by a like impartiality. When at length all were in ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... to whom the pleasure of chattering and displaying his intelligence was evidently more precious and important than his daughters' happiness. Meier, the only young man who ever came to their house, came—they knew—for the sake of their charming, feminine society, but the irrepressible old man had taken possession of him, and would not let him ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Nina, whose irrepressible gossip and giggling met with only silence and scowls from his superior altitude, if they knew why Miss Harriet had decided to walk. They stared at each other innocently, on the brink of fresh laughter. No; ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... a blow from the hands of these men, who had fled from home and country to secure it, but it could not die while their own principles were remembered, and constantly at one point or another, irrepressible men and women rose up, bent upon free thought and free speech, and shaming even the most determined and intolerant spirit. One of such men, outspoken by nature, recorded his mind in some two thousand printed pages, and Roger Williams even to-day looms up with all ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... irrepressible Sol, "that you did git in a good lick at Braxton Wyatt, after all. Ain't he unhappy now, bitin' his fingers an' pawin' the earth an' findin' nothin'? I feel real sorry, I do, fur Braxton. It's hard fur a nice young feller to have to ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... enjoy that immensely," the young man answered, with, for his own consciousness, a touch of irrepressible gloom. He didn't look forward to the continuation of the drama, to his own lame and merely negative part in it, at the close quarters of a house-party among the ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... but instead of doing that, she assured her, and with great sincerity, that she did pity her—to the utter amazement of Lucy, who, though really uncomfortable herself, hoped at least to be an object of irrepressible envy ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... alarmed, and turned fearfully white ... then alarm was replaced by indignation; she suddenly crimsoned all over, to her very hair—and her eyes, fastened directly on the offender, at the same time darkened and flamed, they were filled with black gloom, and burned with the fire of irrepressible fury. The officer must have been confused by this look; he muttered something unintelligible, bowed, and walked back to his friends. They greeted him with a laugh, and ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... his elbow, and Mr. Tredgold, still keeping him under the spell of his eye, began with great rapidity to narrate the circumstances attending the loss of the Fair Emily. After one irrepressible grunt of surprise Captain Brisket listened without moving a muscle, but the changes on Mr. Duckett's face were so extraordinary that on several occasions the narrator faltered and lost the thread of his discourse. At such times Mr. Chalk took up the story, and once, when both seemed ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... steady, and she roused him from indolent repose. As a critic of that time says: "She was as bustling, restless, energetic and pushing as he was modest, retiring and unaffected." Lover gives this picture of them: "There was Lady Morgan, with her irrepressible vivacity, her humor that indulged in the most audacious illustrations, and her candor which had small respect for time or place in its expression, and who, by the side of her tranquil, steady, contemplative husband, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... she exclaimed, with sudden and irrepressible excitement of manner. "Stop!—one moment only. There's something I must say to you. Lachlan, please step inside the hall," she hurriedly continued. "I'll call you in plenty of time before the doctor can get here. Now, Mr. McLean, ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... toward the coast once more. The lists from El Caney were throbbing over the wires, and the country, so long immune from peril and suffering, was awakening to the cost of victory. There was a terrible flippancy in the irrepressible spirit of trade which had seized upon the nation's emblems, freshly consecrated in the blood of her sons, and was turning them to commercial account,—advertising, in symbols of death and priceless devotion, that ribbons or soap or candy were for sale. The flag was, so to ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... cast outside the domain of American politics. Perhaps they did not sufficiently reflect that the same power which had established the boundaries of slavery might, when the opportunity was ripe, erase them. The slavery agitation was, however, only in its infancy. It had within it a vital and irrepressible element of growth. With the advance of civil liberty, the growth of education, it, too, must necessarily make progress. As yet it was in the hands of so-called "fanatics." Respectable statesmanship, having made the Missouri Compromise, would have no ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... express more clearly the loyalty of the soldiers to their general than this quaint estimate of his popularity. The Anglo-Saxon is averse to the unrestrained display of personal affection; and when his natural reluctance is overborne by irrepressible emotion, he attempts to hide it by a jest. So Jackson's veterans laughed at his peculiarities, at his dingy uniform, his battered cap, his respect for clergymen, his punctilious courtesy, and his blushes. They delighted in the phrase, when a distant yell was heard, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... praise which it used to receive,[3] can never be anything much better than a large prize poem, such as those which still receive and sometimes deserve the medals and the gift-books of schools and universities. Every now and then a man of irrepressible literary talent, having no vernacular or no public in the vernacular ready to his hand, will write in Latin a book like the De Nugis Curialium,[4] which is good literature though bad Latin. But on the whole it is a fatal law of such things that the better the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... was a great affray in Fleet Street between the hot-blooded youths of the Inns of Court and the citizens, which lasted two days; the chief man in the riot was one of Clifford's Inn, named Harbottle; and this irrepressible Harbottle and his fellows only the appearance of the mayor and sheriffs could quiet. In 1458 (in the same reign) there was a more serious riot of the same kind; the students were then driven back by archers from ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... to know, but the big sky and my books keep me busy. Do you remember that picture in the Corcoran Gallery with a wee line of land at the bottom and a great high reach of blue sky above, covering nine-tenths of the canvas? I have thought of it often to-day—"the high, irrepressible sky." It is moonlight and the rare air gives physical tone, so that I feel a bit more like myself, as ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... about a year for this irrepressible conflict within the Confederacy to reveal itself. During the twelve months following Davis's election as provisional President, he dominated the situation, though the Charleston Mercury, the Rhett organ, found opportunities to be sharply ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... the organization of the fraternity was completed, I had information in my possession which if it had gone to the emperor, would have created a social upheaval such as has never been witnessed in history. But many of the most anarchistic and irrepressible leaders of the nihilists were quietly arrested and sent where they would be rendered harmless, and others who were less violent, I left undisturbed and in seeming security, knowing that they would ultimately lead me to the point I wished to attain, the very root of the evil which I had determined ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... his eye, and an irrepressible feeling of admiration, rising out of his own skill in athletics, took possession of him ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... policeman, who heard me civilly but without committing himself. To my first question, what was going to happen? he carefully answered that he couldn't say, but to my second, with the irrepressible scorn of one who knows for one who wants to know, he answered more frankly, "Who are they waiting for? Why, Quidnunc. Mister Quidnunc. That's who it is. Him they call Quidnunc. So now you know." In fact, I did not know. He had told me nothing, would tell me no more, and ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... Graham was introduced, and a quiet girl moved up a bit for him to sit down; but there was not much room, and the girl would not talk, so that he sat uncomfortably and looked about him, listening with one ear to the fire of chaff on his right. Donovan was irrepressible. His laugh and voice, and the fact that he was talking to a hospital personage, attracted a certain amount of attention. Peter tried to smile, but he felt out of it and observed. He stared up towards the band, which was just striking ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... and they had to face the foot-lights. Moreland waited for Steadfast to begin. Steadfast was gazing vacantly about him, silent save for irrepressible hiccups. The audience grew impatient, hisses became audible, and an apple or two was hurled upon the stage. Moreland, who had gathered something of the subject of the scene, found it absolutely necessary to say something, and began ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... religion became darker and more intense, and into his ethics crept a note of revenge, into his songs a day of reckoning close at hand. The "Coming of the Lord" swept this side of Death, and came to be a thing to be hoped for in this day. Through fugitive slaves and irrepressible discussion this desire for freedom seized the black millions still in bondage, and became their one ideal of life. The black bards caught new notes, and ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Linden, and I reflected that, having taken the serious step of visiting the head-quarters of the Gallic genius, I should try and project myself; as much as possible, into the circumstances which are in part the consequence and in part the cause of its irrepressible activity. It seemed to me that there could be no well-grounded knowledge without this preliminary operation of placing myself in relations, as slightly as possible modified by elements proceeding from a different combination of causes, ...
— A Bundle of Letters • Henry James
... party that pitched its tent that night on the banks of Soldier Creek and attempted to dry clothes and provisions by the feeble heat of a little sheet-iron stove. Only Sandy, the irrepressible and unconquerable Sandy, preserved his good temper through the trying experience. "It is a part of the play," he said, "and anybody who thinks that crossing the prairie, 'as of old the pilgrims crossed the sea,' is a Sunday-school picnic, might better try it with the ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... flowers suddenly shaken by a puff of wind which threatened to scatter the leaves of an old brown, withered rose on the same stalk with two dewy buds, such being the emblem of the widow between her fair young bridemaids. But her heroism was admirable. She had started with an irrepressible shudder, as if the stroke of the bell had fallen directly on her heart; then, recovering herself, while her attendants were yet in dismay, she took the lead and paced calmly up the aisle. The bell continued to swing, strike and vibrate ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and fear, of his many trials and disappointments, related with fine scorn how the "Parliament men" had badgered and baffled him with their book-knowledge, and how, when at last they thought they had smothered the irrepressible prophecy of his genius in the quaking depths of Chatmoss, he had exclaimed, "Did ye ever see a boat float on water? I will make my road float upon Chatmoss!" The well-read Parliament men (some of whom, perhaps, wished for no railways near their parks and pleasure-grounds) ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... that," said Denis, putting the bowl to his mouth, and pretending to swallow a huge draught, and then placed it on the ground and gasped for breath. "Please tell His Majesty, that unless he wishes to kill me, he'll let me off this time," cried the irrepressible young Irishman. "Poor Percy and Lionel will burst outright if they have ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... The result of this irrepressible growth, fostered by the kind providence and loving care of the Master for whom the service has been done, was for the Directors, in their management of the Society's affairs, embarrassment, difficulty, and debt. That ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... of her situation so penetrated her to whom these words were addressed. She was choked by an irrepressible sob that was half a laugh, and a film of moisture obscured her vision. With a sudden movement, she seized the poet's hand and pressed it to her lips. Then, half-ashamed, she rose and turned away to toy with the foliage of a shrub that stood ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... butter, eggs and milk, on which we dined satisfactorily. We then faced the mountain which we crossed near the summit, being desirous to gain Gougane Barra by the shortest possible route. A steep ascent gives the traveller fresh impulses and an irrepressible desire to bound down at the other side. It seems to spring from that principle of action and reaction pervading all nature. At the northern base of Shehigh, after traversing some miles of bog, we found ourselves entering the pass of Ceimenagh. Though that ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... of the part by men; such was also the "counter" of New England. It was my fortune to hear once in a country church an aged deacon "sing counter". Reverence for the place and song, and respect for the singer alike failed to control the irrepressible start of amazement and smile of amusement with which we greeted the weird and apparently demented shriek which rose high over the voices of the choir, but which did not at all disconcert their accustomed ears. Words, however chosen, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... him do anything in my life but once—when I made him burn up a bad book. That's all!" At her "That's all!" our young friend broke into an irrepressible laugh; it lasted only a second, but it drew her eyes to him. His own met them, though not long enough to help him to understand her; unless it were a step towards this that he saw on the instant how the burnt book—the way she alluded to it!—would ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... they heard the boys come in, and from the merry voices and even whistling of the irrepressible Danny, they knew that the untoward incident had ended well. Yet when the lads had joined them, as eager for refreshments as Mabel now proved, neither Jim, Mr. Seth, nor Monty was with them; and, to the credit ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... two ways. First, I say, irrepressible curiosity imperiously leads one on; and I say, secondly, that it always leads to a better understanding of a thing's significance to consider its exaggerations and perversions its equivalents and substitutes and nearest relatives elsewhere. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... Captain Hart, who has been robbed and threatened by him; Father Orens, whom he has fired at, and repeatedly driven to the woods; my own family, and even the French officials—all seemed smitten with an irrepressible affection for the man. His fall had been made soft; his son, upon his death, was to succeed Paaaeua in the chieftaincy; and he lived, at the time of our visit, in the shoreward part of the village ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a priest appeared, and made a sign, and the officer of the guard signified to us that we were expected to advance, which we did with the best grace that we could muster, all except Alphonse, whose irrepressible teeth instantly began to chatter. In a few seconds we were out of the court and looking at a vast sea of human faces stretching away to the farthest limits of the great circle, all straining to catch a glimpse of the mysterious strangers who had committed ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... what little it was in my power to do for thee. Peradventure a time may come when they who seek the roof of Adam Warner may find less homely cheer, a less rugged habitation,—for look you!" he exclaimed suddenly, with a burst of irrepressible enthusiasm—and laying his hand on Nevile's arm, as, through all the smoke and grime that obscured his face, flashed the ardent soul of the triumphant Inventor,—"look you! since you have been in this house, one ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I should find there, but that this was the spot where the intruder had been, possibly was now, and I determined to grapple with him. What—what have I said?" I asked in anguish, as I caught a look on the coroner's face of irrepressible repulsion and disgust, slight and soon gone but unmistakable ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... a jangle of wrong notes, and Nick sprang to his feet, his yellow face wearing a grin of irrepressible gaiety. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... days his life was in the balance. But gradually the crisis passed, and as he recovered he felt calmed with the conviction that he had now effected redemption from his faults. He accepted without hesitation an appointment to a position in Tashkend. But the nearer the time came, the more irrepressible grew the desire to see Anna for a farewell. He sent her a message, and she waited for his coming. The visit was fatal. Anna had made up her mind what to say, but the presence of Vronsky instantly overcame her resolution, and when she could find words she said, "Yes, you have ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... buoyancy, springiness, which comes from the union, the divine union, of the spiritual and the beautiful. However weighty it may be with thought, the poetical passage floats, thus giving certain sign of life, of a soul irrepressible. ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... brought a pang he might have anticipated. He had a sudden powerful hankering for the old life. That at least was man-size—his job had been man's work. He looked back at those fruitful laborious days, with their rich interest and absorbing details, their human companionships, and had an almost irrepressible desire to rush out, take the elevated train, go down East Eighty-first Street, ascend the elevator, ring the bell, and enter his dominion of trembling, thundering presses. He could smell the old smells, he could see the presses and the men, he could hear the noise. That was where he belonged. ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... populations, yet were not responsible to their subjects for the manner in which they might choose to do it. In the last mentioned states there existed a chronic strife between the people and their rulers. It was an irrepressible conflict, and its crisis was ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... he was also, to some extent, an artist in plot-structure. The mingle-mangle of scarcely connected incidents which did duty with Greene for a plot, the irrepressible by-play with which Lyly loved to interrupt his main story, were rejected by him. Edward the First is an exception; in his best plays he achieved a certain dignified directness and simplicity. But ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... shakes his head. "I've considered that," says he; "but sometimes the bald truth sounds singularly unconvincing. I'm sure it would in this case. If the young lady was familiar with all the buoyant audacity of your irrepressible nature, perhaps it would be different. No, young man, I fear I must ask you ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... expatiating on the flowers as she sat with Clara under the fir trees one evening, and had been telling her again of the wonderful light from the evening sun, when such an irrepressible longing came over her to see it all once more that she jumped up and ran to her grandfather, who was in the shed, calling out almost before she ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... sir, I intended no offence," continued the irrepressible young American, ignoring the warning signals from his associates; "it only occurred to me that with such an immense advantage on your side you could afford to be magnanimous and treat ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... marbles at any object behind her, whistling, stamping, fighting, shrieking out 'Amen' in the middle of a prayer, and sometimes rising en masse and tearing like a troop of bisons in hob-nailed shoes down from the gallery, round the great schoolroom, and down the stairs, and into the street. These irrepressible outbreaks she bore with ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... (b) he begins by asserting that Israel's religious prerogative will only the more certainly ensure her destruction, and justifies his threat of doom by his irrepressible assurance of having heard the divine voice, iii. 1-8. The doom is deserved because of the rapacity, luxury, iii. 9-15, and drunkenness, iv. 1-3, nor will their sumptuous worship save them, iv. 4, 5. Warnings enough they have ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen |
