"Obduracy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the mask of reserve fell quickly over his features. "Enough of me and my affairs, though. How is it with you? Have you won the lady of your own heart's desire? When last I saw you, you were lamenting, the obduracy of some fair one, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... not to bandy words with you," cried the monk; "the flames which you will feel to-morrow will give you a foretaste of those you will have to endure throughout eternity as the consequence of your obduracy." ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... felt his own practised obduracy of feeling strangely giving way before the innocent and guileless faith of Christine, was not unwilling himself to change the direction of the inquiries. The family of Balthazar was directed to retire, and the attendants were ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... not knowing what to say or do. The change from the bacchanalian riot in the great hall to the solemn pathos and woe of the secret chamber sobered him rapidly. Even his obduracy gave way at last. "Caroline," said he, taking both her hands in his, "I will not urge you longer. I am called bad, and you think me so; but I am not brutal. It was a promise made over the wine. Varin, the drunken beast, called you Queen Vashti, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... grief, said, 'Surely, my lord, it would be to your honor that that poor body should be buried, and not left cruelly as food for dogs.' Then the Count, recognizing him, said astonished, 'Go, your patience overcomes my obduracy,' and immediately Marzucco went and buried ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... so iniquitously tarnished. I had hitherto been silent as to my principal topic of recrimination. But I was by no means certain, that I should consent to go out of the world in silence, the victim of this man's obduracy and art. In every view I felt my heart ulcerated with a sense of his injustice; and my very soul spurned these pitiful indulgences, at a time that he was grinding me into dust with the inexorableness ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... a schoolmaster's daughter should apparently care so little to be the Duke of Sedbergh's niece, and should even dare to allow herself the luxury of snubbing a Flaxman; at another, utterly sceptical as to any lasting obduracy on the chit's part. The girl was clearly anxious not to fall too easily, but as to final refusal—pshaw! And it made her mad that Hugh would hold ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a sure basis, and he was succeeded by a race of prophets who from age to age reminded the people that in regard or disregard for what he required of them depended their prosperity or their ruin as a nation, of which from their extreme obduracy they had again ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... out. He refused to be worked upon by argument. To Ranny's amazement, the old Humming-bird bore himself in those days of stress, not with that peculiar savage obduracy that distinguished his more insignificant hostilities, but with a certain sad and fine insistence. It was as if for the first time in his life he was aware that he cared for his son Randall and was afraid of losing him. The Humming-bird ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... aroused and enlarged spiritual impulses are the enginery that is driving their minds and bodies forward into virgin territory, into new and larger enterprises, and thus into a wider, deeper realization of their own capabilities. So the leaven of democracy is working through difficulties of surpassing obduracy and resolving situations that seemed, in the past, to be beyond human achievement. And of democracy it may be said, as of Dame Rumor of old, "She grows strong by motion and gains power by going. Small at first through fear, she presently raises herself into the ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... went to bed early; and the men, having lighted their pipes, proposed a game of ecarte, in which Monsieur Follenvie was invited to join, the travellers hoping to question him skillfully as to the best means of vanquishing the officer's obduracy. But he thought of nothing but his cards, would listen to nothing, reply to nothing, and repeated, time after time: "Attend to the game, gentlemen! attend to the game!" So absorbed was his attention ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... point on which he did not doubt that he was right, and as to which her own father was altogether on his side. After hearing the strong protestation of her affection he could not think that she would be finally obdurate when the reasons for her obduracy were so utterly valueless. But still there were vague fears about her health. Why had she fainted and fallen through his arms? Whence had come that peculiar brightness of complexion which would have charmed him had it not frightened him? A dim dread of something that was ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... reasons that the doctor acknowledged as much as this. First, for Thorwald's sake; for I had been thinking the doctor's obduracy was proving a poor reward for our friend's great kindness to us. I rejoiced, too, that my companion was beginning to show our new acquaintance that, although he had little imagination, he was possessed of a good heart. ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... before us, no other sign can possibly be spoken of than one of the two last classes. For it was a real, miraculous sign only which could possibly exert any influence on a mind so darkened as was that of Ahaz, and it was the vain offer of such an one only which was fitted to bring to light his obduracy. If, then, the Prophet was willing and able to give a real, miraculous sign, why, then, is the answer of Ahaz so unsuitable? And we can surely not suppose, as Meier does, that he should have intentionally misunderstood ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... obduracy so cruel to his friends was the fear of a detection which he thought not merely prejudicial to his affairs, but dishonourable to his character: for, without betraying any symptom of his distress, he had taken a general ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... men, and to open salvation to those who seek it. But men render themselves so unworthy of it, that it is right that God should refuse to some, because of their obduracy, what He grants to others from a compassion which is not due to them. If He had willed to overcome the obstinacy of the most hardened, He could have done so by revealing Himself so manifestly to them that they could not have doubted of the truth of His essence; ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... there, Tommy?" asked she, half relenting, and yet half wishing to excite his fears enough to conquer his obduracy. ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of people was pouring. If he had ever heard of Moloch he would have been struck by the resemblance, and unfairly so, for when revivals were not in the air that ugly little chapel was served very faithfully by a spiritually-minded minister, who hurled himself all the year round against the obduracy of the people. Ishmael had a quick movement of withdrawal as his mother led him in through the prosaic yellow-grained doors, but it availed him nothing. Another moment and he was being propelled into ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... of the same fact in the history of Christianity. The beautiful example of the Saviour, and the wonderful miracles which he performed—all for the good of man—failed to attract the high boasted reason of the Greek, or the Roman, or to soften the obduracy of the blind and hard Pharisaic hearted Jew: it was still the few who had sympathy with the character He exhibited, and the truths which He spoke, and who found Him to be to their souls "the power ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... moment we have a majority in men and ships; but we can't renew our food or drink, or ammunition. The end is sure against us. Our original agitation was just; our present obduracy is madness. This ship is suspected. It is believed by the rest of the fleet—by ships like the Invincible—that we're weak-kneed, selfish, and lacking in fidelity to the cause. That's not true; but we have either to fight or to run, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thus made a necessity by the obduracy of those who were in control of the South, it became a subsequent necessity to adopt the Fifteenth Amendment. Nothing could have been more despicable than to use the Negro to secure the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment and then to ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... nations, has nevertheless secured recognition as ethically and socially right, that Tennyson could not hope to enlist the sympathy and admiration of his readers for his Oenone, if he had cast her image in the tearless bronze of Pagan obduracy." ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... ready beyond the corral, and she rode astride on one of Hay's own saddles. They found "Moreau" awaiting them at the ford, and there was a scene Field could not understand, for they spoke in the Sioux language. That night it was that, all in tears at the Indian's obduracy, she owned that he was her own brother, not merely a cousin, and together they had all gone back toward Frayne. "Moreau" was to wait on the flats until she could return to the house. She had been striving to get him to make certain promises, she said, contingent on her giving him something from ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... my obduracy being softened, I turned to my wise Guide, hearing the name That in my memory evermore ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... take advantage of those affections to accomplish that which he knows must be her ruin, and plunge her into misery for life;—when a young man does this, I say he must be either a selfish and unfeeling brute, unworthy of the name of man, or he must have a heart little inferior, in point of obduracy, to that of the murderer. Let young women, however, be aware; let them be well aware, that few, indeed, are the cases in which this apology can possibly avail them. Their character is not solely theirs, but belongs, in part, to their family and ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... dress of the brides, and ordering the nuptial banquet. History does not warrant me in adding, that she afterwards consummated the happiness of Dr. Lloyd, by completing the liberal tokens of regard which his grateful friends showered upon him. But whether this was owing to her own obduracy, or to somewhat of that enmity which often subsists between professors of the same liberal art, I have no means of discovering. It is certain that they continued to be sincere friends, which possibly might not have been the ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... of forgery "about thirty-five years ago:" his sister may have presented a well-signed petition to the judges, and the sentence may have been commuted without the tradition surviving on the circuit. All however agree, that no man who ever sat on the bench deserved the imputation of "obduracy" less than Baron Graham. I should not have noticed the anecdote but for its mythic accompaniments, which I disposed of in "N. & ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... philosophy and proud freedom from prejudice, that the rencounter of the morning was one which no woman could at the moment tolerate, few eventually excuse, and which of all incidents was that which would most tend to confirm his wife in her stoical obduracy. Of his offences towards her, whatever were their number or their quality, this surely was the least, and yet its results upon his life and fortunes would in all probability only be equalled by the mysterious cause of their original separation. But how much more bitter than that original ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... to take your bellyful of the savoury food cooked for the Hebrew patriarch. Once a week, at least, ye are invited to feast with Joseph in the house of Pharaoh, and yet, stiff-necked generation that ye are, ye stay from the banquet and then complain of hunger! "Shall there be no punishment for this obduracy?" asks kindly Mother Church, her eyes red with weeping for the hard-heartedness of her children. "Shall there be no remedy?" she sobs, wringing her hands. Whereupon, the spotless maiden Law—that Amazonian virgin, eldest child of violated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... us to use the torture upon you so that we may loosen your tongue!" snarled Vasquez fiercely, enraged by my obduracy. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... accomplishment, or the object to be attained, never enters the mind. Such natures properly reared to know the world, to see it, hear it, and suffer it, tunes all the attributes of the mind and heart to make sweet music. Nothing mellows the heart like sorrow; nothing so softens the obduracy of our natures as experience. None, sir, man or woman, are fitted for the world without the experiences its contact brings. These experiences are teachings, and the bitter ones the best. To be happy, we must have been miserable; it is the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... not, I entreat thee, my good Rocinante, the constant companion of my ways and wanderings." Presently he broke out again, as if he were love-stricken in earnest, "O Princess Dulcinea, lady of this captive heart, a grievous wrong hast thou done me to drive me forth with scorn, and with inexorable obduracy banish me from the presence of thy beauty. O lady, deign to hold in remembrance this heart, thy vassal, that thus in anguish pines for ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... stood as motionless as carven stone. Thinking at the last moment of a plan for escape from the dangerous features of the tourney, the hunchback had bribed one of the attendants to fetch him a steed which for sullen obduracy surpassed any charger in the king's stables. Fate, he was called, because nothing could move or change him, and now, with head pushed forward and ears thrust back, he proved himself beneath the blows and ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham |
