"Provocation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all women; and remember that no provocation whatsoever can justify any man in not being civil to every woman; and the greatest man in the world would be justly reckoned a brute, if he were not ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... The provocation must be strong indeed that can rouse me to do this, even with an enemy. And if you can forgive an unintended offence as heartily as I do the way in which you have resented it, there will be nothing to prevent our meeting ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... how she would turn toward the door as he entered, with her way of arching eyebrows, in the manner of one about to recite the symptoms of a change for the worse—or at best to say "about the same" to everything in the universe. And when Kate Kerr spoke, she always whispered on the faintest provocation. ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... under every pretext—wavelets, forerunners of the tide. For now, you too have to improvise great armies, as we improvised ours in the first two years of war. And with you as with us, your unpreparedness stands as your warrant before history, that not from American minds and wills came the provocation to ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... revolution, were not directly responsible for the outbreak. The doctrines hung like a cloud upon the heights, and at critical moments in the reign of Lewis XV. men felt that a catastrophe was impending. It befell when there was less provocation, under his successor; and the spark that changed thought into action was supplied by the Declaration of American Independence. It was the system of an international extra-territorial universal Whig, far transcending the English model by its simplicity and rigour. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... attractive creature stood before him, at once smiling and bashful, in an attitude of provocation and fear, with hands clasped, then with arms again outstretched, beautiful, white, fragrant arms that showed below the short sleeves of her fine cambric blouse. Her fair hair was divided into two loose waves, whose rebellious curls played about at random. She had grey, almond-shaped ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... for Mr Inglis, in the charge of Fred, and then slipping off, after faring no worse than being in a most horrible fright, for Dick's teeth went no farther than through his trousers. As to Harry and Philip, they enjoyed the fun, as they called it, immensely, which can hardly be wondered at when the provocation they had received is taken into consideration; but I must do them the credit of saying that they would not have set the dog at poor Bill, and that they could not have stopped him if they had tried ever so hard, which, in the hurry-skurry ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... to order you out do not leave your posts, happen what may, but exercise prudence and be prepared leaving them to give the provocation. Answer them that you have no instructions given you with regard to what they ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... before the 'leech-gatherer, upon the lonely moor.' Let England look to it. These women, mothers of men, are abandoning her shores for foreign lands. When good and dutiful children desert the maternal home, what provocation must they have had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... backed away. The code was still on. A girl of his own kind he would have kissed in a moment at such provocation, or none. But he had an odd feeling of needing to protect this girl from herself as well as ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... seemed to indicate, that with kind treatment the Wombat might soon be rendered extremely docile, and probably affectionate; but let his tutor beware of giving him provocation, at least if he should ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... the Cross, carved out of wood. It was put up by one family, as a monument of devotion, and was now under the care of a miller dwelling in the neighborhood. Many passers-by still did reverence to it. This was a source of great provocation to a number of enthusiasts, who afterwards went over to the Anabaptists, and especially to Nicholas Hottinger, a shoemaker by trade, a man not without culture, possessed of some property, versed in the Scriptures and of a decided character, which, in connection with his natural eloquence, gave him ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... which viscount Rochford, the queen's brother, was chief challenger, and Henry Norris principal defender. In the midst of the entertainment, the king suddenly rose and quitted the place in anger; but on what particular provocation is not certainly known. Saunders the Jesuit, the great calumniator of Anne Boleyn, says that it was on seeing his consort drop her handkerchief, which Norris picked up and wiped his face with. The queen immediately retired, and the next day was committed to custody. Her earnest entreaties ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... more about it," interrupted Martin. "You had sufficient provocation for all your actions. And really, believe me, I am very glad I fell in with you. I am glad to be here. I have wanted to go to sea all my life. We are going to ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... a shot. After this, they took several vessels, and matters began to look much brighter. Phillips quickly developed into a most accomplished and bloody pirate, butchering his prisoners on very little or on no provocation whatever. But even this desperate pirate had an occasional "qualm of conscience come athwart his stomach," for when he captured a Newfoundland vessel and was about to scuttle her, he found out that ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... servant, sir," and curtsied with an air of perfect deference as she advanced towards him: she was not the woman to misbehave towards her betters, and fly in the face of the catechism, without severe provocation. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... he had ever seen, lovely little rows of pearls, and the biggest and brightest of dark eyes with wide lashes curling dramatically back. Even in the thrill and elation of the moment there was a spark of provocation in those eyes for the good-looking young man who stared down at her, and Billy would have been a very wooden young man, indeed, if he had not felt a tingling excitement in this unexpected capture, for all the destruction of his romantic plans. So this, he thought rapidly, was the foreign ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... then apparently had found no use for it. So Elisabeth in her heart of hearts was at war with Christopher—that slumbering, smouldering sort of warfare which is ready to break out into fire and battle at the slightest provocation; and this state of affairs did not tend to make life any the easier for him. He felt he could have cheerfully borne it all if only Elisabeth had been kind and had understood; but Elisabeth did not understand him in the least, and was consequently unkind—far more unkind than she, in her careless, ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... bare-headed, bare-legged, and often, with not a little of their sleek bodies gleaming through the innumerable rents of their garments, their eyes glittering like black beads, and their white teeth showing on the slightest provocation to mirth. Indeed, the majority of the young men and women were chattering and laughing much of the time, and only those well in the shadow of age worked on in a stolid, plodding manner. Mingled indiscriminately with the colored people were not a few white women and children, and occasionally a white ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... Mrs. Brown, sir—Fanny Sophonisba Brown, sir, who has left my bed and board without provocation, sir,—vide the Providence papers, sir,—left me, sir, because I didn't approve of her strong-minded goings on, sir, her woman's-rights meetings, sir, and her nigger colonizations, sir, and ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... state would prove that Laura Hawkins, the prisoner at the bar, a fiend in the form of a beautiful woman, shot dead George Selby, a Southern gentleman, at the, time and place described. That the murder was in cold blood, deliberate and without provocation; that it had been long premeditated and threatened; that she had followed the deceased-from Washington to commit it. All this would be proved by unimpeachable witnesses. The attorney added that the duty of the jury, however painful it might be, would be plain and simple. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had been nearly five to one, and yet had been unable to inflict defeat upon them. If they had been "broken," the whole of the French left would have assuredly perished. Thanks to their endurance and obedience in the face of great provocation and privation, the Allied armies were now free from the dangers that had threatened them. No one knew better than he did that they would continue to be as brave, as reliable, and as soldierly in the future, as they had been in the past, until final ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... neither at that time of his life nor any other was he animated by an undue or unreasonable jealousy of this sort such as he has sometimes been accused of; and if in 1755 he took occasion to resent with "honest and indignant warmth" a violation of his rights, there must have been some special provocation. ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... but an instant, when he read aright the meaning of the sounds of guns from the village. The explorers had been attacked by the Murhapas. King Haffgo must have given the order. He had violated his pledge for the first time in his life. Great was his provocation! ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... I thank you, Mrs. Perkins, for your expression of confidence. I wouldn't intentionally go into the house of another man and toss his Sevres up in the air, or throw his Royal Worcester down-stairs, except under very great provocation. (Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Bradley have by this time removed the bric-a- brac from the piano—an upright.) Now, boys, ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... honor with contempt. In my day I was the best shot in Eastern Virginia. I can kill a man in this cause as easily as I have broken either of a man's arms, at choice, in my courting days. Public opinion will clear me under this provocation, and I can acquit my own conscience, abhorrent as duelling is to me. My sons-in-law would leap to take the quarrel up, and rid the world ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... end it is necessary that the Baltic Fleet should commit an act of war, and that the Czar should be convinced that the provocation has come from the ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... never indulges this amiable disposition except with a really kind purpose, and entirely knowing what he is about. Fairservice, on the other hand, gradually falls into an unconscious fatality of varied blunder and provocation; and at last causes the entire catastrophe of the story by bringing in the candles when he has been ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... really cruel! but then, remember her provocation and that she was acting in self-defense. All this was easier for her than you might suppose, for the king's grasp of power, never very strong, was beginning to relax even what little grip it had. All faces were turned toward the rising sun, young Francis, duke of Angouleme, the king's distant ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... a mound of weeds burning, and they watched the fire until, in consequence, as she observed, of the smoke "getting up her nose," Miss Slowboy choked—she could do anything of that sort on the smallest provocation—and woke the baby, who wouldn't go to ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... memory require rehabilitation among those who knew him, or knew anything of him—the only people really concerned. His dreadful deed has long been condoned by all (and they are many) who knew the provocation he had received and the character of the man who ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... are greatly provoked, but not otherwise—may be a stronger deterrent than the prospect of more moderate legislation. In general a considerable part of the economic lawmaking of the future will undoubtedly be called out by demands for action that is too violent to be taken except under great provocation. The dread of the extreme penalty insures a cautious policy in increasing charges which have been established under a transient regime of competition. Partial monopolies adhering to rates many of which were established under the pressure of competition—such are the ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... apologized and agreed to pay an indemnity for American lives lost. The negotiations concerning the Lusitania continued to drag on, but otherwise relations between Germany and the United States had reached the point where peace could be maintained if no further accident or provocation intervened. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... six o'clock; the men were dropping off homeward one by one. The last to leave was a round-shouldered, blinking young man of nineteen or twenty, whose mouth fell ajar on the slightest provocation, seemingly because there was no chin to support it. Henchard called aloud to him as he went out of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Robert still stood on his guard, the feeling in his breast being—in spite of the terrible provocation he had received—that he had done wrong in striking his colonel's guest, and he kept cool and clear-headed, resolved not ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... Tientsin, the officials are trying to calm the people. It is feared that some violent action will take place, some hostile demonstration against the French which will throw the Chinese entirely in the wrong, no matter how great the provocation. If this happens, the sympathy of the world will be turned against the Chinese, and the officials are striving by all means to prevent such an outbreak. A quaint account of one of these indignation meetings was published in one ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... excitement, quite unlike his former methodical bearing. He had shown an inclination to testiness, and was less easily pleased than formerly. To one clerk he had shown a nasty spirit under very slight provocation, and was only endured in the store on account of his master, who was too good a customer for them to offend. Mr. Kelly, a grocer, went so far as to say he acted like a man with a grievance who burned to vent his spite ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... marched out, as said, leading the way across the plateau and into the valley coolly and deliberately, though under a terrific fire from above. The Boer guns, which were served with great courage, invariably gave tongue on the smallest provocation, and the ground was ploughed up in every direction with bursting shell. But fortunately few of the gallant Devons were hit. Later on they drew nearer the position, and the regiment, halted under cover of convenient ant-hills, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... flush of her cheek. This colour on her temples was just touched with a certain blueness where the flesh was thin over the fine veining underneath. Her eyes were light brown, and so wide open that on the slightest provocation the full disc of the pupil was disclosed; the lids—just a fraction of a shade darker than the hue of her face—were edged with lashes that were almost black. While these lashes were not long, they were thick ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... rising from all things, the freshness, the warmth, and the mysterious awakening of April and May, is the vast diffusion of sex murmuring, in whispers, their proposals of voluptuousness, till the soul stammers in answer to the giddy provocation. The ideal no longer knows what it ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... flesh of the potato was forced between the fingers of her glove. A horrible sticky mess! That is the worst of a high-class potato, cooked, as the Five Towns phrase it, "in its jacket." It will burst on the least provocation. There stood Mrs Swann, her right hand glued up with escaped potato, in the sober grandeur of Mrs Clayton Vernon's hall, and Mrs Clayton Vernon bearing down upon ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... rugged with the dried ink of abandoned attempts, of answers delayed longer than decency permitted, of letters begun with infinite reluctance, and put off suddenly till next day—till next week, as like as not! The neglected, uncared-for pen, flung away at the slightest provocation, and under the stress of dire necessity hunted for without enthusiasm, in a perfunctory, grumpy worry, in the "Where the devil is the beastly thing gone to?" ungracious spirit. Where, indeed! It might have been reposing behind the sofa for a ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... police haven't; nor will they, to the best of my belief. Now, look here, Captain Croker, this is a very serious matter, though I am willing to admit that you acted under the most extreme provocation to which any man could be subjected. I am not sure that in defence of your own life your action will not be pronounced legitimate. However, that is for a British jury to decide. Meanwhile I have so much sympathy for you that if you choose to disappear in the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... brushing the golden corn, was pathetic or comic as the humour might seize the beholder. As gay as any of the cicadas that keep the summer's jubilee in the sunny tree-tops, he sings songs that have nothing in common with psalms, and he needs little provocation to dance. French has become an awkward language to him, but his tongue is nimble enough both in Languedocian and Latin. When he hears that the evening soup is ready, he hurries the pig home, flourishes his stick above his head in imitation of the Arabs, and ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... furrowed with whimsical lines, with its faint-blue eyes that wandered from his hearer to the allurement of the window and back again, overhung the desk as he spoke, drawling in those curiously soft tones of his an unconvincing narrative of sore provocation and the subsequent fight. He was a man in the later twenties, lean and slack-limbed; the workman's blouse of coarse linen, belted about him, and the long Russian boots which he wore, gave him, by contrast with the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... was greatly given, and that while a Lad, to grievous {31a} Swearing and Cursing: yea, he then made no more of Swearing and Cursing, than I do of telling my fingers. Yea, he would do it without provocation thereto. He counted it a glory to Swear and Curse, and it was as natural to him, as to ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... voluntarily or otherwise, to fight our brethren, "whose cause was just and right," and a strong attempt was made to array the organization by formal action to oppose the Government, and those especially who were impatient for the general uprising, thought it a timely opportunity and ample provocation, and felt confident that as the South manifested open hostility and presented a bold and united front instantly upon the firing of the first gun upon Fort Sumter, so would it be in all the States of the Northwestern league; they ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... it in a martial hand; be curst and brief] Martial hand, seems to be a careless scrawl, such as shewed the writer to neglect ceremony. Curst, is petulant, crabbed—a curst cur, is a dog that with little provocation snarls ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... children lamenting and howling most dismally. The body was wrapped up in the jacket which he usually wore, and some pieces of blanketting tied round it with bines. The men were all armed, and, without any provocation, two of them had a contest with clubs; at the same time a few blows passed between some of the women. Boo-roong had her head cut by Go-roo-ber-ra, the mother of the deceased. Spears were also thrown, but ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... direction. I dearly loved God and fully realized my utter dependence upon him, but my love was not perfected. Then unfortunately I had a quick temper, which I found justification had not destroyed. It was materially repressed and generally held under control, but it was there and needed only the provocation to assert its presence; and sometimes, I am sorry to say, it brought me under condemnation and I had cause to repent and regain the sweet ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... trembled, and finally, to the great astonishment of the Professor, burst into tears. Now, no one ever had higher principles than Professor Merriman, but no man ever had a greater horror of tears. He could not bear what Rosamund had told him; he could not understand how, under any provocation, a girl could act as Rosamund had done; and yet, at the same time, her tears so maddened him that he would have done anything to get ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... the greatness of the provocation, Centralia, Wash., yesterday showed a calmness worthy of an American community. There were no farther attempts at lynching after the hanging of the secretary of the I.W.W. organisation on Tuesday night." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... have been useless to struggle, the boys did not attempt to get away. Both Sack Todd and Jimson were heavily armed, and Dick and Sam felt that they would shoot upon the slightest provocation. ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... by striking the first blow. He was much disliked in Louisbourg. He drank hard, cursed his subordinates when in his cups, and set the whole place by the ears. Moreover, many of those under him wished to avoid giving the British Americans any provocation, in the hope that the war might be confined to Europe. But none dared to refuse a legal and positive order. So in May his expedition left for Canso, where there was a little home-made British fort on the strait between Cape Breton and the mainland of Nova Scotia. The eighty fishermen in ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... suspicious of the bicycle as of some dreaded supernatural object; atnd although I am sometimes fairly at my wit's end to keep them at bay, I manage to avoid the necessity of shooting any of them. I have learned that to kill one of these dogs, no matter how great the provocation, would certainly get me into serious trouble with the natives, who value them very highly and consider the wilful killing of one little short of murder; hence my forbearance. When I arrive at a threshing-floor, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... of Eastern Mysteries, and Mistress of Omism to Riseholme. In fact the Guru was her August stunt; it would never do to lose him before the end of July, and rage to see all Riseholme making pilgrimages to Daisy. There was a thin-lipped firmness, too, about him at this moment: she felt that under provocation he might easily defy or desert her. She felt she had to yield, and so decided to do so in ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... surprise, after the letter from Professor Gray highly recommending you two lads, that you have so soon shown utter disregard for the rules, the standing, the decency of our institution by carrying and drawing a deadly weapon, a pistol, and on slight provocation. This ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... company to the Lake, in the spring of 1819, when being encamped in the neighbourhood of the long Sault rapid, the Algonquin sprang upon his unsuspecting companion, and cleft his skull with his tomahawk, without the least apparent provocation; then dragging the body to the water's edge, he cut it up into small pieces, and threw them in. He next despatched the woman, and mutilated her body in the same savage manner, having first committed the most horrible barbarity on her person; (the recital ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... The disbandment of the army in the summer of 1783, before the British troops had evacuated New York, was hastened by the impossibility of paying the soldiers and the dread of what they might do under such provocation. Though peace had been officially announced, Hamilton and Livingston urged that, for the sake of appearances if for no other reason, the army should be kept together so long as the British remained ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... fellow-residents. No less than three people are "smashed,"—the Old Man of Whitehaven "who danced a quadrille with a Raven;" the Old Person of Buda; and the Old Man with a gong "who bumped at it all the day long," though in the last-named case we admit that there was considerable provocation. Before quitting the first "Nonsense-Book," we would point out that it contains one or two forms that are interesting; for instance, "scroobious," which we take to be a Portmanteau word, and "spickle-speckled," a favorite form of reduplication with Mr. Lear, and of which the ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... before others at least, a gentlemanly demeanor. But this was gradually giving way to the pressure of a constant thorn in his flesh, and the consciousness of his own baseness. He could swear, threaten, and almost strike at slight provocation now. He never really attempted the latter, but once, and it was then I told him I should shoot him, if ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... father's opposition to the work of God and to the solemn league and covenant, which had caused the blood of the Lord's people to be shed, and the idolatry of his mother, the toleration of which in the king's house could not fail to be a high provocation against him who is a jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children; to declare that he had subscribed the covenant with sincerity of heart, and would have no friends nor enemies but those who were friends or enemies to it; to acknowledge the sinfulness ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... is what I am," said the cabman. "You know I've been in trouble, and I don't deny but what I struck the blow, and where was I to get evidence of my provocation? So I turned to and took a cab, and I've driven one for three year ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The provocation has undoubtedly been intense. It was proved in an article of studied moderation and exquisite taste that the time had come to revise our estimates of bygone grandeur and substitute for the devotion to a Queen of tarnished fame and disastrous tendencies the spontaneous and chivalrous worship of her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... that my brother, in whose character and scholarship I had taken so much pride, who stood so high in his class, should have been reported to the Faculty for this vulgar and wicked offence." John said, with great contrition: "I am exceedingly sorry. It was under circumstances of great provocation. I have never been guilty of such a thing before. I never in my life have been addicted to profanity." "Damnation, John," interposed the professor, "how often have I told you the word is profaneness and not profanity?" It is ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... place promise finality; it must be in the nature of a final settlement of the demands made on behalf of Ireland, and not be a mere provocation to the revival ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... of his own language only, albeit not without a smattering of others; and among the books in his own language which we know him to have read in, and can prove him to have been influenced by, we come back to Montaigne's Essays, as by far the most important and the most potential for suggestion and provocation. ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... mastered this piece of intelligence after six readings, but he refrained from comment, beyond thanking God, in thought, that he could mind his own business under excessive provocation to do otherwise. He considered it no meddling, however, to remember that Mrs. Daniel J. Bines, widow of his late employer, could appear neither young nor beautiful to the most sanguine of newsgatherers; nor to remember that he happened to know she ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... Ireland are such that I will get out of the country as soon as I can; for if I expressed my sentiments I should soon be put into jail for Fenianism!'" This was in 1867 while Fenianism was rampant. Of course he did not approve of it, but the sights he saw taught him its awful provocation. And once when unduly pressed with the dictum of an author whose range of power was not high enough to overcome Father Hecker's objections, he said: "I am not content to live to be the echo of dead men's thoughts." But it was not by skill in the thrust and parry of argumentative fence that Father ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... Spanish Government had instituted a fleet of coastguards among the islands to intercept and destroy the pirates. This fleet for some time had been under the charge of an experienced, trusted, and efficient officer named Pedro Menendez de Avils. No doubt the provocation was great, and the new piracy was not to be endured. The home government of Spain had been kept informed of the Huguenot encroachments in Florida, a country which had long ago been granted to Ponce de ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... beaten and bruised by the natives. The wounded man had been employed cutting rushes for thatching, and one of the others was a convalescent from the hospital, who went out to collect a few vegetables. All these people denied giving any provocation to the natives: it was, however, difficult to believe them; they well knew the consequences that would attend any acts of violence on their part, as it had been declared in public orders early in the month, that in forming ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... sort of a dance she led him out there in Manila, I've heard. Never mind that, now. What I want you to know is how he behaved—with what quiet dignity, steady patience, and sweet temper under constant provocation and mortification, he conducted himself. Then that fellow Ruthven turned up—and—Selwyn is above that sort of suspicion. Besides, his scouts took the field ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... as she promised, Fanny descended with Redbud,—her arm laced around the slender waist of that young lady, as is the wont with damsels,—and ready to give battle to our friend Verty, upon any additional provocation, with even greater ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... is written (Wis. 14:11): "The creatures of God are turned to an abomination; and a temptation to the souls of men." But a temptation usually denotes a provocation to sin. Since therefore creatures were made by God alone, as was established in the First Part (Q. 44, A. 1), it seems that God is a cause of sin, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... met a young male badger in the furze, attacked him vigorously, and left him more dead than alive. At another time, he even turned his rage against his sire. The old badger was by no means unwilling to resent provocation: he, too, felt the hot, quick blood of spring in his veins. The fight was fierce and long—no other wild animal in Britain can inflict or endure such punishment as the badger—and it ended in victory ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... excellent and practical schoolgirl wisdom, but unfortunately Lettice preached a philosophy of stoicism to which Honor had not yet attained. At the least provocation her fiery Irish blood always asserted itself, and she would flare up, albeit she was conscious that, by so doing, she was affording her enemy the keenest satisfaction, and was providing amusement for the other girls, who enjoyed "hearing ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... of each other how to injure, not how to benefit society and themselves. There are, for instance, certain crimes which a man may commit under the influence of strong passions, aroused in moments of great temptation, such as rape; or of great provocation, such as manslaughter; or committed under the pressure of misfortune, or to avoid, impending ruin, such as forgery or embezzlement, which do not necessarily prove the criminal to be of habitually depraved habits, or generally of a violent and vicious ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... provocation.... Like a traitor of melodrama, the British government had been preparing the war for a long time, not wishing to show its hand until the last moment; and Germany, lover of peace, had had to defend herself from this enemy, the worst ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... thar:—well, whar's the harm? Didn't he fling me, and kick me, and bite me into the bargain, the cursed savage? and ar'n't you got him ag'in as good as ever? And besides, didn't that etarnal old Bruce fob me off with a beast good for nothing, and talk big to me besides? and warn't that all fa'r provocation? An didn't you yourself sw'ar ag'in shaking paws with me, and treat me as if I war no gentleman? 'Tarnal death to me, cut me loose, or I'll haunt you, when I'm a ghost, I will, 'tarnal ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... occasionally at Claybrook and sometimes at Mary Louise in a far-off, absent-minded way. And then they would ask each other whose deal it was and "How were the honours?" and then they would be at it again. Claybrook laughed at the slightest provocation, and seemed to pay a little too obsequious attention to whatever Thompson had to say, and after a while the conversation narrowed down entirely to the two men, with Mrs. Thompson contracting a glassy ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... track of steam when she has reached her terminus, never troubling the brains afterwards; a merit that it shares with good wine, to the joy of the Bacchanalians. As to this wit, it is warlike. In the neatest hands it is like the sword of the cavalier in the Mall, quick to flash out upon slight provocation, and for a similar office—to wound. Commonly its attitude is entirely pugilistic; two blunt fists rallying and countering. When harmless, as when the word 'fool' occurs, or allusions to the state of husband, it has the sound of the smack of harlequin's wand upon clown, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... enough," said Godfrey, turning to me; "and I must say that it's a good one. He realises that there wasn't provocation enough to cause a man like Swain to commit murder, with all his senses about him; but his presumption is that the crime was committed while Swain was in a dazed condition and not wholly self-controlled. Such a ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... others laughed approvingly, with the exception of M. de Chalusse, whose manner became more and more frigid, and whose lips wore a constrained smile, as if he had resolved to keep his temper despite all provocation. It seemed to me that he was suffering terribly, and I afterward learned that I had not been mistaken. Far from imitating the old gentleman's manner, he bowed to me very gravely, with an air of deference that quite abashed me, and ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... of the corregidora's bands, kissed them repeatedly, bathed them with tears, and said, "Senora mia, the gitano who is in custody is not in fault, for he had provocation. They called him a thief, and he is none; they gave him a blow on the face, though his is such a face that you can read in it the goodness of his soul. I entreat you, senora, to see that justice is done him, and that the senor corregidor is not too ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... he disliked all four. Christina found it very difficult to preserve the gravity essential to a heroine's appearance when she saw the long strides and bent brows of her lover. A smile was ready, on the slightest provocation, to make a dimple in her beautiful cheek, and all the biting she bestowed on her lips only made them redder and rosier. Adolphus had no inclination to smile, and could not believe that any body could see the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... first place, the tension with the French Government, which lasted for twenty-one years and which might at any moment have become very serious, was never allowed to go beyond a certain point. In spite of a good deal of provocation, a policy of conciliation was persistently adopted, with the result that the conclusion of the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904 became eventually possible. It is on this particular feature of my Egyptian ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... and Musard had not only brought sharply back to her all the past horror and agony of the murder, but had caused a poignant renewal of her apprehensions about her nephew's health. She realized that he was a changed being, moody and irritable, and liable to sudden fits of excitement on slight provocation. She felt that Musard had been rather inconsiderate to forget Phil's illness and cause him to get excited by ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... that of killing Captain Alexander Schaw, the Master of Sinclair was found guilty, and sentenced to suffer death. He was, however, recommended to the mercy of the Duke of Marlborough, in consideration of the provocation which he had received,—the prisoner having declared that, not only on that occasion, but upon several, and in different regiments, Captain Schaw had defamed him; that he was forced to do what he did, and that he ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... Monarchy prompted France to this generous Declaration in Favour of the Son, 'tis highly probable the Gallick Sword wou'd have rusted in the Scabbard, as it was lock'd up by the Treaty of Reswick, nor had it been now drawn but upon a more beneficial Provocation, than restoring King James, for if it was the Interest of France to let the Father sit down quietly with the Title, nothing cou'd supervene to give the Son the Reality. Upon this Basis the War was renewed again on both Sides, and the Juggle was kept on ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... which is without a chief; that is, being divided into families, under several chieftains, without any particular patriarch of the whole name. And this is a great reproach, as may appear from an affair that fell out at my table, in the Highlands, between one of that name and a Cameron. The provocation given by the latter was, "Name your chief." The return of it at once was, "You are a fool." They went out next morning, but having early notice of it, I sent a small party of soldiers after them, which, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... that had been committed, Mr. Henley declared that a codicil to his will, depriving his daughter absolutely of all interest in his property, had been legally executed that day. For a time, Mountjoy's self-control had resisted the most merciless provocation. All that it was possible to effect, by patient entreaty and respectful remonstrance, he had tried again and again, and invariably in vain. At last, Mr. Henley's unbridled insolence triumphed. Hugh lost his temper—and, in leaving the ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... De Quincey's testimony to its existence at the time (a month or so later) when he made Coleridge's acquaintance may, subject to the usual deductions, be accepted as trustworthy; and, of course, for aught we know, it may then have been already of some years' standing. That the provocation to it on the husband's part may be so far antedated is at least a reasonable conjecture. There may be nothing—in all likelihood there is nothing—worth attention in De Quincey's gossip about the young lady, "intellectually very ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... way, and to trust him as a really kind and liberal employer. And, unluckily, he did not always heed the rating so loudly given, or rather he did not set his mind to comprehend what lay a little out of his usual beat, and thus gave additional provocation, though still Captain Carbonel bore with him, and would not have rejected him in favour of the far smarter carpenter at Downhill, on any of ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... declared that he was the only man capable of conciliating the Dutch and bringing the war to a happy issue. Others asserted that his again taking up the reins of Government would be considered by the Afrikander Bond—which was very powerful at the time—as an unjustifiable provocation which would only further embitter those who had never forgiven Rhodes ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... of the proscribed playbook or any insidious plea for it. The immense oddity resides in the almost exclusively typographic order of the offence. An English, an American Gyp would typographically offend, and that would be the end of her. THERE gloomed at me my warning, as well as shone at me my provocation, in respect to the example of this delightful writer. I might emulate her, since I presumptuously would, but dishonour would await me if, proposing to treat the different faces of my subject in the most completely instituted colloquial form, ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... said Yram. "He is the gentlest creature living till some great provocation rouses him, and I never saw him hate and despise any one as he does the Professors. Much of what he said was merely put on, for he knew the Professors must yield. I do not like his ever having to throw any one into that horrid place, no more does he, but the ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... Miss Rivers. Will you warn your stepsister, not under any provocation whatever, to speak the ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... a report from one of our stoolies in the store. Bayne thought he was due for a commendation; instead, he got an eat-out. Of course, it was a fact that Pelton'd hit him, and we can't have Literates punched around, regardless of provocation. So we voted to fine Pelton ten million for beating Bayne up, and to award him ten million for losses resulting from unauthorized withdrawal of Literate services. We ordered a new crew of Literates to the store, ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... acquire a good seat over a country. Their slipshod style is neither graceful, nor does it enable them to give their horse any assistance, if he happens to make a mistake; for they are certain to tumble off, if they receive any unusual provocation. ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... the most insolent and revolting expressions. Repentigny turns him out of his chamber. Philibert, continuing his outrageous shouts, ends by delivering the officer a violent stroke of his cane. Monsieur de Repentigny then, as one might well do on such sudden pain and provocation, drew out his sword and ran him through the body, so that he died a couple of days afterwards. That, sir, is your assassination without cause! Then the Sovereign Court of course was obliged to order his decapitation in effigy—not ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... in rushed the authorities with summary punishment. The prisons of the period were full of mechanics whom serfdom or poverty had stung on to commit some crime or other. However trifling the offence, or whatever the justifiable provocation, the law made no trades-union memorialized Congress to limit the hours of labor of those employed on the public works to ten hours a day. The pathos of this petition! So unceasingly had the workers been ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... was an orator, but, with the recklessness of a gamester, he threw his life away. He said profound and beautiful things, but he lacked application. He was uneven, disproportioned, saying ordinary things on great occasions, and now and then, without the slightest provocation, uttering the sublimest and most ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Treaty of Shimonoseki, all but absolutely annexing the country. After the Boxer revolt Admiral Alexieff, who was governor of the Russian possessions in the Far East, embarked on a dangerous policy of provocation towards Japan. He had an ill-informed contempt for the hardy islanders. He underrated their power of resistance, and felt sure that the mere fact that the Russian fleet outnumbered theirs would secure the ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... two sorts of murder; the distinction between them it is of essential importance to bear in mind: (1) murder in an affray, or upon sudden and unexpected provocation; (2) murder secretly, with a deliberate, predetermined intention to commit the crime. Under the first class, the question usually is, whether the offense he murder or manslaughter, in the person who commits the deed. Under the second class, it is often a question ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... this statement, I make it because truth compels me, and for no other reason.... Over the killing of many freedmen nothing is done." General Sheridan cites cases in which our National soldiers wearing the uniform of the Republic have been deliberately shot "without provocation" by citizens, and the grand jury refused to find a bill against the murderers. Even in Virginia, General Schofield was compelled to resort to a military tribunal because "a gentleman" who shot a negro dead in cold blood "was instantly acquitted by one of the ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... is free from perturbation [Greek: atarachos], is not impelled by passion, but guided by reason; is angry when he ought, as he ought, with whom, and as long as, he ought: taking right measure of all the circumstances. Not to be angry on the proper provocation, is folly, insensibility, slavish submission. Of those given to excess in anger, some are quick, impetuous, and soon appeased; others are sulky, repressing and perpetuating their resentment. It is not easy to define the exact mean; each case must be ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... Athenian fleets, the inland towns would be prevented from exporting their products, and importing what they wanted from abroad. War, then, was in the interest of the whole body of allies. And on the moral side their position was equally sound, for they were only acting on desperate provocation, and the common god of Greece had promised success to their arms. But to deserve that success, all must co-operate heartily, contributing freely from their private purses to raise a fleet which ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... European persuasion of America's triviality. I would not like to be an American travelling in Europe now, and those I meet here and there have some of the air of men who at any moment may be dunned for a debt. They explode without provocation into excuses ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... larger and fiercer than the Archangel variety, owing no doubt to the genial influence of the Gulf Stream. Both types are however sufficiently ferocious, and, save when rendered comatose by excess of nutrition, will attack human beings without provocation. The female of the species, if disturbed while accompanied by her young, will invariably charge with such fury that only by an exceptional combination of skill and courage can she be driven off. The shrill and vibrating ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... been better; but how atrocious has been their conduct towards their neighbour! If we go back no further than to the Restoration, we find Louis XVIII. forming the Holy Alliance, and attacking Spain without a shadow of provocation, for the avowed purpose of crushing her liberties and giving absolute power to the most detestable of modern tyrants. We find Charles X. invading a dependence of his ally, the Sultan, and confiscating a province to revenge a tap on the face given by the Bey of Algiers to a French ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... one who had foiled his most adroit temptations, and resisted wrong in a way that was simply heroic, first showing something very like vanity and selfishness, and then temper and passion on what seemed but slight provocation. He did not realize, as many do not, that the petty vexations of life will often sting into the most humiliating displays of weakness one who has the courage and strength to be a martyr. Generals who were as calm and grand in battle as Mont Blanc in a storm ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... buried her in the shadiest corner of the cloisters, and put up a memorial brass setting forth all the virtues for which she was not particularly noted, and entirely omitting to mention her saving grace of patience under great provocation. ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... III are the two greatest and most sincerely religions of the medieval Popes, and they carried the power of the Papacy to a height which excites the amazement of the modern historian. But they were at the same time the most militant of the Popes, and on the least provocation they set armies—even the most barbaric and ferocious troops in Europe—in motion to carry out their imperial commands. They arrogated the power of deposing monarchs, and thus encouraged civil war and the ambitions ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... discretion. Only the other day Jane, you know my married sister, and I were talking about you. She was extremely distressed. I assured her that you must be very far away or very deeply buried somewhere not to have given a sign of life under this provocation." ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... grappling and hammering manifestations of the day. There is a greater mastery in control, than in the exercise of power. An angry man may evince more energy than he who keeps calm in the heat of provocation, but the latter is the man of most power. In the common circumstances of life we must act, and act lawfully; but to bear and suffer is alone the test of virtue, for there come hours of pain and mental anguish when all action is vain, when motion of limb ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... uncle; who took care to propagate it with an indiscretion peculiar to himself; for I heard it in three different companies, before I knew any thing of it from herself; and when I did, it was so repeated, as you, my dear, would hardly have censured her for it, the provocation considered." ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... not accompany him, and at the moment when Henri put his head out of the window to look once more at the gardens of the hotel, he encountered the white eyes of Cristemio, with whom he exchanged a glance. On either side there was a provocation, a challenge, the declaration of a savage war, of a duel in which ordinary laws were invalid, where treason and treachery were admitted means. Cristemio knew that Henri had sworn Paquita's death. Henri knew that Cristemio would like to kill him before he killed Paquita. Both ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... look and manner were void of provocation, except as one, himself rudely disposed, might discover it in the humility somewhat ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... fists, ready to fight, now, at any further provocation. Even good-natured Tom looked about for some sort of club. But Dick ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock |
