"Relentless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of flying fish which ever and anon darted into view, and skimming rapidly over their surface sank again beneath the waves, only to be once more driven for a brief refuge to the upper air by their unseen but relentless enemies below. Drill and exercise were now the order of the day during the hours of light, and as the sun set and the tropic night came rushing swiftly up over the yet glowing sky, chessboards and backgammon-boards ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... the son of the worthy gate-keeper was his victim. The sculptor certainly had been so unlucky as to touch Hadrian in his most sensitive spot, but a cordially benevolent feeling is not easily converted into a relentless opposition if we are not ourselves—as was the case with the Emperor—accustomed to jump from one mood to the other, are not conscious—as he was—of having it in our power directly to express our good-will or our aversion ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... quarry; and gentleman Jones intent on non-existent booty and rapt out of him self by cynical fury at the discovery of an unsuspected woman in the case. And while Mr. CONRAD in his novel drives all these to a relentless doom Mr. HASTINGS contrives a happy ending, which goes perilously near an anticlimax, with the hero on his knees and the heroine pointing up to heaven and claiming a "victory" quite other than their creator intended. But then ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... guidance. The most characteristic thing is that he always seemed to belong body and soul to these tendencies, however much they differed from each other: he let them be established by laws contradictory to each other, and insisted with relentless severity on the execution ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... from beneath one of the seats a new specimen of the well-known green cow-skin, and hand it, with a troubled, deprecating look, to his wife. Ah! they all knew that appealing look well, and the hard, relentless frown by which it was answered, as well as they knew the use of the dreaded instrument itself. But there was only one among them who comprehended its immediate purpose. The glance of cruel meaning which the tyranness, after having examined the lithe, twisted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... belonged, maybe, to a scrub woman. And how they came to be spotted, or faded, or torn, and finally all worn out. And how the rag man got them, and the mill, and how the girls sorted them. And the room in which they do it. And the bins. And the machinery. Oh, it's the most fascinating, and—and sort of relentless machinery. And the acid burns on the hands of the men at the vats. And their shoes. And then the paper, so white. And the way we tear it up, or crumple it, and throw it in the waste basket. Just a piece of paper, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... of golden years, Or raising a laugh with a flash of filthy wit When they bought the drinks to kindle my dying mind. To be judged by you, The soul of me hidden from you, With its wound gangrened By love for a wife who made the wound, With her cold white bosom, treasonous, pure and hard, Relentless to the last, when the touch of her hand, At any time, might have cured me of the typhus, Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost. And only to think that my soul could not react, Like Byron's did, in song, ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... Bay and laid claim to the upper portion of the valley as their hunting-grounds. From that time, with brief and uncertain intervals of peace, up to the close of the Revolutionary struggle, the war between the contending tribes was waged with relentless fury. Many a proud chief and valiant warrior fell beneath the tomahawk and became the victim of the ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... Livia, Antonia was the most respected personage of the imperial family in Rome. She still watched, withdrawn but alert, over the destiny of the house now virtually destroyed by death, dissensions, the cruelty of the laws, and the relentless anger of the aristocracy. It was she who scented out the plot, and quickly and courageously she informed Tiberius. The latter, in danger and in Capri, displayed again the energy and sagacity of his best period. The danger was most ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... groaned. "Where am I?" he said, and half opened his eyes; he started up frightened, and fell-back heavily. He saw only the darkness; felt only the fierce wind and salt mist; heard only the relentless yell of the blast. Memory had no time to wake, and he screamed and fainted ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... the treasure he gets possession of is the wealth of summer vegetation. So there is the story of Brynhild, pricked by the "sleep-thorn" of her father, Wotan, and sleeping until Sigurd wakens her. They marry, but soon Sigurd has to give her up to Gunnar, the relentless winter, and Gunnar cannot rest until he has killed Sigurd, and reigns undisturbed. Grimms' story of Rapunzel, the princess who was shut up by a winter witch, and of Briar-Rose, pricked by a witch's spindle, and sleeping inside a hedge which blooms with spring at ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... increase and stimulate them. Indeed, every thing that has taken place within that period, ought to excite to their utmost efforts all who are not despairing dastards. The Demon of oppression in this land is tenfold more fierce and rampant and relentless than he was supposed to be before roused from the quiet of his lair. To every thing that is precious the abolitionists have seen him lay claim. The religion of the Bible must be adulterated—the claims of Humanity must be smothered—the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Lee had surrendered in Virginia, and General Joseph E. Johnston (who had been restored to his command) in North Carolina. Thus a sudden and violent end had been put to all hopes of establishing a separate government. General Sherman, who was as relentless in war as he was pacific and gentle when the war was over, had, in coming to terms with General Johnston, advanced the theory that the South never had dissolved the Union, and that the States were restored to their old places the moment they laid down their arms. This theory was not only consistent ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... so relentless, This does not sate him, but without decretal He to the temple bears ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... regarding Elfie's health and manners to the Lake Shore summer home, where the Wakehams sought relief from the prostrating heat of the great city. These week ends at the Lake Shore home were to Larry his sole and altogether delightful relief from the relentless drive of business that even throughout the hottest summer weather ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... had given Curtis my pledge of silence, and longed intensely to communicate the melancholy secret to the energetic Frenchman; for at times when I re- flect upon the eight-and-twenty victims who may probably, only too soon, be a prey to the relentless flames, my heart ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... likewise—and this time he lost not only his winnings, but 'an unfortunate ten thousand pounds,' which, when relating the circumstance to a friend many years afterwards, he said was all that remained at his banker's. One night—the fifth of a most relentless run of ill-luck—his friend Pemberton Mills heard him exclaim that he had lost every shilling, and only wished some one would bind him never to play again:—'I will,' said Mills; and taking out a ten-pound ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of his past life. It was as vivid to her as though she had seen and felt it all; the helpless shivering of the naked soul, the mockery that was bitterer than death, the horror of loneliness, the slow, grinding, relentless agony. It was as vivid as if she had sat beside him in the filthy Indian hut; as if she had suffered with him in the silver-mines, the coffee fields, the ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... reluctant executor of the penal laws of his kingdom, and took the lead of his people in liberality and toleration, must be mingled with pain sincerely felt on witnessing the stewards of the word of life becoming the zealous and relentless exactors of a cruel and iniquitous law, straining to the very utmost its enactments to cover their deeds of blood, and sacrificing their fellow-creatures to the image they had set up. The case of Clayton puts the excessive enormities of the hierarchy (p. 395) ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... comes. He however is independent and brave enough to set the opinion of the world at defiance, and he marries. Until then society is passive, but when defied and disobeyed, it is active, bitter, and relentless. ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... afresh from day to day, and after the resolve followed the relentless conviction that the change must be wrought in herself before she would have power to teach another. It would need a noble mother to train a noble son, a mother who was mistress over her own tongue to teach the lessons of self-control; a mother ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... dying states, but his genius has not so often been matched. The son of a Suevic father, his mother the daughter of Wallia, the successor and avenger of Ataulfus the Visigoth, he was the champion of the empire against the Vandal, that is to say, against her most relentless foe. His success in this was the secret of his power. Pondering the fate of his predecessors he determined he would not end as they did. Therefore he determined to make whom he would emperor and to depose him when he ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... they adopt? Why, they send down ASHMEAD-BARTLETT. He was at Dalkeith last night, and, in a single speech, destroyed the effect of my great effort of Saturday. He will go to West Calder; he will come here; he will follow me step by step with relentless energy, tearing up, so to speak, the rails I have laid, and which I had hoped would have safely conducted the Liberal train into the Westminster station. Sic vos non vobis. It is cruel, it is crushing. If I had only foreseen it, I would have remained at Hawarden, and you might have averted the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... without which strenuousness is merely a clumsy and noisy protest against inevitable defeat. These necessary qualities, without which no community may hope for pre-eminence to-day, are a passion for fine and brilliant achievement, relentless veracity of thought and method, and richly imaginative fearlessness of enterprise. Have we English those qualities, and are we doing our utmost ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... than the shortness of its duration. Thus every hen is in her turn the virago of the yard, in proportion to the helplessness of her brood; and will fly in the face of a dog or a sow in defence of those chickens, which in a few weeks she will drive before her with relentless cruelty. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... his experiences in the mining camp during a big strike of the miners. They were shooting up the town in real Western style, and many of them had been heard to swear that they would have Wingfield's life. He might well have taken his departure, but he did not: he was strong and relentless and knew no fear, though I am told he ate his meals in a restaurant where the walls were covered with mirrors, with his back to the wall, and a six-shooter on each side of his plate. Rather ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... out!" gasped Mildmay. And, even as the words escaped his lips, down came the hurricane again in a sudden mad burst of relentless fury; but now the wind blew from the northward, the point of the compass exactly opposite that from which it had been blowing ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... consistency, their nice, natural truth, their pure exemption from exaggeration. No second-rate imitator can write in that way; no coarse scene-painter can charm us with an allusion so delicate and perfect. But what bitter satire, what relentless dissection of diseased subjects! Well, and this, too, is right, or would be right, if the savage surgeon did not seem so fiercely pleased with his work. Thackeray likes to dissect an ulcer or an ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... may have involved neglect of some duty, or a carelessness morally culpable. But when I have committed a sin, then it would be a most inadequate description of my state of mind to call it regret. I suffer from that intense mental pain which we have learnt to call remorse, the constant and relentless avenger which waits upon every transgression of the moral law. And when, leaving my own experience, I interrogate the experience of men better than myself, above all, that of the saints of God, I meet with the same phenomenon ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... New York has its hardships and toil, and it has its joys as well, among rich and poor. Grim and relentless, it is beautiful at all times until man puts his befouling hand upon the landscape it paints in street and alley, where poetry is never at home in summer. The great city lying silent under its soft white ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... while striving to defend Natzie and Lola. It furnished all that was needed as excuse for instant descent upon the settlers in the deep valleys north of the Rio Salado, and, all unsuspecting, all unprepared, several of these had met their doom. Relentless war was already begun, and the general lost no time in starting his horsemen after the hostiles. Meantime the infantry companies, at the scattered posts and camps, were left to "hold the fort," to protect the women, children, and property, and Neil Blakely, ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... Klindworth employs it, but marks the B sforzando. A slur on two notes of the same pitch with Chopin does not always mean a tie. The A flat Mazurka, No. 3, is pessimistic, threatening and irritable. Though in the key of E major the trio displays a relentless sort of humor. The return does not mend matters. A dark page! In A minor the fourth is called by Szulc the Little Jew. Szulc, who wrote anecdotes of Chopin and collected them with the title of "Fryderyk Szopen," told the story to Kleczynski. It ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... tell the whole truth. Do it. But have no thought that even confession can save you; never hope for mercy from my weakness! You can have no enemy who will prove so relentless as I will; if there was a hope of your escape I would hunt you both down to ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... number of so-called Christians were engaged in this unholy traffic, but the scandal became so great that European public opinion would not tolerate it, and so they had to sell their stations to Mohammedan Arabs, who if possible were even more cruel and relentless in the way they conducted the trade. Merchant princes arose among them, and they carried on their business with a thoroughness and a system worthy of a better cause. Soldiers were trained, and large armies kept for no other purpose than that of collecting slaves. ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... and his mother, marrying again, removed to Paris, Bourbon county, Kentucky, the State at that time deserving its sobriquet of the "dark and bloody ground," as the contest with the native savages was carried on with relentless fury on both sides. Under such circumstances it may well be supposed that he grew up with few educational or other advantages, and that his youth was ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... place of the face familiar from my earliest childhood and associated with homely household cares, there lay upon the pillow strange, august features, stern and withdrawn from all the small affairs of life. That sense of solitude, of being unsheltered in a wide world of relentless and elemental forces which is at the basis of childhood's timidity and which is far from outgrown at fifteen, seized me irresistibly before I could reach the narrow stairs and summon the family ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... Teacher seizes a proverb which was current as an exponent of the adversaries' successful stratagems, and stamps the metal with the image and superscription of the rightful King. The evil spreads like leaven; you tremble before its stealthy advance and relentless grasp: but be of good cheer, disciples of Jesus, greater is He that is for you than all that are against you; the word of life which has been hidden in the world, hidden in believing hearts, is a leaven too. The unction of the Holy One is more subtle and penetrating and subduing ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... civil war broke out (1569). The Huguenots received assistance from England, the Netherlands, and Germany, while the Catholics were supported by Spain and the Pope. The war was carried on with relentless cruelty on both sides. In the battle of Jarnac the Huguenot forces were defeated, and the Prince de Conde was slain (1569). The struggle was however continued by Coligny supported by Henry King of Navarre ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... the clear, repeated proof that the present government of Germany has no respect for treaties or for international law, that it has no decent attitude toward neutral nations or human life—we Americans are now face to face not with abstract theories but with cruel, relentless facts. ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... old man will run him down with the determination and energy that helped him to build up his business. Money with brains behind it is a power, but I wouldn't like Hulton on my track if he hadn't a cent. There's something relentless about the man." He paused and resumed: "Well, he has a clew. It's curious I didn't think of mentioning before that I spoke to the watchman, but I thought the fellow was Jordan. I wonder how the thief will get the bonds ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... afterwards stained the fame of the great Ferdinand, and introduced the horrors of the Inquisition, had not yet made it self more than fitfully visible. But the Moors had treated this unhappy people with a wholesale and relentless barbarity. At Granada, under the reign of the fierce father of Boabdil,—"that king with the tiger heart,"—the Jews had been literally placed without the pale of humanity; and even under the mild and contemplative Boabdil himself, they had been plundered without mercy, and, if ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with equal pace, unheeding whether, as a "swift-winged and beautiful angel," he opens flowers on the way for some, or, as a "relentless, unsparing destroyer," he nips the budding hopes and scatters the blight of disappointment on others; but still bearing the record of each minute to eternity, the gliding hours are silently working for all. Their passage had seemingly, ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... set like a vise. Getting to his feet, he looked down at her with the hard, relentless eyes that had ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... both your offer and advice!" said Bouche-de-Miel, excitedly. "They are insults, coming as they do from the stepson of Monte-Cristo, my relentless enemy! But I will have vengeance upon you for them and through you on ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... weather was always hot, often damp and sultry, and the atmosphere on shore so pestilential, that no one was permitted to remain there after sundown. But that rule was no deprivation, as the dangers of the passage through the relentless breakers, alive with sharks, were so great, that few cared to visit the shore except when absolutely necessary. The vessels cruised mostly in sight of the coast to watch the movements of the merchantmen, all more or less under suspicion as slavers, watching ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... establishment of a line of compromise, which would leave all territory north of 36 deg. 30' consecrated to freedom. The Slave Power submitted with anger, intending to break the bargain as soon as it was strong enough, and continued on its relentless struggle for power. It determined to gain possession of the Senate of the United States; make it a house of nobles; control through it the foreign policy, the Executive, and the Supreme Court; and, with this advantage, reckoned it could always manage the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that it might announce rates of pay entirely at variance with prevailing ones. It might announce arbitrary rates or make a bold effort to discover and introduce those which should coincide with the ultimate natural standards—which would mean a relentless reducing of some rates and a raising of others. In a democratic country, however, such a court would have to satisfy the contestants and the public or forfeit its existence, and the only mode of insuring its continuance would be a more conservative policy ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... has the widower exclaimed, 'O Death, how cruel, how relentless thou art to take away my beloved friend in the spring of her youth, in the pride of her strength, and in the bloom of her beauty! If thou wilt permit her once more to return to my abode, my gratitude shall never cease; I will raise up my voice continually ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... married Lloyd before her mother's death; but there was never a moment bitter enough to tempt her into any neglect of present duty. The milking, the butter-making, the washing, the spinning, all the relentless hard work of the women of her day, went on systematically from the beginning of the year to its end, and the younger children came to accept her patient ministrations as unquestioningly as ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... their mood, If God had given them tether Us they had swallowed where we stood, Body and soul together. We should have been drowned all, like those O'er whom the waters great did close, And swept them off relentless. ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... less his sisters woo'd him to relent, Nor less his mother; but in vain; he grew Still more obdurate. His companions last, 730 The most esteem'd and dearest of his friends, The same suit urged, yet he persisted still Relentless, nor could even they prevail. But when the battle shook his chamber-doors And the Curetes climbing the high towers 735 Had fired the spacious city, then with tears The beauteous Cleopatra, and with prayers Assail'd him; in his view ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... and like a mountain-peak That loses in one avalanche its cloy Of ice and snow, so doth her breast employ Its hidden store of blushes; and they wreak Destruction, as they crush my aching heart,— Destruction, wild, relentless, and as sure As the poor Alpine hamlet's; and no art Can hide my agony, no herb can cure My wound. Her very blush says, "We must part." Why was it ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... yet found himself. He was known in his own State as "a successful planter, a breeder and racer of horses, a swearer of mighty oaths, a faithful ami generous man to his friends, a chivalrous man to women, a hospitable man at his home, a desperate and relentless man in personal conflicts, a man who always did the things he set himself to do." But he had achieved no nation-wide distinction; he had not wrought out a career; he had made almost as many enemies as friends, he had cut himself off from official connections; he had no desire ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... one thing certain about New York it is that nothing remains unchanged. Not only do public works like the bridges change the face of things, but private activity effaces great structures to build up still greater ones. This march of progress is as relentless as a modern army, ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... barbarous: The Scythians or the marble hearted fates Could not have acted more remorseless deeds In their relentless natures, then these of thine: Was this the answer I long waited on, The ...
— A Yorkshire Tragedy • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... that house. He did not know where Rosamund was staying, but he thought she was probably at the Hotel de Byzance, and he walked almost mechanically towards it. He was burning with excitement, and yet there was within him something cold, capable and relentless, which considered him almost as a judge considers a criminal, which seemed to be probing into the rotten part of his nature, determined to know once and for all just how rotten it was. Rosamund surely was strong in her goodness as ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... mine, Then tell me who should most repine: This morning, ere you left your room, The chambermaid's remorseless broom In one sad moment that destroy'd, To build which thousands were employ'd! The shock was great; but as my life I saved in the relentless strife, I knew lamenting was in vain, So patient went to work again. By constant work, a day or more, My little mansion did restore: And if each tear which you have shed Had been a needle-full of thread, If every sigh of sad despair ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... sunshiny little domicile "The Mia-Mia," was now silent and desolate, as if under a spell. Whyte and his wife had aged visibly since their darling's death, while Reg had grown into a sad, silent man with a stern, relentless expression of face. Even the pets seemed subdued; the flowers seemed to droop; the sun to shine less brightly, for the hope and the light of the house ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... began upon his letters. The flapper was relentless. She sat in her father's chair and fastened the old look of implacable kindness upon him. He beat the keys of the machine. The flapper ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... fact that our cause is, and is to be, combated by mighty, determined and relentless forces, we will, trusting in Him who is the Prince of Peace, meet argument with argument, misjudgment with patience, denunciation with kindness, and all our difficulties and dangers ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... breathlessly eerie experience for such of the spectators as stayed on to watch—and these were many. Night came on steadily and Farman covered lap after lap just as steadily, a buzzing, circling mechanism with something relentless in its ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... spectator disproportionate indeed—for what can one heart know of the sickness of another's, of its hurried beating when hope beckons, of its numb slackening when hope fails? How swift to Loveday seemed the relentless patter of the days past her questing feet, that, run hither and thither as she would, yet could not keep pace with Time's urgency! How slow to Loveday seemed the ticking of each moment, since each held hope and fear full-globed, as in bubbles that rise and rise only ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... laughing, insatiate amusement-seekers care about any one's duty? They are out to enjoy life. They are the well-to-do, the well-fed, the careless livers. Many of them are keen, relentless business-men wearied by the day's toil. They are now seeking relaxation, and not at all concerned with acquiring wisdom or grace. They are, indeed, the very kind of men to whom my play sets the cold steel, and their wives, ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... of offender does Prince Nicolas exercise his autocratic powers, i.e. the political offender, with whom he is relentless. Such men are thrown into prison, interred in dark cells without trial, and can languish till death sets them free. In this respect the Prince is harsh, and according to Western ideas barbaric, though local circumstances fully excuse his seeming cruelty. The smallness of the prison at ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... dearly loved; and though she did not take much notice, but lay in a stupor most of the time, the holy words were comfort and company to me. At other times I sat in mute grief, watching her painful breathing, and the gradual pinching and sharpening of her features as the relentless disease worked upon them. O, it was hard! I don't think many lives know so much and such utter misery. In my anxiety and grief, and the mental bewilderment resulting from loss of sleep, I forgot to reckon the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... except, of course, the mere crude wealth that her father had left her. Otherwise she was vaguely ashamed of them both. And yet!—in her most vital qualities, her love of sensational effect, her scorn of half-measures, her quick, relentless imagination, her increasing ostentation and extravagance, she was the true child of the boastful mercurial Irishman who had married her Spanish mother as part of a trade bargain, on a chance visit to Buenos Ayres. For twenty years Daniel ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... do at this moment, is to overwhelm the celibate by some crushing phrase which you have been manufacturing all the time; when you have thus floored him, you will coldly show him the door. You will be very polite, but as relentless as the executioner's axe, and as impassive as the law. This freezing contempt will already probably have produced a revolution in the mind of your wife. There must be no shouts, no gesticulations, no excitement. "Men of high social rank," says a young English author, "never ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... despotism, Geneva became famous throughout Europe as the center of elaborate Protestant propaganda. Calvin, who set the example of stern simplicity and relentless activity, was sometimes styled the Protestant pope. He not only preached every day, wrote numerous theological treatises, and issued a French translation of the Bible, but he established important Protestant schools— including the University of Geneva—which ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... exaggeration and minute elaboration Donne carries the Elizabethan conceits almost to the farthest possible limit, achieving what Samuel Johnson two centuries later described as 'enormous and disgusting hyperboles.' 2. In so doing he makes relentless use of the intellect and of verbally precise but actually preposterous logic, striking out astonishingly brilliant but utterly fantastic flashes of wit. 3. He draws the material of his figures of speech from highly unpoetical ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... 'The House of Mirth' is a story of such | | vitality, of such artistic and moral insight, that it will | | stand by itself in American fiction as a study of a certain | | kind of society. The title is a stroke of genius in irony, | | and gives the key to a novel of absorbing interest, as | | relentless as life itself in its judgment, but deeply and | | beautifully humanized at the end."—HAMILTON W. MABIE. | | | | "Mrs. Wharton has done many good things. She has never done | | anything better than this."—The Academy. | | ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... was tempted. Young John Hanson, Commander of the Special Patrol ship, Ertak, had his good share of natural curiosity, the spirit of adventure, and the explorer's urge. But at the same time, the Service has a discipline that is as rigid and relentless as the passing of ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... looked at each other quickly, and as quickly averted their eyes. Ethel gave a toss to her curls, and walked off to her cubicle. Kate went on unhooking with relentless haste, and Flora sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... determined to defend himself against any attempt at another flogging. In the cold passion that took possession of him, the slave-boy became utterly reckless of consequences, reasoning to himself that the limit of suffering at the hands of this relentless slave-breaker had already been reached. He was resolved to fight and did fight. He began his morning work in peace, obeying promptly every order from his master, and while he was in the act of going up to the stable-loft for the purpose of pitching down some hay, he was caught and thrown ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... almost superhuman effort to keep my fingers going; in fact, I believe I sometimes did so while dozing. During such moments this man sitting there so mysteriously silent, almost hid in a cloud of heavy-scented smoke, filled me with a sort of unearthly terror. He seemed to be some grim, mute, but relentless tyrant, possessing over me a supernatural power which he used to drive me on mercilessly to exhaustion. But these feelings came very rarely; besides, he paid me so liberally I could forget much. There at length grew ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... place I was desirous of seeing with my own eyes some remnants of those terrible nomadic tribes which had at one time conquered Russia and long threatened to overrun Europe—those Tartar hordes which gained, by their irresistible force and relentless cruelty, the reputation of being "the scourge of God." Besides this, I had long wished to study the conditions of pastoral life, and congratulated myself on having found a convenient opportunity ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... longer cared for herself. All of life, of good, of use in the world, of hope in heaven entered in Lassiter's ride with little Fay to safety. She would have tried to turn the iron-jawed brute she rode, she would have given herself to that relentless, dark-browed Tull. But she knew Lassiter would turn with her, so she ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... what relentless pursuers were yet behind, would allow them no rest. In another hour they reached a small fishing village on the coast, where a solitary bark was kept. The owner was just about to put out for an evening's fishing, but at the earnest request of his visitors, backed by much gold, he consented ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... country were organized in a manner not to conflict with any pretensions of the South, or any decision of the Supreme Court; and, nevertheless, the representatives of the rebellion formed at Montgomery a provisional government, and pursued their relentless purpose with such success that the Lieutenant General feared the city of Washington might find itself "included in a foreign country," and proposed, among the options for the consideration of LINCOLN, to bid the wayward States "depart in peace." The great republic ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... Selwyn said, was now seldom given in the relentless warfare which the selfish interests were ever waging against the people, but it was intrigue, the promise of place and power, and the ever effectual appeal ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... water-chestnuts, and stared at the skyline. He hated horizons. He was always visualizing the Hand whenever he let his gaze rest upon the horizon. An enormous Hand that rose up swiftly, blotting out the sky. A Hand that strove to reach his shoulder, relentless, soulless but lawful. The scrutiny of any strange man provoked a sweaty terror. What a God-forsaken fool he was! And dimly, out there somewhere ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... men attack, And many sighs are drained. Happy the lad whose mind was never trained: His days are worth forgetting more than not. He sings along the march Which we march taciturn, because of dusk, The long, forlorn, relentless trend From larger day ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... my own wife because I chose to be blind, but a doctor knows as much about women in general as a father confessor. Men and women are not made like that! It seems that every one but myself has known for months that Masters is in love with you; and Masters is a man of strong passions and relentless will. He has used his will so far to curb his passions, principally, no doubt, on my account; he is my friend and a man of honor. But there are moments in life when honor as well ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... aloft in godlike state, The blushing beauty by thy side. Thou sat'st, while reverend Ocean smil'd, And mirthful strains the hours beguil'd; The nymphs and Tritons danc'd around, Nor yet thy doom was fix'd nor Jove relentless frown'd. ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... Relentless power! at length be just, Thy better skill alone impart; Give Caution, but withhold Distrust, And guard, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centred on self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone. Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was Hyde, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "game" is what the newspaper man who belongs, calls it. Those who do not belong get out of it sooner or later. On a big story he does not think of food, drink or hours. In the absorption of a big story he can and does continue without rest an unbelievable number of hours, subject himself to relentless physical strain. In doing so he enjoys it, as he does nothing else. He exemplifies perfectly the statement by the philosopher that there is no greater joy on earth than the one found in work. Hardly anyone, in any other occupation puts in the hours, the work, the loyalty for so little ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... maintained a relentless search for the desperadoes. He refused to accept Wicker Bonner's theory that they were safe in the city of New York. It was his own opinion that they were still in the neighbourhood, waiting for a chance to exhume the body of Davy's mother and ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... Ireland is, cut off from all external succour save across a sea held by a relentless jailor, would she have been to-day a free people, ally of Austria on terms of ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... always sad to see anybody suffering from a loss of self-respect, so I tried to restore the signorina's confidence in her own motives, by references to Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite, Charlotte Corday, and such other relentless heroines as occurred to me. McGregor looked upon this striving ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... impact overwhelmed everything. The Northern officers showed supreme courage in their attempt to stem the rout. Everyone on horseback was either killed or wounded, and their bravery and self-sacrifice were in vain. Nothing could stem the relentless tide that poured upon them. Harry had never before seen the Southern troops so exultant. Jackson's march of a whole day, unseen, almost by the side of the enemy, and then his sudden attack upon his ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... religious fervor, and elevated by a fatalistic premonition of success, had thrown up trenches and redoubts at advantageous points on their chosen battle-fields. In their first onset they advanced like devotees, with the cry, "God have mercy upon us!" and, as each forward rank went down before the relentless invaders, those behind pressed onward over the bodies of their comrades. But it was all in vain; throughout the fourth and fifth of September one outpost after another was taken, until at ten in the evening of the latter day the whole Russian force was ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... night there is no sharp-etched picture on the memory page. As I recall it, no spoken word of Jennifer's or mine came in to break the rhythm of the hasting voyage. Our paddles rose and fell, dipping and sweeping in unison as if we two, kneeling in bow and stern, were separate halves of some relentless mechanism driven by a single impulse. Overhead the starlit dome circled solemnly to the right or left to match the windings of the stream. On each hand the tree-fringed shores sped backward in the gloom; and beneath the light shell of poplar wood that barely kissed the ripples ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... But the prelates had learned from Laud, what measures would be agreeable to Charles I., who, to all his father's despotic ideas of royal prerogative, and love of Prelacy, and to at least equal dissimulation, added the formidable elements of a temper dark and relentless, and a proud and inflexible will. The consequences soon appeared. Charles resolved, that the Church of Scotland should not only be episcopalian in its form of government, but also in all its discipline, and in its form of worship. In order ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... side to side, and watched the furious waves rushing in from the sea, began to tremble for their safety. They had, however, to think of themselves. The wind rapidly increased, the tall trees still remaining on the island bent before it, and the waves washed over the walls of the fort with relentless fury, threatening every moment to overwhelm them. Villegagnon, who had remained on shore, fearing that the guns might be lost, ordered them to be dragged out of the fort to a place of safety. It was a task of ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... ex-post facto references to the split with Lady Austin, may be urged by a relentless prosecutor. But when William has to choose between Mary and Anna it will go hard but he will have to be unfair to ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... "who have this day met their deserts in a violent and bloody death, had by an accident obtained knowledge that this jewel was in my possession. Since then my life has hung upon a thread, and every step that I have taken has been watched by these enemies, the most cruel and relentless that it was ever the lot of any unfortunate to possess. From the mortal dangers of their machinations you have saved me, exhibiting a courage and a determination that cannot be sufficiently applauded. In this you have ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... the most subtle and terrible of all temptations was the temptation of worldly success. He tried to reassure himself, but it was in vain. He committed his thoughts to a diary, weighing scrupulously his every motive, examining with relentless searchings into the depths of his heart. Perhaps, after all, his longings for preferment were merely legitimatehopes for 'an elevation into a sphere of higher usefulness'. But no. there was something more than that. 'I do feel pleasure,' he noted, 'in honour, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... pays attention to is Love; although to everybody else, as Sophocles says, "he knows of no forbearance or favour, or anything but strict justice;" yet before lovers his genius stands rebuked, and they alone find him neither implacable nor relentless. Wherefore although, my friend, it is an excellent thing to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, yet I see that the votaries and initiated of Love have a better time of it in Hades than they have, * *[114] though in regard to legendary lore I stand in the position of one who ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... authority, and for a just cause, and yet be rendered unlawful through a wicked intention. Hence Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 74): "The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Lao Hsi Kai affair constantly before the people, it is relentless in its denunciation of Vice-President Feng's opium deal, and the methods of the British opium-dealers. Columns in regard to this transaction are published every day in the papers, throwing light on some new phase of it, keeping the public constantly informed regarding ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... have known of considerable gold in the possession of the Indians. It was a hope of the Church that some fortunate turn of Mexican politics might have restored their sway. Alas! It was shattered in 1834 by the relentless Hijar. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... before her, dressed in his usual somber garments, a look almost of humility in those keen grey eyes of his, which a year ago on the cliffs of Calais had peered down at her with such relentless hate. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy |
