"Combative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Greek generals to prostrate themselves before him according to Persian usage. He married a woman of the land and united eighty of his officers to daughters of the Persian nobles. He aimed to extend his empire to the farthest limits of the ancient kings and advanced even to India, warring with the combative natives. After his return with his army to Babylon (324), he died at the age of thirty-three, succumbing to a fever of brief ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... or end, which (I may remark) he cannot imagine either. But the letter ends with something much more ominous than bad metaphysics. Here, in the middle of the "Clarion," in the centre of a clean and combative democratic sheet, I meet again my deplorable old acquaintance, the scientific criminologist. "The so-called evil-doer should not be punished for his acts, but restrained." In forty-eight hours I could probably get a ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... I knew the look on his heavy, sombre face—a patient but combative look, powerful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... a glimpse merely—of the 'wise Wit' in London, among congenial society, where every intellectual power was daily called forth in combative force. See him now in the provincial circles of the remote county of York. 'Did you ever,' he once asked, 'dine out in the country? What misery do human beings inflict on each other under the name of pleasure!' Then he ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... say such things. Elvira, stop—stop!" Miss Berry stepped forward. Mrs. Tidditt was bristling like a combative bantam and Elvira was shaking from head to feet and crooking and uncrooking her fingers. "There mustn't be any more of this," declared Elizabeth. "Esther, you must apologize. Stop, both of you, please. Remember, Cap'n Kendrick ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... conceited over his skill in the manly art that he ventured to "stand up" before Pettit, to the bloody disfigurement of his countenance and the humiliation of his pride. If this is true, the lesson lasted him all his life, for a less combative adult than Eugene Field never graduated from an American college. He had a physical as well as a moral antipathy to personal participation in anything involving ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... this time still under forty years of age, would have been a very handsome woman had not troubles, suffering, and the contests of a rugged life, in which she had both endured and dared much, given to her face a look of hard combative resolution which was not feminine. She was rather below than above the average height,—or at any rate looked to be so, as she was strongly made, with broad shoulders, and a waist that was perhaps not now as slender as when she first ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... each other in irreconcilable yet confused antagonism. Both were still excited and combative from their late physical struggle, but with feelings so widely different that it would have been impossible for either to have comprehended the other. In the figure that had apparently risen from the dead ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... method by which the human mind estimates values. We would measure the strength of two men by pitting them against each other in physical encounter; in the same way, we are prone to measure the combative effect of weapons by pitting them in conflict against other weapons. But modern warfare is of so complex a nature that direct comparisons fail, and only a careful analysis of military experience determines the potentiality of a weapon and its influence ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... play are purely imaginary, and therefore not to be confounded with real persons. But lest any one, feeling some of the idiosyncrasies and characteristics apply too forcibly to his own high moral and irreproachable self, should allow his warlike and combative spirits to arise, you might as you go, kind of casually like, produce the impression that I rarely miss my aim with a Colt's forty-five, but if that does not have the effect of quieting the splenetic individual, and he still thirsts for Bill Slax's ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... fearless face that it was extremely valuable to its owner in concealing a crookedness as resourceful as that of a fox, and a moral cowardice which made him a spineless tool in evil hands. A shock of tumbled red hair over a fighting face added to the appearance of combative strength. The Honorable Asa was conventionally dressed, and his linen was white, but his collar was innocent of a necktie. Callomb stood for a moment inside the door, and, when he spoke, it was to ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... struggle, encounter, fray, affray, melee, scrimmage (Colloq.); pugnacity, belligerence. Associated words: militant, combative, combativeness, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... by young men. She looked hard at the American's pale face, saying to herself, "Is that like me? Is that like me?" Her conversation with Robin Pierce had made her feel excited. She had not shown it. She had seemed, indeed, almost oddly indifferent. But something combative was awake within her. She wondered whether the American was consciously imitating her. What an impertinence! But Miss Schley was impertinence personified. Her impertinence was her raison d'etre. Without it she would almost cease to be. She would ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... Charles W. Furse was frequently heard, but in it a suspicion of an Academic note unfamiliar in our midst, so that, young as he was, combative, enthusiastic, "a good fellow" as they say in England, still in his Whistler and rebel period, his friends predicted for him the Presidency of the Royal Academy. The first time I ever saw him was the year he was ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... sky-god worshipped at Thinis in Upper Egypt, at Zarit and at Sebennytos in Lower Egypt, was called Anhuri. When he assumed the attributes of Ra, and took upon himself the solar nature, his name was interpreted as denoting the conqueror of the sky. He was essentially combative. Crowned with a group of upright plumes, his spear raised and ever ready to strike the foe, he advanced along the firmament and triumphantly traversed it day by day.[**] The sun-god who at Medamofc Taud ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... vain efforts often attempted by the French magistracy in favor of sound doctrines of government. The Parliament of Paris fell sitting upon curule chairs, like the old senators of Rome during the invasion of the Gauls; the political spirit, the collected and combative ardor, the indomitable resolution of the English Parliament, freely elected representatives of a free people, were unknown to the French magistracy. Despite the courage and moral, elevation it had so often shown, its strength had been wasted in a constantly useless strife; it had withstood Richelieu ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... this clear-sighted, non-combative humour which Americans love and prize, and the absence of which they reckon a heavy loss. Nor do they always ask, "a loss to whom?" Charles Lamb said it was no misfortune for a man to have a sulky temper. It was his friends who were unfortunate. ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... even duller in books than Perdue. During his early years at Tuskegee he seemed unable to grasp the most rudimentary information. His native dullness was made unpleasant and aggressive by a combative disposition. He was constantly trying to prove to his exasperated teachers that he knew what he did not know. He was almost twenty-five years of age when he reached the Institute and entered the lowest primary ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... only a short time after this matter had been so satisfactorily arranged that Smith met one morning at the office door the gloomy face of the once optimistic and combative Cuyler. The mind of the young Vice-President had been so cheerfully inclined by the events of the last fortnight that he had almost forgotten there still ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... begin to conceive a possible world treaty. Let me state the broad outlines of this pacification. The outlines depend one upon the other; each is a condition of the other. It is upon these lines that the thoughtful, as distinguished from the merely the combative people, seem to be ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... has defined it in the clearest manner in the letter just given,—"Seeing whatever I can, and telling what I see." But among his listeners and readers was a man of very different mental constitution, not more independent or fearless, but louder and more combative, whose voice soon became heard and whose strength soon began to be felt in the long battle between the traditional and immanent inspiration,—Theodore Parker. If Emerson was the moving spirit, he was the right arm in the conflict, which in one form or another ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... chief. But his supposed discovery of the dead body proved an entire mistake; and not many days elapsed before Cavalier made his appearance before the gates of Alais, and sent in a challenge to the governor to come out and fight him. And it is to be observed that by this time a fiercely combative spirit, of fighting for fighting's sake, began to show itself among the Camisards. Thus, Castanet appeared one day before the gates of Meyreuis, where the regiment of Cordes was stationed, and challenged the colonel to come out and fight him in the open; but the challenge was declined. On another ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... in his early manhood was quick tempered and combative, but he soon learned self-control and, as all know, became as patient as he was forceful and sympathetic. "I got into the habit of controlling my temper in the Black Hawk war," he said to Colonel Forney, "and the good habit stuck to me as bad habits ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... for more and more material advantages? Could it promote progress even of a material character except in countries whose resources were still much in excess of their population? The war had seemed to me to show that mankind was too combative an animal ever to recognize that the good of all was the good of one. The coarse-fibred, pugnacious, and self-seeking would, I had become sure, always carry too many guns for the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... immediately intelligible. He is fond of countless details; but he so masters and marshals these details that each only serves to throw more light upon the main statement. His prose may be described as pictorial prose. The character of his mind was, like Burke's, combative and oratorical; and he writes with the greatest vigour and animation when he is attacking a policy ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... between her and another woman, they are left to fight it out as they best can, with the odds laid heavily on the little one. All this time there is nothing of the tumult of contest about her. Fiery and combative as she generally is, when breaking the law in public places she is the very soul of serene daring. She shows no heat, no passion, no turbulence; she leaves these as extra weapons of defence to women who are assailable. For herself she requires no such aids. She knows her ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... the chestnut species. It is in the outlying districts of scant frequency that the danger of infection from chestnut trees from the forest is least to planted trees, and likewise, there it is that combative measures should be most successful. Obviously, the farther from the center of the native range trees can be planted, the less is the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... agreed with their portentous activities. One school of psychologists inclined to minimise this participation, but the balance of evidence goes to show that there were massive responses to these suggestions of the belligerent schemer. Primitive man had been a fiercely combative animal; innumerable generations had passed their lives in tribal warfare, and the weight of tradition, the example of history, the ideals of loyalty and devotion fell in easily enough with the incitements of the international mischief-maker. The political ideas of the common man were ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... only added to his desire. The whole thing had appealed to his combative instinct. It had left him feeling there was not alone the storming of the Skandinavia's stronghold to be achieved. There was also a captive, a fair, innocent captive held bound and prisoned within the citadel ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... afternoon reception at the Embassy. His temper seemed to crave the bleak wet air of the cold streets, and he did not hurry himself. He intended to dine at home that evening, and he anticipated some kind of disagreement with his father. The two men were too much alike not to be congenial, but too combative by nature to care for eternal peace. On the present occasion it was likely that there would be a struggle, for Giovanni had made up his mind not to marry Madame Mayer, and his father was equally determined that he should marry her at once: both ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... family traits. We all had the same infirmities of character: we were all tenderfeet—lacking in grit, will power, self-assertion, and the ability to deal with men. We were easily crowded to the wall, easily cheated, always ready to take a back seat, timid, complying, undecided, obstinate but not combative, selfish but not self-asserting, always the easy victims of pushing, coarse-grained, designing men. As with Father, the word came easy but the blow was slow to follow. Only a year or two ago a lightning-rod ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... could have fitted the foot of no other man. However, though he was less skilled in argument than in cobbling, he was always insisting that other minds should be shod to his own measure. The stationer was more indolent and less combative, and never worried about proving his faith. A man only tries to prove what he doubts himself. He had no doubt. His unfailing optimism always made him see things as he wanted to see them, and not see things or forget them ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... nor stop up its springs, he learns to use the stream by building a mill, and controlling the pressure of the flood for grinding his corn. Similarly, the problem of life is for the upper man to educate, control, and transmute the lower forces into sympathy and service. The combative powers once turned against his fellows must be turned against nature and used for hewing down the forests, bridging rivers, piercing mountains. Thus every animal force and passion becomes sacred through consecration to mental ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... great duty it was necessary that they should make themselves thoroughly acquainted with the great controversy between the pure Church to which it was their own happiness to belong, and that corrupt association which called itself Catholicism. I had rather a bold and combative disposition, and was by no means unwilling to take a ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... places himself on the lowest level on which a moralist or patriot can stand and shows as great a want of refined feeling as of right reason. For the glories of war are all blood-stained, delirious, and infected with crime; the combative instinct is a savage prompting by which one man's good is found in another's evil. The existence of such a contradiction in the moral world is the original sin of nature, whence flows every other wrong. He is a willing accomplice of that perversity ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... to fasten him to a point he desired to evade. He could almost invert a proposition by a plausible paraphrase. He delighted in enlarging an opponent's assertion to a forced inference ridiculous in form and monstrous in dimensions. In spirit he was alert, combative, aggressive; in manner, patronizing and arrogant ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... not subject to its attacks, and while Rand, Jack and Gerald did what they could for their unfortunate companions, they could not resist the temptation of an occasional sly reference to their chums' poor qualities as sailors, that under any other circumstances would have driven the combative Pepper frantic. ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... certain attitude, combative at once and deferential, eager to fight yet most averse to quarrel, which marks out at once the talkable man. It is not eloquence, not fairness, not obstinacy, but a certain proportion of all of these that I love to encounter in my amicable adversaries. They must not be pontiffs holding doctrine, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson |
