"Imperiousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her equal; but one ought to reflect how very few men are worthy of their wives in any sense. After his fashion he certainly loved her always,—even when she tried him most, for it must be owned that she really had that hot temper which he had dreaded in her from the first. Not that her imperiousness directly affected him. For a long time after their marriage, she seemed to have no other desire than to lose her outwearied will in his. There was something a little pathetic in this; there was a kind of bewilderment in her gentleness, as though the relaxed ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... some little distance were a growing irritation. She reined in her horse and looked behind her; Grandcourt after a few paces, also paused; but she, waving her whip and nodding sideways with playful imperiousness, said, "Go on! I want to speak ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... policy wanted pliability, the only virtue which was here indispensable to its success. He was naturally overbearing and insolent, and the royal authority only gave arms to the natural impetuosity of his disposition and the imperiousness of his order. He veiled his own ambition beneath the interests of the crown, and made the breach between the nation and the king incurable, because it would render him indispensable to the latter. He revenged on the nobility the lowliness of his own origin; ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... screens and galleries, all very old and rather dilapidated, but superb, and the lady worthy of the house. A bold-eyed slave girl with a baby put herself forward for admiration, and was ordered to bring coffee with such cool though polite imperiousness. One of our great ladies can't half crush a rival in comparison, she does it too coarsely. The quiet scorn of the pale-faced, black-haired Arab was beyond any English powers. Then it was fun to open the lattice and make me look out on the square, and to wonder what the neighbours would say at the ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... sallow, strongly marked, but proud and aristocratic features, and a manner with more than a tinge of imperiousness. Her face, her figure, her voice were familiar, yet strange to me—familiar because I had heard of her, and been in the habit of occasionally seeing her from my very earliest childhood; strange, because she was reserved and not given to seeing her neighbors' houses for purposes either of gossip or ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... Bulstrode's native imperiousness and strength of determination served him well. This delicate-looking man, himself nervously perturbed, found the needed stimulus in his strenuous circumstances, and through that difficult night and morning, while he had the air of an animated ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... standing," the girl promptly returned, "and of waiting, too"—with a certain imperiousness in her tone. "I wandered away to fill up the time till Mr. Wildred should have ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... watching her with far-away eyes, as she moved lightly about, giving her orders with a childish imperiousness, and setting out the ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... these terrible memories of the past which had come back to her last night when her husband had left her. She concealed nothing, she veiled nothing; there were intervals when her tears no longer flowed, and a cruel hardness and return of her old imperiousness of voice and manner took their place, as if she was doing a rigid penance and took a bitter satisfaction in laying bare her whole soul to him. "I never had a friend," she whispered; "there were women who persecuted me ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... with were a most degraded set: instead of improving the country, they brought ruin upon it by their imperiousness and cruelty. All traded in slaves and generally treated them most harshly. Several gangs were met with in chains. Each slave was dressed in a single goat's skin, and at night they kept themselves warm by lying ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the time. Friends and foes agree in attributing the schism, at least the immediate schism, to the imprudent zeal, the imperiousness, the ungovernable temper of Pope Urban. The cardinals among themselves talked of him as mad; they began to murmur that it was a compulsory, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... development of civil order and society in France. But it was to the advantage of absolute power that all these facts were turned, and the perverted ability of Philip the Handsome consisted in working them for that single end. He was a profound egotist; he mingled with his imperiousness the leaven of craft and patience, but he was quite a stranger to the two principles which constitute the morality of governments, respect for rights and patriotic sympathy with public sentiment; he concerned ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... he said, with his easy imperiousness. "I can't spare you yet. I must have one more dance just to soothe my nerves. I've been dancing with a faultless automaton who didn't understand me in the least. Now I want the real ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... the drug freely and constantly, thus making downward advances in months that in some instances require years of moderate indulgence. Moreover, as with alcohol, many natures have an unusual and morbid craving for opium after once acquiring the habit of its use. Their appetite demands it with an imperiousness which will not be denied, even while in soul they recoil and loathe the bondage. This was especially true of Mr. Jocelyn. The vice in his case was wrecking a mind and heart naturally noble and abounding in the best ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... passed the group in pacing the platform, the woman whom he had been studying raised her eyes and gazed at him with just a touch of imperiousness. ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... man. "How he DU dam and swear," the servants would cry, delighted at his precocity. Those who remembered the Captain his father, declared Master George was his Pa, every inch of him. He made the house lively by his activity, his imperiousness, his ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... got along capitally. Dr. Cardington gave me this candle, but declined to come with us. I thought he quite resented our intrusion, and was anxious to pass us up without delay." Then, turning to her companions with whimsical imperiousness, "Stand in a row, the whole class, till I introduce you to your ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... answered with some imperiousness, "or we should not have sent the carriage and servants ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... Demorest might have been amused at his guest's audacity, or have combated it with his old imperiousness, but he only remained looking at him in a dull sort of way as if yielding to his influence. It was part of the phenomenon that the two men seemed to have changed character since they last met, and when Ezekiel said confidentially: "I ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... positive and determined, and her manner so irresistible, that Hemstead had no thought, save that of compliance. She had that piquant imperiousness to which men are willing slaves when it is manifested graciously, and by a pretty woman. He was like a ship caught in a gale, and there was nothing to do but scud before it. At the same time, it seemed that she was driving him swiftly ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... of danger, and while his body continued to fight, his soul took wing to the throne of Amon. He contemplates the lord of heaven face to face, reminds him of the benefits which he had received from him, and summons him to his aid with an imperiousness which betrays the sense of his own divine origin. The expected help was not delayed. "While the voice resounds in Hermonthis, Amon arises at my behest, he stretches out his hand to me, and I cry out with joy ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... perchance occur before the coming of Doom. Then, after an interval that seemed too age-long to be endured, out of the very core of the silence Dante heard a voice calling to him that he had never heard before, and that spoke to him with such a sweet imperiousness that he was as physically and spiritually bound to obey and attend as ever Moses was on the holy hill. And the commanding voice cried to him, "Dante, behold a deity stronger than thou, who comes ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... dissuade her. The touch of imperiousness with which she silenced their objections made the blundering well- meaning doctor want to shake her. He waited impatiently while Margot made Felicia ready for the hasty journey. He saw nothing absurd about the slender figure that came ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... circumstances," said Van, "I'll take something different from what I got last time. No imperiousness this trip." He smiled grimly. "There was a time when I used to take orders. Suppose you ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... have been re-committed to hers, had I given him reason to think I made an arrogant use of it), you cannot imagine what a triumph I had in my mind over the mortified guilt, which (from the highest degree of insolence and imperiousness, that before had hardened her masculine features) appeared in her countenance, when she found the tables likely to be soon ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... She spoke with such imperiousness that Bunny judged it best to comply. He showed her a door in the eastern wall that was draped ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... a short visit to castle Weelset, and went one day to Corbyknowe, where he left a favourable impression upon all, which impression Kirsty had been the readier to receive because of the respect she felt for him as a student. The old imperiousness which made him so unlike his father had retired into the background; his smile, though not so sweet, came oftener; and his carriage was full of courtesy. But something was gone which his old friends would gladly have seen still. His behaviour in the old time was not ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... an air of faint but well-bred surprise. Tavernake, in those days, was a person exceedingly difficult to place. His clothes so obviously denoted the station in life which he really occupied, while the slight imperiousness of his manner, his absolute freedom from any sort of nervousness or awkwardness, seemed to bespeak a consideration which those who had to deal with him as a stranger ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... she said. Her face was pale, but her lips were smiling. "Get down there where you were!" she continued, with tender imperiousness. He obeyed her, hardly daring to trust his senses. "Now put your hands between my hands," she said, still with that pale, singular smile, which filled him with unquiet transports, "and tell me the truth, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... like that!" she said, with gay imperiousness. "You pale-eyed folk have a horrible knack of making one feel as if one is under a microscope. Your worthy uncle is just the same. If I weren't so deeply in love with him, I might resent it. But Nick is a privileged ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... forward appears as an outrage against a sacred thing, as rebellion against the old, dying, but through custom, sanctified, circumstances, and on the other hand that since the rising of class antagonism, the evil passions of men, greed and imperiousness serve as the levers of historical progress, of which, for example, the history of feudalism and the bourgeoisie affords a conspicuous proof. But Feuerbach does not trouble himself to examine the role of moral evil. ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... do!" cried Hilda, gayly, pushing the chair towards the door. "Bring her hat, please, Mrs. Chirk. I always have my own way!" she added, with a touch of the old imperiousness, "and I have quite set my ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... feminine portion, symbolized by the heart, and, like a magnetic tractor, the soul's affinities are drawn downward, and, as if in defiance of all responsibilities, consequences, and Karma, the soul, lion-like, "shakes his mane in the imperiousness of deathless courage." ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... imperiousness of the tone to wonder how the secret of his identity could be known by this man ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... happiness, cost that witness what it may. Paulina had forbidden letters, yet Dr. Bretton wrote; she had resolved against correspondence, yet she answered, were it only to chide. She showed me these letters; with something of the spoiled child's wilfulness, and of the heiress's imperiousness, she made me read them. As I read Graham's, I scarce wondered at her exaction, and understood her pride: they were fine letters—manly and fond—modest and gallant. Hers must have appeared to him beautiful. They had ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... her accident, for in the evening of that disastrous day she issued to Captain Hume Vidall a commission which he could never—wished never—to resign. Since then she had been at her best,—we are all more or less selfish creatures,— and had grown gentler, curbing the delicate imperiousness of her nature, and frankly, and without the least pique, taken a secondary position of interest in the household, occasioned by Lali's popularity. She looked Lali up and down with a glance in which many feelings met, and then, catching her hands warmly, she lifted them, put ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to rage against her, but instead he could think of nothing but her sweet imperiousness, her dazzling beauty, her cheerfulness under all circumstances, and her loyalty ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... who spoke no word of any language but his own. Although of a brutal, almost idiotic type, he was loudly eulogized by his master as the model of fidelity and usefulness. Bourgonef treated him with gentleness, though with a certain imperiousness; much as one might treat a savage mastiff which it was necessary to dominate without exasperating. He more than once spoke of Ivan as a living satire on physiognomists and phrenologists; and as I am a phrenologist, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... old lady, with a sunny temper and a strong will. She always had her own way, and decided all doubtful matters with a charming imperiousness ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... humbler domain, who—Pagan that she is!—indiscriminately accepts all things beautiful simply for their beauty. Having arrived, Miss Holland proceeded to organize us with all the energy of high-blooded sweet-and-twenty and all the imperiousness of confident wealth and beauty. She organized an evening sewing-circle for women whose eyelids would not stay open after their long day's work. She formed cultural improvement classes for such as Leon Coventry, the printer, who knows half ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... mind upon that thirteenth chapter of "Lily the Lovely Laundress." The handsome rat-catcher had just beaten the aristocratic villain to a pulp and would have finished the job neatly and thoroughly had not Lily raised her lovely fair hand and cried with the imperiousness of ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... which threatened to stand wholly outside the law of the land; and the ecclesiastical pretensions of the time were perhaps well matched by the pretensions of the State. The king had prepared for the coming conflict by a characteristic act of high-handed imperiousness in the election of the chancellor-archbishop to carry out his policy. But all such schemes of imperative despotism were vain. No sooner was Thomas consecrated than it became plain that his ecclesiastical ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... around her, and felt a lady of luxury. Osborn kept her waiting some ten minutes, but soon the damper which that put upon her spirits evaporated, leaving her all pure bliss. It was entrancing to sit here once more—where she had often kept Osborn sitting in the old days of her imperiousness and his humility—and to watch the well-dressed people come in and out, pass to and fro, and enact scenes which suggested the gaudiest stories to her receptive mind. Light and warmth, rich colour and abundant life flowed there like tides, and many ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... cruelty, an imperiousness, even in his warmth, had characterized Charles Stow. As a lover he had ever been a bit of a tyrant; and it might pretty truly have been said that he had stung her into marriage with him at last. Still more alien from her life did these reflections ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... Mr. Champneys suddenly gasped and slid down in his chair. Nancy and Hoichi carried him into the library and placed him on a lounge. He opened his eyes once, and stared into hers with something of his old imperiousness. She took his hand, pitifully, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... her with a sudden imperiousness she could not ignore. "Then the way is made open for Mabyn to come to her!" he cried. "Where will you be then?—thrown on the ground, ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... insolence of his tone Josephine became violently agitated. "Father," she said, with the imperiousness of an only and indulged child, "I have asked you not to interfere between Fred and me. I thought I ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... fancied what bee I thus helped to keep buzzing in her pretty head, which she now carried with all the alternate imperiousness and graciousness of confident and proven beauty. Little I divined of feminine dreams of conquest in larger fields; or foresaw of dangerous fruit to grow from seed planted with thoughtlessness. To my mind, nothing ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... pretty color," he exclaimed testily. "How am I to know what's a pretty color? Now if it was a sack of flour or a spade—but I'll do my best, Missy," he added meekly, catching her eye in which the familiar imperiousness ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... admit of her calling upon Mrs. Jernam. The gentle, happy Rosamond complied willingly, and so thoroughly had the beautiful lady won the girl's heart before they were long together, that Rosamond herself proposed that George should accompany Lady Eversleigh to Allanbay. With pretty imperiousness she bore down Lady Eversleigh's grateful scruples, and the result was, that the two started that same evening, travelled as fast as post-horses could carry them, and arrived at Allanbay before even Lady Eversleigh's impatience ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... that though she was such a fine figure, quite as tall as himself, she was but in the bloom of young womanhood. Her face was certainly striking, though rather by its imperiousness than its beauty; and the beating of the wind and rain and spray had inflamed her cheeks to ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... upon him for them. He charged the not carrying up of "The Charles" upon the Tuesday, to the Duke of Albemarle; but I see the House is mighty favourable to the Duke of Albemarle, and would give little weight to it. And something of want of armes he spoke, which Sir J. Duncomb answered with great imperiousness and earnestness; but, for all that, I do see the House is resolved to be better satisfied in the business of the unreadiness of Sherenesse, and want of armes and ammunition there and every where: and all their officers ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... years older than Claude, a typical Featherstone, fair and straight of limb, with finely chiseled features and delicate complexion. Her eyes were large and long-lashed, but somewhat cold. A life of indolence and luxury had bred a certain air of imperiousness in her. She was known to her friends as Angela the frigid. But this appellation was not quite justified. At times she was far from frigid. Under different circumstances she might have been as warm-blooded as any Southern peasant-girl, but pride of birth and breeding ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... join us or wait," said Mrs. Ashwood incisively, with her first exhibition of the imperiousness of a rich and pretty woman. Perhaps she was a little annoyed that her elaborate introduction of herself had produced no reciprocal disclosure by her companion. "Will you please send the landlord ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... she said. "These friends can see too plainly how much you spoil me. Tell me,"—and she turned with a sudden pretty imperiousness to Lorimer, who started at her voice as a racehorse starts at its rider's touch,—"what person in ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... mountain on a desert shore. The prince first began to rave against the doctor for this piece of treachery and witchcraft. Perceiving however that all his rage was vain, and submitting himself to the imperiousness of his situation, he began to seek for some habitable tract. By and by he discovered people cutting down wood in a forest, and, having no remedy, he was glad to have recourse to the same employment. In process of time he was brought to a town; and there by great good fortune, after ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... back!" said he with the sharp imperiousness which I had associated only with moments of crisis. "If you approach me, Watson, I shall order you out of ...
— The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sort of defiance in the sudden, tensity of her erect body, an imperiousness in the carriage of her head. Her eyes met his with something of the same defiance in them. But in them, ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... dress; he made a progress through Thrace, attended by Persian and Egyptian guards; and copied, in the luxury of his table and the dissoluteness of his manners, the example of his adopted country. Above all, he offended the allies by his haughty reserve and imperiousness. His designs were now too manifest to escape attention. His proceedings reached the ears of the Spartans, who sent out Dorcis to supersede him. Disgusted by the insolence of Pausanias, the Ionians serving in the combined Grecian fleet addressed themselves to ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... swashbuckling sort of mouth, the mouth of one who would lead forlorn hopes with a jest or plot whimsically lawless conspiracies against convention. In its corners and in the firm line of the chin beneath it there lurked, too, more than a hint of imperiousness. A physiognomist would have gathered, correctly, that Ann Chester liked having her own way and ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... his spirits." He encountered the opposition of his colleagues, not with the fierce haughtiness of the first Pitt, or the cold unbending arrogance of the second, but with a gay vehemence, a good-humoured imperiousness, that bore everything down before it. The period of his ascendency was known by the name of the "Drunken Administration"; and the expression was not altogether figurative. His habits were extremely convivial; and champagne ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... conversation between them at that interview, however. Supposing Alyosha to be very shy, Katerina Ivanovna had talked all the time to Dmitri to spare him. Alyosha had been silent, but he had seen a great deal very clearly. He was struck by the imperiousness, proud ease, and self-confidence of the haughty girl. And all that was certain, Alyosha felt that he was not exaggerating it. He thought her great glowing black eyes were very fine, especially with her pale, even rather sallow, longish face. But in those eyes ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... pity me?" She spoke haughtily; and though Vautrot had never suspected this imperiousness of manner or of language, he reflected hurriedly on the point at which he had arrived. More sure than ever of success, after a moment he took from his pocket a folded letter. It was one with which he had provided himself to confirm the suspicions of the Countess, now awakened ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... fleeting impression was that he had become older, sterner, more commanding. Kingship had set its seal on him. A short month of power had stamped lines on his face that would never vanish. But that sense of imperiousness was quickly dispelled by the ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... neighboring canoe, and carried up to the house. They laid him on the floor, pale and groaning, while the children ran out screaming for Fetuao. She came in like a whirlwind, still wet from the river, and threw herself on her knees beside him. With passionate imperiousness she made the rest of the household wait upon her bidding as she busied herself in stanching the flow of blood and in picking the splinters from the wound. Jack knew how wont she was, in common with all Samoans, to shrink from ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... perfectly bald dome-like head, brilliantly polished and almost as red as his face. He was clean shaven and by no means young, for the flesh hung in bags about his face. Long years of the habit of command had left their mark in an imperiousness of manner which might easily yield to ruthlessness ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... at Oakford?" she asked, turning her grey eyes on me. She spoke almost abruptly, and with a touch of imperiousness that suddenly recalled to me where I had ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... was Colonel's Esmond's nature always to be led by a woman, and he spoiled his daughter; laughing at her caprices, but humouring them; making a joke of her prejudices, but letting them have their way; indulging, and perhaps increasing, her natural imperiousness of character, which asserted itself to an unusual degree ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... mutual repellancies and estrangement; it encourages the former to exercise an authority which he would not venture to assume under a system of perfect freedom; it emboldens the latter to display an insolence which he would not have dreamed of in a state of slavery, and thus begetting in the one, the imperiousness of the slaveholder without his power, and in the other, the independence of the freeman without his immunities, it perpetuates a scene of angry collision, jealousy ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... go home!" said the minister, with more of imploring than imperiousness in his command. "What will they ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... perfect health, and the music of her voice and laugh was nothing short of a revelation to me. I could see that, being an only child, she had not wholly escaped being spoiled; but the slight touch of hauteur and imperiousness which was noticeable in her manner was only just sufficient to add to it another piquant charm. Like her foster-sister she was attired in white, the bodice being fastened with a white silken lace or cord, and having no sleeves, a couple ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... then, monsieur, that have revealed you to me as another man; I have learnt something that has utterly withered such love as I then confessed. Now, monsieur, are you satisfied, and will you let me pass?" She said the last words with a return of her imperiousness, already angry at having been drawn ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... Bunsen in more ways than one; in his ardent religious sentiment, in his eagerness, in his undoubting and not always far-sighted self-confidence and self-assertion, and in a combination of practical vagueness of view and a want of understanding men, with a feverish imperiousness in carrying out a favourite plan. In 1841 he sent Bunsen to England to negotiate the ill-considered and precipitate arrangement for the Jerusalem bishopric; and on the successful conclusion of the negotiation, Bunsen was appointed permanently to be Prussian ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... of the 'Messiah' score to the Foundling an amusing story is told, which serves to illustrate the imperiousness of Handel's temper. The directors of the hospital were desirous of retaining for themselves the exclusive right to perform the 'Messiah,' and with this idea they sought to obtain an Act of Parliament confirming ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... she stood opposite the door. On the appearance of a woman, the game instantly ceased. Recognition was mutual, but neither mother nor son spoke a word. Her eye took in the surroundings at a glance. Finally she spoke with a half-concealed imperiousness of tone, though her ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... commit a fault: they'd set the house to rights; they would do every thing. But the lion-like talkers abroad are mere baa-lambs at home, being generally dupes and slaves to some termagant mistress, against whose imperiousness they dare not open their lips, {50}but are frightened even if she frowns. Old bachelors, in this, resemble your pretenders to atheism, who make a mock in public of what in private they tremble at and fall down to. When they become superannuated, they set up for ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... just tied, and turned away not wholly dissatisfied. Indeed, as the acknowledged belle of Canada City and the daughter of its principal banker, small wonder that a certain frank vanity and childlike imperiousness were among ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... voice, saying that they would catch it for him. "I shall catch a cold for myself," said Mr. Pericles, from the elevation of a shrug, feeling that he was doomed to go forth. He acted reluctance so well that the ladies affected a pretty imperiousness; and when at last he consented to join the party, they thanked him with a nicely simulated warmth, believing that they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... time that he had been given to see the Dabney imperiousness shining star-like in Miss ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... the first sweet passions of life blend into an exaltation half sexual and half religious, but pure with the purity of a great flame. The miracle too remains, but it is the miracle of love that subdues the despairing heart, that reconciles man to his universe, and that slays the imperiousness of self. Thus Henry, firmly individualised as he is, becomes in some sense, like all the greater protagonists of the drama, the spirit of man confronting eternal and recurrent problems. The minor figures—Gottfried, ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... embarrassment and danger he foresaw as the outcome. Therefore, that suspicion might be lulled, he judged it wise to make overtures for peace. Most easily done. A little kindliness, a few evidences of consideration, a slight return of the old brotherly imperiousness, and Christian replied by a gratefulness and relief that might have touched him had he understood all, but instead, increased his ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... possibly, after no more than a few entreaties, make them a present of her person as well as the purchase money. In the second place, never had they in the Chia mansion ill-used any of those below; there being always plenty of grace and little of imperiousness. Besides, the servant-girls, who acted as personal attendants in the apartments of the old as well as of the young, were treated so far unlike the whole body of domestics in the household that the daughters even of an ordinary and penniless parentage could not have ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... men of ability, with quietly and unobtrusively despising. The contempt he felt he did not pay sufficient deference to human nature to hide. It was inevitable that the self-love of many should be offended by the arbitrariness and imperiousness with which he overrode their opinions, and still more by the unequivocal disdain manifested for them. It must be conceded, also, that to those for whom he felt indifference or dislike, he had in no slight degree that capacity of making himself disagreeable which reaches, and then only in rare ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... for saying a few words on this subject. I found several times that some people had given you the impression that poor Charlotte had been hasty and violent even to imperiousness and rudeness. I can you assure that it was not so; she was quick, and even violent, but I never have seen anybody so open to conviction, and so fair and candid when wrong. The proverb says, and not without some truth, that ladies come always back to the first words, to ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... and her flippant opinion, delivered to Althea, of the Service Bureau and work in general, was all that was needed to convince the shrewd junior of Jean's true position in life. Then, too, Jean was extremely likable, although Althea stood a little in awe of her remarkable poise and a certain imperiousness that occasionally crept ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... unmistakable—but one sprigged saucer is very like other saucers sprigged the same. It was the Mammies rather than the masters and mistresses, who ordered carriage drivers and horse boys imperiously about. But nobody minded the imperiousness—it was no day for quarrelling or unwisdom. And it would surely have been unwise to fret those who were the Keepers of the Baskets, at the ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... girl laughed. "They call me Peg," she said, and with sudden impulse she held out her work-roughened hand. "Come on," she said again, with an unconscious note of imperiousness in her voice, and ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... must find one somewhere," insisted the girl, with the pretty imperiousness of feminine youth; "there is a gentleman at the very top of the tree, and he is at this moment dying for want of food. What a pity the pears are not ripe! Can't you think of someone who ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... Danesbury's great dread that fever would set in had passed away. The doctor said, however, that Nan had barely escaped real injury to her brain, and that it would be many a day before she would romp again, and play freely and noisily with the other children. Nan had chosen her own nurse, and, with the imperiousness of all babies—to say nothing of sick babies—she had her way. From morning till night Annie remained with her, and when the doctor saw how Annie alone could soothe and satisfy the child he would not allow it to be otherwise. At first Nan would lie ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade |
