"Inflexibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of light, and of a distant and howling uproar. I felt him become suddenly tractable again like an animal, like a good-tempered horse when the object that scares him is removed. Yes. I felt in the darkness there how tractable he was, without my conviction of his inflexibility—tenacity, rather, perhaps—being in the least weakened. His very arm abandoning itself to my grasp was as hard as marble—like a limb of iron. But I heard a tumultuous scuffling of boot-soles within. The unspeakable idiots inside were crowding to the windows, climbing over each other's ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... at having deprived him of an opportunity to prove his assertions. Every gentle look and insinuating accent reappeared to my memory, and I more than half repented my inflexibility. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... weighty sternness, and that a mighty mass cannot be shaken with the idle puffing of the lips. For Starkad had set his face so firmly in his stubborn wrath, that he seemed not a whit easier to move than ever. For the inflexibility which he owed his vows was not softened either by the strain of the lute or the enticements of the palate; and he thought that more respect should be paid to his strenuous and manly purpose than to the tickling of the ears or ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the White Pine is free from some of the defects of the Fir and Spruce, having none of their stiffness of foliage and inflexibility of spray, that cause them to resemble artificial objects. It has the symmetry of the Fir, joined with a certain flowing grace that assimilates it to the deciduous trees. With sufficient amplitude to conceal a look of primness that often arises from symmetry, we observe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... grace of French cleverness with a reserved style and refined pride gained from the English blood of the Maldens. For his part, Felix really loved the girl, and had let his impatience, that very day, carry him into a step that failed to move the elder Montmorot's inflexibility. He refused absolutely to give his daughter to a man without fortune or prospects. Felix was crushed, his hopes all shattered at a blow, by this answer, though he had a thousand reasons to expect it. And at what a moment! A half-unfolded red ticket, stuffed with disgusting ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... able to withstand so formidable an adversary; while others brave the danger, and think it mean to surrender, and dastardly to fly. Melissa, indeed, knew better; and though she could not boast the apathy, steadiness, and inflexibility of a Cato, wanted not the more prudent virtue of Scipio, and gained the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask, what equal he has? The heart of him is of the true Prophet cast. "He lies there," said the Earl of Morton at his grave, "who never feared the face of man." He resembles, more than any of the moderns, an old Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking adherence to God's truth, stern rebuke in the name of God to all that forsake truth: an old Hebrew prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh minister of the sixteenth century. We are to take him for that; not ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... of Wellington is not, I am inclined to believe, a man of excitable temperament. His mind is of a cast too martial to be easily moved; but, notwithstanding his habitual inflexibility, I cannot help thinking, that when he heard his countrymen (for we are his countrymen) designated by a phrase so offensive he ought to have recalled the many fields of fight in which we have been contributors to his renown. Yes, the battles, sieges, fortunes, that ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... loaded with brushwood, lashed out with its hoofs at a negro, who at once began to batter it passionately with a pole, and a long line of sneering camels confronted them, treading stealthily, and turning their serpentine necks from side to side as they came onwards with a soft and weary inflexibility. In the distance there was a vision of a glaring market-place crowded with moving forms and ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... processes of Reproduction have much to do with determining pen methods they become important factors for consideration. While their waywardness and inflexibility are the cause of no little distress to the illustrator, the limitations of processes cannot be said, on the whole, to make for inferior standards in drawing, as will be seen by the following rules which they impose, and for which a strict regard ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... not?" asked Elmira Spelter, the main grief of whose life was time's cruel inflexibility in scoring upon her face unconcealable tallies of every one of his yearly flights over her head, "why shouldn't she enjoy these golden days? Youth is passing, to her and to all of us, like an arrow from the bow. It'd be absurd for her to waste her time in this stuffy old place, when there are so ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... cumulative emphasis, and his construction enabled him so to combine his materials as to secure this effect. He was intensely self-critical; and while almost without conceit concerning his own work, he had an accuracy of detached estimation that enabled him to stand by his own opinion with a proper inflexibility when his judgment convinced him that ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard
... and piety which this prelate enjoyed in common with so many of his clerical contemporaries, he added an extraordinary earnestness in the promotion of Christian knowledge, and a courageous inflexibility on points of professional duty, imitated by few and excelled by none. His manly spirit disdained that slavish obsequiousness by which too many of his episcopal brethren paid homage to the narrow prejudices and state-jealousies ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... necessary. Now, in the three Chambers which the three orders were thenceforward to form, there were two in which the plebeians predominated. Public opinion, moreover, was on their side, while the King, the true constitutional monarch, far from possessing the imperious inflexibility of a despot, did not now possess the initiative of an ordinary person. Thus the preponderance fell to the communes, and they could legally, without any collision, execute multiply, and complete, with the aid of the prince and through him, all useful reforms.[2207]—This ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of the last week. She wore also a large, loose, dark-coloured wrapper, which came well up round her neck, and which was not buoyed out, as were her dresses in general, with an under mechanism of petticoats. It clung to her closely, and added to the inflexibility of her general appearance. And then she had encased her feet in large carpet slippers, which no doubt were comfortable, but which struck her visitor as being strange and unsightly. "Do you find a difficulty in getting your people together for early morning prayers?" ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... his sturdy, weather-beaten countenance and forest attire, lending an air of romantic wildness to the aspect of an individual, who, seen by the sober light of day, would have exhibited the peculiarities of a man remarkable for the strangeness of his dress, the iron-like inflexibility of his frame, and the singular compound of quick, vigilant sagacity, and of exquisite simplicity, that by turns usurped the possession of his muscular features. At a little distance in advance stood Uncas, his whole ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... unnumbered drinking bouts in the not so very distant past. But—two months before—Jim had startled Links and horrified his priest by marrying Kitty Muckevay of the gold-red hair. Kitty had a rare measure of good sense but was a Protestant of Ulster inflexibility. She had taken Jim in hand to reform him, and for sixty days he had not touched a drop! Moreover he had promised Kitty to keep out of mischief on this day of days. All that morning he had worked among the horses in Downey's livery stable where he was head man. It was a public ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... deck at sea is a piece of household work which in all times but raging gales is regularly attended to every evening; it has been known to be done in the case of ships actually foundering at the time. Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of sea-usages and the instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom would not willingly drown without first washing their faces. But in all vessels this broom business is the prescriptive province of the boys, if boys there be aboard. Besides, it was the stronger men ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... motley party, who had crossed from the main land, all bearing towards the same point. Puritans, whose cloaks were of the most formal cut, and whose hats emulated the steeple of St. Paul's; Levellers, with firm steps, wrinkled and over-hanging brows, and hard unchanging features, all denoting inflexibility of purpose and decision of character; Cavaliers, whose jaunty gait was sobered, and whose fashionable attire was curtailed in consideration that such bravery would be noticed and reproved by the powers that were; women attired in dark hoods ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... misery results from man's helplessness and ignorance and nature's inflexibility in this one matter of crossing the ocean! What agonies of prayer there were during all the long hours that this ship was driving straight on to these fatal rocks, all to no purpose! It struck and crushed just the same. Surely, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... in the history of nations), these analogous circumstances have not effaced the individual features, or the shades of character which distinguish the American tribes. We observe in the men of copper hue, a moral inflexibility, a steadfast perseverance in habits and manners, which, though modified in each tribe, characterise essentially the whole race. These peculiarities are found in every region; from the equator to Hudson's Bay on the one hand, and to the Straits of Magellan on the other. They are connected ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... circle of figures or to alter their wretched appearance. The same uncouth forms return with a killing monotony. Centuries do not change them. The uniformity of monastic life by no means tended to relax the inflexibility of invention. Religion, not art, was the sculptor's or the painter's object; his production was a creation of faith, not of beauty. Such is the character of almost all the carvings in wood and stone which have been found in the catacombs of Rome ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... may be questioned whether a single suggestion was of sufficient moment to justify a revision of the system. There is abundant reason, nevertheless, to suppose that immaterial as these objections were, they would have been adhered to with a very dangerous inflexibility, in some States, had not a zeal for their opinions and supposed interests been stifled by the more powerful sentiment of self-preservation. One State, we may remember, persisted for several years ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... being almost unlimited, it was natural, they say, that he should be received with cheers. From a lieutenant up to a general, all are dependent on his favor for promotion. At all events, his austerity and inflexibility have been relaxed, and he has made popular speeches wherever he has gone. I hope good fruits will ensue. But he returns to find the people here almost in a state of starvation in the midst of plenty, brought on by the knavery or incompetency of ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... up to look at the body. Under the pure white sheet a quilted counter-pane had been placed, for now, more than ever, Aunt Ann had need of warmth; and, the pillows removed, her spine and head rested flat, with the semblance of their life-long inflexibility; the coif banding the top of her brow was drawn on either side to the level of the ears, and between it and the sheet her face, almost as white, was turned with closed eyes to the faces of her brothers and sisters. In its extraordinary peace ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was a tall, hard-featured lady, but by no means ill-looking. There was an inflexibility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and carriage, amply sufficient to account for the effect she had made upon a gentle creature like my mother; but her features were rather handsome than otherwise, though unbending ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... in which I was placed by Mr. Forester's letter, not merely a willingness, but an alacrity and impatience, to return. We procured a second horse. We proceeded on our journey in silence. My mind was occupied again in endeavouring to account for Mr. Forester's letter. I knew the inflexibility and sternness of Mr. Falkland's mind in accomplishing the purposes he had at heart; but I also knew that every virtuous and magnanimous principle ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... inflexibility in trampling on rights which no independent nation can relinquish, Congress will feel the duty of putting the United States into an armor and an attitude demanded by the crisis, and corresponding with ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the murdering scene, the obdurate inflexibility of purpose with which she drives on Macbeth to the execution of their project, and her masculine indifference to blood and death, would inspire unmitigated disgust and horror, but for the involuntary consciousness that it is ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... flexibility, suppleness, pliancy, limberness, ductility, malleability. Antonyms: inflexibility, rigidity. See inflexibility. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... at the commencement of the Consulate affords an example of Bonaparte's inflexibility when he had once formed a determination. In the spring of 1799, when we were in Egypt, the Directory gave to General Latour-Foissac, a highly distinguished officer, the command of Mantua, the taking of which had so powerfully contributed to the glory of the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Grotius continue in Holland was so great, that his friend's inflexibility gave him much uneasiness. He wanted him to make application to the Prince of Orange, and, after obtaining his consent, to write to those in power, asking permission to stay in the Country: but this was precisely the step to which ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... same house, or in the same boat, or in the same tent, and I never found a fault in him.... Each day's life with him added to my admiration for him. His gentleness never forsakes him: his hopefulness never deserts him. His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the enduring resolution of the Anglo-Saxon. The man has ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... Anthony considered swiftly what to do. He studied the grave brown eyes an instant in silence, their beauty and the inflexibility in their depths appealing to him with equal force. He loved the tough little will. He recognised it as his own—the same powerful quality which had brought him thus far on the road to fortune after being landed at the furthermost end from the goal. He would not for worlds deal ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... same white mans in picture makes oath." There was a new quality of inflexibility under the soft music of her voice. "You lift up hand and says, 'Help me by God I makes you for-sure my wife!'" She had pondered long upon this oath, and she spoke it now with an easy certainty that it was absolutely binding, and that no man would dare ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... that the queen, Louisa, who left no means untried in order to save as much as possible of Prussia, came somewhat too late, when Napoleon had already entered into an agreement with Russia. Hence Napoleon's inflexibility, which was the more insulting owing to the apparently yielding silence with which, from a feeling of politeness, he sometimes received the personal petitions of the queen, to which he would afterward send a written refusal. The part played in this affair by Alexander was far from honorable, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... we learn, what is confirmed by many proofs elsewhere, that the attribute for which James desired to be distinguished and praised, was that of openness of purpose, and stern undeviating inflexibility of conduct. He scorned to disguise his designs, either upon the religion or the constitution of his country. He forgot that it was only the temporising concessions of his brother which secured his way to the throne, when his exclusion, or a civil war, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... on metal roughened the deliberate speech with a suggestion of grim inflexibility. Flavia lifted vaguely startled eyes to ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the Seigneur, the Cure, and the Abbe Rossignol, an ascetic, severe man, with a face of intolerance and inflexibility. Two constables in plain clothes followed; one stolid, one alert, one English and one French, both with grim satisfaction in their faces—the successful exercise of his trade is pleasant to every craftsman. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Napoleon's household, nor could they show a greater regard for economy than the tailor's bill, still extant, on which the future Emperor gained a reduction of four sous. But it was not on such trivial lines alone that they run parallel. An inflexibility of purpose, an absolute disregard of popular opinion, and an unswerving belief in their own capacity, were predominant in both. They could say "No." Neither sought sympathy, and both felt that they were masters of their own fate. "You can be whatever you resolve to be" may ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Maplestone looked at her and—this was a curious thing—at one glance realised his defeat. All my efforts at dignity and firmness had failed to convince him, but behind Charmion's frail, essentially feminine exterior, those keen eyes had at once detected that strain of inflexibility which I was ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... as she considers herself, is rigid in her ideas of what she thinks she wants, but when the builder has followed her plans she is far from satisfied with the result. She is used to material which puckers and stretches in her clothing; she cannot understand the inflexibility of wood and stone. The remedy is for high-school girls, probably even grammar-school pupils as well, to have along with their drawing some problems in house-planning and some lessons ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... Indians are applicable, of course, to some extent, to the Mamelucos, who now constitute a great proportion of the population. The inflexibility of character of the Indian, and his total inability to accommodate himself to new arrangements, will infallibly lead to his extinction, as immigrants, endowed with more supple organisations, increase, and civilisation advances ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... unknown,—a way so wide and terrible that we may not follow it even in thought. We live alone with majestic forces,—forests greater than an empire, unmapped waters, and strange, savage men. We are pygmies; yet, if we have spirit we can grow into some measure of the greatness and inflexibility around us. Monsieur, when you asked me—what you asked me now—you were thinking of France and its standards. Of little, tidy, hedged-in France. You were not—— Oh, monsieur, I am sorry you asked me that question. Of course I answer 'no,' but—but ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... nag, and might, if I chose, sit for an hour to write, but must, on no account, attempt to leave the canvas, for the guard would instantly shoot me down. The guard in question had a doppel-ganger,—counterpart of himself in inflexibility,—and both were appendages of their muskets. He was not probably a sentient being, certainly not a conversational one. He knew the length of a stride, and the manual of bayonet exercise, but was, during his natural life, a blind idolater of a deity, called "Orders." The said "Orders," ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... my guardian, "shall have her own way even in her inflexibility, though at the price, I know, of tears downstairs. And see here! Here is Boythorn, heart of chivalry, breathing such ferocious vows as never were breathed on paper before, that if you don't go and occupy his whole house, he having already turned out of it expressly ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... this sweet possession and command. How much like an overgrown boy he had become, since she had wakened to find herself in his power that morning in the hills! The harshness and inflexibility had left his atmosphere entirely. She was only afraid of him now because he had refused to be dismissed. But she drew down ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... acuteness and activity of his mental processes delighted her while he questioned her. After the slovenly methods of Madame, after the loose reasoning and the muddled thinking of all the women she met in the course of her work, there was a positive pleasure in following the exactness and inflexibility of his logic. His reasoning was orderly, neat, elastic, without loose ends or tangled skeins to unravel, and she felt again, while she listened to him, the confidence which had come to her as soon as she entered his office. He was efficiency incarnate, and from ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... they eyed one another. In his heart each hated the other, but in David the hate had come suddenly, the hysteric growth of a night's anguish. The mountain man's was tempered by a process of slow-firing to a steely inflexibility. He hated David that he had ever been his rival, that he had ever thought to lay claim to the woman who was his, that he had ever aspired to her, touched her, desired her. He hated him when he saw that, all unconsciously, he ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... effort, we are at a loss to discover an adequate cause. An oak, for instance, which loses its leaves in a St. Helena winter of 68 degrees, scarcely experiences the difference of temperature, which, reasoning by analogy, could cause that change. It would have continued to maintain inflexibility, in its original climate, its old habits, though exposed to far greater irregularity and severity of climate. But though the law is obeyed by many plants, it does not determine the periodical changes of the whole, nor do they all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... and his address was as abrupt as his appearance was unpolished. His forehead was large and bald, eye small and brilliant, and his cheeks had dropped down so as to increase the width of his lower jaw. Deep, yet not harsh, lines were imprinted on the whole of his countenance, which indicated inflexibility and self-possession. ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... La Fayette's countenance in presence of Marie Antoinette. There was perceptible in the general's attitude, it was to be seen in his words, distinguishable in his accent, beneath the cold and polished forms of the courtier, the inflexibility of the citizen. The queen preferred the factions. She thus plainly spoke to her confidents. "M. de La Fayette," she said, "will not be the mayor of Paris in order that he may the sooner become the maire du Palais. Petion is a Jacobin, a republican; but he is a fool, incapable ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... poison!' It was for him now to be struck; but he was suffering too strong an anguish to be susceptible to mock tragedy. The Countess paused to study him. She began to fear her brother. 'I will!' she reiterated wildly, without moving him at all. And the quiet inflexibility of his face forbade the ultimate hope which lies in giving men a dose of hysterics when they are obstinate. She tried by taunts and angry vituperations to make him look fierce, if but an instant, to precipitate her into an exhibition she was so ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... discrimination, she drew the exact line between vivacity and satire, true religion and its semblance. She saw through and pitied those who, pluming themselves on the faults of others, and imparting to the outward man the ascetic inflexibility of the inner one, would fain propagate on all sides their rigid creed, forbidding the more favoured commoners of nature even to sip joy's chalice. If not a saint, however, but a fair, confiding, and romantic girl, she ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... looking, a tense frown between her eyes, and her eyes staring so that they protruded a little, as one who runs ahead of herself in her haste. Hannah had just time to note, in a flash, that the woman's smart hat was slightly askew and that, though she walked very fast, her trim ankles showed the inflexibility of age, when she saw that the woman was not going to get out of her way. Hannah Winter swerved quickly to avoid a collision. So did the other woman. Next instant Hannah Winter brought up with a crash against her own image in that long and tricky mirror which forms a broad full-length panel set in ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... her inflexibility recalled one who long ago had renounced his fealty to the throne; her resistance kindled the flame that had been smoldering ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... which a courtier ordinarily borrows from the same color—the desire to please. Athos knew his own personal value, and bowed to the prince like a man, correcting by something sympathetic and undefinable that which might have appeared offensive to the pride of the highest rank in the inflexibility of his attitude. The prince was about to speak to Raoul. Athos forestalled him. "If M. le Vicomte de Bragelonne," said he, "were not one of the humble servants of your royal highness, I would beg him to pronounce my ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... but Madame Jules' husband had good reason to be more amazed than any other human being. Here his character displayed itself; he was more amazed than overcome. Made a judge, and the judge of an adored woman, he found in his soul the equity of a judge as well as the inflexibility. A lover still, he thought less of his own shattered life than of his wife's life; he listened, not to his own anguish, but to some far-off voice that cried to him, "Clemence cannot lie! ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... and of receiving the royal stipend, has a love for the sciences; he must at the same time be deeply skilled in them; and is obliged to dispute the seat with competitors who are so much the more formidable as they are fired by a principle of glory, by interest, by the difficulty itself; and by that inflexibility of mind which is generally found in those who devote themselves to that pertinacious ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... unison, it is curious to consider that the spirit of the man was in moral accordance or interchange with nothing around him. This indeed he had confided to his lost nephew, before the occasion for his present inflexibility arose. ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... and steals his Mississippi bonds (engraving), i. 21; efforts to save his life, inflexibility of the Regent, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... that she regards it as even a greater desideratum than the efficient discharge of duties. The mistress must not lose her temper. She must be calm, imperturbable, and dignified, always. If she gives an order, she must insist, at whatever personal cost, that it shall be obeyed. Pertinacity and inflexibility on this point ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... 'they will do for an Irishman;' and the prisoner was strung up by them accordingly. It is a savage legend which deserves to be remembered in justice to the audacity of the nameless peasant. Probably invented to glorify a renowned Englishman's inflexibility, it illustrates at all events the temper in which the war was waged. Ferocity to Irishmen was accounted policy and steadfastness. Every advantage was taken of the superiority of English steel and ordnance. Writing in 1603 for the information of King James, Ralegh says that, when he was a Captain ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... acquiescence. His guest could not help thinking to himself that however pacific might be Mr. Ringgan's temper, no man in those days that tried men could have brought to the issue more stern inflexibility and gallant fortitude of bearing. His frame bore evidence of great personal strength, and his eye, with all its mildness, had an unflinching dignity that could never have quailed before duty or danger. And now, while he was recalling with great animation and pleasure the ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... with an unexampled severity of tone, that he was on no account to think of going to the office as usual, but was to wait at home until his father's return—and then hurried from the room. The fact was, that Mrs. Thorpe distrusted her own inflexibility, if she stayed too long in the presence of her penitent son; but Zack could not, unhappily, know this. He could only see that she left him abruptly, after delivering an ominous message; and could only place the gloomiest interpretation ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... morphological stability, so if there was such an arboreal branching out of species from a common root, it took place rapidly in conditions as different from ours as those of uterine from extra-uterine life; and that the stage of inflexibility may have been reached before any time ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... an illustration of which was also noted in "The Redemption." The first one, consisting of four notes, presenting a sequence of three major seconds, is intended to express "the terror inspired by the sense of the inflexibility of justice and, in consequence, by that of the anguish of punishment. Its sternness gives expression both to the sentences of divine justice and the sufferings of the condemned, and is found in combination throughout the whole work, with melodic forms which express sentiments altogether ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... and went to make preparations for their journey. Edmund made his report of Sir Robert's inflexibility to his father, in presence of Sir Philip; who, again, ventured to urge the Baron on ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... companion of Antipater[662] of Tyrus, a Stoic, he attached himself mainly to Ethical and Political studies, occupying himself with every virtue as if he were possessed by some divine influence; but above all that part of the beautiful which consists in steady adherence to justice and in inflexibility towards partiality or favour was his great delight. He disciplined himself also in the kind of speaking which works upon numbers, considering that, as in a great state, so in political philosophy, there should be nurtured with ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... death—the death of the individual as well as of the universe. "He who has learned to get comfort in the deepest affliction from the absolute impartiality of the causal law, is on so good terms with death, whose inflexibility he comprehends, that without reluctance he gives to it the universe into the ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... marriage, found it easier to submit than contend; and so Dinah had ruled supreme. This was the easier, in that she was perfect mistress of that diplomatic art which unites the utmost subservience of manner with the utmost inflexibility as to measure. ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... age; her painters founded new schools of art, and vied with the Italian masters; her theologians gave rise to controversies which brought all churches and their champions within the scene of conflict; and her pulpit orators acquired a celebrity which, in spite of the inflexibility of the language, was second only to that enjoyed by the most renowned preachers of ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... effort at resistance. For the first time since they had lived side by side, Cosette's will and the will of Jean Valjean had proved to be distinct, and had been in opposition, at least, if they had not clashed. There had been objections on one side and inflexibility on the other. The abrupt advice: "Leave your house," hurled at Jean Valjean by a stranger, had alarmed him to the extent of rendering him peremptory. He thought that he had been traced and followed. Cosette had been obliged ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... give you up," answered Wendot very quietly, but with an inflexibility of tone which made his voice seem like that of another person. "Your father placed you in my hands; to him I must answer for your safety. What is life to a man without honour? Would you have me stain my name for the sake of saving my life? ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... answers. The rest were sorry and silent, for the war seemed to have lost them the largess that had always been usual even in peace. Everybody agrees that they could have been won over had the parsimonious old emperor made the least display of generosity. He was ruined by his strict old-fashioned inflexibility, which seems too rigorous for these ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... sea is a piece of household work which in all times but raging gales is regularly attended to every evening; it has been known to be done in the case of ships actually foundering at the time. Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of sea-usages and the instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom would not willingly drown without first washing their faces. But in all vessels this broom business is the prescriptive province of the boys, if boys there be aboard. Besides, it was the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... arrest, he was powerless to avert. Knowing nothing of the true contents of the letter which Philip had substituted for the one received from Beverly, he could not imagine an excuse for the marshal's inflexibility. He was quite ill, too, and what with fever and agitation, his brain was in a whirl. He leaned against the chair, faint and dispirited. The painful cough, the harbinger of that fatal malady which had already brought a sister to an early grave, ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... also very characteristic that she made the statement with a perfectly quiet gravity which almost concealed the evidently tough inflexibility beneath. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... in full dress who could not even be civil enough to take off his hat. So there stood our friend, impatient to display his uniform, and unwilling to lessen the effect of his first appearance by doffing so important a part of his costume: to get through the door, in the rigid inflexibility of head and neck which he had hitherto maintained, was a manifest impossibility: Branling had suggested his staying outside, and he would undertake to bring people to look at him: but Dawson, for some unaccountable reason, was usually suspicious of advice from that quarter; so he "stooped ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... readily perceive, that if I have not scrupled to profit from his discoveries, at least I have freely and largely dissented from him, where he appeared to me to wander from the path of truth. For my own part, I am persuaded that it can only be by striking off something of inflexibility from his system, and something of pedantry from the common one, that we can expect to furnish a medium, equally congenial to the elegance of civilization, and ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... believed in special answers to prayer. They were not stumbled by the objection about the inflexibility of the laws of Nature; because they had the idea, that, when the Creator of the world promised to answer human prayers, He probably understood the laws of Nature as well as they did. At any rate, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... enthusiastick resolution with which, after a hundred successive defeats, they still renewed their attacks; the spirit with which they continued to repeat their arguments in the senate, though they found a majority determined to condemn them; and the inflexibility with which they rejected all offers of places and preferments, at last excited my curiosity so far, that I applied myself to inquire, with great diligence, into the real motives of their conduct, and to discover what principle it was that had ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... twelve long years I have borne it in my memory, and could now reproduce it as freshly as if it were still before my eyes. Of all modes of death, methinks it is the ugliest. Her wet garments swathed limbs of terrible inflexibility. She was the marble image of a death-agony. Her arms had grown rigid in the act of struggling, and were bent before her with clenched hands; her knees, too, were bent, and—thank God for it!—in the attitude of prayer. Ah, that rigidity! ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her father had seldom looked so stern, and there was an inflexibility about his aspect that was decidedly formidable. No one knew better than his favourite daughter that when once the limit of his forbearance was reached, there was no hope of any further yielding, and that he could be hard as flint or adamant; ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... refers their principal varieties in great measure to their sexual habits, variations being much less frequent among animals that pair and breed slowly, than among those which do not mate and breed more freely. After running rapidly over several animals, and discussing the flexibility or inflexibility of their organizations, he declares the elephant to be the only one on which a state of domestication has produced no effect, inasmuch as "it refuses to breed under confinement, and cannot therefore transmit the badges of its servitude ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... been changed to Port de la Montagne, Port North-West, and I believe borne one or two other names, was now called Port Napoleon; Port Bourbon and Isle Bourbon underwent similar changes: such was the inflexibility of French republicanism.] ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... the last chapter, a long time after the Scud had disappeared. The rigidity of his limbs seemed permanent; and none but a man accustomed to put his muscles to the severest proof could have maintained that posture, with its marble-like inflexibility, for so great a length of time. At length he moved away from the spot; the motion of the body being preceded by a sigh that seemed to heave up from the very depths of ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... Wolsey.—The inflexibility of your mind had like to have ruined you in some of your measures; and the bigotry which you had derived from your long abode in a cloister, and retained when a Minister, was very near depriving the Crown of Castile of the new-conquered kingdom ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... feelings, he took measures to have De Soto assassinated. Such is the uncontradicted testimony of contemporary historians. But every day revealed to him more clearly the strength of Isabella's attachment for De Soto, and the inflexibility of her will. He became seriously alarmed, not only from the apprehension that if her wishes were thwarted, no earthly power could prevent her from burying herself in a convent, but he even feared that if ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... institutions, and how far it might be necessary to call new influences into political existence for their remedy. Richly informed, still studious, fond of labour and indefatigable, of a gentle disposition though of an ardent mind, calm yet energetic, very open to conviction, but possessing an inflexibility amounting even to obstinacy when his course was once taken, a ready and improving speaker, an apt and attractive writer, affable and sincere, and with the undesigning faculty of making friends, Lord Henry seemed to possess all the qualities of a popular ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... eyes. "The tale of a gentle life influences for good a somewhat embittered, but grandly noble man. As to our little Madge," with a smile that drew her at once close to him, "the best influence she can gain from the old legend will grow out of the unwavering purpose of the saint, and her inflexibility of action when once the motive was felt to be a noble one. Her needs are not the same ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... almost a natural moat round Chester, the great Roman camp whose form and intersecting streets still bear the stamp of Roman regularity, and whose history long bore traces of the influence of Roman inflexibility mingled with British dash. The view of the city is fine from the Aldford road (or Old Ford, where a Roman pavement is sometimes visible in the bed of the stream), with the cathedral and St. John's towering over the peaks and gables that shoot up above the walls. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... her reason for the delay. Few people argued with Mrs. Ogilvie; there was an inflexibility about her which made protest impossible. He knew that the case was a hopeless one, but life might certainly be prolonged if she would submit to ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... Russia, for instance, like the lakes and rivers of their native country, seem to be subject to sudden and prolonged fits of torpor. In their movement, undulating and caressing like that of water, there is always a threat of unforeseen frost. The high latitude, the difficulty of life, the inflexibility of their autocratic regime, the heavy and mournful sky, the inexorable climate, all these harsh fatalities have left their mark upon the Muscovite race. A certain somber obstinacy, a kind of primitive ferocity, a foundation of savage ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his bloody suggestion with dogged inflexibility, maintaining only one axiom above all the rest—that whatever minor parts might be enacted—Casca, Cassius, or what not—he was to be the dramatic Brutus, excepting that assassin's negativeness. In other words, the idea was to be his own, as ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... she had sustained: that in reconciling herself to a penitent lover, who subscribed to her own terms of submission, her honour would be acquitted by the most scrupulous and severe judges of decorum; and that her inflexibility would be justly ascribed to the pride and insensibility of her heart. She turned a deaf ear to all their arguments, exhortations, and entreaties, and threatened to leave the house immediately, if they would not promise to ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... cried he, "you are now my sole dependence. From what I told you yesterday of my father's inflexibility, we can have no hope of his relenting: indeed, after what has passed, I could not flatter myself that Thaddeus Sobieski would now submit to any obligation at his hands. Already he has refused, with all the indignation ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... ingratitude, and taking a ruthless revenge. But the performance of the great actor on this night opened another and a finer view to me. Till now, I had seen the hero, a Roman, merely a gallant chieftain of the most unromantic of all commonwealths, the land of inflexibility, remorseless daring, and fierce devotement to public duty. But, by throwing the softer feelings of the character into light, Kemble made him less a Roman than a Greek—a loftier and purer Alcibiades, or a republican Alexander, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... about taking this important vote, in which, I suspect, we should have been unanimous, the commodore and Capt. Hutchinson came on board to inquire into the cause of the dispute; and this lucky, and well timed visit, saved our credit; and established the Yankee character for inflexibility, beyond all doubt or controversy. These two worthy gentlemen soon discovered that Mr. O. had made representations not altogether correct. They therefore ordered the hatches to be taken off, and proper bread to be served out, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... But the grief of Cecilia, however violent, induced her not to join in this regret; she mourned only the obstacle which had occasioned the separation, and not the incident which had merely interrupted the ceremony: convinced, by the conversations in which she had just been engaged, of Mrs Delvile's inflexibility, she rather rejoiced than repined that she had put it to no nearer trial: sorrow was all she felt; for her mind was too liberal to harbour resentment against a conduct which she saw was dictated by a sense of right; and too ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... ever been to her a source of regret, and she had on several occasions, although in the most delicate and unobtrusive manner, hinted at the fact; but the man who doated upon her, and to whom, in all other respects, her desire was law, evinced so much inflexibility in all that appertained to military etiquette, that she had never ventured to carry her allusions beyond the light commentary induced by casual reference ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... surrender. Leyden was sublime in its despair. A few murmurs were, however, occasionally heard at the steadfastness of the magistrates, and a dead body was placed at the door of the burgomaster, as a silent witness against his inflexibility. A party of the more faint-hearted even assailed the heroic Adrian Van der Werf with threats and reproaches as he passed through the streets. A crowd had gathered around him, as he reached a triangular place in the centre of the town, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... from within, and hence there is apt to be a dryness of surface, a lack of that sheen, that spontaneous warm emanation, which, in good original work, comes from free inward impulsion. To counteract, in so far as may be, this proneness to a mechanical inflexibility, the translator should keep himself free to wield boldly and with full swing his own native speech. By his line-for-line allegiance, Mr. Longfellow forfeits much of this freedom. He is too intent on the words; he sacrifices the spirit to the letter; he ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... had enemies to contend with, from whom they obtained little, the manners and laws, the mode of education, and the government of their country, remained pure as at first. Their business, indeed, became more easy; for the terror of their name, their inflexibility, and the superior means they had of bringing their powers into action, all served to facilitate their conquests. But when they conquered Carthage, and begun sic to taste the fruits of wealth, their ground-work altered by degrees, ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... his venerable age and by the memory of his great services to the state. But Appius Claudius Crassus enjoyed no such immunity. He was descended from a long line of ancestors distinguished by their haughty demeanor, and by the inflexibility with which they had withstood all the demands of the Plebeian order. While the political conduct and the deportment of the Claudian nobles drew upon them the fiercest public hatred, they were accused of wanting, if any credit is due to the early history ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... her at once, both of which required for their perfect accomplishment a few years of time and a large share of vital force: one was the education of the brain, the other of the reproductive system. The schoolmaster superintended the first, and Nature the second. The school, with puritanic inflexibility, demanded every day of the month; Nature, kinder than the school, demanded less than a fourth of the time,—a seventh or an eighth of it would have probably answered. The schoolmaster might have yielded ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke |
