"Inflexible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his confidence in his wisdom and patriotism; and the latter left office with the happy consciousness that he carried with him into retirement the friendship of one, of whom he said in after years, "His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the word, a wise, and good, and ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... yet more infallible characteristics of true greatness than the most unequivocal displays of enterprise and active daring. Scarcely a day passed in which Sir Alexander Ball's patience, forbearance, and inflexible constancy were not put to the severest trial. He had not only to remove the misunderstandings that arose between the Maltese and their allies, to settle the differences among the Maltese themselves, and to organise their efforts; ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... had to submit themselves to more frequent absences than ever on his part. He made business a pretext for shutting himself up in his study, but it was really in order to spend the time with the Princess, who remained inflexible. ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... undergone important changes within the last few score years. The classical composers, almost down to our own time, were restricted in the use of them because they were merely natural tubes, and their notes were limited to the notes which inflexible tubes can produce. Within this century, however, they have all been transformed from imperfect diatonic instruments to perfect chromatic instruments; that is to say, every brass instrument which is in use now can give out all the semitones ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Prudent was not sudden or rash, but his whole life had proved, and was to prove, him inflexible in his purposes, and patient in his attempts to carry them into effect, even when the purposes had become chimerical, and the execution impossible. Before the fall of Antwerp he had matured his scheme for the invasion of England, in most of its details—a necessary part of which was of course ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... prematurely broken down—he was only in his fifty-second year—either by excess or hard service in the East, perhaps both, had married late in life the widow of a brother officer, and the mother of a grown-up son. The lady, a woman of inflexible will, considerable remains of a somewhat masculine beauty, and about ten years her husband's junior, held him in a state of thorough pupilage; and, unchecked by him, devoted all her energies to bring about, by fair or foul means, a union between Clara and her own son, a cub ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... and in nearly the same terms, Bonaparte wrote to the Emperor Francis. He had treated formerly with this sovereign, and would not perhaps have found him inflexible; but Pitt did not believe the Revolution finished, and had no confidence in a man who had just seized with a victorious hand the direction of the destinies of France. A frigidly polite letter, addressed by Lord Granville to Talleyrand, ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... the continuation of a large pension, and the security of a vast sum of money she has amassed; and has, at last, provoked the king to confine her person to a castle, where she endures all the terrors of a strait imprisonment, and remains still inflexible, either to threats or promises. Her violent passions have brought her indeed into fits, which 'tis supposed, will soon put an end to her life. I cannot forbear having some compassion for a woman that suffers for a point of honour, however ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... the dull resonance of the locker to his voice, supplementing the stifling quality of the air, set going a new train of ideas. He lifted up his hands and feet, and met an inflexible resistance. He was in a coffin, he thought! He had been buried alive! He gave way at once to wild panic. "'Elp!" he screamed. "'Elp!" and drummed with his feet, and kicked and struggled. "Let me out! Let ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... circle yourself with the "free" hand, and with a single line. You cannot do it if your hand trembles, nor if it is in the common sense of the word "free." So far from being free, it must be as if it were fastened to an inflexible bar of steel. And yet it must move, under this necessary control, with perfect, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... the artistic point of view, was "out of place and altogether incongruous in a group of sonnets so entirely spiritual as The House of Life," and Rossetti gave way: but upon the subject of Wordsworth in his relations to Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley, he was quite inflexible to ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... for immediately upon the separation, she took her maiden name again, bought a cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off, established herself there as a single woman with one servant, and was understood to live secluded, ever afterwards, in an inflexible retirement. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... way with his followers into the city, aided by treachery from within. Gregory hastily shut himself up in the castle of St. Angelo, in which he was besieged by the Romans themselves, and from which he bade defiance to Henry with the same inflexible will as ever. Henry offered to be reconciled with him if he would crown him, but the vigorous old pontiff replied that, "He could only communicate with him when he had given satisfaction to God and the church." The emperor, thereupon, called the rival pope, Clement, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... walking in the moonlight to-night ... shall we?" whispered Gaga. Sally nodded, making her voice quaver by the motion. Gaga could not see her face; but Sally knew that even if he had done so he would have been quite unable to read her thoughts, which were dry and inflexible. He remained by her side until she had finished the song, and then fiercely pressed her head back until he was able by stooping to kiss her lips from above. His hand was under her chin. He kissed her many times, oppressively—little ravenous pecks that were febrile rather than loving; and assertive ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... we have chiefly discussed the effect produced upon the individual by a compulsory course of study. It has been seen that he suffers in a number of ways, through being subjected, from his earliest childhood, to a more or less inflexible method of training. All of these, however, have been directly attributable to his education. We may now consider, before pursuing the subject any further, certain disabilities that may be traced to the same cause, but which are brought ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... Apologia, "a man of large designs; he had a hopeful, sanguine mind; he had no fear of others; he was haunted by no intellectual perplexities.... If confidence in his position is (as it is) a first essential in the leader of a party, Dr. Pusey had it." An inflexible patience, a serene composure, a meek, resolute self-possession, was the habit of his mind, and never deserted him in the most trying days. He never for an instant, as the paragraph witnesses, wavered or doubted about the position of the ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... answered the captain in an inflexible tone. "If I yielded to such a weakness all discipline would be at an end. If treachery is to be pardoned, who knows which one among you might be the next to imitate the example of this man. No! justice is stern, and punishment must be inflicted. The guilty must be punished though the ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... few exceptions, the units of the Grand Fleet seem anonymous. The Warspite was quite unknown to the fame which her sister ship the Queen Elizabeth had won. For "Lizzie" was back in the fold from the Dardanelles; and so was the Inflexible, heroine of the battle of the Falkland Islands. Of all the ships which Sir John Jellicoe had sent away on special missions, the Inflexible had had the grandest Odyssey. She, too, had been ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... pretend ignorance and innocence were pitiful. This impromptu court was trying him there in the open beside the cabin, and he knew that its verdict would be a speedy one. He started to run the gamut of appeal, denial, and anger; but his hearers were inflexible. ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... prescription of the law and sometimes against it"; and that this power belongs to the executive, it being "impossible to foresee and so by laws to provide for all accidents and necessities that may concern the public, or make such laws as will do no harm if they are executed with inflexible rigor." Nor, continues Locke, is this "undoubted prerogative" ever questioned, "for the people are very seldom or never scrupulous or nice in the point" whilst the prerogative "is in any tolerable ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... generosity of Gwendolen's attitude Mr. Cartaret was not aware. He believed that the custom of prayers was maintained in his household by his inflexible authority and will. He gloried in them as an expression of his power. They were a form of coercion which it seemed he could apply quite successfully to his womenkind, those creatures of his flesh and blood, yet ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... said, one of their greatest problems was the passing of time. The nights were interminably long, but they had to be passed in work or play or dream—anything except sleep. That was Ladd's most inflexible command. He gave no reason. But not improbably the ranger thought that the terrific heat of the day spend in slumber lessened a wear and strain, if not a real ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... with you, Commodore," replied Philip; "but still we must obey orders. The Admiral is an inflexible man." ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... third or fourth year, they altogether cease; and pass merely into the formal character. In which state they continued fixed, liable to no uncertainty; and were transacted, to the end of Friedrich's life, with inflexible regularity as the annual reviews were. This is a curious section of his life; which there will be other opportunities of noticing. But there is yet no thought of it anywhere, nor for years to come; though ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... can be so happy as to cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... and prayed that he would order his sergeants to lend the secular arm to enforce their authority. "Yes," answered the king, "if you will give me the particulars of each case that I may judge if your sentence be just." That, they objected, appertained to the ecclesiastical courts, but St. Louis was inflexible, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... years later it was reported he had said, 'Knaves rule about the King. I trust to give them a buffet one day,' Cromwell was glad to seize the opportunity of simultaneously striking at feudalism in the West, and of dealing a blow at the inflexible Cardinal Pole, the Courtenays' kinsman. The Marquis was at once arrested on the charge of being an accomplice of the Cardinal, and was beheaded on ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... inflexible, and the next day set out for Lone, carrying John Scott's fortune locked up in the iron box, besides other treasures in money and jewels, ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... was very unusual, and Nick chafed under it. It indicated that he was up against men as good as himself, and his vain work of the past ten days served only to aggravate him, and embitter his grim and inflexible determination to unearth ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... which passed over the young man's face at these significant words was of a nature to surprise Mr. Gryce. Rising slowly, he took his stand by Mr. Poindexter, who, true to his inflexible nature, had scarcely moved in limb and feature ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... then offered nine cents; but finally, when Leopold was found to be inflexible, he yielded the point, and agreed to pay the ten cents. The mackerel were unloaded and conveyed to the market, when the sale of them at retail commenced immediately. The fish were so large and handsome that twenty cents did not appear to be ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... exponent of British law and order in that arduous time. We do not forget what is due on the mainland to Matthew Baillie Begbie, Chief Justice, who dealt rigidly with offenders committed for trial before him. His inflexible administration of the law struck terror into the hearts of evildoers. Still less must we forget the man at the helm and master of the ship, His Excellency Governor Douglas, who, by his sagacity, penetration, and godly fear, coupled with his long experience ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... pitiless clutches, can speak of such an act without a shrug of uneasiness or a wicked expression of anger. Again, it must be universal in its application. It must meet all classes and conditions of society; must be adapted to all shades of religious and political belief; must be inflexible as Justice on his throne, yet tender and sympathetic as a mother to her child. It must take into consideration different branches of industry, and the fields of one section must not be depleted of husbandmen that those of another may ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... believe what we are taught; and those are most fanatical who know least of the evidences on which their creed is based. Facts and testimony are not, except in very rare instances, the ground-work of faith. It is an imperative law of God's Economy, unyielding and inflexible as Himself, that man shall accept without question the belief of those among whom he is born and reared; the faith so made a part of his nature resists all evidence to the contrary; and he will disbelieve even the evidence of his own senses, rather ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... it, Miss Harriet." Drayton's voice was inflexible. "It would upset all arrangements to have a woman present. It cannot be ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... he sought no further occasion to place himself as leader, as the bearer of any banner. In the only occurrence in which he took part in the conflict of parties, he gave proof of opinions, absolute, tenacious, and inflexible, as those which rarely come to the light ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... She gave, indeed, a quiet hearing to all he said, and even to those parts which most displeased her ears; I mean those in which he exaggerated the great goodness and disinterested generosity of his friend; but her resolution remained inflexible, and resisted the force of all his arguments with a steadiness of opposition, which it would have been almost excusable in him to ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... the Trojans had no power to save, Themselves all driven before the host of Greece. 145 Next, on Pisandrus, and of dauntless heart Hippolochus he rush'd; they were the sons Of brave Antimachus, who with rich gifts By Paris bought, inflexible withheld From Menelaus still his lovely bride. 150 His sons, the monarch, in one chariot borne Encounter'd; they (for they had lost the reins) With trepidation and united force Essay'd to check the steeds; astonishment Seized both; Atrides ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... his plays, illustrates the clash between capital and labor. In The Eldest Son (1912), the conflict is between two social orders. Justice (1910), which secured reforms in the English prison system, shows how a young man is affected by an inflexible but legal punishment; and how such a method fails to assist him humanely to a better manhood, but drives him to ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... and hope to Bois de Duc, Avignon, and Italy. [Where the Chevalier Saint George, or, as he was termed, the Old Pretender, held his exiled court, as his situation compelled him to shift his place of residence.] The accession of the near relation of one of those steady and inflexible opponents was considered as a means of bringing over more converts, and therefore Richard Waverley met with a share of ministerial favour more than proportioned to his talents or his political importance. It was however, discovered that he had respectable talents for public business, and the first ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... thirty-two years old, of middle height, with crisp brown hair, a broad high forehead; gray, steady eyes, unusually long; small ears tight to the head; the mouth and chin slightly concealed by the moustache and beard, but hard, inflexible, and fierce. His dress, as he appears in his portrait, is a loose, dark, seaman's shirt, belted at the waist. About his neck is a plaited cord with a ring attached to it, in which, as if the attitude was familiar, one of his fingers is slung, displaying ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... vanquishing him has made him a martyr and conqueror. I swear you by the memory of this martyr to hate slavery with an unabatable hatred, and to pursue it. We will admire the firmness of this man in justice, his inflexible conscience for the right, his gentleness and moderation of spirit, which not all the hate of party could turn to bitterness. And I swear you to follow his justice, his moderation, his mercy. How can I speak to that twilight million to whom his name was as the name of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... if it had floated back from some remote past which I but dimly remembered. I had never felt, even when standing at Bonny's side, that I was within speaking distance of her, and to-day, while I looked after the vanishing horses, I knew that odd, baffling sensation of struggling to break through an inflexible, yet invisible barrier. Why was it that I who had won Sally should still remain so hopelessly divided from all that to which Sally by ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... began to feel warmly drawn to the entire family who had taken the good old Vicar of Wakefield for an example, and adopted one of his sayings as a rule of life: "Let us be inflexible and fortune will at last ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... seems that we have turned aside the inflexible decree. It seems that we have averted the fate that was about to be accomplished. It was bearing down upon us with the weight of the ages, with all the weight of all the vague but irresistible aspirations of the past and, perhaps, ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... appearance of quill and plumage of any of our birds, and, with all its speed and marvelous evolutions, the effect of its flight is stiff and wiry. There appears to be but one joint in the wing, and that next the body. This peculiar inflexible motion of the wings, as if they were little sickles of sheet iron, seems to be owing to the length and development of the primary quills and the smallness of the secondary. The wing appears to hinge only ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... to you,' said the inflexible Knight. 'Which will you have of these two things of about equal value—the well-chosen little library of the best music you spoke of—bound in morocco, walnut case, lock and key—or a pair of the very prettiest earrings in Bond ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the agility of the hands and immovability of the body. He stood erect and firm, with a wrist at once strong and supple, and with a sword which seemed a flexible reed from the point to the middle of the blade, and an inflexible steel from thence to ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... into an inflexible contract with himself not to utter another syllable before the break of day at least he might have eased Phelan's mind on that score and informed him that something ominously like a patrol wagon was rounding the corner ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... Indians—in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deer-skin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed spear—stood apart, with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wild as were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature of the scene. This distinction could more justly be claimed by some mariners,—a part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... been impelled to draw, and the expression of his thought had driven everything else out of his mind. Paolo had gained a fancied victory by means of a fancied bribe. Marzio determined to revenge himself for the unfair advantage his brother had then taken, by showing himself inflexible in his resolution concerning the marriage. It was but a small satisfaction to have braved Gianbattista's boyish threats, after having seemed to accept the ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... granted in different ways, but with a seriousness essentially the same. The mind of Chief Inspector Heat was inaccessible to ideas of revolt. But his thieves were not rebels. His bodily vigour, his cool inflexible manner, his courage and his fairness, had secured for him much respect and some adulation in the sphere of his early successes. He had felt himself revered and admired. And Chief Inspector Heat, arrested within six paces of the anarchist nick-named the Professor, ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... clangor of arms again burst upon the ear of Europe. France was the arena of woe upon which the Catholics and the Protestants of England and of the Continent hurled themselves against each other. Catharine, breathing vengeance, headed the Catholic armies. Jeanne, calm yet inflexible, was recognized as at the head of the Protestant leaders, and was alike the idol of the common soldiers and of their generals. The two contending armies, after various marchings and countermarchings, met at Rochelle. The whole country around, for many leagues, was illuminated ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... objected, but the Harrisonites ultimately carried their point. Of the two principal opponents, Ludlow was fairly talked off his feet by the voluble patois of Loewenberg, and Benson completely put down by the laconic and inflexible Sumner. So far so bad, but worse was to follow; for after the horses had been ordered, and most of the ladies, including the Robinsons, bonneted and shawled for the start, the lionne, who had, doubtless, heard of the unsuccessful attempt to blackball her, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... without the heroes of Jutland and Coronel, of the Falkland Isles and Zeebrugge, of the Fleets behind the Fleet; without the services of Smith-Dorrien at Mons, French at Ypres; without the dogged endurance, the inflexible will and the self-sacrificing loyalty of Haig; the dash of Maude and Allenby; the steadfast leadership in defence and offence of Plumer and Byng, Home and Rawlinson ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... The queen had placed her son, the young dauphin, between his knees. Barnave's fingers had played with the fair hair of the child. The king, the queen, Madame Elizabeth, had distinguished, with tact, Barnave from the inflexible and brutal Petion. They had conversed with him as to their situation: they complained of having been deceived as to the nature of the public mind in France. They unveiled their repentance and constitutional ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... trivial word of hers had been crushed out of life by Weldon's serious dignity. She was never quite able to understand his mood upon such occasions. The man was no prig. At times, he was as merry as a boy. At other times, he showed an inflexible seriousness which left her with the vague feeling of being somehow or other in the wrong. The result was a mood of pique, rather than of antagonism. Up to that time, Ethel Dent had known only unreserved approval. Weldon's occasional gravity, to her mind, suggested certain ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... bears obliquely to the right with a serpentine movement, and there encounters a mountain rising some twenty-five hundred feet above sea-level, the base of which is a vertical palisade of solid rock more than a mile and a half long, the inflexible granite nowhere yielding to clefts or undulations until it reaches a height of two hundred feet above the water. Rushing violently in, the sea is driven back with equal violence by the inert force of the ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... inflexible. All his life he had treated his mother with deference, and he thought he had acquired the right to defend himself against her in the hour of his death. He would not let the servant go until she had promised him that she would be silent. ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... palms; and following her stern beckon, the thirsty pilgrim re-trod the sands of surrender, more intolerable than before, because the oasis was still in sight. Duty! Rugged incorruptible Spartan dame, whose inflexible mandate is ever: "With your ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... would not fear to encounter four mountain horsemen, and with equal numbers they are invariably victors. Lastly, they speak the Tartar language; they are connected with the mountaineers by friendship and alliance, their women being mutually carried off into captivity; but in the field they are inflexible enemies. As it is not forbidden to make incursions on the mountain side of the Terek, the brigands frequently betake themselves thither by swimming the river, for the chase of various kinds of game. The mountain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... the ordinary sense. While a slaveholder could threaten disunion with impunity, the mere suggestion that the existence of slavery was incompatible with freedom in the Union would hazard the political chances of any public man in the North. But Lincoln was inflexible. "It is true," said he, "and I will deliver it as written.... I would rather be defeated with these expressions in my speech held up and discussed before the people than be victorious without them." The statesman was right in his far-seeing judgment ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... my parents well; my father is inflexible on some points, but easily influenced; my mother is, I believe, the proudest woman in the wide world. I know that she expects something wonderful from me in the way of marriage; I hardly think that ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... while to have made a coup d'etat to end it in such a manner. M. de Morny argued and reasoned with his imperial brother, but neither the violence of Persigny nor the arguments of De Morny made any impression on the cold and inflexible will of Napoleon III., and a few days later the countess made her appearance at one of the court-balls in a dress looped and wreathed with the imperial emblem-flower, the violet. The emperor, advancing toward her, presented her with a superb bouquet of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... the spectre of iron impassible, implacable, inflexible, which men call Retaliation; and this spectre mingled with the guests. It entered the gilded salons; it signalled with a look, a gesture, a nod, and men followed where it led. It was, as says the author from whom we have borrowed these hitherto unknown but authentic details, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... husbands, the boys inured to arms from early days, the careful breeding of horses, the songs of poet and minstrel stirring all hearts, the mail-clad lines of warriors with lance and sword, the supreme power of the King—often dealing out justice with stern, sudden, and inflexible ferocity. Among these surroundings Antar appears, a dazzling and irresistible warrior and a poet of wonderful power. The Arab classics, in years long before Mohammed had taken the Kaaba and made it the talisman of his creed, were hung in the little shrine where the black volcanic stone was ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... scrupulous justice of Pliny. He acquits the Christians of all criminal practices; he bears testimony to the purity of their lives and their principles. What baffles and vexes him is their "pertinacity and inflexible obstinacy"—Neque enim dubitabam, qualecunque esset quod fateretur, pertinaciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem debere puniri. He could not understand, in other words, why, when the theory of the Roman religion was ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... air raids is an inflexible determination of the British people rather to die in death grips with German militarism than to live and let it survive. The best chance for the aircraft was at the beginning of the war, when a surprise development might have had astounding results. That chance has gone by. ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... winter of 1911-12 and the succeeding summer, the foreign traveller met innumerable results of Venezelos' activity in every part of the country, and all gave evidence of the same thing: a sane judgement and its inflexible execution. For instance, a resident in Greece had needed an escort of soldiers four years before, when he made an expedition into the wild country north-west of the Gulf of Patras, on account of ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... to the hardness of pumice-stone there are infinite fine degrees of difference. Man is just like that. Between the sponge-like organizations of the lymphatic and the vigorous iron muscles of such men as are destined for a long life, what a margin for errors for the single inflexible system of a lowering treatment to commit; a system that reduces the capacities of the human frame, which you always conclude have been over-excited. Let us look for the origin of the disease in the mental and not in the physical ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... involving the most interesting and affecting consequences. Shall we, by lukewarmness or neglect, give the enemies of our institutions the triumph of reproaching us with indifference.... With a want of that virtue ... that inflexible spirit of perseverance, without which the tree we have nourished, and hoped to bring to maturity, may erect its barren and useless branches before us, a gloomy monument of our indolence? With what reproaches, and difficulties, and dangers, have ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... old and the young, for the humble and the poor, for animals and plants, at the bottom of her nature she is heathen. In life's last moments, with death and revenge in mind, she can still pretend, invent, dupe. Such profound and exquisite womanhood, such inflexible masculine will, have hardly ever been seen combined ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... wild struggle begins between the two. Kirke strives with all her arts and blandishments to enchain him, to keep him. Odysseus resists; he has gained the victory over himself, he is no longer in the power of the syren; his will is inflexible. All in vain does she strive to charm him by the delights of her garden; the songs and dances of her maidens; her sweetest caresses. He turns from her with loathing, he curses her. At last Kirke's love turns to fierce ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... 'Equality' was a task too great for the physical strength and vitality of its author. His health, never robust, gave way completely, and the book was finished by an indomitable and inflexible dominion of the powerful mind over the failing body which was nothing short of heroic. Consumption, that common New England inheritance, developed suddenly, and in September of 1897 Mr. Bellamy went with his family to Denver, willing to ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... vacillation of purpose. Even when there could be no doubt that in view of changed conditions it was wise to change a policy, which he had openly adopted or approved, he clung to it with peculiar tenacity refusing or merely failing to modify it. Mr. Wilson's mind once made up seemed to become inflexible. It appeared to grow impervious to arguments and even to facts. It lacked the elasticity and receptivity which have always been characteristic of sound judgment and right thinking. He might break, but he would not bend. This rigidity ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... inflexible mind had Mrs. Fancy, to whom the Prophet now applied himself with gestures ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... character, aptitude, and willingness among his raw recruits. This man, whose name was Hardy, made a powerful impression on our hero from the first; there was something so quiet and even gentle about him, in spite of his firm and inflexible demands in regard to the matters of drill and duty. To please this man, Miles gave himself heart and soul to his work, and was soon so efficient as to be allowed ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... kept me away when I heard Bemis was coming. But he doesn't seem so inflexible in regard to me. ...
— The Elevator • William D. Howells
... hopes of a successful campaign. In front, the Indians, painted and decked out for war, skimmed the lake in their light canoes. Next came the barges containing Frazer's corps, marshalled in one regular line, with gunboats flanking it on each side; next, the Royal George and Inflexible frigates, with other armed vessels forming the fleet. Behind this strong escort, the main body, with the generals, followed in close order; and, last of all, came the camp followers, of whom there were far too many for the nature ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... of frost into his very marrow; he was speechless and mute with shame. If she had dragged him through all the tribunals of the world she would have hurt him and humiliated him far less. Better all the hooting gibes of the whole earth than this one voice, so cold, so inflexible, so full of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... inordinate gambling and dissipations, with those of the Count d'Artois, and others of her clique, had been a sensible item in the exhaustion of the treasury, which called into action the reforming hand of the nation; and her opposition to it, her inflexible perverseness, and dauntless spirit, led herself to the guillotine, drew the King on with her, and plunged the world into crimes and calamities which will forever stain the pages of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... Mr. B. Some day, perhaps, he may read this letter and realise how extremely awkward an inflexible standard of morality can make things for one's neighbours. The last sentence of all has a pathetic ring, as of a Utopian throwing up the sponge: "I think much better to add little serpent-like wisdom to upright manhood and thus found ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... as they show some signs of doing, will carry with them half the historic sense of the nation) as the hero of an anecdote of an unsuccessful attempt made upon his political virtue by a minister of the Crown, as a rare type of an inflexible patriot, and as the last member of the House of Commons who was content to take wages from, instead of contributing to the support of, his constituents. As the intimate friend and colleague of Milton, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... life; for I did not assume my place in society in my younger days; and in argument I was instantly silenced, although I often knew, and could have proved, that I was in the right. The only thing in which I was determined and inflexible was in the prosecution of my studies. They were perpetually interrupted, but always resumed at the first opportunity. No analysis is so difficult as that of one's own mind, but I do not think I err much in saying that perseverance ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... completed. The conquest of space went on, from moon ship to planet ship to star ship. But Earth became increasingly rigid in its institutions. A civilization more inflexible than anything produced by medieval Europe punished any opposition to existing customs, habits, beliefs. These breaches of the social contract were considered major crimes as serious as murder or arson. They were punished similarly. The antique institutions of secret ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... you see ... all my brothers, ... constrained bodily into submission ... apparent submission at least ... by that worst and most dishonouring of necessities, the necessity of living, everyone of them all, except myself, being dependent in money-matters on the inflexible will ... do you see? But what you do not see, what you cannot see, is the deep tender affection behind and below all those patriarchal ideas of governing grown up children 'in the way they must go!' and there never was (under ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... the mind of him to whom it is made is prevailed upon to grant what is asked of him; but the mind of God is unchangeable and inflexible: The Triumpher in Israel will not spare, and will not be moved to repentance; for He is not a man that He should repent.[113] Consequently it is unavailing ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... the gallows, and that he was to go immediately back to his home again. He told our embryo pirate that his family had nigh gone distracted because of his wicked and ungrateful conduct. Nor could our hero move him from his inflexible purpose. "What," says our Harry, "and will you not then let me wait until our prize is divided and I get ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... will, and he must succeed; whereas, if he allow an exercise to be prepared where this act of the mind is absent, he may rest assured that he is deceiving both himself and the child.—The laws of Nature are inflexible; and while she will undoubtedly countenance and reward these who act upon the principles which she has established, she will as certainly leave those who neglect them to eat the "fruit of their ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... conflict for which he feels unequal, but he has no right to consent to a sacrifice of the interests of his client while he is paid to protect them. The questions of professional ethics arising out of the relations between the engineer and the contractor are much too complex to be decided by an inflexible rule of professional conduct, but the engineer cannot make a mistake in refusing to remain in responsible charge of work when, by remaining, he must give consent to that which his judgment tells him involves a wrong to his client. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... can wear such ruthless heart As to delight in ill? Who in thy sorrow bears not part? Zeus, Zeus alone! for he, with wrathful will, Clenched and inflexible, Bears down Heaven's race—nor end shall be, till hate His soul shall satiate, Or till, by some device, some other hand Shall wrest from ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... up with the sunrise always, and at work with his eyes and his heart if not with his hands. A beautiful object too is such a one to contemplate, a pure virgin soul, a creature gentle, pious, and full of love, endowed with sweet gifts, humble and timid; but for truth's and justice's sake inflexible, thankful to God and man, fond, patient, and faithful. Clive was still his hero as ever, his patron, his splendid young prince and chieftain. Who was so brave, who was so handsome, generous, witty as Clive? ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... been appointed Secretary of Foreign Affairs, in which station he had conducted himself with his accustomed ability. A sound judgment improved by extensive reading and great knowledge of public affairs, unyielding firmness, and inflexible integrity, were qualities of which Mr. Jay had given frequent and signal proofs. Although for some years withdrawn from that profession to which he was bred, the acquisitions of his early life had not been lost, and the subjects on which his mind had been exercised were ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... prince of the hated Suabian line that Gregory twice anathematized. Beneath the cold forbidding eye of the last of the Hohenstaufen and his friend and avenger here rest, strangely enough, the ashes of that "great and inflexible asserter of the supremacy of the sacerdotal order: the monk Hildebrand, afterwards Pope Gregory the Seventh." Born the son of a poor carpenter in the Tuscan village of Soana, this extraordinary man rose to eminence as a monk ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... the expense of other natural objects, such as stones, plants, animals, which the primitive Semitic faith considered equally divine. The stars always retained this character, even at Rome. They were not, as to us, infinitely distant bodies moving in space according to the inflexible laws of mechanics, and whose chemical composition may be determined. To the Latins as to the Orientals, they were propitious or baleful deities, whose ever-changing relations determined the events ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... steady to his trust, Inflexible to ill, and obstinately just, May the rude rabble's insolence despise, Their senseless clamours, and tumultuous cries; The tyrant's fierceness he beguiles, And the stern brow, and the harsh voice defies, And with ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... chief, as well by his majestic port as by the intrepid activity of his behavior, called out to him, and desired a short conference. He here represented to Wallace the fruitless and ruinous enterprise in which he was engaged; and endeavored to bend his inflexible spirit to submission under superior power and superior fortune: he insisted on the unequal contest between a weak state, deprived of its head and agitated by intestine discord, and a mighty nation, conducted by the ablest ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... the house. Then we had a most painful scene. Martha reminded him with bitter tears that her mother had committed him to her with her last breath and set before him all the advantages he would have in her house over ours. Father sat pale and inflexible; tear after tear rolling down his cheeks. Ernest looked distressed and ready to sink. As for me I cried with Martha, and with her father by turns, and clung to Ernest with a feeling that all the foundations of the earth were giving way. It came time for evening prayers, and Ernest prayed as he ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... habits, and he resented the plastic yet characterless mobility which made Yerba's Parisian dress and European manner fit her so charmingly and yet express so little. For a brief critical moment he remembered the placid, unchanging simplicity of German, and the inflexible and ingrained reserve of English, girlhood, in opposition to this indistinctive cosmopolitan grace. But only for a moment. As soon as she spoke, a certain flavor of individuality seemed to return ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... untimely end. It was unable to maintain itself against the powerful apostolic influences in the bosom of the Church, and the violent pressure exerted by the unbelieving Jews, who exhibited toward it an inflexible hatred. Moreover, the rapid advance of the new doctrines through Asia Minor and Greece offered a tempting field for enthusiasm. The first preachers in the Roman empire were Jews; for the first years circumcision and conformity to the law of Moses were insisted on; but the first ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... was practical, patriotic, and faithful to obligation; he loved to be governed by inflexible law; and it was a fundamental principle with him that the individual should be subordinate to the state. His kings were either organizers, like Numa and Ancus Marcius, or warriors, like Romulus and Tullus Hostilius; they either made laws, like ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... much the same object; his skin was of that peculiar colour and texture, to which, not all "the water in great Neptune's ocean" could impart a look of cleanliness, while his very voice, hard, harsh, and inflexible, was unprepossessing and unpleasant. And yet, strange as it may seem, he, too, was a correct type of his order; the only difference being, that Father Malachi was an older coinage, with the impress of Donay or St. Omers, whereas Mister Donovan ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... to make it a permanent establishment with merit and fitness the tests for appointment instead of political influence. It was a cause naturally to appeal to the "best people" of Boston, and Mr. Lodge, being one of them, having inflexible principles and a high code of honor, threw himself eagerly into the reform movement and became its apostle. His principles were so stern and unyielding, he demanded such an exalted standard of private and public morality, that, although he worshipped ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... and he had informed Max that unless he chose to stick to his work this time he would have to be shipped off to the Cape. No entreaties on the part of Mrs. Wedmore or the girls were of any avail against this fixed resolution on Mr. Wedmore's part, or against the inflexible laziness of Max himself. He detested office work, and he confessed that if he was not to be allowed to lead the country life he loved, he would prefer enlistment in the Cape Mounted Police to drudgery in a dark corner of a ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... law is not a matter of persuasion. It is the inflexible condition with which religious and ethical institutions are confronted. Churches should therefore estimate their policies by the responses of the marginal people of the community. Religious standards of value should be measured by final utility, not initial utility. The complaint against the ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... with a tin box which she placed in my hands was followed by an extraordinary moment. I became, if I did not deceive myself, increasingly conscious of a silent struggle going on between the two. Mrs. Drainger, in her biting, inflexible voice, again requested her daughter to leave us. Emily demurred and in the interval that followed I had a sense of crisis. Nay, I fancied more; upon hearing Emily's brief protest Mrs. Drainger slowly clenched her hands, and the movement was as though she were steadily bending her daughter's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... his father's. This was a man, who, under his pleasant exterior of a landed gentleman, was rigid and inflexible. He had already borne a great deal, remember; but this was disgrace, an indelible stain upon a stainless name. Therefore this father, who was at the same time a just and good man, disinherited his favorite child and eldest son. House, slaves, lands, money, the great position of the head ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... except virtue. A person, small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage which, while it indicated deference to the court, indicated, also, habitual self-possession and self-respect; a high and intellectual forehead; a brow, pensive, but not gloomy; a mouth of inflexible decision; a face, pale and worn, but serene, on which a great and well-balanced mind was legibly written: such was the aspect with which the great proconsul presented himself to ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... formal court-martial that had once been held in the hall of the Grange, when every man in the settlement had been summoned to attend, for there were offenses in regard to which her brother was inflexible. When it was over and the disgraced man went forth an outcast, a full account of the proceedings had been forwarded to those at home who had hoped for ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... exterminated. The preparations had been almost completed when Craven arrived at the camp, and tonight, for the first time, at a final war council of all the principal headmen held in the Sheik's tent, he had seen the stricken man and had hardly recognized in the gaunt attenuated figure that only an inflexible will seemed to keep upright, the handsome stalwart Arab who of all the tribe had most nearly approached his own powerful physique. The frenzied despair in the dark flashing eyes that met his struck an answering chord in his own heart and the silent handclasp that passed between ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull |
