"Insolent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and delighting more sometimes at finding its table spread in strange places, and in the presence of its enemies, and its honey coming out of the rock, than if all were harmonized into a less wondrous pleasure; hating only what is self-sighted and insolent of men's work, despising all that is not of God, unless reminding it of God, yet able to find evidence of him still, where all seems forgetful of him, and to turn that into a witness of his working which was meant to obscure it, and ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... was in such a rage that before he could speak he had time to cool, and to reflect that it would be great waste to kill the only man who was willing to be useful in the present emergency, seeing that in the end the insolent fellow would be as dead as if he had died by his majesty's own hand. "Oh!" said he at last, putting up his sword with difficulty, it was so long; "I am obliged to you, you young fool! Take ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... like the heaven-born lightnings. At his side Stood, all his form divine in darkness cloaked, Ares the terrible, and winged the flight Of what bare down to the Argives doom or dread. He fought as when Olympian Zeus himself From heaven in wrath smote down the insolent bands Of giants grim, and shook the boundless earth, And sea, and ocean, and the heavens, when reeled The knees of Atlas neath the rush of Zeus. So crumbled down beneath Aeneas' bolts The Argive squadrons. All along the wall Wroth with the foeman ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... twice as they flashed by a street-lamp they were recognized as British officers, and then natives, who would have gone to some trouble to seem insolent a few hours before, stopped to half-turn and salaam ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... thousand feet below; happy children are nestling there in innocent sleep. Jovial voices are chatting round the fire. What has he to do with youth, and health, and joy? Lower, lower, ye clouds!—Shut out that insolent and intruding spark, till nothing be seen but the silver sheet of Cwm Fynnon, and the silver zig-zag lines which wander into it among black morass, while down the mountain side go, softly sliding, troops of ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... of the old days, the file of pole-and-basket carrying Chinese, the squaw with the papoose strapped to her shoulder, or the wandering and foot-sore prospector, who were the only wayfarers he used to meet. He contrasted their halts and friendly greetings with the insolent curiosity or undisguised contempt of the carriage folk, and smiled as he thought of the warning of the blacksmith. But this did not long divert him; he found himself again returning to his previous thought. Indeed, the face of a young girl in one of the carriages had quite startled him with its ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... would be useless, he said: "Your lordship's words are law; your servant will make all preparations accordingly; and to-morrow, when your lordship goes to Court, if this Kotsuke no Suke should again be insolent, let him die the death." And his lord was pleased at this speech, and waited with impatience for the day to break, that he might return to Court and ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... blue eyes flashed, his strong arm quivered. Every hardy nerve was tingling to strike out at the insolent speaker who lost no opportunity to fling a scornful word. But this beautiful day had left holy as well as happy memories. Dan had knelt at Brother Bart's side before the altar light, that through all his ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... who makes up his mind to do right and to be good, must expect ridicule now and then. Rich or poor, boy or man, if you try to keep your hands clean, and your path straight, the world will think you a fool, and will be ready enough to tell you so; for it is cruel and insolent enough. And the more tender your heart; the more you wish for the love and approbation of your fellow-men; the more of noble and modest self-distrust there is in you, the more painful will that be to you; the more you will be tempted to obey man, and not God, and to follow after the multitude ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... become a den of thieves and confusion, such as all men shudder to behold. That the Citizen Hassenfratz, as Head-Clerk, sits there in bonnet rouge, in rapine, in violence, and some Mathematical calculation; a most insolent, red-nightcapped man. That Pache munches his pocket-loaf, amid head-clerks and sub-clerks, and has spent all the War-Estimates: that Furnishers scour in gigs, over all districts of France, and drive bargains;—and lastly that the Army ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of the Border States understand very well the unfriendly and selfish spirit exercised toward them by the leaders of this Cotton-State Rebellion, beginning some time previous to its outbreak. They will not fail to remember their insolent refusal to counsel with us, and their haughty assumption of responsibility upon themselves for ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... found that Bourdeaux had capitulated, we found it difficult to get any thing like accommodation. I am happy to add, that this same fellow, meeting another party of English, and beginning to be insolent, an Irish gentleman, with that prompt and decisive justice which characterises his country, by one blow of his fist laid ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... encountering Eleanor one morning in the corridor, the latter had stared at her with an expression of such open scorn and dislike that Miss Thompson felt her color rise. A direct slap in the face could scarcely have conveyed greater insult than did that one insolent glance. The principal was at a loss as to its import. She wisely decided to ignore it, but stored it up in her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... conqueror, and then by the announcement that the infante Don Francisco was to be despatched to Bayonne with his uncle and all the remaining members of the royal family, including the Queen of Etruria and her children. On May second the entire population rose to resist this insolent tyranny. Murat was ready for the move; the conflict was short, but it was sharp, for he lost several hundred soldiers, perhaps half as many as the patriots, in whose ranks some eight hundred fell. The aspirant to royal honors yielded with ostentatious grace to the first representations of the junta, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of a creature half man, half lion (his fourth Avatar or incarnation), delivered the three worlds, that is to say, Earth, Heaven, and the lower regions, from the tyranny of an insolent demon ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... rebuke to the vanity and arrogance of her speech. She had been up amongst the boughs, and little expected they would break under her so suddenly, and with so little mercy. Her large features swelled, and her eyes flashed with anger—'I was recommended to a man of genius, and I find him insolent and ill-bred.' Then, gathering up her meek and alarmed husband, whom she had loosed when she first spoke, under the shadow of her broad arm and shoulder, she strutted ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... years Verres came back to Rome. The people of Messana, his only friends in the islands, had built a merchantman for him, and he loaded it with his spoils. He came back with a light heart. He knew indeed that the Sicilians would impeach him. His wrong-doings had been too gross, too insolent, for him to escape altogether. But he was confident that he had the means in his hands for securing an acquittal. The men that were to judge him were men of his own order. The senators still retained the privilege which Sulla had given ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... much as a day spent between here and there on the sand, I'll jist give him his chice; being who he is, and a foine gintleman, he has his right to it. As for you"—the tone instantly slipped into insolent indifference—"ye can go by one or the other ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... longer a virgin, but the equal in knowledge of any woman alive. She saw around her, clustered about the white tables, multitudes of violently red lips, powdered cheeks, cold, hard eyes, self-possessed arrogant faces, and insolent bosoms. What had impressed her more than anything else in Paris, more even than the three-horsed omnibuses, was the extraordinary self-assurance of all the women, their unashamed posing, their calm acceptance of the public gaze. They seemed to say: "We are the renowned ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... caricature,—founded on fact. This time of humiliation, when there was no free speech, no literature, little manliness, no reality, no simplicity, no accomplishment, was the era of American brag. We flattered the foreigner and we boasted of ourselves. We were over-sensitive, insolent, and cringing. As late as 1845, G.P. Putnam, a most sensible and modest man, published a book to show what the country had done in the field of culture. The book is a monument of the age. With all its good sense and good humor, it justifies foreign contempt because ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... procured them a mild and secure exile at Milan and Constantinople. Eusebius the eunuch, and the Barbarian Allobich, succeeded to the command of the bed-chamber and of the guards; and the mutual jealousy of these subordinate ministers was the cause of their mutual destruction. By the insolent order of the count of the domestics, the great chamberlain was shamefully beaten to death with sticks, before the eyes of the astonished Emperor; and the subsequent assassination of Allobich, in the midst of a public procession, is the only circumstance of his life in which Honorius ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... things; it may make the task harder; but it will not alter the end. Of course we are going to win. Nothing else is thinkable. I have never believed they meant it. But I see now they meant it. This insolent arming and marching, this forty years of national blustering; sooner or later it had to topple ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... said he with something like an insolent emphasis upon the name. "The resemblance is remarkable, ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... second mutiny; and, though I had not even then attained the age of a young man, I was sufficiently able to notice and understand the observations and discourses of my father on the various events which occurred; and I can testify that the soldiers behaved in so proud and insolent a manner that the magistrates were forced to take notice of their conduct. The soldiers thought proper to be much offended on this occasion, pretending that no one ought to have any authority over them except Giron under whose command they had inlisted; and they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... whose covered carriages are continually driving round the immense space of the city and suburbs. Whenever they condescend to enter the public baths, they assume, on their entrance, a tone of loud and insolent command, and maintain a haughty demeanor, which perhaps might have been excused in the great Marcellus after the conquest of Syracuse. Sometimes these heroes undertake more arduous achievements: they visit their estates in Italy, and procure themselves, by servile hands, the amusements of the chase. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... with her clumsy finery, put on as it were one dollar above the other. She patronized me, as a little country-girl who knew nothing. Must I not undeceive her? There was Faustina St. Clair, really of a good family, and insolent on the strength of it; must I never let her know that mine was as good and that my mother had as much knowledge of the proprieties and elegances of life as ever hers had? These girls and plenty of the others looked down upon me as something inferior; not ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... from periods beyond historic record, but colleges have not yet learned of their existence. They are now becoming familiar to millions, from the emperor to the beggar, and still the colleges plod on in sanctified ignorance where the priest rules, or in insolent dogmatism where the medical professor rules. Is there anything in the way of demonstration that can overcome this pachydermic stupidity?—doubtful! Clairvoyants have described diseases, described distant places, described things in public, while their ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... been full of wrath against his neighbor all the morning. There had been a tone in Heathcote's voice when he gave his parting warning as to the fire in Medlicot's pipe which the sugar grower had felt to be intentionally insolent. Nothing had been said which could be openly resented, but offense had surely been intended; and then he had remembered that his mother had been already some months at the mill, and that no mark of neighborly courtesy had been shown to her. ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... white surtout, however, standing direct in our way, raised his hat with a mock salutation, placing his hand on his breast, and forthwith began to advance with an insolent grin and ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... has one spoken to you of the insolent absurdity with which you condemned Galileo, and I speak to you for the hundred and first, and I hope you will keep the anniversary of it for ever; I desire that there be graved on the door of ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... of breathing above her head close to her hair. With a little scream she shrank back and looked up. A man's face was gazing down at her. It was a very brown and very masculine face, roughened by wind and toughened by sun, with keen, steady, almost insolent eyes, black and shining, stiff, black hair, that looked as if it had been crimped, a mustache sprouting above a wide, slightly animal mouth full of splendid teeth, and a square, brutal, but very manly chin. On the head was a Sicilian cap, long ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Hesper's roof, what was to become of her! Durnmelling, too, would then be as certainly closed against her, and she would be compelled to take a situation, and teach music, which she hated, and French and German, which gave her no pleasure apart from certain strata of their literature, to insolent girls whom she would be constantly wishing to strangle, or stupid little boys who would bore her to death. Her very soul sickened at the thought—as well it might; for to have to do such service with such a heart as hers, must indeed be torment. All hope of marrying ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... end to his ambition. This view is confirmed by the Apology he wrote and published for his act. It remains one of the most pregnant, bold, and brilliant pieces of writing which we possess in favour of tyrannicide from that epoch of insolent crime and audacious rhetoric. So energetic is the style, and so biting the invective of this masterpiece, in which the author stabs a second time his victim, that both Giordani and Leopardi affirmed it to be the only true monument of eloquence in the Italian language. If ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... when I tell you," said the first speaker, "that the lark, who was so timid and ladylike, has become an insolent ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... (cont.) that is to be found in his letter of July twelfth, in which he gave his opinion of the negroes, whom he found very insolent. He proposed that the Cherokee Nation ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... to go," said I, "but not till I express my gratitude and pleasure at the sight of your attention to this sufferer. You deem me insolent and perverse, but I am not such; and hope that the day will come when I shall convince you of my ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Night-cloud, the Crow, made his appearance. 'Deign me one regard, Sire,' said he, 'the insolent enemy is at our gates; let your Majesty give the word, and I will go forth and show my valor ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... though I'm not. He is better because he is just what he seems. There is no pretence about him. He doesn't think that plastering his hair with stuff, and wearing ugly, showy clothes, and a hat on the back of his head, or swaggering, or smoking nasty cigarettes, or being insolent to women, are marks of a gentleman. He's the real thing. That's what Hal is, and that's why I'm so proud of him, so—so touchy ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... thoughts, passions, emotions, language; having for its immediate object—its very essence—pleasure and delectation rather than truth; but springing from truth, as the flower from its fixed and unseen root. To use the words of Puttenham in reference to Sir Walter Raleigh, poetry is a lofty, insolent (unusual) and ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... of an instantaneous vision of the household thus thrown open to him. Such opportunities for falsity, artificiality, downright humbuggery, for plutocratic upholstery and indecorous statues and light-minded paintings, for cynical and insolent servants, for the deployment of vast gains got by methods that at best were questionable! Could he accept such ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... question of my forcing a breach." The first words wore spoken sharply, but as they continued they began again to rush and mount into an access of passion. "You are as insolent as your words prove you to be reckless. You have tried to corrupt every idea of righteousness in my daughter's heart. It would almost appear that you have succeeded. But I believe God is stronger than Satan. I believe my prayers and the heritage of Godfearing forefathers ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... treated by Walpole. The lobbies of the House of Commons and all the adjacent places were crowded by proprietors of the short annuities and other redeemable popular deeds; men and women who, as the contemporary accounts tell us, "in a rude and insolent manner demanded justice of the members as they went into the House," and put into their hands a paper with the words written on it, "Pray do justice to the annuitants who lent their money on Parliamentary security." "The noisy multitude," we are told, "were particularly ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Seneca: "Little souls rendered insolent by prosperity have this worst property, that they hate those whom they ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... at every village they pass; who beget children of the native women and regard them no more than a dog does his pups, indifferent that their own flesh and blood go cold and hungry. They are the curse and disgrace of Alaska, and they often go long time insolent and unwhipped because our poor lame law is not nimble enough to overtake them; "to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever," one's indignation is sometimes disposed to thunder savagely with Saint ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... I heartily wish you could have stayed long enough at Manheim to have been seriously and desperately in love with Madame de Taxis; who, I suppose, is a proud, insolent, fine lady, and who would consequently have expected attentions little short of adoration: nothing would do you more good than such a passion; and I live in hopes that somebody or other will be able ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... personal appearance: the sleeves of his overcoat were greasy; his dirty waistcoat, buttoned up to his neck, showed not a trace of linen; a filthy black silk scarf, twisted till it resembled a cord, was round his neck, and his hands were unwashed. He looked round with an air of insolent effrontery. His face, covered with pimples, was neither thoughtful nor even contemptuous; it wore an expression of complacent satisfaction in demanding his rights and in being an aggrieved party. His voice trembled, and he spoke so fast, and with such stammerings, that he might ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... creed, may consistently pronounce judgment on those who reject it. The absurdity in one case, is not greater than in the other. But their attempts at intimidation will have no other effect with persons of dispassionate reflection, than to render more repulsive those errors which foster insolent conceit in vulgar minds, and encourage those who appear to have but a superficial knowledge of themselves to pass sentence of condemnation on the hearts ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... having to bow before the threats of Prussia. Remember that the rulers of Russia in those days were the most charming and cultivated people in the world, whereas the Prussian as a diplomatist was the same Prussian whom, even as an ally of ours in 1815, Croker found "very insolent, and hardly less offensive to the English than to the French."[1] The Russians felt those humiliations as a gentleman would feel the bullying ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... said the Colonel to me, when he had shown me this letter, "I feel a different man to what I did yesterday. Sit down and write my answer to this insolent Moor." ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... leader. He was thirty-one years of age, belonged to an ancient and powerful family, possessed vast wealth, had great personal beauty and attractive manners, but above all, was unboundedly ambitious, and grossly immoral—the most insolent, unprincipled, licentious, and selfish man that had thus far scandalized and adorned Athenian society. The only redeeming feature in his character was his friendship for Socrates, who, it seems, fascinated him by his ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... the Brotherhood of Trainmen, you sent strong bodies of armed men to terrorize the few strikers gathered in the effort to establish their just claims. You broke their blockade, ran your trains in and out, and indulged in insolent triumph before the people in the morning press. At this moment within easy range of your palatial home ten thousand determined men are assembled, awaiting the word. Once launched upon their work, not one stone of your railway ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... best coffee in the world?" said Beaufort, sipping his complacently and looking about the crowded room for a familiar face. Apparently he found none, for, leaning across the table and speaking to Calvert quite loudly and in an insolent tone, he said, "'Tis a good thing the coffee is of the best, or, my word of honor, I would not come to a place which gentlemen seem to have abandoned and to which canaille flock." And with that he leaned back and looked about him with a fine nonchalance. There was a little murmur ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... permit that aim to be turned aside because various and sundry roughneck punchers thought it was funny to go around yelping like a band of coyotes. Mary V, too—he did not neglect to include Mary V. Indeed, much of his determination to remain was born of his desire to crush that insolent young woman with polite, ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... own services extravagantly. Life in the bush was not her ideal in coming to America, but rather high wages, and perchance a well-to-do husband; and, knowing that it would be difficult to replace her, she thought she might be indolent and insolent with impunity. Linda's mother never knew of all the hard household work which her frail fragile girl went through in these days of preparation, nor what good reason the roses had for deserting her cheeks. Mamma should not be vexed by hearing of Biddy's defection; ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... the United States capitalism has emerged from the war more reactionary and aggressive, more insolent and oppressive ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... this insolent young fellow?" inquired Captain Langford, who still remained beside Dr. Clarke. "If he be in his senses, his impertinence demands the bastinado; if mad, Lady Eleanore should be secured from ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... such manifest gusto and sympathy, and takes such pains to make him agreeable on the whole, and relates with such approval the admiration which empty-headed idiots express for him when he has jumped his horse over some very perilous fence or thrashed some insolent farmer, that it is painfully apparent what is the writer's ideal of a grand and imposing character. You know the kind of man who is the hero of some novels,—the muscular blackguard,—and you remember what are his unfailing characteristics. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... are pretty well known. I shall only observe now that lenient measures have had no other effect than to produce insult after insult; that the more we conceded, the higher America rose in her demands, and the more insolent she has grown. It is for this reason that I am now for the most effective and decisive measures; and am of opinion that no alternative is left us, but to relinquish America for ever, or finally determine to compel her to acknowledge the legislative authority of this country; and it is the principle ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... for our preference of the waiting-woman? It is a strange claim. The search for the beauty of the less-beautiful is a modern enterprise, ingenious in its minor pranks, insolent in its greater. And its chief ignobility is the love of marred, defiled, disordered, dulled, and imperfect skies, the ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... crockery and the goat, were stretched out on the sand. The moon shone, and the stars peeped out, and the goat jumped up, frightened, and stood on its thin legs, stock-still, while it stared at us with foolish eyes. It soon marched off, like an insolent creature, over the tables and chairs, and over our heads, bleating "Meh-eh-eh-eh!" The candles were extinguished; the crockery smashed; the supper in the sand; and we were all frightened to death. The women were shrieking, the children ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... the utmost contempt, and made the greatest mockery that was possible for them to do at me, giving me all the opprobrious insolent scoffs that they could think of for preaching to them, as they called it, which, indeed, grieved me rather than angered me; and I went away, blessing God, however, in my mind, that I had not spared them, though they had insulted ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... interfered, and said he was quite right, and it always turned out best in the end for a prisoner to conform himself, and his friends did him no good by any other attempt, as Mr. Ernescliffe could tell the young gentleman. The man's tone, though neither insolent nor tyrannical, but rather commendatory of his charge, contrasting with his natural deference to the two gentlemen, irritated poor Aubrey beyond measure, so that Hector was really glad to have him ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... getting up early (And tempers are short in the morning), An inopportune joke is enough to provoke Him to give you, at once, a month's warning. Then if you refrain, he is at you again, For he likes to get value for money: He'll ask then and there, with an insolent stare, "If you know that you're paid to be funny?" It adds to the tasks Of a merryman's place, When your principal asks, With a scowl on his face, If you know that you're paid to ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... but be curious as to the motives and policy of a person, virtuous as a man, but so relentless as a lawgiver. Although Draco was himself a noble, it is difficult to suppose that laws so stern and impartial would not operate rather against the more insolent and encroaching class than against the more subordinate ones. The attempt shows a very unwholesome state of society, and went far to produce the democratic action which Solon represented ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... all that has ever existed of the city of San Carlos, is a coat of arms painted on fine parchment, with an enormous cross erected on the bank of the Meta. The Guahibos, who, it is said, are some thousands in number, have become so insolent, that, at the time of our passage by Carichana, they sent word to the missionary that they would come on rafts, and burn his village. These rafts (valzas), which we had an opportunity of seeing, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... was received, the bell summoned the popular assembly together, and, in the name of the doge, Pietro Mocenigo described to them the terrible nature of the peril that threatened them, told them that, after the insolent reply of Doria, there was now no hope save in their own exertions, and invited all to rally round the national standard, for the protection of their hearths and homes. The reply of the assembly was unanimous; and shouts ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... promises fumed away in projects; and though he appeared for ever correcting the blunders of others, this French Ritson left enough of his own to afford them a choice of revenge. His style of criticism was perfectly Ritsonian. He describes one of his rivals as l'insolent et tres-insense auteur de l'Almanach de Gotha, on the simple subject of the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... prettiest—spaeing! spaeing! why, I should be ashamed to make use of the word, it sounds so much like a certain other word;' and then I made a face as if I were unwell. 'Perhaps it's Scotch also for that?' 'What do ye mean by speaking in that guise to a gentleman?' said he; 'you insolent vagabond, without a name or a country.' 'There you are mistaken,' said I; 'my country is Egypt, but we 'Gyptians, like you Scotch, are rather fond of travelling; and as for name—my name is Jasper Petulengro, perhaps you have a better; ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... its captain had lost its head, grew over-confident. Castruccio observed this, and allowed some days to pass in order to encourage this belief; he also showed signs of fear, and did not allow any of the munitions of the camp to be used. On the other side, the Guelphs grew more insolent the more they saw these evidences of fear, and every day they drew out in the order of battle in front of the army of Castruccio. Presently, deeming that the enemy was sufficiently emboldened, and having mastered their tactics, he decided ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the work of government and legislation is not more wisely and beneficially done by this concurrence of antagonistic parties, and compromise and fusion of antagonistic opinions, than it could be in any other way. All strong Governments become to a certain degree careless and insolent in the confidence of their strength, but their weakness renders them circumspect and conscientious. Governments with great majorities at their back can afford to do gross jobs, or take strong party measures; but when their opponents are as strong ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... in him the insolent priest who had confronted me on my way to La Trappe that morning. I knew him, although now he was wearing neither robe nor shovel-hat, nor those square shoes too large to buckle closely over his ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... that appear to have arisen even before Buddha's death. Thus in the Mah[a]vagga (ch. X) there is found an account of the schism caused by the expulsion of some unworthy members. The brethren are not only schismatic, some taking the side of those expelled, but they are even insolent to Buddha; and when he entreats them for the sake of the effect on the outer world to heal their differences,[37] they tell him to his face that they will take the responsibility, and that he need not concern himself with the matter. It ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... sheep of yourselves, and the wolf will eat you. We shall find our destruction in our immoderate desire for peace. Spain is making a Papistical league in Germany. Therefore is Assonleville despatched thither, and that's the reason why our trash of priests are so insolent in the empire. 'Tis astonishing how they are triumphing on all sides. God will smite them. Thou dear God! What are our evangelists about in Germany? Asleep on both ears. 'Dormiunt in utramque aurem'. I doubt they will be suddenly enough awakened one ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... companion, in order that ye may be brought to trial for the crimes of exercising undue and pernicious influence upon the mind of the Queen, and the abolition of certain ancient rites and customs connected with the worship and honour of the great god Kuhlacan. And I warn ye beforehand, oh insolent white stranger, that it will be useless for ye to resist my demands; for though ye have some five hundred soldiers at your back, I have here as many thousands to support me, while in your rear there are ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... his career. In 1785, for some reason unknown to his biographer, Parr resigned the school at Norwich, and in the year following went to reside at Hatton. "I have an excellent house, (he writes to a friend,) good neighbours, and a Poor, ignorant, dissolute, insolent, and ungrateful, beyond all example. I like Warwickshire very much. I have made great regulations, viz. bells chime three times as long; Athanasian creed; communion service at the altar; swearing act; children catechized first Sunday ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... for intrushon & finddmg them resolutli bent to rout all gud a mong us & advanc there superstischous ways & by boystrous words indeferd to fritten men to accomplish his end. & he abusing me to my face, dru upon him with intent to corb his insolent & dastardli sperrite.... Ister daye on Pickeren their Chorch Warden caim up to us with intent to make some of ourse drone as is sospeckted but the Lord sofered him so to misdemen himslfe as he is likli to li by the hielse this too month.... My homble request is that ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... cliffs above, while the water deepened in shadow, and busy muskrats marked its glossy surface with long silvery lines. Mischievous camp-birds peered at the couple from the branches of the pines uttering satirical comment, while squirrels, frankly insolent, dropped cones upon their heads and ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... to be forged which even that insolent boy cannot break; a sword which, if the race of Nibelungs could wield it would win them back the treasure and the ring. This sword must kill the dragon, Fafner, who guards that ring—the magic sword, Nothung! But my arm cannot forge it; ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... round for a stone when one of them buttonholed me. He wasn't insolent, but he was impertinent. The two hawks and the blackbirds flew off as I came up; but the sparrows stayed. They were the only ones in possession as I moved away; and they will be the only ones in possession when I return. If that is next summer, ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... modesty in peace, and service in war, is best secured by an honorable poverty. The demeanor of Caracalla was haughty and full of pride; but with the troops he forgot even the proper dignity of his rank, encouraged their insolent familiarity, and, neglecting the essential duties of a general, affected to imitate the dress and manners of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... people "are the most beautiful creatures of imagination that ever were devised," and added that Sir Walter Scott was a warm admirer of the book. With Charles Lamb at Christ's Hospital the story was a favourite. "We had classics of our own," he says, "without being beholden to 'insolent Greece or haughty Rome,' that passed current among us—'Peter Wilkins,' the 'Adventures of the Hon. Captain Robert Boyle,' the 'Fortunate Blue-Coat Boy,' and the like." But nobody loved the old romance with ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... climbing up to the Capitol secretly by night, the cackling of the geese awoke Marcus Manlius, and so the enemy was repulsed. There was another story, that, when the Romans were paying the ransom required by Brennus, and complained of false weight, the insolent Gaul threw his sword into the scale, exclaiming, "Woe to the conquered!" and that just then Camillus appeared, and drove the Gauls out of the city. This is certain, that the Gauls retired of their own free will from their ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... shall be changed by this day month, for before that time whatever power the law gives the husband over his wife and her property shall be mine over you and your possessions. Then we will see who shall be insolent; then we shall see whose proud blue eye shall day after day dare to look up and rebuke me. Oh: to get you in my power, my girl! Not that I love you, moon-faced creature, but I want your possessions, which is quite as strong ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Achilles may do as he pleases. "I have others by my side that shall do me honour, and, above all, Zeus, Lord of Counsel" (I. 175). He rules, literally, by divine right, and we shall see that, in the French feudal epics, as in Homer, this claim of divine right is granted, even in the case of an insolent and cowardly Over-Lord. Achilles half draws "his great sword," one of the long, ponderous cut-and-thrust bronze swords of which we have actual examples from Mycenae and elsewhere. He is restrained ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... march to Richmond was one continued insult from the troops that were hurrying to the front; one man being determined to kill Capt. Weiss, whom he thought was not humble enough. The female portion of the inhabitants were also very insolent. ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... the cultivated world the word is nowadays pronounced by some people with a jeer, and by others it is used as a term of abuse, and this contempt for the monk is growing. It is true, alas, it is true, that there are many sluggards, gluttons, profligates and insolent beggars among monks. Educated people point to these: "You are idlers, useless members of society, you live on the labor of others, you are shameless beggars." And yet how many meek and humble monks there are, yearning for solitude and fervent ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... they seemed to have succeeded. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Europe reposed in the monotony of almost universal uniformity, beneath the almost universal supremacy of the Papacy. Rome might indeed have adopted the insolent language of the Assyrian of prophecy: "As one gathereth eggs, so have I gathered all the earth, and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped." And what was the result? What but the deep sleep ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... more picturesque sheilings. Men who seemed to measure everything in life with a two-foot rule were making roads and building jetties for coal-smacks to lie at. There was constant influx of strange men and women—men of stunted growth and white faces, and who had an insolent, swaggering air, intolerably vulgar when contrasted with the Doric simplicity and quiet gigantic ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... party of Union soldiers headed by Corporal Evans, an insolent young fellow of about twenty-five. He has a very boisterous manner, giving ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.
... cavalier would certainly have called the unknown men to account for their insolent curiosity; but fear deprived him of all courage ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... passed a resolution, signed by seventy-one of their people, which they forwarded to the Council. In this document they offered to take the oath on the conditions offered by Wroth. This the Council considered 'insolent and defiant,' and ordered the arrest of the deputies. On September 16 Charles Landry, Guillaume Bourgois, Abraham Bourg, and Francois Richard were brought before the Council, and, on refusing to take the oath except on the terms proposed by themselves, were committed to prison ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... Radowitz at the dinner of the college debating society about a fortnight earlier. It was witty and damaging in the highest degree, and each man as he read it had vowed vengeance. Falloden had been especially mocked in it. Some pompous tricks of manner peculiar to Falloden in his insolent moods, had been worked into a pseudo-scientific examination of the qualities proper to a "blood," with the happiest effect. Falloden grew white as he read it. Perhaps on the morrow it would be in Constance Bledlow's hands. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is gone; and we must again go to war. Were my generals as great fools as some of my Ministers, I should despair indeed of the issue of my contest with these insolent islanders. Many believe that had I been more ably supported in my Cabinet, I should not have been under the necessity of taking the field, as a rupture might have ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... he spoke was insistent, almost insolent in its demand, and she hesitated no longer in ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... have more than two or three millions at the most. He, or better she, were better perhaps with only a million, or a million and a half, or enough to live handsomely in eminent inns, either at home or abroad, with that sort of insolent half-knowledge to which culture is contemptible; which can feel the theatre, but not literature; which has passed from the horse to the automobile; which has its moral and material yacht, cruising all social coasts and making ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... almost as incapable of intercourse as the creatures of the field and pasture. Because they do not know the kind of things the townsman knows, they are supposed to know nothing. I have already said enough to show how absurd and insolent is this assumption. My neighbours were few, and simple-minded; but they possessed many kinds of skill necessary to their life, they had wisdom and virtue, and upon the whole a kind of fundamental dignity of nature. They were as shy as ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... me insolent villain, although so much in my power! And for what!—only for kissing (with passion indeed) her inimitable neck, her lips, her cheeks, her forehead, and her streaming eyes, as this assemblage of beauties offered itself at once to my ravished sight; she ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... of the Corporation of Tangier, did present to Norwood, for his opinion in, in order to the King's service, which were drawn up very humbly, and were really good things; but his answer to them was in the most shitten proud, carping, insolent, and ironically-prophane stile, that ever I saw in my life, so as I shall never think the place can do well, while he is there. Here, after some talk, and Creed's telling us that he is upon taking the next house to his present lodgings, which is next to that ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... expenses of the Castle; and he took repeated opportunities of telling the Castle people his mind; till old Cardoness in a passion chased him out of the house, and rode next Sabbath-day over to Kirkdale and worshipped in the parish church of William Dalgleish. The insolent young laird continued, at least during the time of his courtship, to go to church with his mother, but Rutherford could not shut his eyes to the fact that he studied all the time how he could best and most openly insult his minister. ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... those who can give an account of them," said Pollux, turning to the south, where in a valley the Hebrews might be seen marshalled around their loader. "There, I ween, is the insolent outlaw who has been making a shambles of our camp. See you the glitter of the spears? Maccabeus is setting his men in battle array. There is but a handful of them. Shall we charge down upon them, and sweep them from the ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... should lord it over Italians? Why should a Roman soldier have the right of appeal to a civil tribunal, and an Italian soldier be at the mercy of martial law? Why should two Italians for every one Roman be forced to fight Rome's battles? Why should insolent young Romans and the fine ladies of the metropolis insult Italian magistrates and murder Italians of humbler rank? This was the reward of their long fidelity. If here and there a statesman was willing to yield them the franchise, the flower of the aristocracy, the Scaevolae and the Crassi, expelled ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... play-fellow is he; His master's guard he wills to be: Willing for him his blood be spent, His look is never insolent. Few men to do such noble deeds have learn'd, Nor having done, could ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... don't mean that!" he would say to her when she sputtered and raged. He listened absently to her long dissertation upon the persons—and for Adele the world was full of them—who tried to cheat her, or who were insolent to her, and to whom she was triumphantly insolent in return. She found Martie much ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... boy to get me a draught of wine. The boy—mountebank as he is—lost her groat, and played truant; and she, poor wench, got into such fear for me that she went herself, and fell in with a sort of insolent masterful rogues, from whom this young knight saved her. I took her home safe enough after that, and thought to be rid of the knaves when they saw my wallet; and so truly I am, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... should like to go to the Pitti Gallery. I shall never forget our melancholy stroll through those gorgeous halls, every picture on whose walls seemed, even to my own sympathetic vision, to glow with a sort of insolent renewal of strength and lustre. The eyes and lips of the great portraits appeared to smile in ineffable scorn of the dejected pretender who had dreamed of competing with their triumphant authors; the celestial candour, even, of the Madonna of the Chair, as we paused in perfect silence before ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... an insolent day. There are days which, to imaginative minds, at least, possess strangely human qualities. Their atmospheres predispose people to crime or virtue, to the calm of good will, to sneaking vice, or fierce, unprovoked aggression. The day was of the last description. A beast, or a human ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the account of the healing of a man with a withered arm, which took place in the synagogue of Capernaum (iii. 1-5). In the vivid narrative, we can see the scribes and Pharisees, who had already questioned Him with insolent airs of authority about His breach of the Rabbinical Sabbatic rules, sitting in the synagogue, with their gleaming eyes 'watching Him' with hostile purpose. They hope that He will heal on the Sabbath day. Possibly they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... the party reached the Sioux country. Some of the tribes of this nation were known to be friendly toward the whites, while others had acquired a manner overbearing and insolent, inspired by the inferior numbers of the traders who had visited them in the past, and by the subservient attitude which these had assumed. From such tribes there was good reason to anticipate opposition, or even open hostility. But the specific nature of their mission ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... had then an opportunity and a duty imposed upon him of entering into a complete justification of his conduct: he might have justified it by every civil, and by every criminal mode of process. Did he do this? No. Your Lordships have in evidence the manner, equally despotic, rebellious, insolent, fraudulent, tricking, and evasive, by which he positively refused all inquiry into the matter. How stands it now, more than twelve years after the seizure of their goods, at ten thousand miles' distance? You ask of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... proud, Saucy, insolent, and loud, Great James subdued the boisterous crowd, The foaming ocean stemming; His country's glory and its good He valued dearer than his blood, And rid sole sovereign o'er his flood, In spight of French ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... introduced into his commentary on the New Testament some seditious remarks respecting the attitude of the government towards dissenters. The infamous Jeffreys presided at the trial, and spared neither counsel nor prisoner his insolent invectives. The whole proceedings were nothing less than a farce, and the evidence adduced was of such a flimsy character that Baxter volunteered a remark expressing a doubt whether any jury would convict a man on it. He was, however, mistaken. ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... of the great masses were deeply dissatisfied with the state of representation, but were in a very moderate and patient condition, awaiting the better intellectual cultivation of numbers of their fellows. The old insolent resource of assailing them and making the most audaciously wicked statements that they are politically indifferent, has borne the inevitable fruit. The perpetual taunt, "Where are they?" has called them out with the answer: "Well then, if you must know, here we ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... sermons were delivered by eminent preachers like Rev. William Simonds and Rev. Daniel Price. Zuniga, the Spanish minister, was greatly disturbed, and urgently advised his master, Philip III., to give orders to have "these insolent people in Virginia quickly annihilated." But King Philip was afraid of England, and contented himself with instructing Zuniga to keep on the watch; and thus the preparations of the London ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... go and do it? I guess it's no business of mine to go and stick my head over the ship's rump? I guess it's yours. And I'll tell you what it is, my fine fellow, I'll trouble you not to come the dude over me. You're insolent, that's what's wrong with you. Don't you crowd me, Mr ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... direct and insolent that Claire missed the trepidation that might have come with a more covert move. She was no longer uncertain. There was a sharp relief in realizing that all the cards were on the table. She felt also that there was no immediate danger. Flint was far from sober, but he ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... their religion was only half allowed to them; their clergy were forced to be educated out of the country; their aristocracy was quite distinct from them; there was a Protestant nobility, and in the towns, poor insolent Protestant corporations, with a bankrupt retinue of mayors, aldermen, and municipal officers—all of whom figured in addresses and had the public voice in the country; but there was no sympathy and connection between the upper and the lower people of the Irish. ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the insolent confidence which they had in luck, the two friends went to sleep, convinced that their hundred francs were already on the way, the ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... that they did not; so he settled himself in an arm-chair, with an ugly glance at his wife and an insolent one at Quarrier; and the game went on in silence; Leila and the major still losing heavily under the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... he, "are mostly tall of stature,[8] fair and red-haired, and horrible from the fierceness of their eyes, fond of strife, and haughtily insolent. A whole band of strangers would not endure one of them, aided in his brawl by his powerful and blue-eyed wife, especially when with swollen neck and gnashing teeth, poising her huge white arms, she begins, joining kicks to blows, to put forth her fists like stones from a catapult. Most of ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Chesapeake and the Leopard.%—Such an attempt to punish Great Britain by cutting off a part of her trade was useless, and only made her more insolent than before. Indeed, just a week after the President signed the non-importation bill, as one of our coasting vessels was entering the harbor of New York, a British vessel, wishing to stop and search her, fired ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... known me, and begin a new career of honesty, God permitting. I will not remain with the character of a thief stamped upon me, to be a drag round your neck, and I have made up my mind no longer to persecute dear Betty Bevan with the offer of a dishonest and dishonoured hand. In my insolent folly I had once thought her somewhat below me in station. I now know that she is far, far above me in every way, and ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... maintained.' Ay! and it will yet be maintained. The time will come, when repudiation will be repudiated by Mississippi—when her wretched secession leaders, the true authors of her disgrace and ruin, will be discarded—when her insolent slaveholding oligarchy will be overthrown, when the people will break the chains of their imperious masters, and labor, without regard to color, will be emancipated. Secession, repudiation, and slavery are the same in principle and had the same leaders. Jefferson Davis carried ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... as one with an ague and shook off the deadly influence of the idea. Had he no more grit? he asked himself. Had he come this far only to be beaten? Was this insolent young popinjay to win at last? No! Then he listened, for ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... there determined not to quarrel if he could help it. He had very nearly quarrelled already. Every word that his brother said was in truth an insult,—being, as they were, the first words spoken after so long an interval. They were intended to be insolent, probably intended to drive him away. But if anything was to be gained by the interview he must not allow himself to be driven away. He had a duty to perform,—a great duty. He was the last man in England to suspect a fictitious heir,—would at any rate ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... God! what blind bats men are! With all their high capabilities and immortal destinies, with all the world before them to conquer, they can sink unnerved and beaten down to impotent weakness before the slighting word or insolent gesture of a frivolous feminine creature, whose best devotions are paid to the mirror that reflects her in the most becoming light! How easy would be my vengeance, I mused, as I watched Ferrari. I touched him on the shoulder; ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... all critics from Aristotle downwards—are both here rudimentary. There are some fluctuations of hope and fear; but the play is a single situation, The stages are: the appeal; the hesitation of the king, the resolve of the people; the defeat of insolent violence; and the rescue. It should not be forgotten, indeed, that the play is one of a trilogy—-an act, therefore, rather than a complete drama. But we have only to compare it with those later plays of which ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of her sister, Elizabeth had, by her ambassador, signified her accession to the Pope, whose precipitate temper, insolent reflections, and extravagant demands, determined her to persevere in the plan she had already secretly embraced. While, to conciliate the Catholics she retained in her cabinet eleven of her sister's counsellors, she took care to balance their ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... massacred some and prepared to fight the rest. But the Mongol generals, seeing the difficulties of campaigning in an unknown country without guides, prudently returned to their master and reported that they had taken Daha and killed the insolent king. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... he. "He never offers to attempt my life; nor dares he, if he had the inclination; therefore, although his manner is peculiarly repulsive to me, I shall not have my mind burdened with the reflection that my own mother's son yearned for a reconciliation with me and was repulsed by my haughty and insolent behaviour. The next time he comes to my hand, I am resolved that I will accost him as one brother ought to address another, whatever it may cost me; and, if I am still flouted with disdain, then shall the blame ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... there was no mistaking that this sensitiveness now tied the extra lash on to the whip of his tongue. When he had finished talking, when he had said all that he wanted to say, and all without once losing his temper or his damned insolent dexterity, he nodded to me for all the world as though we had been talking shop in Fleet Street, and were separating to go about our various businesses. That nod remains with me; I'll never forget it or forgive it; it seemed to me the last crowning ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... mission is unto thee. And he greets thee well, as an uncle should greet his nephew, and as a vassal should greet his lord. And he represents unto thee that he waxes heavy and feeble, and is advancing in years. And the neighbouring chiefs, knowing this, grow insolent towards him, and covet his land and possessions. And he earnestly beseeches thee, Lord, to permit Geraint his son to return to him, to protect his possessions, and to become acquainted with his boundaries. And unto him he represents that it were better ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... of his valet de chambre. — 'If that be the case (said my uncle, in a peremptory tone), I shall be contented with lord Oxmington's personal excuses; and I hope my friend will be satisfied with his lordship's turning that insolent rascal out of his service.' — 'Sir (cried Lismahago), I must insist upon taking personal vengeance for the personal injuries I ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the word, it sounds so much like a certain other word," and then I made a face as if I were unwell. "Perhaps it's Scotch also for that?" "What do ye mean by speaking in that guise to a gentleman?" said he, "you insolent vagabond, without a name or a country." "There you are mistaken," said I, "my country is Egypt, but we 'Gyptians, like you Scotch, are rather fond of travelling, and as for name—my name is Jasper Petulengro, perhaps ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... told me to go to the next room, it had a gunny sack door, too, the First and Second Lieutenants were in there. They told me to go on to the next room that the Captain's headquarters was in the other room. I had my mittens and overcoat on, and he said, "you pull off your hat, you insolent puppy, and salute me." I replied to the Captain's kind words of greeting that, "I will not salute you, but excuse me, I should have had manners enough to have removed my hat." He told me that he "would put the irons" on me. I answered him that I did not think he would do such an unmanly ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... all this mean?" said the doctor on the following day. "Brookes has been complaining to me that he was busy yesterday dressing those sheep, when he found Leather, as they call him, my assigned servant, lazy, careless, and insolent. He was speaking to him rather sharply, when you suddenly appeared from behind the fence, flew in a passion, abused him, defended the other man, talked in a way that would make Leather disobedient in the future, and finally ordered the man to go away ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... friend, Mr. Dryfesdale," said Catherine, "I understand this announcement is a nightly form of yours. Now, I pray you to remark, that the Lady Fleming and I—for I trust your insolent invitation concerns us only—have chosen Saint Peter's pathway to Heaven, so I see no one whom your godly exhortation, catechise, or lecture, can benefit, excepting this poor page, who, being in Satan's hand ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... well set, you have no chance whatever against the dealer; and for my own part, I never try to be clever when I go up against these thimble-riggers; I believe all they tell me, and accept the most insolent gold bricks; and in that way I occasionally catch some of the very ablest of them napping; for they are so subtle that they will sometimes tell you the truth because they think you will suppose it to be a lie. I do not wish to catch them napping, however; I cling to the ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... which submits to your government is not capable of being armed, if you be beneficial and obliging to those you do arm, you may make the bolder with the rest, for the difference of your behaviour to the soldier binds him more firmly to your service," etc.[780](Vide the insolent behaviour permitted to officers of the German Imperial Army and the feeding of the Red Army in Russia at the expense of the ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... assign'd to man, I feel, alas! With this exalted joy, Which lifts me near and nearer to the gods, Thou gav'st me this companion, unto whom I needs must cling, though cold and insolent, He still degrades me to myself, and turns Thy glorious gifts to nothing, with a breath. He in my bosom with malicious zeal For that fair image fans a raging fire; From craving to enjoyment thus I reel, And in enjoyment ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Half-Millions annually, the Britannic Majesty has a considerable sword, say 40,000, of British and of subsidized;—sword which costs him a great deal of money to keep by his side; and a great deal of clamor and insolent gibing from the Gazetteer species, because he is forced to keep it strictly in the scabbard hitherto. This Year, we observe, he has determined again to draw it, in the Cause of Human Liberty, whatever follow. From early Spring there were symptoms: ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... benevolent works to the monarchies; this insolent and shabby way of furnishing assistance is fit only for slaves and masters; we substitute for it a system of national works, on a grand scale, over the whole ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... should sit silent before a man of the world, and, like the clowns they were, find nothing to say fit for a gentleman to hear. Under such circumstances he was not unwilling to pose before them in an indolent, insolent fashion, to show them what a great person he was, and to speak of things beyond their ken. Playing this part, he would have enjoyed himself tolerably—nor the less because now and again he let his contempt for the company peep from under his complaisance—but ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... that the iron railing is a useless fence—it can shelter nothing, and support nothing; you can't nail your peaches to it, nor protect your flowers with it, nor make anything whatever out of its costly tyranny; and besides being useless, it is an insolent fence;—it says plainly to everybody who passes—"You may be an honest person,—but, also, you may be a thief: honest or not, you shall not get in here, for I am a respectable person, and much above you; you shall only see ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... observed, with a leer, half cunning half insolent, "if I have hid my rifle near the Sandusky swamp, the last ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... grown much wiser lately. I have extraordinary, original ideas now. When I think of my past, of my life then . . . people in general, in fact, it is all summed up for me in the image of my stepmother. Coarse, insolent, soulless, false, depraved, and a morphia maniac too. My father, who was feeble and weak-willed, married my mother for her money and drove her into consumption; but his second wife, my stepmother, he loved passionately, insanely. . . . What I had to put up with! But what is the use of ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... brains were not fit to lead a mule to water, and others who, in regard to manners, were scarcely fit to follow the mule. But, thank God, the Boers have taught our nation this, if they have taught us nought else—that it needs something more than an eye-glass, a lisp, a pair of kid gloves, and an insolent, overbearing manner to make a ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... would have found herself incapable. Raising her hand with an imperative gesture she said in a firm voice: "Back tempters, hinder not my husband from following the dictates of his better nature." For a few moments there was silence in the room, till one of the company, more drunken and insolent than the others, exclaimed in a loud, derisive voice: "Zounds, madam, but you would make a capital actress, specially on the tragedy parts; you should seek an engagement upon the stage." Mr. Harland's eyes flashed angrily as his listened ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... dishonest, an extemporized passion? Having done the young man so bitter a wrong in intention, nothing would appease her magnanimous remorse (as time went on) but to repair it in fact. She went so far as keenly to regret the harsh words she had cast upon him in the conservatory. He had been insolent and unmannerly; but he had an excuse. Much should be forgiven him, for he loved much. Even now that Gertrude had imposed upon her feelings a sterner regimen than ever, she could not defend herself from a sweet and sentimental thrill—a thrill ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... revolution and relieve their feelings in regard to it. There is something still more appealing in the yearning efforts the immigrants sometimes make to formulate their situation in America. I recall a play written by an Italian playwright of our neighborhood, which depicted the insolent break between Americanized sons and old country parents, so touchingly that it moved to tears all the older Italians in the audience. Did the tears of each express relief in finding that others had had the same experience as himself, and did the knowledge ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... said Mr. Arbuton, "what an abominable scene!" His face was deadly pale, as he turned from these insolent intruders to his deliverer, whom he saluted, with a "Merci bien!" spoken in a cold, steady voice. Then he drew off his overcoat, which had been torn by the dog's teeth and irreparably dishonored in the encounter. He looked at it shuddering, with ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... finally burning them. The contemptuous disobedience of the people of Paris and their cruelty are frequent topics touched upon in Throkmorton's correspondence. He acknowledges himself to be afraid, because of "the daily despites, injuries, and threatenings put in use towards him and his by the insolent, raging people." He sees that "neither the authority of the king, the queen mother, or any other person can be sanctuary" for him; for they "daily most cruelly kill every person (no age or sex excepted) whom they take to be contrary to their religion, notwithstanding daily proclamations ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... were spared some trips to market, for the sale of vegetables to pay, as would then be necessary, for the work done by others. Besides, the tailor who was most convenient to them, and who, it was admitted, was a very good one, was insolent and capricious; would sometimes extort extravagant prices, or turn them into ridicule; and occasionally went so far as to set his water-dogs upon them, of which he kept a great number. He declared, that for his part he would incur a little ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... and grasped the dress over her bosom so tightly that the fabric was in danger of ripping. Her face, in the flickering light from the candle on the floor, was slightly in in the shadow, but Calumet could see that the color was coming back to her cheeks, and he took note of her, watching her with insolent intentness. ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... expression—the most galling of all sentiments to a proud mind. In the year 1709 he solicited peace on terms of most abject submission. The states-general, under the influence of the duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, rejected all his supplications, retorting unsparingly the insolent harshness with which he had formerly received similar proposals from them. France, roused to renewed exertions by the insulting treatment experienced by her humiliated but still haughty despot, made prodigious but vain efforts to repair her ruinous losses. In the following year Louis renewed ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... he believed, found the Garden of Eden and the river of Paradise. And here, as an end to it all, he was arrested by order of the king and queen he had tried to serve, his power and position were taken from him by an insolent and unpitying messenger from Spain; he was thrown into prison and after a few days he was hurried with his brothers on board a ship and sent to Spain for trial and punishment. How would it all turn out? Was it not a sad and sorry ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks
... too, have been often and justly controverted. The book is, undoubtedly, a storehouse of his prejudices, as well as of his wisdom. Its treatment of Milton, the man, for instance, is insufferably insolent, although ample justice is done to Milton, the poet of the "Paradise Lost." Some poetasters he has overpraised, and some true but minor poets he has thrust down too far in the scale. But the work, as a whole, is full of inextinguishable life, and has passages ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... same Sister of his you must have; if it be but to put this insolent Whore Flauntit out of favour, who manages this ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... a red ribbon round her neck; and her hair was done up carefully, the chignon being enclosed in a blue silk net. She stood an instant in the middle of the central alley, screwing up her eyes as though seeking someone; then, when she caught sight of Gervaise, she passed close to her, erect, insolent, and with a swinging gait, and took a place in the same row, five ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... could, soldering and tinning kettles and pans. "What do you want?" he asked, looking askance at me; and as I went out, I heard him bolt the door behind me. Alas! he was afraid—afraid that I was come to snatch his daily bread from him. His wife was a big-boned fleshy lump of a woman, insolent enough in her ways, though she had just been in prison for criminal abetment in the case of a girl that had got ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... for Hamlet—-he shed his inky cloak, and came out in a doublet of insolent splendor, looking like a dagger-handle newly gilt. With his funereal gear he appeared to have thrown off something of his sepulchral gloom. It was impossible to be gloomy with Juliet, in whom each day developed some sunny charm un-guessed before. Her freshness and ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... sit undisturbed for dance after dance. She was suffering ostracism. The more he talked to her the more he was puzzled. Even Arthur did not appear. Even the normal jealousy of a fiance was not evident. Orson's brain grew frantic for explanation. The girl was not wicked, nor insolent. She plainly had no contagious disease, no leprosy, no plague, not even a cold. Then ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... that clothes itself in the Satanic to terrify cowards is the vilest form of impudence venturing at insolence; and an insolent impudence with Jew features, the Jew nose and lips, is past endurance repulsive. She dismissed her contemplation of Alvan. Luckily for the gentleman who had compared her to the Jew politician, she did not meet ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... have your little joke, Jim," he said. "But now let's get down to business. The woman distrusts me and she has sent for this insolent cub lawyer—Washburn, his name is. He's been to see me already, the unwhipped pup," he went on, while in the shadows Allen's hands gripped themselves into fists, "trying to find out more about my client and John Josephs. Say, that's a good joke, Jim. Here ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... opened the disputation with a pompous and insolent speech about "one Campion," an "unnatural man to his country, degenerated from an Englishman, an apostate in religion, a fugitive from this realm, unloyal to his prince." Campion sat with his eyes cast down, until the ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... on the way, like two helpers. She profited by this circumstance, using the one to reach the other and to gain Rosas from the latter. She bore a grudge, nevertheless, against Guy de Lissac, the insolent and silly fellow who had formerly left her. Bah! before taking vengeance on him, it was most important to make use of him, and, after all, revenge is so wearisome ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... of the forfeiture of the fee, had reluctantly assented to the compromise. He was weary and sick. He would be glad, he wrote, never to hear the place named thenceforth. Not so easily could he divorce himself from it. There was his old bailiff, whose insolent persecution tied him to the estate. In April, 1610, Meere had the effrontery to offer to prove by a letter, probably forged, that Ralegh had promised him L100 a-year to conceal a set of frauds. His own heart cherished a lingering hope of a restoration of the property after all. In 1612 ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... tatters." It is by moderation sitting upon power that works of art truly masculine and mighty are produced; and by this sign they are marked off from the lower host of things, gorgeous and redundant, and still more from the order of "the loose, the lawless, the exaggerated, the insolent, and the profane." ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... having kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my pride show'd itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any point, but was overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinc'd me by mentioning several instances; I determined endeavouring to cure myself, if I could, of this vice or folly among the rest, and I added Humility to my list, giving an extensive ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin |
