"Insubordinate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mackintosh a very great puzzle. He had certainly been insubordinate in his first year (Mr. Mackintosh gravely suspected him of the Bread-and-Butter affair, which had so annoyed his colleague), but he certainly had been very steady and even deferential ever since. (He always took off his hat, for example, to ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... hero, who saw that "to rob and pill was a good life," he is not the dupe of that public sentiment against killing which is propagated and endowed by people who would otherwise be killed themselves, or of the mouth-honor paid to poverty and obedience by rich and insubordinate do-nothings who want to rob the poor without courage and command them without superiority. Froissart's knight, in placing the achievement of a good life before all the other duties—which indeed ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... morning dawns, let the boy go to school. As the sheep need the shepherd, so the boy needs a master; for he is at once the most cunning and the most insubordinate of creatures. Let him be taken away from mothers and nurses, and tamed with bit and bridle, being treated as a freeman in that he learns and is taught, but as a slave in that he may be chastised by all other freemen; and ...
— Laws • Plato
... take his food, or shows no disposition to run to his mother when he is hurt or when he is frightened, we have reason to suspect something wrong, or, at least, something abnormal, in his mental or physical constitution. But if he does not obey his mother's commands—no matter how insubordinate or unmanageable he may be—the fault does not, certainly, indicate any thing at all wrong in him. The fault is in his training. In witnessing his disobedience, our reflection should be, not "What a bad boy!" but "What an unfaithful ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... faults and training should be laid on the shoulders of those critics who shriek unreasonably of their weaknesses, while they do nothing to improve matters. Many of these gentlemen complain of Jack's drunken, insubordinate habits, while they do not disapprove of putting temptation in his way. They complain of him not being proficient, and at the same time they refuse to undertake the task of efficient training. They cherish the memory of the good old times. They speak reverently of the period of ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... that multitude has no claim to christian freedom who will do nothing, neither what the world nor what God requires, but abide in their insubordinate disposition, although they make their boast of ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... to submission, though decidedly insubordinate. She had once been fairly conquered: but if what she reverenced as a great mind could conquer her, it must be a great man that should hold her captive. The Autumn Primrose blooms for the loftiest manhood; is a vindictive flower in lesser hands. Nevertheless Sir Austin ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mysterious arrangements of brown shadows and cones and bars of light. At first many people were recalcitrant, and here and there a restaurant or a draper's window still blazed out and broke the gloom. There were also a number of insubordinate automobiles with big head-lights. But the police were being ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... described as a "New" monarch born before his time. He had some of the notions which the Tudors subsequently developed with success; but he had none of their power and self-control, and he was faced from his accession by a band of insubordinate uncles. Moreover, it needed the Wars of the Roses finally to convince the country of the meaning of the independence of the peerage. Richard fell a victim to his own impatience and their turbulence. Henry IV came to the throne as the king of the peers, and hardly maintained his uneasy crown ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... various matters of interest. The conquest of Mindanao has been practically effected. The numbers and power of the Chinese in the islands have been greatly reduced. A rising of the Zambales has been quelled. Insubordinate Spaniards have been punished; "on New Year's day, I had the entire city council arrested for an act of disobedience to me." Tello is improving the city, and is striving to secure a good water-supply. He has imprisoned Dasmarinas, for failure to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... broke down and individuality came to its own. Yet there had always been a clearly felt difference between the conclusions of the biological sciences and those dealing with lifeless substance, in the relative vagueness, the insubordinate looseness and inaccuracy of the former. The naturalist accumulated facts and multiplied names, but he did not go triumphantly from generalization to generalization after the fashion of the chemist or physicist. It is easy to see, therefore, how ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... Some have thought that this was a fatal miscalculation. The other causes of their ruin are obvious and are decisive. They ought to have been supported by the Bretons, and the Bretons were not ready. They ought to have been united, and they were bitterly divided and insubordinate. They ought to have created an impregnable fastness on the high ground above the Loire; but they had no defensive tactics, and when they occupied a town, would not wait for the attack, but retired, to have the unqualified ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... 3 the steamer returned, bringing Achmet Rafik and the sole surviving soldier from the Shir. This officer declared his men to have been insubordinate, and that they joined the natives against his orders to make an attack upon their enemies in return for attacks on ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... ally, and this act of liberality, which, it is true, had been approved and supported by Granvelle, could no longer be undone. Moreover, if he drew the sword, he must maintain the pretence that it was not done for the sake of religion, but solely to chastise the insubordinate Protestant princes, headed by the Elector John Frederick of Saxony and Philip of Hesse, who ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... she had said only a little boy and accustomed to do as he was told. He was also a fine, sturdy little Scot with a pride of his own. His breeding had been of the sort which did not include insubordinate scenes, so he got out of bed and began to dress. But his mother saw that ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... destined to cost them dear. In the course of a few months Alva, finding them still resolute in their refusal, quartered the regiment of Lombardy upon them, and employed other coercive measures to bring them to reason. The rude, insolent, unpaid and therefore insubordinate soldiery were billeted in every house in the city, so that the insults which the population were made to suffer by the intrusion of these ruffians at their firesides would soon, it was thought, compel ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to such thin shreds that eyes keen as Jack's must see and know him as he was. What was hatefulest and most unendurable of all was the bondage of truce in which the Atterburys held him. Wesley was no coward, and he ached to meet Jack face to face, arm to arm, and settle with that thoughtless insubordinate a rankling list of griefs heaped up in moments of over-vivacious frankness. He would make Jack smart for his arrogance, his insolence, his cursed condescension so soon as they ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... So when first arraigned, he tried to avoid pleading (ibid., 287), but he was tried first for the murder of William Moore, on which the passes had no bearing. William Moore was an insubordinate gunner; after an altercation, Kidd hit him on the head with a bucket, and he died. It was probably manslaughter, but the jury sustained the indictment for murder. After being condemned for murder, Kidd was tried (unfairly in several particulars) ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... to have a good deal of his time to himself, had been rather cross about it. Not that he dared show any temper to Lady Anne, who was easy and kindly with her servants, as a rule, but could reduce an insubordinate one to humble submission as well as any old lady ever could. But Mary, who knew the household pretty well by this time, knew that Jennings was out of temper by the set of his shoulders, as she surveyed them from her seat in the barouche. It was a road, too, he never liked to take, because ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... comes to the aid of a fool,' he answered. 'Perhaps it is as well, otherwise the world would fall too completely into the power of the astute. So, you have killed Chenier, I see. He was an insubordinate dog, and always smelt abominably of garlic. Might I trouble you to lay me upon the bed? The floor of these Portuguese tabernas is hardly a fitting couch for anyone who has prejudices in favour ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... children, His beloved ones too, Ye need,—as I should use an optic glass I wondered at erewhile, somewhere i' the world, It had been given a crafty smith to make; A tube, he turned on objects brought too close, {230} Lying confusedly insubordinate For the unassisted eye to master once: Look through his tube, at distance now they lay, Become succinct, distinct, so small, so clear! Just thus, ye needs must apprehend what truth {235} I see, reduced to plain historic fact, Diminished into clearness, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... powers are not co-ordinate with those to which this nation owes its virtue and its prosperity. Here is, in one case, a sudden formal abstraction of a vital principle, and in both an unnatural and violent pushing on. Mechanics' Institutes make discontented spirits and insubordinate and presumptuous workmen. Such at least was the opinion of Watt, one of the most experienced and intelligent of men. And instruction, where religion is expressly excluded, is little less to be dreaded than that by which it is trodden ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... prose-writer in his own style of the nineteenth century, was born at Ipsley Court, in Warwickshire, on the 30th of January 1775— the anniversary of the execution of Charles I. He was educated at Rugby School and at Oxford; but his fierce and insubordinate temper— which remained with him, and injured him all his life— procured his expulsion from both of these places. As heir to a large estate, he resolved to give himself up entirely to literature; and he ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... number of days and sometimes a man is revocated, which means he is sent home without being paid for the six months or year previously. In this way men who drink hard when they have the opportunity, who are habitually insubordinate, or who are undesirable, are weeded out rapidly. Penal offences are of course tried in the Courts and punished with imprisonment. It is indeed curious after travelling in America and our colonies, to find, sturdy, rough, independent characters behaving with extraordinary meekness and docility. ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... continued. "The whole camp turned out to save the lake, to stem the flood. But you were not here. Your companions in our troop worked till they were dog tired. But where were you? Helping? No, you were off on some vagabond journey—disobedient, insubordinate." ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... become a wild insubordinate boy, and the only school in which I could properly be taught was that world-wide school which awaited me, in which Toil and Hardship are the severe but noble teachers. I got into sad scrapes. Quarrelling, on one occasion, with a boy of my own standing, we exchanged blows across the form; and when ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... But Bouquet was insubordinate. He did not intend to be cheated out of his fun by any orders that "Straw-nose" should give him. Instead of obeying his commander, he sang out a contemptuous refusal, and dashed ahead, as if to supplant his general in the post of leader of ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... needs a combination of independence and discipline which is not common, and where it does not exist parliaments speedily degenerate either into an assemblage of puppets in the hands of party leaders or into disintegrated, demoralised, insubordinate groups. Some of the foremost nations of the world—nations distinguished for noble and brilliant intellect; for splendid heroism; for great achievements in peace and war—have in this form of government conspicuously failed. In England it has grown with our growth ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... regiment with which I now am have been highly satisfactory to me. I took it in a very disorganized, demoralized and insubordinate condition, and have worked it up to a reputation equal to the best, and, I believe, with the good will of all the officers and all the men. Hearing that I was likely to be promoted, the officers, with great unanimity, have requested to be attached to my command. This ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... chasing the larger cage. They were not hostile to Larry and presently made friends with him. They were Princess Tina and a young scientist named Harl, both of the world of 2930. The two cages had come from 2930. The larger one had been stolen by an insubordinate Robot named ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... Steno, one of those young and insubordinate gallants who are a danger to every aristocratic state, having been turned out of the presence of the Dogaressa for some unseemly freedom of behavior, wrote upon the chair of the Doge in boyish petulance an insulting taunt, such as might well rouse ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... though in a passionless way, and he would have preferred to talk business when obliged to talk horse. But he deferred to his business superior with the sense of discipline which is innate in the apparently insubordinate American nature. If Corey could hardly have helped feeling the social difference between Lapham and himself, in his presence he silenced his traditions, and showed him all the respect that he could have exacted from any of his clerks. He ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... day at Saint-Cloud, Jean thought himself unhappy, and unhappy he became in fact. He was wilfully, deliberately insubordinate, proud of breaking ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... older than his friend by several years. He was of an unruly and insubordinate temper, and did as little work as he pleased at home. He often remarked that he would like to see who could make him do what he ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... who attempted to domesticate the natives of the Mariveles coast was stoned by them, and died in Manila in consequence. An insubordinate Archbishop was once banished to Mariveles. Through the narrow channel between this port and Corregidor Island, known as Boca chica, came swarms of Asiatic trading-junks every spring for over two centuries. Forming the extreme point of Manila Bay, here was naturally the watchguard ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Dread an insubordinate temper, and deal with it as one of the greatest evils. Let the child feel by your manner that he is not a safe companion for the rest of the family when he is in anger. Allow no one to speak to him at such times, not even to answer a question. Take from him books, and whatever ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... given them as a cause for unmercifulness. The more time changed his army from the feudal gathering of English country gentlemen and yeomen to mercenary bands of men-at-arms, the mere greedy, rapacious, and insubordinate became their temper. Well knowing the greatness of the peril, and that the very best of his captains had scarcely the will, if they had the power, to restrain the license that soon became barbarity unimaginable, he spoke sadly overnight of his dread of the day of surrender, when it might ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or insulting One month's confinement at hard language or behaving in an labor and forfeiture of $10; for insubordinate manner to a noncommissioned officer, reduction noncommissioned officer while in addition thereto. in the execution of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... nevertheless had completely the superiority: Ralegh's only son was killed; and the captain who had the charge of the expedition was so disheartened that he committed suicide. These disasters involved the utter failure of the expedition. His crews, who were naturally insubordinate, quarrelled among themselves, and on the voyage home the fleet dispersed. Ralegh came back to England without an ounce of gold, and without having effected any result whatever: he appeared in the light of an adventurer ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... last to deny; but that they were in the main a quarrelsome, intractable, mutinous, and mischief-making element in our armies during the Revolution, is not to be gainsaid. I know, of my own knowledge, how their fractious and insubordinate conduct grieved and sorely disheartened poor Montgomery while we lay before Quebec. I could tell many tales, too, of the harm they did to the cause in New York State, by their prejudices against us, and their narrow spite against ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Lady Dunstane soothed him during the term of a visit that was rather like purgatory sweetened by angelical tears. He was glad to go, wretched in having gone. She diverted the incessant conflict between his insubordinate self and his castigating, but avowedly sovereign, principle. Away from her, he was the victim of a flagellation so dire that it almost drove him to revolt against the lord he served, and somehow the many memories at Copsley kept him away. Sir Lukin, when speaking of Diana's 'engagement ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... foundationers of the Great Shirley School. The person who can doubtless tell me most is Kathleen O'Hara. The mere fact of her defying my authority and refusing to come to see me when she is summoned, shows that she is insubordinate as far as this school ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... honour is at stake." Yet, of course, her guardian was bound to resist. The fight between her will and his was natural and necessary. It was the clash of two generations, two views of life. She was not merely the wilful and insubordinate girl she would have been before the war; she saw herself, at any rate, as something much more interesting. All over the world there was the same breaking of bonds; and the same instinct towards violence. "The ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the defiant and insubordinate chieftain for an instant, his expression one of haughty, fearless contempt and hate, and then without drawing a weapon and without uttering a word he hurled himself at ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... know his pleasure. None of them returned. A female emissary was equally unavailing. Week after week elapsed, until nearly three months had expired. Provisions began to fail. The city was in confusion. The troops grew insubordinate. Yet Sir Henry persisted in the defence. General Fairfax, with 1,500 horse and foot, was daily expected. There was not powder enough for an hour's contest should the city be stormed. Still Sir Henry "awaited his ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... "Insubordinate wretch!" cried the colonel, the ends of his moustache looking fiercer than ever, and his eyes gleaming with anger, for after ruling as despot over his regiment for so many years, the lack of deference shown by a mere civilian was a distinct trial to the flesh. "There's a good deal to ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... himself so well. All would seem to have been in order in the centre of the kingdom; the Borders were as quiet as it was possible for the Borders to be; and only the remote Highlands and islands remained still insubordinate, in merely nominal subjection to the laws of the kingdom. James, we are told, had long intended to make one of the royal raids so familiar to Scottish history among his doubtful subjects of these parts, and accordingly ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... I won't, sir. I'm sorry to appear insubordinate, but I've got to refuse—I simply must. I've never shirked a duty before, as I think you will admit, Mr. Blaine. I have always carried out the missions you entrusted to me to the best of my ability, no matter what the odds against me, and in this case I have gone ahead conscientiously ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... to degrade ourselves by meaningless and humiliating gestures. The N.C.O.'s are almost as bad. If you answer a sergeant as you would a foreman, you are impertinent; if you argue with him, as all good Scotsmen must, you are insubordinate; if you endeavour to drive a collective bargain with him, you are mutinous; and you are reminded that upon active service mutiny is punishable by death. It is all very ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... That any mind, even an imaginative one, could pass beneath the sway of such a fancy was strange enough; and Hibbert, while fully aware of the disorder, yet found a curious joy in yielding to it. This insubordinate centre that drew him towards old pagan beliefs had assumed command. With a kind of sensuous pleasure he let ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... produced by the presence of the English Militia in Ireland, led Lord Grenville to desire the extension of a service which, in many points of view, was admirably calculated to check the insubordinate temper of the people. The English character offered an example of steadiness and discipline which could hardly fail to make some impression on the disordered masses of the population; while the independence of all local interests and sectarian prejudices displayed by those ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... with this order, or at least with its many attachments thereto; and stretch to the wider span demanded by the new and larger world. And further, it is in possession of a complex psychic life, containing many insubordinate elements, many awkward bequests from a primitive past. That psychic life has just received the powerful and direct suggestion of the Spirit; and for the moment, it is subdued to that suggestion. But soon it begins to experience ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... I was a pupil in the Kansas City, Missouri, High School, the stepson of a United States Circuit judge made a brutally rude and insubordinate reply to a woman teacher who said to him, in reference to an excuse which he had given for tardiness, "That is not a good excuse." The young man turned an insolent eye upon the teacher—a gray-haired woman—and replied, "It's good enough for me. What are you going ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... insubordinate man who was a perfect moral character," said the Rector. "It is very discouraging altogether; and you thought he was engaged to Wodehouse's pretty daughter, didn't you? I hope not—I sincerely hope not. That would make things ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... vivacity. Roderick watched her keenly. Mr. and Mrs. Scobel went back to their business of getting the children together, and the pots, pans, and baskets packed for the return-journey. The children were inclined to be noisy and insubordinate. They would have liked to make a night of it in this woody hollow, or in the gorse-clothed heights up yonder by Stony Cross. To home after such a festival, and be herded in small stuffy cottages, was doubtless ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... the men grew more and more intractable and insubordinate. That day, when Madden had ordered Heck Mulcher to paint in a certain place, the navvy had grumbled out a "That's all very well for you, sir," and the rest ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... Suddenly, however, a change came over this cheering scene. The misconduct of a few white men disturbed the harmony of a wide region. The Indians were oppressed and insulted to the last point of forbearance, and a small but restless band, regarded as insubordinate and troublesome even by their own nation, seized upon the occasion ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... reason, or affects to supersede the reason, it is then what St. Paul calls the mind of the flesh ([Greek text]), or the wisdom of this world. The result is, that the reason is superfinite; and in this relation, its antagonist is the insubordinate understanding, or ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Then," continued Archer, "I asked Willett in so many words if it were true that he had struck 'Tonio with a gauntlet that night at Bennett's, and he said, reluctantly, it was—that 'Tonio had been insolent, insubordinate, that that was the way he had always dealt with such cases. Perhaps with men like 'Tonio it was all wrong, but he had never met Indians like 'Tonio before. I told him gravely that he had made a serious error, and that he should lose no time in getting ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... in Gonzaga quickly, "you bring us back to the main issue. Such a leader you have shown us that you are not. You have done worse. You have been insubordinate when you should not only have been orderly, but have enforced orderliness in others. And for that, by my lights, you should be hanged. Waste no more time on him, Madonna," he concluded, turning to Valentina. "Let the example ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... those days, when the schoolmaster had made but little progress, in the Navy especially, and not much on shore, it was difficult to obtain good and steady warrant officers, and I was especially troubled with a drunken boatswain, gunner, and carpenter. Drunk or sober, they were constantly insubordinate, setting a bad example to the crew, and quarrelling with each other. I determined, however, to master them, and compel them to do their duty, or get them dismissed from the service. As I was the only officer in the ship directly over them, my task ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... if the inhabitants, in their enforced idleness, had any temptation to be insubordinate, they had a far greater inducement to keep the law in the bridled savagery of the German gendarmerie. These creatures, who from the color of their uniform and the brutality of their conduct were known as the "green devils," seemed to revel in sheer cruelty. They scour the towns on bicycles and ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... arrival of Kossuth in England brought on another crisis. Palmerston's desire to receive the Hungarian patriot at his house in London was vetoed by Lord John; once more there was a sharp struggle; once more Palmerston, after threatening resignation, yielded. But still the insubordinate man could not keep quiet. A few weeks later a deputation of Radicals from Finsbury and Islington waited on him at the Foreign Office and presented him with an address, in which the Emperors of Austria and Russia were stigmatised as "odious and detestable assassins" ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... remarkable and happy characteristic, as contrasted with the cities of Catholic Europe. Abroad, even in Catholic countries, if there be in any part of their territory scepticism and insubordination in religion, cities are the seat of the mischief. Even Rome itself has its insubordinate population, and its concealed free-thinkers; even Belgium, that nobly Catholic country, cannot boast of the religious loyalty of its great towns. Such a calamity is unknown to the Catholicism of Dublin, Cork, Belfast, and the other cities of Ireland; for, to say nothing of higher ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the law into one's own hands; kick over the traces. turn restive, run restive; champ the bit; strike &c. (resist) 719; rise, rise in arms; secede; mutiny, rebel. Adj. disobedient; uncomplying, uncompliant; unsubmissive[obs3], unruly, ungovernable; breachy[obs3], insubordinate, impatient of control, incorrigible; restiff|, restive; refractory, contumacious, recusant &c. (refuse) 764; recalcitrant; resisting &c. 719; lawless, mutinous, seditions, insurgent, riotous. unobeyed[obs3]; unbidden. Phr. seditiosissimus quisque ignavus [Lat][Tacitus]; "unthread ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... yours, into capital, and came to town and started this bank. When I was younger than you, my son, I went into the bank and stood at my father's right hand, as I wish you—for your own sake—to do by me. We are a set race—a determined race, but we are not an insubordinate ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... been one of perpetual friction. Wilkins's irritable pride would yield nothing, either in the House or in the Clarion office, to Wharton's university education and class advantages, while Wharton watched with alarm the growing influence of this insubordinate and hostile member of his own staff on those labour circles from which the ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... painful episode in Australian annals. Ten Europeans and three Sepoys accompanied the expedition, which was soon torn by internal dissensions. Near Menindie on the Darling, Landells, Burke's second in command, became insubordinate and resigned, his example being followed by the doctor—a German. On the 11th of November Burke, with Wills and five assistants, fifteen horses and sixteen camels, reached Cooper's Creek in Queensland, where a depot was formed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... finely-drawn brows and with thick lashes, golden-brown, and curling up at the tips. Peculiar eyes: Mrs Gildea, who knew them well, never could decide their exact colour. The nose was a delicate aquiline, the chin pointed. An untidy mass of wavy chestnut hair stuck out in uneven puffs and insubordinate curls, all round the small head. At this moment Mrs Gildea remembered a suggestive charm sent to Lady Bridget by her cousin, Chris Gaverick, one Christmas, ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... civilian; it's quite different in the army." Then I got cross and said: "That's all very well, Jeno, but you are not an officer yourself, so I don't see how you can know anything about it." Then he said to Hella: "I say, Ilonka, you must keep your friend in better order, she is rather inclined to be insubordinate." She is to make a written note of every act of insubordination, and then he will administer exemplary punishment. All very fine, but it will take ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... the staff quarters very badly disposed towards the little upstart dispatched them from Paris. On the strength of the description of him that has been given them, Augereau is inclined to be insolent and insubordinate; a favourite of Barras, a general who owes his rank to the events of Vendemiaire who has won his grade by street-fighting, who is looked upon as bearish, because he is always thinking in solitude, of poor aspect, ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... from his chair and took two or three turns across the frayed strips of carpet. His eyes were no longer the eyes of a father irritated by the insubordinate fret of a fledgling son begging permission to test his wings. His bearded face bore the seamed uncertainty of his deeply vexed spirit. Perhaps in that moment there came to him some sense of conversion to the prophet-like assurance of his ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... expression in outward punishment maltreatment or death. Among men, punishments for the immoral and outward honors for the virtuous antedate history. Decorations, tattoos, songs, for the conspicuously brave and efficient, death or some lesser penalty for the cowardly, the traitorous, the insubordinate, figure largely in primitive life. These honors are capricious, uncertain, and transitory; but they are undoubtedly more stimulating to the savage, who lives in the moment, than they are in the more complex existence of the modern man. And while in general the savage is more callous ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... ecclesiastics under censure have recourse to the Audiencia against the archbishop's authority, and this soon leads to hostilities between the religious and secular branches of the government. Next the cathedral chapter become insubordinate to Pardo, their proper head, and they too appeal to the Audiencia; and a long legal war ensues, in which the weapons are official acts on both sides. At last (in 1682) the Audiencia decree Pardo's banishment from his see, but hold this measure in suspense ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... the portico in front of the arsenal, all covered me with rifles. The captain turned to a trusty and told him to call the warden. The warden came out, and the captain told him I was trying to run double on my extra, and said I was impudent and insubordinate and refused to fall in. The warden said, 'Drop that and fall in.' I told him I wouldn't fall in. I said I hadn't run double, that I hadn't got my extra, and that I would stay there till I died before I would be robbed of ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... The men became conscious that the eyes of their superiors were on them at all times, and that the slightest breach of discipline on their part was sure to be detected and reported. The force became attentive and efficient, as if by magic. Incompetent and insubordinate members were thrown out, and good men put in their places. Matters continued to improve, until now, after a lapse of nearly eight years, the city has the best ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... state, and his polite, but unequivocal ultimatum to its insubordinate chief had been carried through, not without moments of uncertainty and danger, yet with complete success, and throughout the past six weeks he had been enjoying his first big tour of that strange region of raised valleys and vast, wind-swept ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... lie in the streets." The system of convict-management at that date was one of compulsory labor, or mostly so. This plan tended to produce tyranny, insubordination, deception, vice, and "the social evil." In the case of men, Captain Mackonochie testified that they were sullen, lazy, insubordinate and vicious; the women, if not engaged quickly in respectable domestic service, and desirous of being kept respectable, become curses to the colony. But by the means adopted by Mrs. Fry each woman was enabled to earn sufficient money to provide for board and lodging until some ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... the critical moment the Greeks always appear to have lost faith in their leaders, and to have behaved in a disorderly and insubordinate manner. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 28, May 20, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... The first attempt at mutiny being thus happily suppressed, it is to be hoped that Curtis will succeed as well in future. An insubordinate crew would render ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... who proved insubordinate were summoned to the camp of the Horde and there tried and executed. Rivals sought the khan, to buy power by presents. During their journeys, which occupied a year or more, the Tartar bashaks ruled their dominions. Tartar armies aided the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... enough to make him insubordinate; and the days when Lord Northmoor gave permission for shooting or for inviting his companions for a share in the sport, were days of mutual offence, when the balance of provoking sneer and angry insult would be difficult to cast, ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... colonies that would do nothing to aid her, came more and more to value her overseas possessions for their commercial importance, classing as valuable assets those that advanced her prosperity, and treating as insubordinate those that disregarded the acts of trade and thwarted her policy. The independence that Massachusetts claimed was diametrically opposed to the growing English notion that a colony should be subordinate and dependent, should obey the acts of trade and navigation, ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... determined on asking the captain to set him on shore, that he might wait at Juan Fernandez the passing of some other ship in which he might return home. The captain agreed to this proposal willingly enough, glad to dismiss from his crew so insubordinate a sailor; and just before the Clinque Ports was about to weigh anchor, the adventurous seaman was sent on shore with the few things that belonged to him. He sprang from the boat almost before her keel had grazed the sand, wishing to appear gay ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... They were persistent and almost insubordinate in expressing their conviction that the measure was wholly uncalled-for, that the sepoys were thoroughly loyal, and that, notwithstanding what had occurred in other places, they had perfect confidence in ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... bad, untruthful man, and he had no confidence in his flippant faith in the cowardice of the disciples, and of the people. Annas believed in his own power, but he feared bloodshed, feared a serious riot, such as the insubordinate, irascible people of Jerusalem lent itself to so easily; he feared, in fact, the violent intervention of the Roman authorities. Fanned by opposition, fertilised by the red blood of the people, which vivifies everything on which it falls, the heresy would grow stronger, and stifle in its folds Annas, ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... old-fashioned ships, but an old-fashioned ship she was indeed. We even had hempen cables instead of chain ones! The crew, drawn almost exclusively from the lists of registered seamen, was active and bold on the rigging, but somewhat insubordinate. The words of command were given amidst volleys of oaths, and carried out under a hail of blows dealt by the petty officers. The superior officers, who had all belonged to the old Imperial Navy, clung to that detestable habit, which has cost us so many reverses, of completely neglecting the ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... mean the abolition of democracy. Communism, equal rewards for all, would lead to the tyranny of the many over the few, and would stifle all motives to excel. Well might the Fabians ask: "Since we are too dishonest for Communism without taxation or compulsory labour, and too insubordinate to tolerate task work under personal compulsion, how can we order the transition so as to introduce just distribution without Communism and maintain the incentive to labour without mastership?"[1066] Unfortunately for the Socialists, that ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... his cabin with Captain Alden, the Master faced the insubordinate member of his crew with an expression of hard implacability. The captain stood there determinedly confronting him. His right hand held to the table for support. His left sleeve was sodden with blood; the left arm, thrust into the breast of his ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... The request was granted, and a body of German warriors returned with the ambassadors to the rescue of Tusculum. They soon perceived that, although the Romans had the advantage of numbers, they were so imperfectly drilled and so insubordinate that the chances were equal for both sides. The battle was opened at nine o'clock on the morning of Whit-Monday, May 30, 1167. The twelve hundred Germans, led by Christian, archbishop of Mayence, and three ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... in easy circumstances, in a decent little house which had been acquired by the sale of those wretched portraits and holy pictures; that Clara ... or Katya, whichever you choose to call her, had astonished every one ever since her childhood by her talent, but was of an insubordinate, capricious disposition, and was constantly quarrelling with her father; that having an inborn passion for the theatre, she had run away from the parental house at the age of sixteen ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... discover this opinion in Private McCuaig, and that he should consider the holding of this opinion as a tendency toward insubordination. It was also inevitable that the sergeant major should order a course of special fatigues calculated to subdue the spirit of the insubordinate private. ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... matter come fairly before the public, in the shape of a court-martial, which was, shortly afterwards, held at Brighton. This court confined itself chiefly to the consideration of the second letter written by Capt. Reynolds, which they conceived to be couched in a spirit so insubordinate, ungentlemanly, and insolent, as to afford the writer no sort of excuse, or palliation for his conduct, on the alleged grounds of previous provocation on the part of his commanding officer, and they adjudged that Capt. Reynolds should be ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... a state of the body that is called locomotor-ataxy. This state is one in which the man who manifests it is unable to control properly the movements of his feet and legs. He has lost command from the supreme cerebral centre; the lower nerve ganglia seem to have become insubordinate and to act on their own initiative. But is locomotor-ataxy a disease? Clearly your answer will depend upon whether you are on the side of the man or the microbe. If you sympathize with the man and are thinking of him, it is a disease; ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... from the shore. A basket of provisions had been placed in the boat, and before we had been very long out at sea, George insisted upon its being unpacked, threatening Aleck that he should be reported as insubordinate unless he consumed precisely the quantity of wine and the whole amount of cold chicken dealt out ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... secure their patronage, is,—'The successful prosecution of our scheme will remove the chief source of danger to yourselves, and enable you to hold your property in greater security: the presence of free persons of color among your slaves is eminently calculated to make them insubordinate, and to procure their violent emancipation.' This argument, I say, is introduced into every conversation, and every public address, and every essay; and whoever carefully consults the numbers of the African Repository, through seven volumes, will find it repeated ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... cause every association with him in the heart of the parent to be disturbing and painful, how can the result be otherwise than alienating and depressing? Let there be two children in a family, one of whom is invariably obedient, gentle, attentive, ingenuous; the other, irritable, insubordinate, careless, secretive, and untruthful. The former shall be idolized, while the latter is regarded with condemnatory repugnance. The fact that a boy is your son, or that a girl is your daughter, cannot wholly neutralize the repulsiveness of their odious traits. When children ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... with regard to the qualifications of members; but I hold it my duty to recommend to you, in the interests of peace and the interests of union, the admission of every State to its share in public legislation when, however insubordinate, insurgent, or rebellious its people may have been, it presents itself, not only in an attitude of loyalty and harmony, but in the persons of representatives whose loyalty can not be questioned under any existing constitutional ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... of the 15th which were communicated to the army in the morning. That Porter should be unfriendly to Burnside was not strange, for it had by this time become known that the dispatches of August 27th to 30th were relied upon by General Pope's friends to show Porter's hostile and insubordinate spirit in that campaign. The court-martial was still impending over Porter, and he had been allowed to take the field only at McClellan's special request. Although Burnside had not dreamed of doing Porter an ill service, his transmittal of the dispatches ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... same self he had had the morning before. He refused the event of the past night—denied it had ever been—and was successful in his denial. He had not done any such thing—not he himself. Whatever there might be lay at the door of a stupid, insubordinate servant. ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... which was lying in the harbour was ashore with a press-gang. The drunkard went and declared that the Veteran's father had been insubordinate, and showed a bruised face in evidence. So in the grey of the morning the naval officer and half-a-dozen seamen came under the barque's quarter and climbed aboard. The old man was walking the deck, being very much perturbed about the last night's affray, and he grasped ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... fiscal or military unification that we who desire its continuance must look to hold it together. There never was anything like it before. Essentially it is an adventure of the British spirit, sanguine, discursive, and beyond comparison insubordinate, adaptable, and originating. It has been made by odd and irregular means by trading companies, pioneers, explorers, unauthorised seamen, adventurers like Clive, eccentrics like Gordon, invalids like Rhodes. It has been made, in ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... impudent and insubordinate act which had ever been done to Mr Paton for years, and it was now his turn to be angry. But mastering his anger with admirable determination, he merely said, "Evson, you must be beside yourself this morning; it is very rarely, indeed, that a new boy is so far gone in disobedience ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... me why it is that you—a Parisian artisan, the type of a class the most insubordinate, the most self-conceited that exists on the face of earth—take without question, with so docile a submission, the orders of a man who plainly tells you he does not sympathise in your ultimate objects, of whom you really know very little, and whose ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the honour to report further explorations of the course of the river Vaea, with accompanying sketch plan. The party under my command consisted of one horse, and was extremely insubordinate and mutinous, owing to not being used to go into the bush, and being half-broken anyway - and that the wrong half. The route indicated for my party was up the bed of the so-called river Vaea, which ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the mercy of his servants, who, insolent and insubordinate, robbed, laughed at, and neglected him. The waste and expense were enormous. Our hero, who found how matters stood, soon resolved what ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... its most startling form; in the New Testament it is exhibited, alike by St. Paul and by St. Paul's Master, as a manifestation of love—not vindictive, but remedial. The disciplining love of a human father is used to illustrate the Divine dealings with insubordinate mankind. About Nature we need scarcely argue. "In the physical world there is no forgiveness of sins," and rebellion against the laws of righteous living brings penal consequences which no one can ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... armies but the Canadians laid down their arms. Currie had not finished his work. He had planned the whole hundred days, beginning with Cambrai, and the apex of that achievement after the breaking of the infallible Hindenburg line, was the recapture of Mons. He was once more "insubordinate". He did not seem to pay respect to the armistice. His men had often said that they wanted to fight Heine on German soil. Denied that, at least they wanted a chance to be part of the army of occupation, ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino |
