"Obduracy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... low on that visit to town, for the main purpose of his presence was medicinal. "I have only seen Brown, the surgeon," he writes, "to whom, I have made an auricular confession, and from him have received extreme unction, and applied it, which may soften the obduracy of my ear, and make it capable of receiving the impression of ten thousand lies which will be poured into it as soon as I shall take my seat ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... and enlarged spiritual impulses are the enginery that is driving their minds and bodies forward into virgin territory, into new and larger enterprises, and thus into a wider, deeper realization of their own capabilities. So the leaven of democracy is working through difficulties of surpassing obduracy and resolving situations that seemed, in the past, to be beyond human achievement. And of democracy it may be said, as of Dame Rumor of old, "She grows strong by motion and gains power by going. Small at first through fear, she presently raises ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... earth, the water that would enrich it, the heat that would ripen it, tear it when caged up. So in her bosom even now; the strongest qualities she possessed, long turned upon themselves, became a heap of obduracy, that rose ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... his countrymen, though only one portion of them had done him any wrong, while the other, the better and nobler portion, had actually suffered, as well as sympathized, with him. And, secondly, by the obduracy with which he resisted numerous embassies and supplications, addressed in propitiation of his single anger and offense, he showed that it had been to destroy and overthrow, not to recover and regain his country, that he had excited bitter and implacable hostilities against it. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... place is derived from letting lodgings. Carpetless, dreary barracks the rooms usually are, with an uncompromising squareness of prints upon the wall, an appalling breadth of husk-bed, a niggardness of wash-bowl, and an obduracy of sofa, never, never to be dissociated in their victim's mind from the idea of the villanous hard bread of Venice on which the gloomy landlady sustains her life with its immutable purposes of plunder. Flabbiness without softness ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... than ever penetrated the study. The crowd had again started cheering. Impatient as the watchers were, they felt that no news was good news. The longer the interview accorded by the Home Secretary to the chairman of the Defense Committee, the greater the hope his obduracy was melting. The idol of the people would be saved, and "Grodman" and "Tom Mortlake" were mingled in the ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... Indies to know exactly the relation in which she stood to her father. However, he went on to relate how she had been born to him by a beautiful mulatto, for whom he had given a great sum; yet at this she startled not, moved not, blushed not. But hers was not the calmness of obduracy, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... hour. He shook his head, and the bandages hid the tears that came to his smarting eyes. He had made arrangements to be read aloud to, he said; and as for music, that must wait awhile. The kind woman retired dismayed,—she could not understand such obduracy,—and her husband felt rebuffed. Stannard of the cavalry, too, came in with his gentle wife. She was loved throughout the regiment for her kindliness and grace of mind, as well as for her devotion to the sick and suffering in the old days ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... her flighty head crammed with scraps of idiotic romance, would elope without regard for the canons of romance? Not so; depend upon it, a letter was left upon her pin-cushion announcing her removal with you, and in the most approved heroic style arraigning the obduracy of her unsympathetic grandchildren. D'ye think Gerald Allonby will not follow her? Sure, and he will; and the proof is," I added, "that you may hear his horses yonder on the heath, as I heard ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... sure ye will now, f'r the Orphanage.' But Mr. Jones was obdurate. Well, then, he would give a few pounds of tea and sugar? But he was right out of both commodities. Some of his fine eggs, or, maybe, a young pig? Mr. Jones continued in his obduracy. He was a poor man, he said, and could not afford ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... her husband and his adherents. After prophesying how it all must end in the ruin of her daughter Julia, she declared that she would never speak on this subject again: she showed herself ready, with maternal resignation, and in silent obduracy, to witness the completion of the sacrifice of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... gazing on its doomed magnificence, been discoursing on the appalling desolation which awaited that loved and time-honoured sanctuary. This had led Him to the more sublime and terrific theme of a Day of Judgment. Not only did He foresee the grievous obduracy of His own infatuated countrymen, but His Omniscient eye, travelling down to the consummation of all things, wept over the fate of myriads, who, in spite of atoning love and mercy, were to ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... the pleasure with which Natura found his father was apprized of this affair, without being obliged to relate it himself, as he was now determined to have done:—all his obduracy being now intirely vanquished, and converted into the most tender, affectionate, and ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... the address of Peter on the day of Pentecost. Immediately after the outpouring of the Spirit at that period an abundant blessing followed the proclamation of the gospel. But though Jesus often mourned over the obduracy of His countrymen, and though the truth, preached by His disciples, was often more effective than when uttered by Himself, it cannot with propriety be said that His own evangelical labours were unfruitful. The one hundred and twenty, who met in an upper room during the interval between ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... N. obstinateness &c. adj.; obstinacy, tenacity; cussedness [U. S.]; perseverance &c. 604a; immovability; old school; inflexibility &c. (hardness) 323; obduracy, obduration[obs3]; dogged resolution; resolution &c. 604; ruling passion; blind side. self-will, contumacy, perversity; pervicacy|, pervicacity[obs3]; indocility[obs3]. bigotry, intolerance, dogmatism; opiniatry|, opiniativeness; fixed idea &c. (prejudgment) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... redeem men, and to open salvation to those who seek it. But men render themselves so unworthy of it, that it is right that God should refuse to some, because of their obduracy, what He grants to others from a compassion which is not due to them. If He had willed to overcome the obstinacy of the most hardened, He could have done so by revealing Himself so manifestly to ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... felt his own practised obduracy of feeling strangely giving way before the innocent and guileless faith of Christine, was not unwilling himself to change the direction of the inquiries. The family of Balthazar was directed to retire, and the attendants were commanded to ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... with his eloquence. The parson did so by citing to the girl texts from the Bible enjoining matrimony as a duty. But she beat him at his own game, telling him to take his Bible when he got home and look at 2 Sam. xii. 7, which would explain her obduracy. He did so, and found this: "And Nathan said to David, thou art the man." The parson took the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... saw that his poet was fascinated, and he was unlikely to tolerate any outspoken protest on the part of his protege. There is no clue to the lady's identity, and speculation on the topic is useless. She may have given Shakespeare hints for his pictures of the 'dark lady,' but he treats that lady's obduracy conventionally, and his vituperation of her sheds no light on the personal history of the mistress who left him ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... repartee of Pope, of which Johnson was not informed. Johnson, after justly censuring him for having 'nursed in his mind a foolish dis-esteem of Kings,' tells us, 'yet a little regard shewn him by the Prince of Wales melted his obduracy; and he had not much to say when he was asked by his Royal Highness, how he could love a Prince, while he disliked Kings[176]?' The answer which Pope made, was, 'The young lion is harmless, and even playful; but when his claws are full grown he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... a tantalising little devil," said James, his dull brain seeking vainly a clue to the cause of Flamby's obduracy. ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... proved the successful messenger of Providence, when every other failed! It has gone out into the "highways and hedges," and "compelled them to come in," when no entreaty or remonstrance could overcome the obduracy of sinners, and thus has replenished the table of mercy with thankful guests. It cannot be doubted, that a part of the felicity of glorified spirits in eternity will consist in tracing the mysterious ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... Jane was obduracy itself in respect to his pleadings. A certain light in her eyes had, at last, brought conviction to his soul. He began to fear—with a mighty pain—that she would not retreat from the stand she ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... to bandy words with you," cried the monk; "the flames which you will feel to-morrow will give you a foretaste of those you will have to endure throughout eternity as the consequence of your obduracy." ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... directions, but especially agitating matters that concern the conscience and spiritual affairs, namely, to induce us to despise and disregard both the Word and works of God to tear us away from faith, hope, and love and bring us into misbelief, false security, and obduracy, or, on the other hand, to despair, denial of God, blasphemy, and innumerable other shocking things. These are indeed snares and nets, yea, real fiery darts which are shot most venomously into the heart, not by flesh and blood, but ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... of the uneasiness of the English official element, and the obduracy of the extreme Patriotes, it is barely possible that Gosford, with his bonhomie and his Burgundy, might have effected a modus vivendi, had there not occurred, about six months after Gosford's arrival ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... appearance of the greatest embarrassment and emotion. After some delay, and much pretended confusion, he at length confessed that the seizure of her father was all a stratagem; a mere false alarm, to procure him the present opportunity of having access to her, and endeavouring to mitigate that obduracy, and conquer that repugnance, which he declared had almost driven ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... out of sight Mrs. Mumpson betook herself to the rocking chair and began to expatiate on the blindness and obduracy of men in general and of Mr. Holcroft in particular. "They are all much alike," she complained, "and are strangely neglectful of the proprieties of life. My dear, deceased husband, your father, was becoming gradually senserble of my value ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... might progress. There by the Lord's pleasure, the Tinguianes of that visita, who had never consented to build a church, nor have the father visit them, at length, through the Lord's mercy, ceased their obduracy. They built me a church, and I baptized many of them, both children at the breast and those somewhat older, and adults. If I have done any service to the Lord in that place, I pray His Majesty to receive it as a partial payment for my many ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... remembered with that feeling. But had his life been prolonged to the full age of man it would not have been in his power to remedy the evil which had been done in his father's reign and during his own minority. To have effected that would have required a strength and obduracy of character incompatible with his meek and innocent nature. In intellect and attainments he kept pace with his age, a more stirring and intellectual one than any which had gone before it: but in the wisdom ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... be attained, never enters the mind. Such natures properly reared to know the world, to see it, hear it, and suffer it, tunes all the attributes of the mind and heart to make sweet music. Nothing mellows the heart like sorrow; nothing so softens the obduracy of our natures as experience. None, sir, man or woman, are fitted for the world without the experiences its contact brings. These experiences are teachings, and the bitter ones the best. To be happy, we ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... followed. "I tell you this, young man! the man's a fool—a damned fool—that runs from the woman who loves him!" And the asseveration that the speaker would say the same if she was anything short of the worst character in camp, only in slightly different words. His remorse for his own obduracy, and the cruelty of his behaviour then; his shame when he thought of his application, months later, to the Court at Lahore—for "relief" from Rosey: just imagine it!—these were bad enough to think back on, even from ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... held out. He refused to be worked upon by argument. To Ranny's amazement, the old Humming-bird bore himself in those days of stress, not with that peculiar savage obduracy that distinguished his more insignificant hostilities, but with a certain sad and fine insistence. It was as if for the first time in his life he was aware that he cared for his son Randall and was afraid of losing ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... knowing what to say or do. The change from the bacchanalian riot in the great hall to the solemn pathos and woe of the secret chamber sobered him rapidly. Even his obduracy gave way at last. "Caroline," said he, taking both her hands in his, "I will not urge you longer. I am called bad, and you think me so; but I am not brutal. It was a promise made over the wine. Varin, the drunken beast, called you Queen Vashti, and challenged ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... refused to abjure, his obduracy put an end to the judge's leniency, and withdrew him at once from ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... on the high road, she passed youthful couples, love-engrossed, she went on with a wistfulness in her eyes. For such as these, life held something, but for her, she was sure in her obduracy of inexperience, ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... of one whose future prospects he had so iniquitously tarnished. I had hitherto been silent as to my principal topic of recrimination. But I was by no means certain, that I should consent to go out of the world in silence, the victim of this man's obduracy and art. In every view I felt my heart ulcerated with a sense of his injustice; and my very soul spurned these pitiful indulgences, at a time that he was grinding me into dust with the ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... drew nearer, I averted my head. At that moment I had not courage to look him in the face. I could scarcely suppose him ignorant of what had occurred; and, if aware of the sad event, his obduracy was unmanly to a degree that filled me with disgust. But just as I came opposite the iron gates, he hailed me by name—more familiarly and courteously than he was wont—to ask whether I came from the village, and for whose death ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... advantage of those affections to accomplish that which he knows must be her ruin, and plunge her into misery for life;—when a young man does this, I say he must be either a selfish and unfeeling brute, unworthy of the name of man, or he must have a heart little inferior, in point of obduracy, to that of the murderer. Let young women, however, be aware; let them be well aware, that few, indeed, are the cases in which this apology can possibly avail them. Their character is not solely theirs, but belongs, in part, ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... her pride and power, and with all the obduracy of her spirit summoned about her, still her old conviction that she and her mother had been known by this man in their worst colours, from their first acquaintance; that every degradation she had suffered in her ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... much purpose of repayment; but Addison, who seems to have had other notions of a hundred pounds, grew impatient of delay, and reclaimed his loan by an execution. Steele felt, with great sensibility, the obduracy of his creditor, but with emotions of ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... to make substantial additions to her fleet and her army in far-eastern Asia. It was impossible to mistake her purpose. She intended to yield nothing, but to prepare such a parade of force that her obduracy would command submission. The only alternatives for Japan were war or permanent effacement in ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the devil 569:24 knoweth his time is short. Here the Scriptures declare that evil is temporal, not eternal. The dragon is at last stung to death by his own malice; but how many periods 569:27 of torture it may take to remove all sin, must depend upon sin's obduracy. ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... such as this that one may conclude the repentance of Jean Livingstone, as shown in her confession, to have been sincere. There was, we are informed by the memorialist, nothing maudlin in her conduct after condemnation. Once she got over her first obduracy, induced, one would imagine, by the shock of seeing the realization of what she had planned but never pictured, the murder itself, and probably by the desertion of her by her father and kindred, her repentance was "cheerful'' ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... drive us to use the torture upon you so that we may loosen your tongue!" snarled Vasquez fiercely, enraged by my obduracy. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... national life on a sure basis, and he was succeeded by a race of prophets who from age to age reminded the people that in regard or disregard for what he required of them depended their prosperity or their ruin as a nation, of which from their extreme obduracy they had again ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... The obduracy of Hatteraick, during the latter part of this scene, was in some slight degree shaken. He was observed to twinkle with his eyelids—to attempt to raise his bound hands for the purpose of pulling his hat ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... looked with a shade of compunction at the fragile kneeling figure, with its face crimsoned by the act of stooping and by the obduracy of the dust-ingrained boot-laces. But as she looked she noticed the flushed cheeks, and, being a diviner of spirits, wondered what Hester was ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... Sister Medliker, the incorrigibility of his conduct, and how he has added the sin of 'false witness' to his breaking the Eighth Commandment. But I leave him to your Christian discipline! Let us hope that if, through his stiff-necked obduracy, he has haply escaped the vengeance of man's law, he will not escape the rod of the ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... his offer to this advice, and gradually advanced to 100 francs, without in the least softening Jean Souday's obduracy. The possessor of the assignats was fain, at last, to adopt Madame Souday's iterated counsel, and placed 120 paper francs before the owner of Cocotte. The husband and wife instantly, as silently, exchanged with each other, by the only electric telegraph ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... its welded strength that thousands of tons of merchandise pass over it daily without causing, the slightest oscillation of its airy arches. Here, too, the wonders of mechanical skill are placed in striking juxtaposition with the wonders of Nature, whose obduracy has been so signally overcome. The sense of security was heightened in our case by a furious storm which burst upon us. We were seated on the fender or' cow-catcher,' watching the majestic marshaling of the thunder-clouds over the mountain-tops, and enjoying to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... with such calmness as amazed every one. Her noble, beautifully formed countenance seemed bloodless; her dark-blue eyes beamed with a brilliancy which seemed like that of delirium; her beauty, her calmness, and yet this obduracy in crime, produced an extraordinary impression ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... out of countenance. If we are asked how it happened that the merry, joyous Verty, whose face was before all sunshine, now resembled nobody so much as some young and handsome Don Quixote, reflecting on the obduracy of his Toboso Dulcinea, we can only reply, that Verty was in love, and had not prospered lately—that is to say, on that particular day, in his suit; and, in consequence, felt as if the world no longer held any more joy or ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... completely think out definite parts—of the purpose and future of man, clearly and finally; they have set themselves to legislate and construct on that assumption, and, experiencing the perplexing obduracy and evasions of reality, they have taken to dogma, persecution, training, pruning, secretive education; and all the stupidities of self-sufficient energy. In the passion of their good intentions they have not hesitated to conceal facts, suppress thought, crush disturbing initiatives ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... several reasons that the doctor acknowledged as much as this. First, for Thorwald's sake; for I had been thinking the doctor's obduracy was proving a poor reward for our friend's great kindness to us. I rejoiced, too, that my companion was beginning to show our new acquaintance that, although he had little imagination, he was possessed of a good heart. And, finally, I was ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... three days and three nights for pardon for your heavy sins, and for support for our dear mother; your sins are an offence to the Lord, and He would not hearken to me. For this morning I hear, to my great terror, that the good abbess, just as I feared, has been done to death by your vile obduracy and disobedience." ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... proud freedom from prejudice, that the rencounter of the morning was one which no woman could at the moment tolerate, few eventually excuse, and which of all incidents was that which would most tend to confirm his wife in her stoical obduracy. Of his offences towards her, whatever were their number or their quality, this surely was the least, and yet its results upon his life and fortunes would in all probability only be equalled by the mysterious cause of their original separation. But how much more bitter than that original ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... familiar with its organic existence from the inside. The amazing delays in the construction of the town hall were characteristic of the city, originating as they did not from sloth or indecision but from the obduracy of the human will. At the start a sensational municipal election had put the whole project on the shelf for two years, and George had received a compensatory one per cent on the estimated cost according to contract, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... the judge, when silence was again restored, "your unparalleled obduracy has gained one point; it was my intention to have ordered you for execution tomorrow at the hour of twelve o'clock; but, as a Christian man, I could not think for a moment of hurrying you into eternity in your present state. The sentence of the court then ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton |
