"Stiff-necked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before my face, and tell me this?" he roared, infuriated by their cold resistance. He flung out an arm in a gesture of terrible dismissal. "Out of my sight, you proud and evil men! Back to your cells, to await my pleasure. Since in your arrogant, stiff-necked pride you refuse to do my will, you shall receive the bishop I shall ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... "I'm a stiff-necked person," said Theydon, trying to smile unconcernedly. "I've made up my mind to see you safely to your destination, and I refuse to leave you on any account. I am sure the doctor will let ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... numbers and in obstinacy." They recommended the infliction of fines, and furnished the authorities with a list of recusants and the value of their property. In York the archbishop reported that "a more stiff-necked or wilful people I never knew or heard of, doubtless they are reconciled with Rome and sworn to the Pope," and what was worse they preferred to be imprisoned than to listen to the archbishop's harangues. From Hereford it was announced ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... Jews, but his hatred of Christianity was so great that he preferred to help the stiff-necked race in Palestine, in order to rouse them against Christ. For that purpose he had given orders that the Temple in Jerusalem should be rebuilt, and this was the matter which he wished to discuss with his philosophers and Eleazar. "What is your opinion, then?" he asked, after finishing a ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... fanatics: as he may not be satisfied with Timperley's meagre allusion, allow me to refer him to the Memoirs of the Lord Viscount Dundee: London, 1714. The author of this, "An Officer of the Army," speaking of the stiff-necked Presbyterians, says: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... are you happy in Canada, Millicent," he repeated, and there was command as well as kindness in his tone. Anthony Thurston, mine owner and iron works director, was dying, but he had long been a ruler of stiff-necked men, and the habit of authority still remained with him. It struck Millicent that he was in many ways very ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... gipsies, proud and stiff-necked and perverse, Saying: "We tell the fortunes of the nations, And revel in the deep palm of the world. The head-line is the road we choose for trade. The love-line is the lane wherein we camp. The life-line is the road we wander on. Mount Venus, ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... the napkin to hide her laughing face, but Mr. Brewster construed the act to be one of reverence, and he approved of such tendencies in the young. Consequently, he hastened to say grace. Barbara sat stiff-necked throughout the lengthy prayer because she felt so rebellious at everything and with everything, that she wouldn't pay heed to the ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... I didn't want to be bothered; besides, there was always something very attractive about Sterling. I don't mind telling you that if he had fallen in love with me instead of the stiff-necked woman he married, I'd have tumbled over ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... in case any trouble arose, they were to let me know, and I would myself come to their assistance. The tribes were, Lundu, Sarambo, Bombak, Paninjow, and Sow. The only other tribe on the right-hand river were the Singe, a powerful and stiff-necked people, with good reason to be shy; but when once they are treated justly, their strength will be advantageous, and give ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... people was the hardest for Christophe to bear, but their inconsistency, their formless, shallow natures. There was no knowing how to take them. The pig-headed opposition of one of those stiff-necked, bard races who refuse to understand any new thought were much better. Against force it is possible to oppose force—the pick and the mine which hew away and blow up the hard rock. But what can be done against an amorphous mass which gives like a jelly, collapses under the least pressure, and ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... vain. The only thing to do now is to see that the Academy is no longer allowed to sail under false colours. This article may awaken in the Academy a sense that it is not well to persist in open and flagrant defiance of public opinion, or it may serve to render the Academicians even more stiff-necked than before. In either case it ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... virtues, then we have in no degree done him justice. And while he was kind and loving to all about him, yet he was terribly severe with the incorrigibly mean and vicious. If he had a great fault, it was in this particular. No one could be more loving and tender with a penitent; but the stiff-necked and haughty, the oppressors of the poor, were an ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... kindness. They called me sister and invited me to your wedding, promising me that Jonathan should be there, too, and making me promise to come. And when they had written the letter they even coaxed the stiff-necked Aaron, who hates us Wallachians like poison, to add his signature to it, though I could see in the very way he wrote his name how he disliked to do it. I promised to come, and I kept my word. And Jonathan came with me—I brought him. That night I told your wife and your sister that I should come ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... of the preceding; born Chevrel; cousin of Mme. Roguin; a stiff-necked, middle-class woman, who was scandalized by the marriage of her second daughter, Augustine, with Theodore de Sommervieux. [At the Sign of the ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... him to brave what the morning brought. Insensibly also, as Time hardened his sufferings, Evan asked himself what the shame of his position consisted in. He grew stiff-necked. His Pagan virtues stood up one by one to support him. Andrew, courageously evading the interdict that forbade him to visit Evan, would meet him by appointment at City taverns, and flatly offered him a place in the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Onondagas, will say, "I (that is, my nation) am angry; thou (the Delaware people) hast done wrong." This style of bold personification is common in the scriptures. Moses warns the Israelites: "Thou art a stiff-necked people." "Oh my people!" exclaims Isaiah; "they which lead thee ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... capture of Jerusalem, which did not take place until the third month of his successor. The last prince of David's house, Zedekiah, having suffered more severely than all his predecessors, must therefore have been stiff-necked and rebellious (xxxvi.12, 13),—characteristics to which, according to the authentic evidence of the prophet Jeremiah, he had in reality the ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... of such a mode of expression. And rightly so. It implies a confusion of ideas, confounding physical power which is almighty, and moral power, which is suasory and resistible. Stephen charged the Jews with resisting the Spirit. "Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye" (Acts vii. 51). Because they resisted him, would it be right to say that they were physically stronger than God? We replied to the clergyman that we supposed that the person who used ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... and probably nearly every one of them came within half an inch of perfect happiness, and just missed it. No, depend upon it, there is nothing like a wise, judicious, discriminating friend at such junctures, to help matters along. You may thank me that Geoff isn't at this moment wedded to some stiff-necked British maiden, and you eating your head off in single-blessedness ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... light from a dark corner a very unjust account of it, and neglects, though lying upon the highroad, a very pleasing one. Both are from English pens. Grafton, a chronicler, but little read, being a stiff-necked John Bull, thought fit to say that no wonder Joanna should be a virgin, since her "foule face" was a satisfactory solution of that particular merit. Holinshead, on the other hand, a chronicler somewhat later, every way more important, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... psychology so bred and nourished sprang a political temper which, as it hardened with the passing years, appeared to English Home Rulers to be "stiff-necked," "bigoted," and "intractable." It certainly was a state of mind very different from those shifting gusts of transient impression which in England go by the name of public opinion; and, if these epithets in the mouths of opponents be taken as ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... Dombey sat and watched his daughter, the sight of her in her beauty, now almost changed into a woman, roused within him a fleeting feeling of regret at having had a household spirit bending at his feet, and of having overlooked it in his stiff-necked pride. He felt inclined to call her to him; the words were rising to his lips, when they were checked by the entrance of his wife, whose haughty bearing and indifference to him caused the gentle impulse to flee from ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... mistress, the roan pony is easy to guide, if you happen to be going the way he likes, and that is, ever from the park to the stable, from the stable to the park; otherwise, like the Israelites of old, he is a stiff-necked beast, whom I would rather eschew than commune with. And the wolf-hound, my lady, behaves so rudely to little Crisp, holding him by the throat in an unseemly fashion, and occasionally despoiling him ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... are on neutral ground, I want to say that you Americans are a stiff-necked lot of people. You are not like any other breed of men. I am done with you. My way can not be yours. Let us part as friends and gentlemen ought to part. I say good-by with a sense of regret. I shall never forget your service to ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... all times, my children, that you are an obedient and a docile people, content to accept the word of God from those whom he has sent to teach it to you—that you are not a stiff-necked generation, prone to follow your own vain conceits, or foolish enough to conceive that your little earthly knowledge can be superior to the wisdom which comes from above, as others are. I have always rejoiced at this, my children, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Israel. Glory to that name which is ever the same, and changeth not. 'The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.' This was his name among a stiff-necked people, an idolatrous, ungrateful people; this is his name to me alike in character. O how he has magnified this name to me, a backslider in heart and life; multiplying pardons while I have multiplied transgressions: still he has been last with me, healing my backsliding; restoring my soul; leading ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... it loves the sinner, and sacred fear and pity for the self-inflicted miseries of those who might be (so runs the dream, and will run till it becomes a waking reality) strong, and free, and safe, by being good and wise. To such a spirit this bold cunning man had come, stiff-necked and heaven-defiant, a "brand plucked from the burning:" and yet equally unconscious of his danger, and thankless for his respite. Given, too, as it were, into her hands; tossed at her feet out of the very mouth of the pit,—why but that she might save him? A far duller heart, a far narrower ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... produced at Berlin were "Nurmahal," in 1825; "Alcidor," the same year; and in 1829, "Agnes von Hohenstaufen." Various other new works were given from time to time, but none achieved more than a brief hearing. Spontini's stiff-necked and arrogant will kept him in continual trouble, and the Berlin press aimed its arrows at him with incessant virulence: a war which the composer fed by his bitter and witty rejoinders, for he was an adept in the art of invective. Had he not been singularly adroit, he would have been obliged ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... aforesaid, was growing rich, and the king had to get their money out of their purses directly; which, as they were not represented at the council, he had to do by means of his officers (the sheriffs) dealing with them one after another, which was a troublesome job; for the men were stiff-necked and quite disinclined to part with their money; and the robbery having to be done on the spot, so to say, encountered all sorts of opposition: and, in fact, it was the money needs both of baron, bishop, and king which had been the chief instrument ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... his oar, suddenly broke out into laughter, soulless, without meaning. Simpson, stung sharply in his stiff-necked pride, sprang up and took one step forward, his fist raised. The boy dropped the oars and writhed to starboard, his neck askew at an eldritch angle, his eyes glaring upward. But he did not raise a hand to ward off the blow that he feared, and that ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... "Ye swash-buckler! Ye stiff-necked braggart!" bawled the priest. "Out wid y'r nonsense, and what good are y' thinkin' ye'll do—? Stir your ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... was it. Rain it was, sure enough, and a good heavy shower—but as soon as it had rained enough to spoil Isak's lichen, it stopped. The sky was blue. "What did I say," said Isak, stiff-necked and hard. ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... life, then drowsily dying away as though the spurt of energy had faded in the hour's discouraging languor. The doctor's voice detached itself from this pastoral chorus intoning the laws that God gave Moses when he was conducting a stiff-necked and rebellious people ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... mind from sin, All being shut out, the adulterer is within. Who may offend, sins least; power to do ill The fainting seeds of naughtiness doth kill. 10 Forbear to kindle vice by prohibition; Sooner shall kindness gain thy will's fruition. I saw a horse against the bit stiff-necked, Like lightning go, his struggling mouth being checked: When he perceived the reins let slack, he stayed, And on his loose mane the loose bridle laid. How to attain what is denied we think, Even as the sick desire forbidden drink. Argus ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... passed the wine, the king hearkened with condescending and approving nod to the report of the Prince as to his mad adventure in Hellas. Xerxes even reproved his brother-in-law mildly for hazarding his own life and that of his wife among those stiff-necked tribesmen who were so soon to taste the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... rejoined his lordship, "the whim is wearing off! One pellet drives out another. Behind the love in the popgun came the conviction that it would be simple ruin! But we Graemes are stiff-necked both to God and man, and I ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Stiff-necked setting oneself against God's merciful fighting with evil lasts for a little while, but verse 10 tells how soon and easily it is annihilated. God's 'desire' brushes away all defences, and the obstinate sinners are like children, who are whipped ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... He has sent in the olden time seemed bad failures. Noah's preaching was a failure, Isaiah thought his so too. Poor Jeremiah is sitting weeping tears over his people, everybody cursing the honest man, and he ill-pleased with his mother for having borne him among such a set. And Ezekiel's stiff-necked, rebellious crew were no better. Paul said, 'All seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ,' and he knew that after his departure grievous wolves would enter in, not sparing the flock. Yet the cause of God is still carried on to more enlightened ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... fear—fear of the social democrat. He refers to Bismarck and Moltke, "whose greatness is the less open to controversy as it manifests itself in the domain of tangible external facts. No help for it, therefore; even the most stiff-necked and obdurate of these fellows must condescend to look up a little, if only to get a sight, be it no farther than the knees, of those august figures" (p.327). Do you, Master Metaphysician, perhaps intend to instruct the social democrats in the art of getting kicks? ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... I would do a thing like that, Phyllis—be a girl's friend in private?" Roxanne asked, and her head went up into a stiff-necked pose like that portrait of her great-grandmother Byrd that looks so haughtily out of place hanging over the fireplace in the living hall in the little old cottage, in spite of the room full of old mahogany furniture and silver candlesticks brought from Byrd Mansion to keep ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a certain stiff-necked strength in the old fellow; in fact, nature had been rather kind to him; and certainly his Uncle and Guardian—the distinguished Seckendorf who did the HISTORIA LUTHERANISMI, a RITTER, and man of good mark, in Ernst THE PIOUS of Saxe-Gotha's time—took ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... their study of art." It is the battle that will so often be renewed between the artist who looks upon colour as merely a complement and adjunct to design, and the painter who regards it as not only the outer covering, but the body and soul of art. We remember how the stiff-necked Ingres, the greatest Raphaelesque of this century, hurled at Delacroix's head the famous dictum, "Le dessin c'est la probite de l'art," and how his illustrious rival, the chief of a romanticism which he would ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... hands on either side keeping it close. Then there was a little scheming to get it exactly in equilibrium; this was attained, and as the boy sat there stiff-necked and rigid of spine, with his eyes turned upwards, there was nothing left to do now but ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... dear pretty Miss Rachel, possessing a host of graces and attractions, had one defect, which strict impartiality compels me to acknowledge. She was unlike most other girls of her age, in this—that she had ideas of her own, and was stiff-necked enough to set the fashions themselves at defiance, if the fashions didn't suit her views. In trifles, this independence of hers was all well enough; but in matters of importance, it carried her (as my lady thought, and ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... the King!" while the thought's commentary ran, unacknowledged, "Yes, as an eagle resembles a falcon!" For here, to the observant eye, was a more zealous person, already passion-wasted, and a far more dictatorial and stiff-necked person than the lazy and amiable King; also, this Maudelain's face and nose were somewhat too long and high: the priest was, in a word, the less comely of the pair by a very little, and to an immeasurable ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... the assembly at rare intervals, some officer from Von Werder's army, attentive, shy, saying little even when questioned. The huge Saxon officers, beaming with good-nature, mixed amiably with the sour-visaged Brunswick men and the stiff-necked Prussians. ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... his arts to get the diamond cross from her on her death-bed, and to get her to make a will in his favour of her separate possessions; but there she was too tough for him. He used to swear at her behind her back, after kneeling to her to her face, and call her in the presence of his gentleman his stiff-necked Israelite, though before he married her, that same gentleman told me he used to call her (how he could bring it out, I don't know) "my pretty Jessica!" To be sure it must have been hard for her to guess what sort of a husband he reckoned to make her. When she was lying, to all expectation, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... gave it birth. Fallacious hopes of coming "posts," averted for a time my coming wretchedness—three weeks, and not a line! The landlord suffered from an intermitting affection, characteristic of the "stiff-necked generation;"—he bowed to others—galvanism could not have procured the tithe of a salaam for me. His till was afflicted with a sort of sinking-fundishness. I was the contractor of "the small bill," whose exact amount would enable him to meet ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... on his way to death; Simon the Cyrenian relieving him of the burden of the Cross; the reproaches of Ahasuerus addressed to the Saviour for neglecting his counsel; the transfigured features on the handkerchief of St. Veronica; and the words of the Lord dooming his stiff-necked gainsayer to wander to and fro on earth till his second coming. As the subsequent narrative was to be developed, it was to illustrate the outstanding events in the history of Christianity—one incident in the experience ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... men, and left them, in their power of raising up enduring images before their fellow-creatures yet unborn, no better than the beasts: that, in these very broad- brimmed hats and very sombre coats - in stiff-necked, solemn- visaged piety, in short, no matter what its garb, whether it have cropped hair as in a Shaker village, or long nails as in a Hindoo temple - I recognise the worst among the enemies of Heaven and Earth, who turn the water at the marriage feasts of this poor world, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... that sometimes God indeed does so, and to such a possible complaint has this reply in Himself: "I gave thee what thou wouldst, because not otherwise could I teach the stiff-necked his folly. Hadst thou been patient, I would have made the thing a joy ere I gave it thee; I would have changed the scorpion into a golden beetle, set with rubies and sapphires. Have thou ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... rigorous, saucy, stiff-necked rascal it is! I see my folly now.—I am undone by mine ain policy.—This Sidney is the last man that shou'd have been about my son:—The fellow, indeed, hath given him principles, that might have done vary weel among the ancient Romans,—but are damn'd unfit for the modern ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... expedition to-morrow? I say," addressing himself particularly to Roscoe and MacNab, "did you know that this fellow is going out tiger shooting? Tiger shooting, if you please! Tiger shooting is to be his way of spending the Sabbath; what do you say to that, my stiff-necked Presbyterian?" ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... corresponding increase of melancholia in the redwood operators; hence he had returned to Michigan, closed out his business interests there, and returned to Sequoia on the alert for an investment in redwood timber. From a chair-warmer on the porch of the Hotel Sequoia, the Colonel had heard the tale of how stiff-necked old John Cardigan had called the bluff of equally stiff-necked old Bill Henderson; so for the next few weeks the Colonel, under pretense of going hunting or fishing on Squaw Creek, managed to make a fairly accurate ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... that the Rutherford temper developed in the Princess as she grew older. Mrs. Swaney was Juanita Sinclair; her father was a mild-mannered little man, who went out of doors to cough, but her mother was a Rutherford—a big, stiff-necked, beer-bottle-shaped woman, who bossed the missionary society until she divided the church. John Swaney, who is not a talkative man, once got in a crowd at Smith's cigar-store where they were telling ghost stories, and his contribution to the horror ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... believe thet they can git Mor'n wut they lost, out of our little wit: I tell ye wut, I'm 'fraid we'll drif' to leeward 'thout we can put more stiffenin' into Seward; He seems to think Columby'd better ect Like a scared widder with a boy stiff-necked Thet stomps an' swears he wun't come in to supper; She mus' set up for him, ez weak ez Tupper, Keepin' the Constitootion on to warm, Tell he'll eccept her 'pologies in form: 180 The neighbors tell her he's a cross-grained cuss Thet needs a hidin' 'fore he comes ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... see my younger brother, Courtenay, is turned out of office in India, for refusing the surety of the East India Company! Truly the Smiths are a stiff-necked generation, and yet they have all got rich but I. Courtenay, they say, has L150,000, and he keeps only a cat! In the last letter I had from him, which was in 1802, he confessed that his money was ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... out after she had gone to bed that night. She had been imperturbable with her sisters, who had finally come in a body to make entreaties, although not apologies or retractions. There was a stiff-necked strain in the Hempstead family, and apologies and retractions were bitterer cuds for them to chew than for most. She had been imperturbable with her father, who had quoted Scripture and prayed at her during family worship. She had been imperturbable even with Benny, who had whispered to ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to England, and afterwards shall account to him for all the goods and gold they have plundered. A most loving request! If Gloriana will not be Philip's bride, she shall be his broker and his butcher! Should she still be stiff-necked, he writes—see where the pen digged the innocent paper!—-that he hath both the means and the intention to be revenged on her. Aha! Now we come to the Spaniard in his shirt!' (She waved the letter merrily.) 'Listen here! Philip will prepare for Gloriana a destruction from the West—a destruction ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... war, doesn't it?" asked Lieutenant Holton. "That chap, Huerta, will be stiff-necked about yielding a gun salute after it has been refused, and Mexican pride will back him up in it. The Mexicans hate us as only jealous people can hate. The Mexicans won't give in. On the other hand, our country has always been very stiff over any ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... of ruin to Denmark in 1863-64 bears a remarkable resemblance to that which produced war in South Africa in 1899, viz. high-handed action of a minority towards men whom they treated as Outlanders, the stiff-necked obstinacy of the smaller State, and reliance on the vehement but (probably) unofficial offers of help or intervention ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... complained to Blessed Francis of the thorns besetting his path in life, of the difficulties of his holy calling, of the anxieties inseparable from it, but chiefly of the intractableness of stiff-necked Christians, who refuse to submit to the easy yoke of Jesus Christ, and to do what their duty requires. The Bishop replied that their obstinacy was not so much to be wondered at as the weakness of their Pastors who were so easily discouraged and impatient, just because ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... "Oh, you're rather a stiff-necked young man, ain't ye?" growled the big bear. "Let's understand the ground rules before we begin. How about a wild ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... once more for a season stood behind the cherub with the flaming sword, Ericson was teaching two stiff-necked youths in a dreary house in the midst of one of the moors of Caithness. One day he had a slight attack of blood-spitting, and welcomed it as a sign from what heaven there ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... you forth! Thence take you wing unto the Orcades! There let my verse get glory in the north, Making my sighs to thaw the frozen seas. And let the bards within that Irish isle, To whom my Muse with fiery wings shall pass, Call back the stiff-necked rebels from exile, And mollify the slaughtering gallowglass; And when my flowing numbers they rehearse, Let wolves and bears ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... betray me to your son and daughter, nor consider me as having in anywise committed myself—it was Paul of Tarsus's notion of the history and destinies of our stiff-necked nation. See what your daughter has persuaded me into reading!' And he held up a manuscript of the ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... said to the sorcerers and to the practisers of unholy arts, that they should do those evil things no more, for he had bound the spirits of whom they were wont to inquire, and they would get no further answers to their incantations. Then those stiff-necked sons of the devil fell upon the man of God, scourged him sore, and threatened him with death, if he would not instantly loose those spirits he had bound. And seeing he could prevail nothing, and being, moreover, admonished ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a stiff-necked youth, lounging sluggishly in his study, while the frost pinches him in winter time, oppressed with cold, his watery nose drops, nor does he take the trouble to wipe it with his handkerchief till it has moistened the book beneath it with its vile dew. ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... the wish of the Irish patriots. Furthermore, the determination of Pitt to commend the act to Ireland by removing the political disabilities which barred Catholics from membership in Parliament was thwarted by the stiff-necked George III., who had got it into his head that such a concession would do violence to the Protestantism of his coronation oath. Pitt resigned in disgust, and Catholic emancipation had to await until England had finished Napoleon's European business and ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... Corinth there will be found some stiff-necked opponents of whom he cannot hope that their 'obedience shall be fulfilled,' and he sees in the double issue of the small struggle that was being waged in Corinth a parable of the wider results of the warfare in the world. 'Some believed and some believed not'; that has been the brief summary ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... come in from Boston, and Dodge, with that infernally suggestive way of his, was cackling about Roger's "jumping over the broomstick" with a "handsome gypsy" and letting his relatives believe the thing was serious in order to tease his stiff-necked family. ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... Lucien was released, when he went to Rome, where he was welcomed by the kindly old Pope, who remembered the benefits conferred by Napoleon on the Church, while he forgot the injuries personal to himself; and the stiff-necked Republican, the one-time "Brutus" Bonaparte, accepted the title of Duke of Musignano and Prince ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... have much effect. Those men would either abstain from voting, or vote for the railway hero, with the view of keeping out the de Courcy candidate. Then came the shopkeepers, who might also be regarded as a stiff-necked generation, impervious to electioneering eloquence. They would, generally, support Mr Moffat. But there was an inferior class of voters, ten-pound freeholders, and such like, who, at this period, were somewhat given to have an opinion of ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... divided for the Heavenly Kingdom as follows,—the sons followed the religion of their father, and the daughters of their mother. If anybody made objections, a terrible storm fell upon his head. The Lord of Mitosin was a stiff-necked Protestant, who persecuted priest and monk in every possible way. He would not allow his daughter to bring a Catholic prayer-book or a rosary into the house. If anybody wished to pray, he could do it in the church; it was not far away. From the rear gate of the castle straight to the church ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... were landed in New Orleans and given into the care of the Ursuline nuns; and, before many days had elapsed, fifty-nine soldiers of the king were well wived and ready to settle upon their riparian land-grants. The residuum in the nuns' hands was one stiff-necked little heretic, named, in part, Clotilde. They bore with her for sixty days, and then complained to the Grand Marquis. But the Grand Marquis, with all his pomp, was gracious and kind-hearted, and loved his ease almost ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... would again make himself agreeable to a beautiful girl whom he thoroughly loved, and by whom also he was thoroughly loved! But George was an ass, as we have said; and a mole, a blind mole; and a mule, a stiff-necked, stubborn mule. He would not yield an inch to his uncle; nor an inch to his ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... preacher had been studying his Cruden, and bolstering himself up, too, with the very Scriptural texts that Prue had written out for her stiff-necked father. He had met other texts that she had not known how to find. The idea came to the preacher that, in a sense, since God made everything He must have made the dance, breathed its impulse ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... had softened her, and now she had the double reward. She had what she wanted, and was able to congratulate herself at the same time on her virtue. But he, though he had too what he wanted, became gradually aware that he had been cruel, stiff-necked, and obdurate. She was everything that he desired, but he was hardly happy because he was conscious that he had been unjust. And he was a man that loved justice even against himself, and could not be quite happy till ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... been raised up between us; but after that I had told him that I had concealed from Ann all that I had seen by ill-hap at the moss-hut, he was as kind and trusting as of old, and he showed himself more ready to give Ann the pledge she required than I had looked to find him, stiff-necked as he ever was. And he hearkened unmoved when I told him what Ann had said: "That she was ready to follow him to death, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... crude colour, they have indeed the sentiment of style, and they reveal, with surer delicacy than does any other record, the spirit of Mr. Brummell's day. Grego guides me, as Virgil Dante, through all the mysteries of that other world. He shows me those stiff-necked, over-hatted, wasp-waisted gentlemen, drinking Burgundy in the Cafe des Milles Colonnes or riding through the village of Newmarket upon their fat cobs or gambling at Crockford's. Grego's Green Room of the Opera House always delights me. The formal way ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... there be one man far removed from the vulgar love of praise, it is I," he says to Cato.[96] He tells Cato that they two are alike in all things. They two only have succeeded in carrying the true ancient philosophy into the practice of the Forum. Never surely were two men more unlike than the stiff-necked Cato ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... the most beautiful of all the months, and the loveliest June days are those that follow showery nights. Then all the trees of the great villas are in full leaf and all the flowers are in bloom: the gorgeous, stiff-necked, courtly flowers in the formal beds and borders of the Pope's gardens; the soft, sweet-scented, shapely carnations that grow in broken pots and pitchers outside the humble windows of Trastevere; the stately lilies in ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... George to say a great deal more before he succeeded in bringing the stiff-necked Don to reason, and in the process of doing so he told His Excellency a few home truths that first sent that functionary into a towering passion and then turned him sick with fear; but at length Don Silvio was brought to see the futility of kicking against the pricks, and finally he gave in ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... performance. I was not at all clear in my mind how a hostile should act; it was thirty years since I had read "Deerslayer." Should I drop on my knees and crawl through the long grass, snooping round the beanpoles and taking the devoted block-house in flank? I swallowed my stiff-necked English pride and began to crawl. Then I saw a better plan. I slipped through the sparse line of dwarf oaks smothered with crimson poison-ivy that bordered the forest path and crept as silently as I could ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... 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
... and, like all other rumors, had taken to themselves wings, and flown abroad; their crimes became a by-word. How was it they escaped punishment? How came they to evade the hand of justice? Proof was ever wanting; justice was ever baffled. They were a stern and stiff-necked people, of indomitable pride and resolution, with, for the most part, force of character sufficient to enable them to breast difficulties and dangers that would have overwhelmed ordinary individuals. No quality is so advantageous to its possessor as firmness; and the determined ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Pothier reflectively, "the best bond I could draw would not bind him more than a spider's thread! They are stiff-necked as bulls, these De Repentignys, and will bear no yoke but what they put on of themselves! Poor lad! Do they know at the Manor House that he is here drinking and dicing ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the elders to their new dignity, saying, 'Hail to you that are deemed worthy by God of being fit for this office.' At the same time, however, speak seriously with them also, saying, 'Know ye that the Israelites are a troublesome and stiff-necked people, and that you must ever be prepared to have them curse you ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... were ignored: "You're a poor man, Jim," declared Tenison, "and you can't pay any bills now for Abe. He thought more of you than he did of any man in the world. But most of his money he left here with me, upstairs and down. Abe was stiff-necked as hell, whether it was cards or cattle, you know that. And it's only some of his money—not mine—I'm turning back to him. That Dutchman," he added, referring with a contemptuous oath to the unpopular undertaker of Sleepy Cat, "is a robber, anyhow. ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... "That young, stiff-necked, reviling town Beholds your fancies on her walls, And paints them out or tears them down, Or bars them ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... his heart; for the remedy he proposes poses for Irish sufferings is to increase them, if possible, a thousandfold; and he would have troops employed to "tread down all before them, and lay on the ground all the stiff-necked people of the land." And this he would have done in winter, with a refinement of cruelty, that the bitter air may freeze up the half-naked peasant, that he may have no shelter from the bare trees, and that he may be deprived of all sustenance by the ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... a little river from Germany and Austria. While those greedy neighbors may be held back now, you could not restrain them a moment after revolt broke out in that border province. For two centuries those Krovitzers have been a defiant and stiff-necked race in spite of every corrective measure adopted to suppress them. Unless immediate action is taken to anticipate and abort any movement of theirs, it may mean the utter destruction of your present southern frontiers. I ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... I'm afraid this has been a lot of bother for you," he said stiffly, gave her a ceremonious little bow, and went his way stiff-necked ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... stiff-necked people," Mr. Harvey said. "That the Sovereigns of Europe should have viewed with displeasure the overthrow of the monarchy here was natural enough; but in Holland, if anywhere, we might have looked for sympathy, seeing that as they had battled for freedom of conscience, so had we ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... to warn Myra, to emphasize that warning. No one could tell of what a dull egotist like Bland might be capable. The very fact of that furtive spying argued an ignoble streak in any man. Bland was stiff-necked, vain, the sort to be brutal in retaliation for any fancied invasion of his rights. And his conception of a husband's rights were primitive in the extreme. A wife was property, something that was his. Hollister could imagine him roused ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... this plan, for he thought it shame to steal away in his sister's garments; but they prayed him not to be stiff-necked, and at length he suffered the cloak to be put ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... speech. They are all interesting and contain some truth; but if the "new" poetry and the "new" criticism are really balderdash, they should not require so much attention from one of the most eminent of contemporary writers. I think Mr. Watson is rather stiff-necked and obstinate, like an honest, hearty country squire, in his sturdy following of tradition. Smooth technique is a fine thing in art; but I do not care whether a poem is written in conventional metre or in free verse, so long as it is unmistakably ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... of Baal, and, if I mistake not, even now concocting mischief for this foolish, indulgent, stiff-necked father. (Aloud.) Your only daughter, ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... you to stand before him, to serve him, and that ye should minister unto him and burn incense (or, offer sacrifice)."[150] That all Judah and Israel were enjoined to accede to the Covenant, in the second month, is manifest from the King's command to them—"Now be ye not stiff-necked, as your fathers were, but yield yourselves unto the Lord, and enter into his sanctuary, which he hath sanctified for ever; and serve the Lord your God, that the fierceness of his wrath may turn away from you."[151] ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... affair that made her shrink from going nearer; and she could not help feeling a little afraid of the giant smith in particular, with his brawny arms that twisted and tortured iron bars all day long,—and his black angry-looking face, that seemed for ever fighting with fire and stiff-necked metal His very look into the forge-fire ought to have been enough to put it out of countenance. Perhaps that was why it was so necessary to keep blowing and poking at it. Again he stooped, caught up a great iron spoon, dipped it into a tub of water, and poured the spoonful on the fire—a ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Merrington, stiff-necked in his officialism, had been unable to see this changed aspect of the case, and, strong in his presumption of the girl's guilt, had acted with impulsive indiscretion in going to see Nepcote before attempting to ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... been wandering a good deal in her mind. From time to time she expressed her opinion that Brotherton would get well and would come back; and she would then tell Mary how she ought to urge her husband to behave well to his elder brother, always asserting that George had been stiff-necked and perverse. But in the midst of all this she would refer every minute to Mary's coming baby as the coming Popenjoy—not a possible Popenjoy at some future time, but the immediate Popenjoy of the hour,—to be born a Popenjoy! Poor Mary, ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... nice in you to say so, Mr. Hartman, and very polite, and very loyal; but I know Robert. Clarice does him a little good: she would do very much more, if he were not so stiff-necked. He thinks he is a man, and we are ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... frequently reckless and violent in his writings. He often said that bloodshed could not be avoided when it should please God to visit his judgments upon the stiff-necked and perverse generation of "Romanists," as the Germans contemptuously called the supporters of the pope. Yet he always discouraged precipitate reform. He was reluctant to make changes, except in belief. ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... eye of the stiff-necked dame with the straight nose and the gun-metal hair. No, both eyes, it was; and a cold, suspicious, stabby look is what they shoots my way. No wonder I chokes off the feeble-minded remarks and turns sort of panicky to Vee, half expectin' ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... stiff-necked twins, both of whom Joe was beginning to find a bit too stereotyped West-world adherents, said, "Sir, I must protest. The ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... costume; and we will even add into the bargain that other most honourable and equally useful branch of the public force "the mariners of England;"—as for "the force," the police, truly we eschew them and their deeds. They are a perverse, stiff-necked race, who wear two abominations, round hats and short coats, and they have a villanous propensity of following you home from your club of an evening, and inveigling you every now and then to Bow Street, thrusting a broken knocker or two ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... there were stealthy snores. The pair had slept through my playing. Imbeciles! I awoke them and soon packed them off to their canvas home in the woods hard by. They'll get no more dinners or wisdom from me. I tell this tale to show the hopelessness of arguing with this stiff-necked generation of pianists. But I mean to keep on arguing until I die of ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... shrewdly worded and to the point. Plymouth entrusted her mission also to Winthrop, hoping for a confirmation of her political and religious liberties. All protested their loyalty to the Crown, while Massachusetts, her petition signed by the stiff-necked Endecott, prostrated herself at the royal feet, craving pardon for her boldness, and subscribing herself "Your Majesties most humble subjects and suppliants." Did Endecott remember, we wonder, a certain incident connected with the royal ensign ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... that journey to Yorkshire by the pretty dark-eyed girl who was his daughter Lola, and by his valet, a very silent, stiff-necked, morose individual, whose personality did not attract me. He seemed, however, to be an exceptionally efficient person, so far as his duties were concerned, and on our arrival at the little wayside station about twelve ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... worthy guests," said Cedric; "my hospitality must not be bounded by your dislikes. If Heaven bore with the whole nation of stiff-necked unbelievers for more years than a layman can number, we may endure the presence of one Jew for a few hours. But I constrain no man to converse or to feed with him.—Let him have a board and a morsel apart,—unless," ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... vociferated the advocate. "One half the period that heaven was vexed with a stiff-necked generation have I endured you, Babet. Housekeeper! eh? Keeper of the King's conscience next, a she Lord Chancellor,—but continue: call yourself Keeper of the Seals, and mistress—or master either—of the Rolls, so you unroll your secret. Tell all you may; empty your ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... object of the association being to establish a harmonious society of persons of different religious sentiments, all intractable people shall be excluded from it, such as those in communion with the Roman See usurious Jews, English stiff-necked Quakers, Puritans, fool-hardy believers in the Millenium and obstinate modern ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... community, as they at first seemed likely to be, but be supported by their own nation." Again his grim smile. "No fear of that, when even a boy like you thinks of his people before gifts for himself. I wish," he half mused, "I wish that we had at least that virtue of your stiff-necked race." ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... Mr. Boythorn, suddenly firing another volley, "that fellow is, and his father was, and his grandfather was, the most stiff-necked, arrogant imbecile, pig-headed numskull, ever, by some inexplicable mistake of Nature, born in any station of life but a walking-stick's! The whole of that family are the most solemnly conceited and consummate blockheads! But it's no matter; he should not ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... may be a hero. And, on the other hand, you may write verses and be a clown. It is not necessary to feed on ambrosia in order to become divine; nor shall one be accursed, though he drink of the ninefold Styx. The Israelites ate angels' food in the wilderness, and remained stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears. The white water-lily feeds on slime, and unfolds a heavenly glory. Come as the June morning comes. It has not picked its way daintily, passing only among the roses. It has breathed up the whole earth. It has blown through the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... lower himself thus—What happens? The rich man goes to a church where flattery and subservience are more plentiful. The stiff-necked rector seeks in vain for funds. For lack of money his church runs down. It cannot keep up its charities ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... that, it is possible that Alwin would have obeyed; but to yield in the face of a threat, that was too low for his stiff-necked pride to stoop. The earl-born answered haughtily, "Have your will,—and I ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... perverse and stiff-necked generation!" Beatrice laughed. "What can his mentioning or not mentioning her name signify? For since he's in love with her, it's hardly likely that he's in love with you or me at ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... got abroad. The yard is full, and Rogers of the flaming eye is beleaguered with entreaties to show other Lodging Houses. Mine next! Mine! Mine! Rogers, military, obdurate, stiff-necked, immovable, replies not, but leads away; all falling back before him. Inspector Field follows. Detective Sergeant, with his barrier of arm across the little passage, deliberately waits to close the procession. He sees behind him, without any effort, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... he had been divinely appointed to rule them after his own will. No idea that he had ever been pigheaded and wrong had ever been driven into his dull brain. His view of his prerogative was that whatever he thought to be best was best, and they were ungrateful and stiff-necked people who took a different view, and that it was his bounden duty to punish such in his colonies ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... the centre. "Speed the work, my son," said His Holiness, dismissing him at last, "for I would wear the button myself before I die." Then, raising a beaming face, "Wouldst thou aught further with me, Fra Giuseppe? Ah, I recall! Thou yearnest to preach to thy stiff-necked kinsmen. Ebbene, 'tis a worthy ambition. Luigi, remember me to-morrow to issue ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... have said above, may be due to the naughtiness of the stiff-necked things that we have eaten, or to the poverty of our own arguments; but it may also arise from an attempt on the part of the stomach to be too damned clever, and to depart from precedent inconsiderately. The healthy stomach is nothing if not ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... English had a good deal of accent. His Hindoo companion was a beautiful old man, with long snowy hair flowing over his long white robes, who took the Bishop's hand between both of his, and blessed God for his coming, hoping that as Elijah brought back the stiff-necked Israelites, so the Bishop might turn ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... their position; above all, they have been teachable, ready to receive impressions from without, and, when received, to develop them. To show the truth of this, we need only observe, that they adopted Christianity from another race, the most obstinate and stiff-necked the world has ever seen, who, trained under the Old Dispensation to preserve the worship of the one true God, were too proud to accept the further revelation of God under the New, and, rejecting their birth-right, suffered their inheritance to ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... The stiff-necked old gentleman would in all human probability have expressed himself in this manner, and Rex knew Greif well enough to know the son would have fulfilled the father's injunctions and carried out his orders to the letter, no ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... willing to send a subaltern and a score of troopers to convoy the entire party—sheriff and deputies, posse and prisoners—to the territorial capital, but, like the old war-horse he was, he balked, stiff-necked and stiff-legged, at the sheriff's demand that the escort should report to him—should be, in point of fact, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... of things—this survival of the more prominent traits of the old stiff-necked ones, albeit their necks were stiffened by their resistance of the adversary—can necessarily be known only to the initiated. The sojourner from cities for the summer months cannot often penetrate in the least, though he may not be aware of it, the reserve and dignified ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... character and enthusiasm of the greeting the candidate received every place he spoke, nor the response his thrilling speeches evoked all over the state. Those who had gathered the idea that the head of the great university would appear pedantic and stand stiff-necked upon an academic pedestal from which he would talk over the heads of the common people were forced, by the fighting, aggressive attitude of the Doctor, to revise their old estimates. The campaign had only begun when the leading newspapers ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... taketh a dog by the ears. As coals are to burning coals, and wood to fire; so is a contentious man to kindle strife' (Prov 26:17-21). I do observe two things very odious in many professors; the one is a head-strong and stiff-necked spirit, that will have its own way; and the other is, a great deal of tattling and talk about religion, and but a very little, if anything, of those Christian deeds that carry in them the cross of a Christian in the doing thereof, and profit to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... are fools—most of them stiff-necked fools," he asserted. "Bah! Do you think I do not know? Do you think anything is hidden from her? I know—and she knows—that you think you have a surprise in store for her! You think you will go to her, and she will say, 'King sahib, why did you throw that head into the ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... come. Several of her nuns followed her hastily heterodox example; but the mass of them stood stoutly by their faith, and ended by making off with it intact to Valence. I admit that an appearance of improbability is cast upon this tradition by the unhindered departure from the Abbey of the stiff-necked nuns: who thus manifested an open scorn equally of the victorious Huguenots and of the Reformed faith. But, on the other hand, there are the ruins of the Abbey to prove conclusively that it truly was conquered; and there, slanting with a conspicuously ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... of yore, being of a submissive rather than a stiff-necked generation, habitually bent their contemplative heads to avoid collision with the beams in the low ceilings of the many chambers of their House; whether they sat in its long low windows telling their beads for their mortification, instead of making necklaces ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... indifferent face. His eyes were closed, and one might have thought him asleep. Mr. Jackson noted the attitude, and attributed it to a wicked obstinacy. For the repentant sinner, acknowledging his fault, he would have had entire forgiveness; but James showed no contrition. Stiff-necked and sin-hardened, ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... of the necessity of paying taxes—and so between them the Republic came to grief. But it must be borne in mind that President Burgers was throughout actuated by good motives; he did his best by a stubborn and stiff-necked people; and if he failed, as fail he did, it was more their fault than his. As regards the pension he received from the English Government, which has so often been brought up against him, it was after all no more than his due after five years ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... demonstration against the system at the first session. Lincoln was a member of this body, and, being by that time the unquestioned leader of the Whig minority, was nominated for Speaker, and came within one vote of an election. The Legislature was still stiff-necked and perverse in regard to the system. It refused to modify it in the least, and voted, as if in bravado, another eight hundred ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Mountain led me to the door, and there I had my first glimpse of Tar Baby! He was a four-year-old horse that had spent those years running wild on the range. A few months before he had been captured and partly tamed. But he was hard-mouthed, and stiff-necked and hell-bent on having his own way about things. I didn't know all that when I saw him this Christmas Day. To me he was perfect. He was round and fat, shiny black, with a white star in his forehead, and four white feet. One eye was blue, ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... secrets are safe with me. Am I not your chaplain, and does not this wilful and rebellious King of ours work much mischief against God and His servants? Yet I tell you that I like it not, and cannot see the end. We English are a stiff-necked folk whom you of Spain do not understand and will never break, and Henry is strong and subtle; moreover, his ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... by its excellency, a share in the type, be sure that for it we shall never be sharers in the anti-type itself. "Understand, therefore, that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness; for thou art a stiff-necked people;" Deut. ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... can do so in no other manner, and that I may rid you either of heresy or of life. Notwithstanding, if you prefer to return to the Catholic faith and to the light of primitive days, send unto me your ambassadors and I will tell them what ye must do. If on the other hand ye will be stiff-necked and kick against the pricks, then remember all the crimes and offences ye have perpetrated and look for to see me coming unto you with all strength divine and human to render unto you again all the evil ye have done ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... all was still, save when the ghostly wind Swept o'er the plains with melancholy moan. That night the shadowy shape of one long dead Stood face-to-face with Saul, in lonely cave, The Witch of Endor's haunt. Ah, me—the fall! To degradation deep that man hath slid Who 'gainst the Lord in stiff-necked folly strives Choosing the path of cabalistic wiles— The dark and turbid garniture of toads, And philters rank of necromantic knaves— Who spurns the hand which, by the light of Heaven, Points clear and straight along the spacious ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning |
