"Stubbornness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a man of no little originality and character," he went on. "Wherefore, none of the townsfolk liked him. By the age of twenty he had risen to be an alderman, yet never to the end could get the better of folk's stubbornness and stupidity, even though he made it his custom to treat all and sundry to food and drink, and to reason with them. No, not even at the last did he attain his due. People feared him because he revolutionised everything, revolutionised ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... none of these airy messages. She secretly marvelled at the happiness that could blind Sally to a memory of Pa, and Pa's stubbornness. ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... in his designs, and astounded and impatient that a poor monk should thus set at naught all the prayers and powers of the sovereign of Christendom, the cardinal bade him see his face no more until he had repented of his stubbornness. ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... diversion. But having more salt than he could use during the remainder of his days, did not tend toward an abatement of this war he waged against nature's ultimate design. He himself would analyse that as a species of stubbornness, an egotistic desire to see how good an interference he could establish, but he gave body and brain and soul to his meddling with a fire ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... Germany puts it, does not strike the American mind favorably. No doubt this will be regarded by you as quite an absurdity, that we should have any such dream, but I find myself from day to day feeling a twinge or two of bitterness over England's stubbornness, which seems to be as irremovable a quality as it was in some past ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... Conrad Grebel, William R[oe]ubli and Simon Stumpf. Two others, Felix Manz and John Br[oe]dlein, were added; the first of whom by his scientific culture, and the second by his strength of character, as well as by his stubbornness and pride, which did not indeed allow of entire harmony of feeling, soon drew attention, as among the ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... shop in Bezem Straat, others were really of ancient date. The very glass from which the dying man drank his milk dated from the glorious days of Holland when William the Silent pitted his Northern stubbornness and deep diplomacy against the fire and fanaticism of Alva. Many objects in the room had a story, had been in the daily use of hands long since vanished, could tell the history of half a dozen human lives lived out and now forgotten. The air itself smelt of ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... hard luck, but the soldier boy felt that he had made all the fight that could be expected of any one. There seemed no sense in being killed for sheer stubbornness, now that he had not a ghost of a ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... is, say what we will about it—it would carry me too far afield to explain it to-night—that the negro cannot work together on equality with the white man; he either assumes an apparent insolence and stubbornness, which the whites will not allow; or he puts on a civility and submission, which strips him of his manhood. So, we are placed in this condition: when we keep the negro close to us on formal equality, he has no real opportunity to grow and develop in the true characteristics of manhood; ...
— Church work among the Negroes in the South - The Hale Memorial Sermon No. 2 • Robert Strange
... Betty be driven single to a small pung that had been built for water-hauling when the well froze up. Accordingly, the mule was put before the sleigh. Failure resulted. Though both Dallas and her father alternately coaxed and scolded, Betty, with characteristic stubbornness, refused to budge a rod from ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... the suspicious Mrs. Anderson confiscated it within five minutes. For the severity of maternal government was visibly increased thereafter, and Julia received many reminders of her ingratitude and of her determination to kill her self-sacrificing mother by her stubbornness. ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... impertinence. Look at the self-confidence of Wordsworth, stiffening every other sentence of his prefaces into defiance; there is no more of it than was needed to enable him to do his work, yet it is not a little ungraceful here and there. Suppose this stubbornness and self-trust in a youth, laboring in an art of which the executive part is confessedly to be best learnt from masters, and we shall hardly wonder that much of his work has a certain awkwardness and stiffness in it, or that ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... "Not always. If stubbornness is encountered, the agent merely shelves the manuscript and tells the writer it has been ...
— The Smiler • Albert Hernhunter
... one quality which pre-eminently distinguishes the man of Truth from the man of self, and that is humility. To be not only free from vanity, stubbornness and egotism, but to regard one's own opinions as of no value, this indeed ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... the rocks, growing more stout and scrubby, until it forms, not a tree as yet, but a little pyramidal, stiff, twiggy mass, almost as solid and impenetrable as a rock. Some of the densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have ever seen, as well on account of the closeness and stubbornness of their branches as of their thorns, have been these wild-apple scrubs. They are more like the scrubby fir and black spruce on which you stand, and sometimes walk, on the tops of mountains, where cold is the demon they contend ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... Elsie's appearance. He had noticed the look of sadness on her fair young face, and conjectured, from something in the manner of the rest of the family toward her, that she was in disgrace; yet he was sure there was no stubbornness or self-will in the expression of that meek and gentle countenance. He began to suspect that some injustice had been done the little girl, and determined to watch and see if she were indeed the naughty child she was represented ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... river is low you may hear their death-song sounding there. The manitous of the river and the wood were offended with the medicine-man because of his stubbornness and cruelty, although he suffered greatly because of the death his daughter died, and he the cause of it. For now strange Indians appeared among the Cherokees and drove the deer and bear away. Tall, strong, and large were these intruders, and they hung about the village ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... condition. His fishing had been unsuccessful, and during twelve days that he had been wandering alone through the savage mountains he had found scarcely anything to eat. He had been ill, sick at heart, and still had pressed forward; but now his strength and his stubbornness were exhausted. He expressed his satisfaction that Mr. Stuart and his party were near, and said he would wait at his camp for their arrival, hoping they would give him something to eat, for without food he declared he should not be ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... his work on an opinion he had formed that the troubles of the time were not due wholly to the intemperance of faction, the misgovernment of a king, or the stubbornness of a people, but to change in the balance of property; and he laid the foundations of his commonwealth in the opinion that empire follows the balance of property. Then he showed the commonwealth of Oceana in action, with safeguards against future shiftings ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... he was wrong, he would show it by a slight diminution of his ferocious stubbornness; but would never acknowledge it in words. If he gained even a doubtful advantage over an adversary, he rubbed his hands, clapped his knees, and chuckled and growled out his satisfaction, in a manner peculiarly his own. He ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... began to hiccough with rage, and I wrestled from my very inmost soul with my misery; made a right gallant effort not to sink down. It was not my intention to collapse; no, I would die standing. A dray rolls slowly by, and I notice there are potatoes in it; but out of sheer fury and stubbornness, I take it into my head to assert that they are not potatoes, but cabbages, and I swore frightful oaths that they were cabbages. I heard quite well what I was saying, and I swore this lie wittingly; repeating time after time, just to have the vicious satisfaction of perjuring myself. I got ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... has completely forgotten the contract, my slavehood. Or was it actually only stubbornness? And she gave up her whole plan as soon as I no longer opposed her and submitted to her ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... last time, Boccadoro," he said slowly, attempting by words to shake a demeanour that was proof against the impending facts of the cord, "I ask you to remember what must be the consequences of this stubbornness. If not at the first hoist, why then at the second or the third, the torture will compel you to disclose what you may know. Would you not be better advised to speak at once, while your limbs are soundly planted in their sockets, rather than let yourself ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... found myself a prisoner in my own room. I thought for a moment I would fling myself from the open window, but I felt that I was afraid to die. I was not penitent. At times my heart was subdued, but my stubbornness rose in an instant, and bade me ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... mutually declared their intention never to speak to each other again, wetting and drying their forefingers to the accompaniment of an ancient childish incantation, and while they lived on the paternal farm they kept their foolish oath with the stubbornness of a slow country stock, despite the alternate coaxing and chastisement of their parents, notwithstanding the perpetual everyday contact of their lives, through every vicissitude of season and weather, of sowing and reaping, of sun and shade, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Mitau, near Bausk, heavy fighting took place, and the Russian lines, which had held their own throughout the entire retreat of the Russian armies in Poland, began to give way. At one other point the Russians had fought back inevitable retreat with special stubbornness, and that was due west of Grodno, in the neighborhood of Augustovo, which had seen such desperate fighting during and following the Russian invasion of East Prussia. But there, too, now the Germans began to make headway and were advancing against the Niemen and the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... first appearance occasion an instinctive shrinking and repugnance in the world which it was to dissolve. The outer and palpable causes of the misrepresentation were, for the Roman public at large, the confounding of the Christians with the Jews, that isolated, fierce, and stubborn race, whose stubbornness, fierceness, and isolation, real as they were, the fancy of a civilized Roman yet further exaggerated; the atmosphere of mystery and novelty which surrounded the Christian rites; the very simplicity of Christian theism. For the Roman statesman, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... since it is a necessity, from which never any age by-past hath been exempted, and unto which they which be, and so many as are to come, are thralled (no consequent of life being more common and familiar), why shouldst thou with unprofitable and nought-availing stubbornness, oppose so inevitable and necessary a condition? This is the high-way of morality, and our general home: Behold what millions have trod it before thee, what multitudes shall after thee, with them which ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... on his knee. He had been trying to play, but could not. His heart yearned after his daughter—yes, and after a long-estranged bride of his youth. His love of the sea was sated forever; his love for wife and child still cried for its own under all his old anger and stubbornness. ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... closing the book, "we are here in the caves tonight because of the stubbornness of Humbolt and Schroeder and all the others. Had they thought only of their own welfare, had they conceded defeat and gone into the migratory way of life, we would be sitting beside grass campfires somewhere to the south tonight, our way of life containing no plans or aspirations greater than ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... long end—there were exceedingly few requests which he refused. Against all attacks upon his purse he made the most sturdy defence; but the amount extorted from him, at last, was generally in direct ratio with the length of the siege and the stubbornness of the resistance. In charity no one gave more liberally or with ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... like one stunned by a heavy blow. She had not really believed that a calamity she so much dreaded, would overtake her, and the fact that it had, paralyzed her faculties. Thinking her in a fit of stubbornness Mrs. Atherton said no more, but busied herself in packing her scanty wardrobe, feeling occasionally a twinge of remorse as she bent over the little red, foreign-looking chest, or glanced at the slight figure sitting so motionless ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... came out into the road, and, catching Dick by the bridle, jerked him forward, using, at the same time, the customary language on such occasions, but Dick met this new ally with increased stubbornness, planting his fore feet more firmly and at a sharper angle with ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... worth of the poetry is not affected by the stubbornness of its recipient. Sara Teasdale very delicately names her anthology of love poems by women, The Answering Voice, but half the poems reveal the singer speaking first, while a number of them show ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... can't be. No argument and no appeal can bring it about. It makes me shudder to think of it. Really I can't understand it. The situation to me is most unnatural. But I won't be harsh with you. But I must say that I don't know where you get your stubbornness. No, I won't be harsh. Let me tell you what I will agree to do. He may come to this house and stay here until—may stay here and the best of care shall be taken of him, and you may nurse him, but you must not bear his name. Will you ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... dumb. The pale and terror-stricken countenances of those present were turned toward him. The members of the Council implored and besought him to put aside this unnatural stubbornness. ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... at the head of the column commanded by John made his position safe from attack. Whether the chief refused to comply with Uraso's demand from stubbornness, or because he was paralyzed at the sudden changes from his fancied security, was not apparent at ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... very stubbornness of this resistance proved in itself a danger. On the right and the left the line, though not broken, was bent back. In this way the American position formed a salient in the German line, and was subjected to attack not only in front, but on ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... in Hochkirch Church and Churchyard,—whither the Battalion Margraf-Karl had flung themselves; the poor Village soon taking fire about them. Soon taking fire, and continuing to be a scene of capture and recapture, by the flame-light; while Battalion Margraf-Karl stood with invincible stubbornness, pouring death from it; not to be compulsed by the raging tide of Austrian grenadiers; not by "six Austrian battalions," by "eight," or by never so many. Stood at bay there; levelling whole masses of them,—till its cartridges were spent, all ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... them due credit, I think they would have," replied Damis thoughtfully, "yet their motive would not have been loyalty, but stubbornness and a refusal to subordinate their will to another's. I thought you said that Lura would join ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... stubbornness of the border states, was forced toward the Congressional point of view as expressed in the Confiscation Bill. On the day following his failure to win the border state representatives he told Seward and Welles who were driving with him, that he had come ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... also a free pardonconditioned, that you will imitate her in avoiding vice and stubbornness, and that henceforward she banish herself forth of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... unoccupied, with her head leaning on her arm. Had she done so, she would have spoken to her about George. As it was, she did not dare to do so. There was during these days, and indeed outwardly for many days afterwards, an iron stubbornness about Caroline which frightened Miss Baker and altogether prevented her from alluding to the possibility of a reconciliation. Nothing could be more gentle, nay, more obedient, than Caroline's manner and way with her aunt at this time: ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... sparing Agag and the best of the cattle and sheep should be better known and more heeded than it is. Concerning this, the prophet of God chastised him, saying: "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim. Because thou hast rejected the word of Jehovah, he hath also rejected thee from being king." The dark picture of Saul's doings is here and there relieved by the unadulterated love of Jonathan and David, "which, like the ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... faith in his cause and the people that even after he fell ill he could not believe that ratification would fail. What his enemies called stubbornness was his firm faith in the righteousness of the treaty and in the reasonableness of the proposition that the time to make amendments was not prior to the adoption of the Treaty and by one nation, but after all the nations had agreed and had met ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... said the King, whose acute eye perceived the struggle in the Fleming's bosom; "but carry not thy stubbornness too far. Have we not said we will be gracious to yonder offenders, as far as ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... to pursue: several men in all branches of the service dropped dead from sun-stroke. The rebels bore away their guns. The English lost twenty-four men; about half from sun-stroke. Lieutenant Perkins was among the slain; Captain Johnson, and Ensign Napier, among the wounded. The stubbornness of the mutineers led Colonel Wilson to maintain his position and await orders and reinforcements. On the 3rd of June he was joined by another company of the Royal York Rifle regiment, and by a battalion of Goorkhas. These troops remained faithful, for, although attached to the Brahminical ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Fred, who never yielded an inch and never would argue or cajole. She firmly believed that Fred would actually have gone in swimming with her sitting there on the bank; he was just that stubborn. For that she sometimes hated him—since no one detests stubbornness so much ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... Westerner—fortune and his sweetheart, Winnie Lee. Winnie was as wildly anxious to see Buck as he was to see her. She had been locked in her room for stubbornness in refusing to promise never to see Badger again, and the other girls had been told that she was ill and could not be seen. They knew better now, for Winnie had finally bribed and coaxed one of the servants to tell them the truth. They had not known ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... attend Sunday school, bear in mind that your teachers have frequently to sacrifice their time or pleasure for your sake, and that you should not repay them for their kindness by acts of disobedience, disrespect, and stubbornness. By spending your time in idleness, in giving annoyance to your teacher, and in distracting others who are willing to learn, you show a want of appreciation and gratitude for the blessings God has ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... I may not let pride keep me down when it may be mine to be carried to the heights. With tenderness take me out of myself, that I may see how pride deceives, and destroys an humble spirit. Help me to master both stubbornness and ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... is to be sure!" she cried scornfully. "And what nonsense is this he writes. With all his men and officers he must come for my husband! What is HE doing? And all the others? It's just his own stupid stubbornness. He always did object to ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... good authority, that the English have refused the mediation of Russia. This surprises me not at all, because I am sure their arrogancy and stubbornness will never let them acknowledge either the independence of the United States, or the rights of neutrality, till their heads are broken; a blessed work, fit for heaven only and America to achieve, while European politicians take time ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... more frequency and fervor than any creatures it has been my lot to encounter throughout an adventurous life. After we got the vessel into the inner harbor,—though not without a mishap, owing to the captain's drunken stubbornness,—my Irish friends resolved to take lodgings for a while on shore. For two days they did not make their appearance; but toward the close of the third, they returned, "fresh," as they said, "from ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... writes, "Certain savage-looking beings, male and female, are seen in the country, black, livid, and sunburnt, and belonging to the soil which they dig and grub with invincible stubbornness. They stand erect, they display human lineaments, and seem capable of articulation. They are, in fact, men. They retire at night into their dens, where they live on black bread, water and roots. They spare other human beings the trouble ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... shall insist upon, however, if I have anything to do with the matter, and it is this: that when you have made up your mind on the subject you will stick to it. I have not found in your composition that element of stubbornness which is a constant source of embarrassment to me in all friendly and social ways, but which, when applied to certain lines of business, brings in the dollar and fifty-cent pieces. If you accept the position, of course that means that you have to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... only thing that can justify us, the death and resurrection of Jesus are without meaning; that Christ is the Savior of the world would be a myth. God would be a liar, because He would not have fulfilled His promises. Our stubbornness is right, because we want to preserve the liberty which we have in Christ. Only by preserving our liberty shall we be able to retain the ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... the untracked grass and building chickencoop dwellings as nearly alike as the buttons on a new shirt—spite of all that they had felt keenly their exile from Flying U ranch. They had stayed away, for two reasons: one was a latent stubbornness which made them resent the Old Man's resentment; the other was a matter of policy, as preached by Andy Green and the Native Son. It would not do, said these two cautious ones, to be running to the Flying U outfit ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... by Raleigh's vehement counsels. The Lord Admiral had always shown deference to Raleigh's nautical science, and the Earl was captivated by the qualities he could best admire, courage and spirit and rapidity. Raleigh's old faults of stubbornness and want of tact abandoned him at this happy moment. His graceful courtesy to Essex, his delicacy in crossing dangerous ground, won praise even from his worst enemies, the satellites of Essex. It was Raleigh's blossoming hour, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... not much behind her sisters in contentious stubbornness. In answer to the Governor's appeal, the Assembly replied: "It appears that the French have built a fort at a place called French Creek, at a considerable distance from the River Ohio, which may, but does not by any evidence ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... of the province of Estremadura in Spain, and being shut out by his low birth from advancement in his own land, had come to the colonies in the hope of gaining wealth and position by the sword. His reckless courage, iron muscle, and a certain cold stubbornness had given him the reputation of an able man, but though nearly ten years older than Balboa, he had never held any but a subordinate position. He had nearly made up his mind that his chance would never come. These hidalgos wanted all the glory as well as all the power for themselves. ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... stubbornness, "I must. Do you know why I was such a wild-cat at school? Because some of the other girls were more important than I—much more important—and richer—and more beautiful—and people paid them more attention. And that seemed to burn the heart in me." She pressed her hands to her breast with ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... our direction, so that our right flank needed strengthening. The Boers displayed no sign of quitting their position, though they must have known that Brabant and Hart would be on their track from the south-east, and General French from the north-west. They held their ground with a grim stubbornness against overwhelming odds of men and guns, and dropped shells amongst us in a way that made one feel that no spot could ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... for the message which he daily grew a little more doubtful of his ability to deliver. A native streak of stubbornness kept him studying the language along with his daily tussle with the axe and saw. But the rate of his progress was such that he pessimistically calculated that it would take him at least two years ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... for those there was money enough; but it seemed to them now that the bad wife, who had utterly refused to acclimatise herself to the soil to which she had been transplanted, was to be rewarded for her wicked stubbornness. Lady Laura would become mistress of her own fortune and of all Loughlinter, and would be once more a free woman, with all the power that wealth and fashion can give. Alas, alas! it was too late now for the taking of any steps to sever her from her rich inheritance! "And the false ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... and high-speed machines for such roads as they have on the other side, we have much to learn from the French,—and we have been slow in learning it. The conceit of the American mechanic amounts often to blind stubbornness, but the ease with which the foreign machines have passed the American in all races on smooth roads has opened the eyes of our builders; the danger just now is that they will go to the other extreme ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... met Claybrook again. Nothing had been decided. Maida had seemed utterly indifferent. "Perfectly satisfied with things as they are," she had said; there was a diabolical stubbornness in her manner. She made capital of her own inertia. She was as cool as if dealing with an entire stranger. Finally, after two days of backing and filling, of bickering and contesting, she had named her price. "Fifteen hundred," she had said and there was nothing in the way she said it that ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... man are the words Satan is clever in coining when the false gods speak and reject the true," he stated quietly. "My children, we must not hold this against the weak human brother. The devils of necromancy and sorcery are stubborn—but ere this the stubbornness has been broken, and the saints have rejoiced! It is plain that devilish arts could not prosper where the Image remained—hence it has been given back! Make no mistake my children, where the word of God, and the Image rest,—there the pagan powers must ever grow ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... her finger. But alas! this did not work as she had expected. The teacher saw her put it on and concluded that she had put the other on also; so she said, "Bessie, you may go and sit in my chair." As she said this, all the stubbornness in Bessie's nature arose. She did not move; and when the teacher said sternly, "Are you going to obey?" she shook her head and caught hold of the seat. At this moment Nora whispered, "If that were me, she'd make me go." The teacher ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... to apologize; if he had done so he would have extended his hand and taken him to Kate, who, upon a second apology, would have extended her hand, and the incident would have been closed. It was Willits's stubbornness and bad breeding, then, that had caused the catastrophe—not ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... hard, porcelain-like blue eyes and kinky hair which, instead of being black, is brown or brownish red. After her first startled glance toward Bristow she stood with her head lowered and with an expression of sulky stubbornness. ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... he blurted out, with the ungracious stubbornness of a weak mind which fears to be over-persuaded. Afraid lest he should consent, he refused ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... love Thee with my tongue, then mourn my fill; For love warms not my heart, nor can I rise, Or ope the doors of Grace, who from the skies Might flood my soul, and pride and passion kill. Rend Thou the veil, dear Lord! Break Thou that wall Which with its stubbornness retards the rays Of that bright sun this earth hath dulled for me! Send down Thy promised light to cheer and fall On Thy fair spouse, that I with love may blaze, And, free from doubt, my heart feel ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... spirit of independence, if not of stubbornness, was strong in Mrs. Samuel, Jr. At length, what seems to have been the true motive, jealousy on the part of the husband, appears in the record by the father, and from all the evidence Samuel might well be jealous, as future events will show. To return ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... in the distance, a mannish spring in his stride, and with every evidence that he took himself seriously. He was of that peculiar stubbornness and determination that had the children failed to carry out his plan of procedure he would have gone deliberately by and refused to ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... almost bull-dog tenaciousness about the loose-jointed, high-shouldered figure, and, above all, the audacity of the careless Irish-American smile. That smile, she felt, trailed like a flippant and fluttering tail to the kite of his racial solemnity and stubbornness of purpose, enabling it to rise higher even while seeming to ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... so much stubbornness, the gentleman thought that violence must needs be used to win her, and threatened her with his master's authority and power. But she laughed, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... abroad towards that company with those last words of his; and I could feel that all shame and fear was falling from those men, and that mere fiery manhood was shining through their wonted English shamefast stubbornness, and that they were moved indeed and saw the road before them. Yet no man spoke, rather the silence of the men-folk deepened, as the sun's rays grew more level and more golden, and the swifts wheeled about shriller and louder ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... know that one of the medicine men had questioned him in the tongue of the Sioux, which, if he were indeed one of Broken Feather's tribe, he ought to have understood. His failure to answer was taken for stubbornness, a sure evidence ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... agreed that their 'take' that week was not at all what they had expected. I even went so far as to admit the possibility of his own statement, and besought him at least to show me where he had found it. He at first refused with great stubbornness of temper, but later consented to accompany me privately this afternoon to the spot." Mr. Staples paused, and sinking his voice gloomily, and with his eyes fixed upon Johnny, continued slowly: "When I state that, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... concerning Dexter's nerve, he did not doubt that Driggs was really "bad." Here was a brute who might very likely carry out his threats. Yet Dick, in addition to possessing an amazing lot of grit for a boy of his age, had also a great amount of stubbornness about doing the right thing and not doing ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... limits of his vessel's deck had preyed upon his ambitious spirit; and the horrors of the voyage, caused by his own self-will and stubbornness, stood before him like a nightmare. Scarcely had the Isle of Demons sunk from sight on the horizon, when his conscience began to prick him; and he would have returned for the women whom he had set on shore, but he ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... both parties. Not to admit that the text of this Edition is in many places improved, from the suggestions of my Translators, by corrections of "Names of Persons, Places, and Things," would be to betray a stubbornness or obtuseness of feeling which certainly does not enter into the composition of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... in the general psychological sense of volition; but it was more often specifically applied to two limited manifestations of the volition. It was the commonest of synonyms alike for 'self will' or 'stubbornness'—in which sense it still survives in 'wilful'—and for 'lust,' or 'sensual passion.' It also did occasional duty for its own diminutive 'wish,' for 'caprice,' for 'good-will,' and for 'free consent' (as nowadays in ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... in peace, assert the people's right; With noble stubbornness resisting might: No lawless mandates from the court receive, Nor lend by force, but in a body give. Such was your generous grandsire; free to grant In parliaments, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... in spite of his lack of flesh. He had vast hands, all loose skin and outstanding tendons; he had a fleshless face over which his smile was capable of extending limitlessly. He was the sort of a man from whom one would expect shrewdness, some cunning, stubbornness, a dry humor, and many principles. All of which, except the last, was ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... violence, but feeling deepened. Men put restraint upon their words, but their hearts behind them were full of bitterness, bitterness on one side because the Northern sympathizers were so stubborn, and bitterness on the other, because the Southern sympathizers showed the same stubbornness. Friends of a lifetime used but cold words to each other and saw widening between then, a gulf which none could cross. Supporters of either cause poured into the little capital. Tremendous pressure was brought to bear upon House and Senate. Members were compelled ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in all trials, or feel murmurings, fretfulness, and impatience under them?—is it not easy to know if we feel anger at provocations, or whether we feel our tempers mild, gentle, peaceable, and easy to be entreated, or feel stubbornness, self-will, and pride? whether we have slavish fears, or are possessed of that perfect love which casteth out all fear ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... was a typical Brazilian horse. It shared many of the characteristics of the people of the Province. Timidity, laziness, lack of affection and judgment, sulkiness and great stubbornness under training of any kind were its qualities. This was due chiefly, I think, to its inferior intelligence when compared with thoroughbred horses of other nations. The Goyaz horse was small, fairly agile, and when well cared for had a handsome shiny coat with luxuriant ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... outnumbered the forces opposed to him by at least two thousand men, since Mortier's corps, guarding the northwest road, was perforce inactive, and since six thousand men had been left at Champaubert under Marmont to retain Bluecher, attacked with the utmost stubbornness and gallantry. He could make no impression on Friant, echeloned on the main road, and before the resolute resistance his advancing divisions slowly obliqued to the right toward another walled farmhouse, ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... police. All this necessarily requires a prodigious space of time. We see by the long details which face every day the most necessary and the smallest of our undertakings, how difficult it is to do great things, and it needs not only indefatigable stubbornness, but several ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... in his nature shades of evil—there was an obstinacy which he himself, and his friends termed firmness of mind; but had not religion and some opposite virtues weighed heavily in the balance, it would frequently have degenerated into implacable stubbornness. ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... swearing that he loved me and that he had killed himself for me ... a tiresome, horrible scene.... And nevertheless I am sure that he was deceiving himself, that he did not love me. He killed himself through wounded vanity on seeing that I would have nothing to do with him,—just for stubbornness, for theatrical effect, influenced by his readings.... He was a Roumanian tenor. That was in Russia.... I have been an actress a part ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... back-yard—tried to scale the wall—fallen back exhausted, and been found at morning on the stones in a dying state. But though there was some evidence of cruelty, there was none of murder; and the aunt and her husband had sought to palliate cruelty by alleging the exceeding stubbornness and perversity of the child, who was declared to be half-witted. Be that as it may, at the orphan's death the aunt inherited her brother's fortune. Before the first wedded year was out, the American quitted England abruptly, and never returned to it. ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... is not then carried without bloodshed, it will be due to the unconstitutional action of the rich, not to the need of revolutionary violence on the part of the advocates of the proletariat. Whether such a state of opinion grows up or not depends mainly upon the stubbornness or conciliatoriness of the possessing classes, and, conversely, upon the moderation or violence of those who desire fundamental economic change. The majority which Bolsheviks regard as unattainable is chiefly prevented by the ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... of this play would be very conspicuous in any other piece, not only for their justness, but their strength. Cassio is brave, benevolent, and honest, ruined only by his want of stubbornness to resist an insidious invitation. Roderigo's suspicious credulity, and impatient submission to the cheats which he sees practised upon him, and which by persuasion he suffers to be repeated, exhibit a strong picture of a weak mind betrayed by unlawful desires to a false friend; ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... him to go on if he dared. The same character remains with him now. He will incur any hazard for the triumph of his own will. From his youth, he has been a popular idol; a circumstance which has doubtless increased the requirements of his passions, without diminishing the stubbornness of his temper. Milza tells me he has already inquired of her concerning your present residence and future intentions. Obstacles will only increase his ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... that you refused to learn the lesson that she assigned, and that you incited the rest of the girls to mutiny. You are one of the most able pupils in the class, and your failure to finish the lesson is nothing in the world but stubbornness. If it were Rosalie Patton now, there might be some ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... necessary. The others have submitted; and Clarke is but a shadow of himself, owing to the unwholesome nature of the place in which he is confined. I do not despair yet of bringing him to reason and submission. He is not like Dalaber. There is no stubbornness about him. He will speak with sweet courtesy, and enter into every argument with all the reasonableness of a great mind. But he says that to walk in that procession, to take part in that act of so-called recantation and reconciliation, would be in itself ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... spade," he said at length; but there was an element of stubbornness in Renmark's ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... She does not either resemble you, with your fresh and open manner, or Cornelia, with her merry, pliant disposition, which won every one's heart. The child has a dull and sullen nature, a roughness of manner and an unheard-of stubbornness. I can do nothing for her, at least not by anything I say. But I have decided to leave physical or other punishment to you. I shall do all I can by good example and admonishment as long as I am here. ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... salute you, Marie!" His perch was placed near the door and several persons were astonished that he did not answer to the name of "Jacquot," for every parrot is called Jacquot. They called him a goose and a log, and these taunts were like so many dagger thrusts to Felicite. Strange stubbornness of the bird which would not talk when ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... effect their purpose, a carriage drew up, and effectually impeded further progress by the cross-way, so that there seemed no alternative between standing fast and gaining the pavement by walking through the mud. The coachman retained his position despite of remonstrance, and in this laudable stubbornness he was encouraged by a well-attired female inside the vehicle, for the carriage was a private one, and its ill-mannered inmate probably a lady of rank and fashion. Sir Felix, justly indignant at this treatment, set danger and inconvenience at defiance, and deliberately ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... to ride with General Morgan, like Shelly did," Boyd repeated doggedly, with that stubbornness which seasons ago had kept him eternally tagging ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... weasel, fox and wolf. It is sullen and ferocious, and one of the most troublesome of the wood-denizens. When first seen it is apt to be mistaken for a small bear, or rather heavy-looking wolf. The sensuous neck and head bespeak the wolf and weasel nature, the sly persistency the fox, and the savage stubbornness that of the bear; while a resemblance to all four can be seen in the general contour, appearance and habits of ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... the same reputation alive. What this literary design was, we do not know with certainty. It is believed to have been a history of England, of which, as I have said, a fragment remains. Whatever the work may have been, it was an offence to Hamilton. With an irrational stubbornness, that may well astound us when we think of the noble genius that he thus wished to confine to paltry personal duties, he persisted that Burke should bind himself to his service for life, and to the exclusion of other interests. "To circumscribe my hopes," cried Burke, "to give up even the possibility ...
— Burke • John Morley
... of philosophy, in spite of progress, the spirit of the cloister persists in the midst of the nineteenth century, and a singular ascetic recrudescence is, at this moment, astonishing the civilized world. The obstinacy of antiquated institutions in perpetuating themselves resembles the stubbornness of the rancid perfume which should claim our hair, the pretensions of the spoiled fish which should persist in being eaten, the persecution of the child's garment which should insist on clothing the man, the tenderness of corpses which should ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the fixedness of her ideas, the rigidity of her type of mind, the relentlessness of her will; and that independence on my part survived was due to sturdy stubbornness, to a refusal to be dominated, and an incapacity for subjection. But this, too, she failed ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... I cannot conquer you in one way, I will in another. Go, both of you, and join the bird that warned you, and live in the air and the trees until you repent your stubbornness and promise to become my slaves. The tuxix has spoken, and her magical powers ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... brow upon her, with a look of dumb and inflexible defiance. 'Dirk Hatteraick, dare ye deny, with my blood upon your hands, one word of what my dying breath is uttering?' He looked at her with the same expression of hardihood and dogged stubbornness, and moved his lips, but uttered no sound. 'Then fareweel!' she said, 'and God forgive you! your hand has sealed my evidence. When I was in life I was the mad randy gipsy, that had been scourged and banished and branded; that had begged ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... spell, and in the delirium of self-delusion hold sin for virtue, and the unnatural for higher truth and beauty. With this creed, experimental love was a logical sequence, and great constancy was already to be unprogressive stubbornness. 'All love exhausts itself,' said Sand in 'Lelia'; 'disgust and sadness follow; the union of the woman with the man should therefore ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... very well what this recommendation was, but with a certain stubbornness and sense of what was due to himself, he let his father proceed with the not very welcome ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... of the matter," said Martin Lorimer. "Stubbornness is in the family, and you are your father's son. An archangel would hardly have moved poor Tom! Well, lad, you shall not go penniless, nor third-class, if it's only for the credit of the name; and you can't go until spring. I thank thee for telling me; but I'm busy, and we'll ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... misconceptions on all sides If they have learnt anything as to the finality of the act of annexation—that I have no power to undo it, and do not believe that it will ever be undone, in the only sense in which they will ask it—I have, on the other hand, been shown the stubbornness of a determination to be content with nothing else, for which I was not prepared by the general testimony of officials who had been longer in the country, and who professed to believe that the opposition of the Boers was mere bluster, and that they had not the courage ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... sir, but better late than never. I began to think your stubbornness would postpone this call ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... with the youth's stubbornness. He pointed to all those happy, peaceful-looking families out for their afternoon drive—wealth, comfort, public esteem, abundance, freedom from struggle and toil! Cristo, boy! Was that so bad, after all? Well, that was just the life he could have if he would be good and not ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Burke. "Confound Tom's stubbornness, anyhow! Why doesn't he say if it was someone else who wore ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... resolution of artistic purpose; without these, we ask, how could a man, not lavishly dowered with poetry in his soul, have achieved so much of it? It was his very fixity and loftiness of purpose, his English stubbornness and doggedness of resolution that enabled him to surmount so many obstacles of style and metre, of subject and thought. His two purposes, of glorifying his mistress and his friends, and of sounding England's glories past and future, ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... or, on the other side, closing our cars with asinine stubbornness, let us take an impartial view of the facts determined, and draw ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... had seen better days, and, like her sisters, endowed with great artistic talent and practical energy, might have proved the salvation of Grillparzer's existence as a man if he had been more capable of manly resolution, and she had been less like him in impetuosity and stubbornness. They became engaged, they made preparations for a marriage which was never consummated and for years was never definitely abandoned; mutual devotion is ever and anon interrupted by serious or trivial quarrels, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... him, behind the Old Testament precedent of Abraham and other godly men, to whom it had been permitted to have more than one wife, and pleaded, moreover, that the New Testament contained no prohibition of polygamy. With all the energy and stubbornness of his nature, he fastened on these notions and clung to them, when, at the house of his sister, the Duchess Elizabeth, at Rochlitz, he chanced to meet and fall in love with a lady named Margaret von der Saal. She refused to ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... approach was from the west. The first line, consisting wholly of militia, went into action, and continued in it with a coolness and stubbornness which, says Greene, "would have graced the veterans of the great king of Prussia." Such conduct was almost invariable on their part, wherever Marion or Pickens commanded. Steadily and without faltering, they advanced into the hottest of the enemy's fire, with shouts and exhortations, ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... of going to the extreme of attributing to the child ideas and instincts which he does not possess. In former times it was considered one of the mother's chief duties to "break the child's will"; to-day, realizing the importance of a strong will, we are in danger of assuming that a child's stubbornness or wilfulness is a manifestation of a strong will, and we hesitate to interfere ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg |
