"Tenacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the half-submerged man parted company. The former was steered for the open sea; the latter drifted and tossed helplessly to and fro, growing hourly weaker and more and more benumbed, but always hanging on with convulsive tenacity to the friendly timber that buoyed him up, and was his ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... his first expectation of picking the town like a cherry, Charles sat down before it. The siege that followed won a reputation beyond the warrant of its real importance from the extraordinary tenacity and energy of the people in their own defence. Every missile that the ingenuity of man or woman could imagine was used to drive back the besiegers when the ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... behold the "Prodigious Prodigy" on the football field. Somewhere—Hicks won't divulge where—Thor has learned the rudiments of the game. With that bulldog tenacity of his, he has learned them well. Hence he was ready for the scrubs, and in the practice game it was a veritable slaughter of the innocents. The 'Varsity could not stop Thor. Remember 'Ole' Skjarsen, the big ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... by Gilbert Blythe. The rivalry between them was soon apparent; it was entirely good natured on Gilbert's side; but it is much to be feared that the same thing cannot be said of Anne, who had certainly an unpraiseworthy tenacity for holding grudges. She was as intense in her hatreds as in her loves. She would not stoop to admit that she meant to rival Gilbert in schoolwork, because that would have been to acknowledge his existence which Anne persistently ignored; but the rivalry was there and honors fluctuated ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... from 1604, had since the Peace of Utrecht nominally belonged to England, yet their sentiments and mode of life had been unaltered; Port Royal had been little changed by calling it Annapolis, and the simple, old-fashioned Catholics loved their homes with all the tenacity of six unbroken generations. Their feet were familiar in the paths of a hundred and fifty quiet and industrious years; their houses nestled in their lowly places like natural features of the landscape; their fields and herds ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... was carried on with tireless tenacity. Instead of digging all around the Nautilus, which would have entailed even greater difficulties, Captain Nemo had an immense trench outlined on the ice, eight meters from our port quarter. Then his men simultaneously staked it off at several points around its circumference. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... two hours for the accomplishment of the movement, the flash of the weapon would be of such terrific velocity that it is not an easy task to conceive how any blade of connected material substance could bear the strain of the stroke. Even with a blade that possessed the coherence and tenacity of iron or steel, the case would be one that it would be difficult for molecular cohesion to deal with. But that difficulty is almost infinitely increased when it is a substance of much lower cohesive tenacity than either ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... our hotel bill, and gotten the valise containing our shirts—(which we clung to with a bull-dog tenacity, owing to our late shirtless experience)—I hurried to the barn, where I found Frank had the horse between the shafts, and we hitched him up in a space of time that would have done credit to ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... the rooters urge them on to renewed efforts. Columbia seemed to have thrown up a stone wall in front of her goal lines, and no matter what strenuous plays were called off they were met with a stubborn tenacity that ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... eyes. That same sense of humour had often saved him from making mistakes, although it is not a popular attribute of story-book detectives. His carefully kept brown moustache was daintily upturned at the ends. There was grim tenacity written all over the man, but none but his intimates knew how it was wedded to pliant resource and ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... witness a little disorder where the orderly teller-accountant ruled. Porter, with all his boneheadedness, was a match for any man in the office, including the manager, when it came to the primitive way of "managing" affairs; Evan was compelled to admire his physique and the tenacity with which he clung to an opponent. After all "the porter" possessed certain qualities not to be despised. But Watson hit the point uppermost in ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... Fairview pour a heavy and destructive fire of shell and case into their columns as they press on. Every inch of ground is contested by our divisions, which hold their footing at Fairview with unflinching tenacity. ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... Even Hilmer had been surprised into banalities. Fred Starratt might have parted with them but yesterday, for any indications to the contrary, and for an instant he had found all sense of tragedy swallowed up in amazement at the passive tenacity of the conventions. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... preceding evening. Dinorah was no restraint. The slaves Joris owned, like those of Abraham, were born or brought up in his own household; they held to all the family feelings with a faithful, often an unreasonable, tenacity. ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... the heart's core in his convictions, and moreover that heart was bleeding in father-love, from a wound that could never be stanched. Bodine resolved to put all passion under his feet, to hold his ground with the coolness and tenacity of a general in a battle, and attain his purpose without the slightest personal compromise. His indomitable pride led him to feel that he would rather work for this honest, implacable foe than for any man in the city, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... de grace" with a bullet through her head at close range. We were quite anxious to capture the little fellow alive, but found it difficult to kill the mother without wounding him, as he clung to her poor wounded body with the most touching tenacity. It was heartrending to see him try to cover her body with his own little form, and lick her face and wounds, occasionally rising upon his hind legs and growling a fierce warning to his enemies. At this juncture Lieutenant Schwatka got out upon the ice, and, after several ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... 'Come, I tell you,' repeated Venus, chafing, 'to my place.' Not very well seeing his way to a refusal, Mr Wegg then rejoined in a gush, '—Hear me out!—Certainly.' So he locked up the Bower and they set forth: Mr Venus taking his arm, and keeping it with remarkable tenacity. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... influential Parliamentary personage. "I am not one of the converts," Disraeli said, "I am perhaps a member of a fallen party." A new Protection party was formed almost immediately under the leadership of George Lord Bentinck, a man of great energy and tenacity of purpose, who had hitherto spent his life almost altogether on the turf, who had had almost no previous preparation for leadership or even for debate, but who certainly, when he did accept the responsible position offered to him, showed a considerable capacity for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... went on, "all the ascertained veracities are immutable. One holds to them, or, rather, they hold to one, with an indissoluble tenacity. But convictions are in the region of character and are of remote origin. In their safety one indulges one's self in expectations, in tolerances, and these rather increase with the lapse of time. We should say that your theory of the stiffening tastes is applicable to the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... as a sportsman, he determined to let the matter of Hicks lie buried. For the dead man's good name he cared nothing, however, and victory over Will was only the more desired for this postponement. His black tenacity of purpose won strength from the repulse, but the problem for the time being was removed from its former sphere of active hatred towards his foe. How long this attitude would last, and what idiosyncrasy of character led to it, matters little. The fact remained that Grimbal's ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... what is commonly called English, or in some sections meadow, hay, though it originated and was first cultivated in this country. It contains a large percentage of nutritive matter, in comparison with other agricultural grasses. It thrives best on moist, peaty, or loamy soils, of medium tenacity, and is not well suited to very light, sandy lands. On very moist soils, its root is almost always fibrous; while on dry and loamy ones it is bulbous. On soils of the former description, which it especially affects, its growth is rapid, and its yield of hay large, sometimes ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... the whole coil of the slack of the main sheet on to the top of him. In a moment he was at the level of the rail, the mate and the steward hauling steadily on the rope, to which he clung with the tenacity and somewhat the attitude of a monkey. At the same instant a splash made the rescuers turn in time to see Conyngham, whose coat lay thrown on the deck behind them, rise to the surface ten yards astern of the 'Granville' and strike ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... down, he went on the branches, exploring them over and over. How he hurried, lest the trail get cold! How subtle and cruel and fiendish he looked! His snakelike movements, his tenacity, ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... tradition have rendered many a spot in India sacrosanct for all time; and to no tract perhaps have such traditions clung with greater tenacity than to the western littoral which in the dawn of the centuries watched the traders of the ancient world sail down from the horizon to barter in its ports. As with Gujarat and the Coast of Kathiawar, so with the Konkan it is a broken tale of strange arrivals, strange building, strange trafficking ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... lover could come, that he could even know of the evil, until too late to save her. Yet, the thought of his coming subtly cheered her. It persisted in defiance of all reason. And the affrighted girl clung to it with desperate tenacity, as a drowning man to the life line. She kept repeating to herself, "Zeke'll come! He will, he will!" as if the phrases were a spell for the soothing of terror. She wished that her hands were free to touch the fairy crystal ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... abbreviation of "bulldog," and had been won by the grit and grip that never let go when he had closed with an enemy. But whatever the origin of the term, all agreed that either definition was good enough to express the courage and power and tenacity of the man. Force—physical force, mental force, moral force—was the supreme characteristic ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... Oatmeal lacks the tenacity of wheaten flour, and cannot, without the addition of some other flour, be made into light bread. It is, however, largely consumed by the inhabitants of Scotland and the north of England, in the form of oatcakes. ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... after Andre had left the Avenue de Matignon, one of Mascarin's most trusty emissaries was at his heels, who could watch his actions with the tenacity of a bloodhound. Andre, however, now that he had heard of Sabine's convalescence, had entirely recovered the elasticity of his spirits, and would never have noticed that he was being followed. His heart, too, was much rejoiced at the friendship ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... did it, and hugged Dan round the neck with the tenacity of a shipwrecked mariner clinging to his last plank. The sturdy Celt went down the mountain as lightly as if Peter were a fly, and as if the vice-like grip of his arms round his throat were the ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... of construction, to the excellent binding quality of the stones, and to the slow drying of the grout-work in the inside, may be attributed the great tenacity of the walls of this fabric, more than to any uncommon or unknown method of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... one afternoon at the end of his usual solitary lesson, and the master and Uncle Ben were awaiting the arrival of Rupert. Uncle Ben's educational progress lately, through dint of slow tenacity, had somewhat improved, and he had just completed from certain forms and examples in a book before him a "Letter to a Consignee" informing him that he, Uncle Ben, had just shipped "2 cwt. Ivory Elephant ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... had I swung flail in peaceful border contest as I did that murderous iron bar in the dark of the river-shore, driving them back foot by foot against the high bank which held them helpless victims of my wrath. I struck again and again, my teeth set together in bulldog tenacity, my breath coming in gasps, the streaming blood from a deep cut over my eyes half blinding me, yet guided by fierce instinct to find and smite my foes. I trod on limp bodies, on writhing forms, and felt my weapon clash against iron rifle barrels ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... the other," he said to himself presently. "Cheniston's a decent fellow enough, brainy and a thoroughly steady sort of chap, but there is something about this man that I rather admire. It may be his pluck, or his quiet tenacity of purpose—I'm hanged if I know what it is; but on my soul I'm inclined to wish I'd been called upon to give my little girl into his keeping. As for that affair in India, it's not every man who would have had the pluck to shoot the girl, and precious few men would have lived it down as he has ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the end of the green-house. Then she re-entered. She tugged now with renewed strength at Wedderburn's motionless body, and brought the strange orchid crashing to the floor. It still clung with the grimmest tenacity to its victim. In a frenzy, she lugged it and him into ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Lun, of the Kara Korum, of the Himalaya, of the Hindoo Koosh. This orographic system, four hundred kilometres across, which remained for so many years an impassable barrier, has been surmounted by Russian tenacity. The Sclav race and the Yellow race have ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... this great demonstration that one great man was capable of inspiring quickly faded from my memory in view of the insight which three weeks as his guest gave me of the many sides of his life, occupations, and character. The extraordinary strength of will and tenacity of purpose, points always insisted on in connection with him, seemed on nearer acquaintance to be merely but a small part ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... might be preserved must depend on the care with which the old stories of the gods were passed from one person and one generation to another. The fundamental myths of a race have a surprising tenacity of life. How many centuries had elapsed between the period the Germanic hordes left their ancient homes in Central Asia, and when Tacitus listened to their wild songs on the banks of the Rhine? Yet we ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... men now, with the strength of the hills in bone and muscle, were the old man's chief reliance. They could see that he was failing, and felt sincerely sorry. They noted with what grim determination he stuck to his work. The tenacity inherited from a hundred generations of strong men, farmers, sea-kings, warriors, nerved his old arms and kept strong ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... dry, and he felt little weariness. The clouds were now all gone, and the stars sprang out, dancing in a sky of dusky blue. Trained eyes could see far in the forest despite the night, and Henry felt that he must be wary. He recalled the skill and tenacity of Timmendiquas. A fugitive could scarcely be trailed in the darkness, but the great chief would spread out his forces ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to borrow at ruinous usuries, or to fail to meet their payments. Their default involves others; others fail, and others again. The bowels of the banks, with us the great money-lenders, close with the snap and tenacity of steel-traps; and then a general panic, or want of commercial confidence, brings on a paralysis of the domestic exchanges, and wide-spread bankruptcy and ruin. Importations are checked, of course; but they are checked ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... really adhered with unexpected tenacity to the plan of reconstruction which he had attempted, and which, putting aside the opprobrious names applied to it, was called by himself "The Louisiana Plan." He had stubbornly maintained his ground against the almost unanimous protest of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... have sifted their dust over the immortal figures seated on the marble bench within the precincts consecrated to the Eumenides, but in deathless tenacity, the rich aroma of Sophocles' narcissus, and the soft crocus light linger there still; while from thickets of olive, nightingales break their hearts in song, as thrilling as the melody that smote the ears of doomed and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... not appear difficult to the sanguine imagination of a man who was without means or powerful friends, and who at no time had sufficient confidence in those with whom he was engaged to fully inform them of his plans. But he pursued his purposes with a tenacity which leaves no doubt of his sincerity, and an audacity and unscrupulousness seldom equalled. A few whom he thought it safe to trust were admitted to his secrets. Upon those in whom he did not dare to confide he practised every species ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... the spider, takes hold with her hands in king's palaces, as every twig is furnished with innumerable little fingers, by which it draws itself close, as it were, to the very heart of the old rough stone. Its clinging and beautiful tenacity has given rise to an abundance of conceits about fidelity, friendship, and woman's love, which have become commonplace simply from their appropriateness. It might also symbolize the higher love, unconquerable and unconquered, ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... not applaud his tenacity about fasting, yet I did not fail to approve all he said, and threw in my exclamations so well in time, that I perceived he became almost as much pleased with me as he appeared to be ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... inexplicable, but its reason is readily understood by those who know the sway of falsehood over a society perverted in its opinions as in its tastes; to those who know the deplorable facility with which error is spread and the tenacity with which it clings to our poor mind. Error, moreover, owes to our abasement which it flatters and crushes, the privilege of freedom from contradiction, and it is only in regard to truth that the minds of men are ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... the Jaceto and Sciar. Many of them had no covering to their beautiful little feet, excepting that magical slipper named before, which they managed to admiration, never allowing it to lose its position, or to touch the floor at any other part but the toe, to which it adhered with singular tenacity, through the most difficult steps of the ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... middle of their third week; still almost the half left of this month she had promised him. And already it was clear to him that he and love had lost their first hold, and that she was consumed with the unspoken wish to go back to Paris, and the atelier. Ah, no!—no! With a fierce yet dumb tenacity he held her to her bargain. Those weeks were his; they represented his only hope for the future; she ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... heel of Napoleon. Lord John was ever a fighter, and the political conflicts of his early manhood against the triple alliance of injustice, bigotry, and selfish apathy in the presence of palpable social abuses lent ardour to his convictions, tenacity to his aims, and boldness to his attitude in public life. Although an old Parliamentary hand, he was in actual years only fifty-four when he came to supreme office in the service of the State, but he had already succeeded in placing ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... necessity, had its limits. As Lord of Luss and "laird" of Malcolm, he represented his county in the House of Lords; but, with his Jacobite ideas, he did not care much for the favor of the House of Hanover, and he was looked upon coldly by the State party in England, because of the tenacity with which he clung to the traditions of his forefathers, and his energetic resistance to the political encroachments of Southerners. And yet he was not a man behind the times, and there was nothing little or narrow-minded about him; but while always keeping open his ancestral ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... a lagging footstep along the line of houses. She turned to meet the eyes of the pale-faced loungers in the lighted entrance of the St. James's restaurant, "Jimmy's," as she called it. But her mind was preoccupied. A problem had fastened upon it with the tenacity of some vampire or strange clinging creature of night. Cuckoo was wrestling with an angel; or was it a devil? And often, when she stopped on the pavement and exchanged a word or two with some casual stranger, she scarcely knew what she said, or to what kind of ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... available, it was a debatable point whether or not the inmates of No. 11 Fortescue Square were saved from an almost maniacal vengeance by the fact that a crisis was precipitated. Winter maintained stoutly that the police must triumph in the long run, whereas Furneaux held, with even greater tenacity, that although the gang would undoubtedly be broken up, that much-desired end might have been attained after, and not before, a dire tragedy occurred in the ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... a larger occupation. If I should be obliged to leave the college, it should be for something in the direction of art, and in this light I did not much regret the change. I had not, however, calculated on my mother's tenacity, or the imperceptible domination she exercised over ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... although it itself lived mostly in the water. Here, we said, is being enacted a little tragedy that would have escaped any but sharp eyes. The snake, which was itself small, had the fish by the throat, the hold of vantage among all creatures, and clung to it with great tenacity. The snake knew that its best tactics was to get upon dry land as soon as possible. It could not swallow its victim alive, and it could not strangle it in the water. For a while it tried to kill its game by holding ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... Nevertheless, they got within a few yards of the Turkish trenches and proceeded to dig themselves in. The Second Australian Infantry Brigade actually won about 400 yards of ground and stuck to it with a tenacity warmly praised by Sir Ian Hamilton. To the left the Eighty-seventh Brigade had suffered terribly from machine-gun fire while the French had been severely handled. The French troops were steady enough, but the Senegalese broke in. At one point General d'Amade ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... iron is eminently a ductile and tenacious substance— tenacious above all things, ductile more than most. When you want tenacity, therefore, and involved form, take iron. It is eminently made for that. It is the material given to the sculptor as the companion of marble, with a message, as plain as it can well be spoken, from the lips of the earth-mother, "Here's for you to cut, and here's for you to ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... connection with the work of the founder of the Positive School, we may say, without any disparagement to the comprehensive abilities of the French Philosopher, that the task undertaken by the English Historian required a tenacity of intellectual grasp, a steadiness of mental vision, a scope of generalizing power, an all-embracing scholarship, a marvellous accumulation of Facts, and a wonderful readiness to handle them, which even the prodigious labors ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... a man like Andrew Howland to yield in such a contention, and let the will of his child remain unbroken. But, after a long debate with himself, his better conviction triumphed over prejudice and the tenacity of a mind fixed in its own opinions. He ceased to command obedience in the case of Emily Winters, and therefore ceased to punish Andrew on her account. Nevertheless, he rarely saw him in her company that the displeasure ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... exposure sinks the angel in man. Our phrase, want of moral courage, really denotes in the young an excruciating physical struggle, often so keen that the victim clutches after liberation with the spontaneous tenacity and cruelty of a creature wrecked in mastering waters. Undisciplined sensations constitute egoism in the most ruthless of its shapes, and at this epoch, owing either to the brutalities which surrounded his ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... while if the boy also wished to amuse himself elsewhere, a worthy neighbor from across the way came in to fill the places of both. Seeing this, I retained my small hold upon the concern with fresh tenacity; for who knew but some day, when the directors also had gone on a picnic, the senior depositor might take his turn at the helm? It may savor of self-confidence, but it has always seemed to me, that, with one day's ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... kiss on my cheek which I once suddenly felt in a dark garden where I stood listening to some music and which I - oh, obstinate simpleton that I was! - scornfully and indignantly repelled - how often and with what teasing tenacity have they haunted me in my dreamy days and sleepless nights, when the icy crust of boyish pride had long been melted, but the girls had also grown proportionally more chary of their favors. And even now with half a century intervening, I cannot watch this subtle game of mutual ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... every word of this statement in his note-book, with the view of communicating it to the club, as a singular instance of the tenacity of life in horses under trying circumstances. The entry was scarcely completed when they reached the Golden Cross. Down jumped the driver, and out got Mr. Pickwick. Mr. Tupman, Mr. Snodgrass, and Mr. Winkle, who had been anxiously waiting the arrival of their illustrious leader, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... know what no one else breathing knows. He is a man who never forgives; a man who was brutally deceived, and who for years has had no other occupation than to brood upon his wrongs. He is very wealthy indeed, still young, he has marvelous tenacity of purpose, and he has brains. Tomorrow he will ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as much energy and achievement as the American, but the vast mass of those who would come here if immigration were unrestricted are undesirable, because of their low industrial and moral standards, their tenacity of old habits, and with all the rest because of their immense numbers, that would overrun all the western part of the United States. When the Chinese Exclusion Act passed Congress in 1882, the ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... Bonaparte even when at Brienne. Pichegru, afterwards so celebrated, who acted as his monitor in the military school, (a singular circumstance,) bore witness to his early principles, and to the peculiar energy and tenacity of his temper. He was long afterwards consulted whether means might not be found to engage the commander of the Italian armies in the royal interest. "It will be but lost time to attempt it," said Pichegru. "I knew him in his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... the leading characteristics even of the most original language, the names of a few prominent ideas in the new idiom sufficed to open a first means of communication. His prodigious memory retained with iron tenacity every word or phrase once acquired; his power of methodising, by the very exercise, became more ready and more perfect with each new advance in the study; and, above all, a faculty which seemed peculiar to himself, and which can hardly be described ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... to even the most fossilized thought. One by one, social institutions clung to with fiercest tenacity fell away. Barbaric independence had followed Greek and Roman slavery, which in turn was succeeded by feudal servitude, to reappear once more in the affranchised communes. Each experiment had its season, and ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... beneath me, I found my conjecture well founded; but whether the ice were strong enough to bear me, I could not ascertain. But it was my only hope of deliverance; letting myself down therefore gently, I planted my feet on the lower ledge, and clinging with the tenacity of a shell-fish to the upper, I crept slowly ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... pole, and very little in the invention of aeroplanes; while gramophones, machine guns, advertisements, cinematographs, submarines, dreadnoughts, cosmopolitan hotels, seem to me merely fatuous or sheerly disastrous. But what lies behind all this, the tenacity, the courage, the spirit of adventure, this it is that is the great contribution of the West. It is not the aeroplane that is valuable; probably it will never be anything but pernicious, for its main use is likely to be for war. But the fact that men so lightly risk their lives to perfect it, that ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... was vaguely disturbed as I climbed the hill to the Everton cottage. Blackwell had proved to be a veritable bull-dog in the long-drawn-out fight, and the tenacity with which he was holding on was ominous. Why the Lawrenceburg people should make such a determined struggle to wipe us out was beyond my comprehension. It had been proved in the State courts, past a question of doubt, that our title ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... times in the night, and wandered out into the little courtyard of the hospital, to look at the stars, because he could not keep still within four walls—so unreasonable of the 'type.' Or when Gray, the tall glass-blower—his grandfather had been English—refused with all the tenacity of a British workman to wear an undervest, with the thermometer ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... coarse crystalline granite, as may be seen in contrast with the watch, and it is falling into decay at a marvelous rate. Disintegration has penetrated the rock far below the surface and the large crystals are held together with but little more tenacity than prevails in a bed of gravel. Moisture and even roots penetrate it deeply and readily and the crystals fall apart with thrusts of the knife blade, the rock crumbling with the greatest freedom. Roadways have been extensively carved along the sides of ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... lazzaroni, it is, I am persuaded, as much as the truth will justify. In fact it is not the audience that is so critical: it is the associated band of foreign parasites who attach themselves to our aristocracy with the tenacity of leeches, as purveyors des menus plaisirs, and whose interests are vitally concerned in excluding English talent, and negotiating the concerns of foreign artists, that raise the cry of "pronunciation." It is these gentry who, in phrase that a Tuscan would spurn at, and in a brogue ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... show of enjoying himself nightly with his accustomed lightheartedness in the Tenderloin, he did not feel confident that in the end this peril would disappear like the others which had from time to time threatened him during his criminal career? But Hummel was fully aware of the tenacity of the man who had resolved to rid New York of his malign influence. His Nemesis was following him. In his dreams, if he ever dreamed, it probably took the shape of the square-shouldered District Attorney in the ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... Bosc we have the 'soul of the Gironde' tout entiere a sa proie attachee. She clung to her regicide purpose with the tenacity of a tigress. Everything which furthered it she approved, everything which retarded it she denounced. When the king and queen were brought back captives from Varennes to Paris in June 1791 she wrote, in an ecstasy of delight, to Bancal des Issarts, that 'thirty or forty ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... beauty and dignity which always attach to dumb real objects,—they expect him to indicate the path between reality and their souls. Men and women perceive the beauty well enough—probably as well as he. The passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers, cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, the love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons, drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, all is an old varied sign of the ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... had been running on before, returned barking to the scene of action, and saw a favorable opportunity for biting Bob's bare leg not only with inpunity but with honor. The pain from Yap's teeth, instead of surprising Bob into a relaxation of his hold, gave it a fiercer tenacity, and with a new exertion of his force he pushed Tom backward and got uppermost. But now Yap, who could get no sufficient purchase before, set his teeth in a new place, so that Bob, harassed in this way, let go his hold of Tom, and, almost throttling Yap, flung him ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... on Mrs. Procter's cheeks. Suzanna saw them. Ardently she wished mother would stop and rest. Such driving haste, such tenacity, meant later a nervous headache with mother put aside in a darkened room. Suzanna sighed as she took the ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... smoother than the wagon-trail, and bowl along for a short distance as easily as one could wish. But not for long is this permitted; the ground becomes covered with a carpeting of small, loose cacti that stick to the rubber tire with the clinging tenacity of a cuckle-burr to a mule's tail. Of course they scrape off again as they come round to the bridge of the fork, but it isn't the tire picking them up that fills me with lynx-eyed vigilance and alarm; ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... grey cloth had been ordered of the tailor, to whom Mrs. Ellis gave strict injunctions not to make them too small. Notwithstanding the unfavourable results of several experiments, Mrs. Ellis adhered with wonderful tenacity to the idea that a boy's clothes could never be made too large, and, therefore, when Charlie had a new suit, it always appeared as if it had been made for some portly gentleman, and sent home to Charlie ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... island To, is one of the most important acquisitions for which colonial agriculture is indebted to the travels of naturalists. It yields not only one-third more juice than the creolian cane on the same space of ground; but from the thickness of its stem, and the tenacity of its ligneous fibres, it furnishes much more fuel. This last advantage is important in the West Indies, where the destruction of the forests has long obliged the planters to use canes deprived of juice, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... streams it was necessary to construct suspension bridges, as they are termed, made of the tough fibres of the maguey, or of the osier of the country, which has an extraordinary degree of tenacity and strength. These osiers were woven into cables of the thickness of a man's body. The huge ropes, then stretched across the water, were conducted through rings or holes cut in immense buttresses of stone raised on the opposite banks of the river, and there secured ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... vanity fought over that question; fought furiously, and with an ugly tenacity. It seemed that the vanity conquered. For she ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... biographer, somewhat prone, however, to find for actions of questionable public morality a justification in "immutable laws" and "veracities," which to other eyes is a little akin to Wordsworth's apology for Rob Roy. But whether we accept Carlyle's estimate of him or no, the amazing skill, tenacity, and success with which he stood at bay virtually against all Europe, while Great Britain was fighting as his ally her own duel in France in the Seven Years' War, constitutes an unparallelled achievement. "Frederick the Great" was begun about 1848, the concluding ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... extinguishing them; and the people obey the customs of their barbarous ancestors rather than the Christian prudence which the ministers teach them. And although I do not at this time consider it as an explicit error, ut in plurimum, yet the error implied in the tenacity with which these people follow the errors of their ancestors ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... needed in addition to those mentioned will vary in different occupations and according to the accidental circumstances of different cases; but they are not always the qualities which a man can acquire. Men will fail who have deserved to succeed and who might have succeeded with a little more tenacity or under slightly more favorable conditions. Men who have deserved to fail will succeed because of certain collateral but partly irrelevant merits—just as an architect may succeed who is ingenious about making his clients' ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... his slaughter of the mouse. He now treated the big shin-bones that were provided for his delectation as live game of a peculiarly treacherous sort. He stalked, tracked, hunted, and slew those bones with unerring skill and remarkable daring. Their tenacity of life was most striking. There were times when, having slain a bone after a long chase, poor Jan would give way to his natural exhaustion and fall sound asleep with his head pillowed on one end of the apparently well-killed and harmless bone. Yet as often as not, when he would ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... him. He had a pale, longish face, with thin lips, which might indicate either narrow prejudice or a fanatic tenacity. When he grew animated, he had a habit of opening his eyes very wide, and of staring straight before him. At such moments, too, he tossed back his head, with the impatient movements of a young horse. His hands and feet were good, his clothes ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... early disciples must have grasped with great clearness and tenacity the practical side of the Gospel, or they would never have adopted this name. If they had thought of it as being only a creed, they would ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... of bed, and flung two lace-frilled arms round her room-mate, clinging to her with the tenacity ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... Anastasio Murguia. But the astute Juarez knew that he was right. He knew it in that one look of consuming, conquering hate. He knew the giant in that hate. The feeble flesh, Anastasio Murguia, was an incident. Yet even so, only the President's tenacity held him to where his instinct had leapt. For under discovery Murguia was changed to a huddled, abject creature, stammering denial. Yet it must be true, it must. The strangest, the most weird of contrasts in the same soul and body—yet it must, it ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... interpreter with a Scottish regiment, relates with amazement how the Highlanders go into action, "as if they were going to a picnic, with laughing eyes and, whenever possible, with a cigarette between their lips. Their courage is a mixture of imperturbability and tenacity. One must have seen their immovable calm, their heroic sang-froid, under the rain of bullets to do it justice." Then he goes on to describe how a handful of Scots were selected to hold back a large body of Germans in a village ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... obliged to say more, at once desired to fix the time for Clotilde's departure. She applauded herself for her tenacity; she thought she had gained the victory by main force. It was now Friday, and it was settled that Clotilde should leave on the following Sunday. A despatch was even ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... satisfaction was speedily dashed by the very earnest warning, as to the consequences of publication, which my friend's interest in my welfare led him to give; but, as I have confessed elsewhere, when I was a young man there was just a little—a mere soupcon—in my composition of that tenacity of purpose which has another name, and I felt sure that all the evil things prophesied would not be so painful to me as the giving up of that which I had resolved to do, upon grounds which I conceived to be ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... her go up like Medea in machina; then he turned away and stumbled back into his limousine. It was still fragrant from her presence. The perfume she was using then was a rather aggressive essence of a lingering tenacity upon the atmosphere. But Dyckman was so excited that he liked it. The ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... foregoing conversation was related to the Professor, who remarked: "If there is one thing savages and all low orders of people are noted for, it is the tenacity in retaining their property. Of course, that is not an uncommon trait with all people, but it is particularly well developed in the savage. One phase of this came to my attention some years ago, when a merchant told me that the poor people of India bought more locks ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... trying situation could not last long. The part of the sail on which Reuben had hung, with what might be truly termed his death-clutch, was wanted to be rolled in with the furl, and, by the tenacity of his ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... exultation. He believed himself an instrument employed by Heaven to achieve a great result, and, having accomplished it, he claimed simply to be the original and only instrument by which that result had been reached. With the same steadiness of purpose, tenacity and perseverance, with which he had pursued the idea by which he was inspired in 1832, he adhered to his claim to the paternity of that idea, and to the merit of bringing it to a successful issue. Denied, he asserted it; assailed, he defended it. Through long years of controversy, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... discussions followed as to the property qualification of an elector. Citizens were classed as active and passive. Only those were to have votes who paid direct taxes to the amount of three days' wages in the year. Robespierre flung himself upon this too famous distinction with bitter tenacity. If all men are equal, he cried, then all men ought to have votes: if he who only pays the amount of one day's work, has fewer rights than another who pays the amount of three days, why should not the man who pays ten days have more rights than the other who only pays the earnings of three days? ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... through which this yearning for fame sought to express itself! Sometimes it seemed even to her as though she would never dissipate the fog-bank which tortured his intelligence. But Jimmy was patient, too, and his bull-dog features were but the reflex of a grim tenacity of purpose. At the end of the first year she reported that he was unfit to be promoted, in order that she need not lose him just when he needed her most. She was able to make clear to Jimmy that this was not a disgrace, but a sign of progress. But when the end of the second ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... said, "It was not I, but your courage and tenacity. I had the rare good fortune to find the letter among the Chickasaws and obtain it. It was sent by the Shawnees and Miamis as a sort of token, a war belt as it were. It was only a remote chance that brought it back to New ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... insubordination of the Barcelonians, that he asserts, "The inhabitants have so many privileges, that the king scarcely retains any authority over them; their liberty," he adds, "should rather go by the name of license." [81] One example among many, may be given, of the tenacity with which they adhered to their ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... of this engagement testify to the efficiency and resolution of both combatants; but a special meed of praise is assuredly due to Captain Manners, whose tenacity was as marked as his daring, and who, by the injury done to his stronger antagonist, demonstrated both the thoroughness of his previous general preparation and the skill of his management in the particular instance. Under his ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... tenacity of purpose Wetzel stuck to this gradually fading trail. Every additional rod he was forced to go more slowly, and take more time in order to find any sign of his enemy's passage through the forests. One thing struck him forcibly. Wingenund was gradually circling to the southwest, ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... There was an Old-Man-of-the-Sea-like tenacity in Placidia's smiling impuissance. She did not know one syllable of French. A new-born babe could not have revealed itself more utterly incompetent. I verily believe that, despite our haste, we would have ended by escorting Placidia across Paris, and ensconcing her in the Marseilles train, had ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... obstructions to some of the acts of government (for I can not prevail on myself to believe that these measures are as yet the acts of a determined party) be brought to the verge of dissolution. Melancholy thought! But while it shows the consequences of diversified opinions, where pushed with too much tenacity, it exhibits evidence also of the necessity of accommodation, and of the propriety of adopting such healing measures as may restore harmony to the discordant members of the union, and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... horror, I pronounced stupid; and a torn copy of the "Imitation of Christ," a book which she threatened to take from me, because she believed it had something to do with the Papists, but to which, for that very reason, I clung with a tenacity and read with an earnestness which brought at last its own beautiful fruits. Then, there was the "Scottish Chiefs," a treasure-house of delight to me,—two or three trashy novels, given me by Tom Salyers, of which my mother knew nothing,—and (the only poetry ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... victims of calumnious gossips and slanderous pamphleteers. His health became precarious. Incessant sleeplessness spoke of an overtasked brain and shattered nerves. Life was full of pain; still he clung to it with a craven-like tenacity. So, at least, Seneca asserts, quoting in support of his statement some very bad verses by Maecenas, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... tired of asking Barrie about "Peter Pan." It was a curious commentary on the man's tenacity of interest and purpose that, although he made nearly seven hundred productions in his life, the play of the "Boy Who Would Never Grow Up" tugged most at his heart. Nor did Barrie ever weary of telling him how the play began as a nursery tale for children; how their insistent demand to "tell ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... for several moments. He paced up and down the room, his hands behind his back, his eyebrows contracted into a heavy frown. For him it was a bitter moment. He was only a half-educated, illiterate man, possessed of sturdy common sense and a wonderful tenacity of purpose. He had permitted himself to indulge in a little silent but none the less absolute hero-worship, and Mannering had ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... capital invested in the publishing business had doubled in the preceding half decade, despite the fact that publishing is almost unique among industries in the diffusion of its establishments, and in the tenacity with which it still clings to competition in an age of combination. Since 1850 the whole industry has increased over thirty-fold, while all other industries have increased only fifteen-fold. The number of publications in the country, as given, is 21,394. These ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... stone basement. The outside structure curiously vandyked in a zigzag fashion with wooden partitions, the interstices were filled with wicker-work, plastered with well-tempered clay, to which chopped straw imparted additional tenacity. When newly embellished, looking like the pattern, black and white, of some discreet magpie perched on the wooden pinnacles terminating each gable, or hopping saucily about the porch—that never-failing adjunct ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... and asked Casey what the chances were for getting under way. Casey repacked a lightened bag, emptied the coffee grounds, shouldered his canteen and waded back to the cars and to the problem of red mud with an unbelievable quality of tenacity. ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... patient, and courteous people, who, to quote Napier "retain a sense of injury or insult with incredible tenacity;" and a due observance of their customs and proper politeness are so readily met, and friendly advances are so freely proffered, that a sojourn amongst them is pleasant enough. I have wondered that the tourist has not found ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... obeyed another law of political economy: We clung to our property with unrelaxing tenacity, made the best use of it in our intercourse with our fellows, and only gave it up after our release and entry into a land where the plenitude of cooking utensils of superior construction made ours valueless. Then we flung them into the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... possesses a pale gold color, a hardness surpassing that of bronze, and is susceptible of taking a fine polish. This alloy has found a ready market, and, if less costly, would replace red and yellow brass. Its hardness and tenacity render it peculiarly adapted for journals and bearings. Its tensile strength is 100,000 lb., and when drawn into wire, 128,000 lb., and its elasticity is one-half that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... that they hinder right acting. "He that keepeth the law, happy is he";[435] "Blessed is the man that feareth the Eternal, that delighteth greatly in his commandments";—[436] that is the Hebrew notion of felicity; and, pursued with passion and tenacity, this notion would not let the Hebrew rest till, as is well known, he had at last got out of the law a network of prescriptions to enwrap his whole life, to govern every moment of it, every impulse, every action. The Greek notion of felicity, on the other hand, is ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... your plans and your undertaking and try to work good for your countrymen in another way. The undertaking needs another man than you for its execution, because to carry it out will not only require money and care, but, in our country, self-denial, tenacity and faith are also needed. The land is not ready for it; it has ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... the tenacity of those convictions, it is with them as it is in plant life. The longer a tree is in maturing, the harder is ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... closer the identification becomes, the more confirmed is the monomaniac in his madness, the character of which varies with the temperament of the individual. If the person's mind be weak, or rude and uncultivated, the tenacity with which he clings to his metamorphosis is feebler, and it becomes more difficult to draw the line between his lucid and insane utterances. Thus Jean Grenier, who laboured under this form of mania, said in ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... understood that it was so. And yet, if once she were landed on that green island, she would be so happy. She spoke with scorn of a woman clinging to a tree like ivy; and yet, were she once married, no woman would cling to her husband with sweeter feminine tenacity than Bessy Garrow. He spoke no further word to her as he walked home, but in handing her down to the ferry-boat he pressed her hand. For a second it seemed as though she had returned this pressure. If so, the action was involuntary, and her hand instantly resumed ...
— The Mistletoe Bough • Anthony Trollope
... Cappadocia, the Italian insurrection was at the height of its power and might encourage even the weak to declare against Rome; yet Mithradates allowed the year 664 to pass without profiting by the opportunity. Nevertheless he pursued with equal tenacity and activity his plan of extending his territory in Asia Minor. This strange combination of a policy of peace at any price with a policy of conquest was certainly in itself untenable, and was simply a fresh proof that Mithradates ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... dangerous, he would have been ready to strike; but his distrust of the English Queen was too justifiably complete. She was in fact saved from the absolute necessity of yielding to the persuasions of Burghley and Walsingham only by the dogged tenacity with which the Hollanders held out. And while they held ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... consisted of vessels of all sizes, from the Jupitre and Restoration, down to large rowing galleys. Although many were sunk, and more greatly damaged by the fire of the Dutch, they swarmed round the great ships with wonderful tenacity; and, while the larger vessels fought their guns against those of the men-of-war, the smaller ones kept close to them, avoiding as much as possible their formidable broadsides, but keeping up a perpetual musketry fire at their bulwarks and tops, ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... of your really remarkable analysis. It does you great credit. The absence of motive would have appeared to most persons a fatal objection to the theory of, what I may call, the prosecution. Permit me to congratulate you on the consistency and tenacity with which you have pursued ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... almost screamed. "This is unmanly of you, Mr. Bold. Will you leave my father to die in peace in his quiet home?" And seizing him by his arm, she clung to him with fixed tenacity, and reiterated ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... usual, were all upon one side, the lessee being bound to a multitude of things, and the lessor to little more than acceptance of the rent. But such a result is in the nature of the case. Yet Jack o' the Smithies was not well content. In him true Yorkshire stubbornness was multiplied by the dogged tenacity of a British soldier, and the aggregate raised to an unknown power by the efforts of shrewd ignorance; and at last the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... rooted in the ground of prescription. The public mind received what was new the more freely because it loved the old. So that hope and anticipation walked with the bolder pace, inasmuch as memory and retrospection were still their cherished companions. In a word, men's tenacity of the past gave them the larger and brighter vision of the future. Because they had no mind to forsake the law of their fathers, or to follow the leading of "sages undevoutly free," therefore they were able to legislate the better for their children, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... of property, though erroneously developed, otherwise they would not have deemed any excuse for their act necessary. Now for my instance of the inherent tenacity of that instinct. A worthy citizen in want of fuel sees a door in a garden wall, and naturally carries off the door. He is apprehended by a gendarme who sees the act. 'Voleur,' he cries to the gendarme, 'do you ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... perseverance and tenacity, can be compared with spiders who repair, or start again every instant at a damaged or broken thread. When these good fathers knew that their petition had not triumphed offhand, they struck out for some new road to reach the generous heart of the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... will stick to it, I'm sure. He goes by the nickname of Bull-dog, and I don't think he is badly named; he has both the pluck and the tenacity of one." ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... important victory. It was on this occasion that the Hero of Austerlitz gave a most valuable testimonial to the British Army, to whom he referred as "bull-dogs who never knew when they were beaten," and soldiers with iron-like tenacity. JOSEPHINE subsequently died of visions at Malmaison to the soothing sound of soft music kindly supplied by a ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... hitherto unnoticed, to be added to the catalogue of Nature's endless stores? And what are those corals, that, like mimic tenants of the forest, extend their graceful boughs! Look at the variety of shells which are adhering to its sides. Observe the patellae—with what tenacity they cling to save themselves from being washed into the deep water, and being devoured by the fishes that are playing in its chasms! What a source of endless amusement, what a field for deep reflection, is there in the investigation of this one little rock! When you contemplate ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... age-long under-feeding, friendly, most lovable, most winning, but untrained and unequipped, half-hearted in its business of rolling the pitiless stone up the never-ending hill. It survived—clinging with a desperate tenacity to the soil which so meagrely nourished it. But during that generation of yesterday—and how many generations before it?—there grew up inevitably, from the conditions, a traditional toleration of incompetence, a faith as it were in inefficiency. Ireland of yesterday was bound up in one vicious ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... least to wait till the squashes are better grown. Why is it, I wonder, that Nature has provided such a host of enemies for every useful esculent, while the weeds are suffered to grow unmolested, and are provided with such tenacity of life, and such methods of propagation, that the gardener must maintain a continual struggle or they will hopelessly overwhelm him? What hidden virtue is in these things, that it is granted them to sow themselves with the wind, and to grapple the earth with this immitigable stubbornness, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... while animal size, which putrefies so readily, always exhales a very disagreeable odour. That of potatoes, as it is very little subject to putrefaction, appears, from experience, to be more durable in tenacity and whiteness; and, for white-washing, should be preferred to animal size, the decomposition of which is ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... hoofs as he rapidly traversed the arid soil, clearing with ease to himself, though not without discomfort to the sexton, every gravelly trench, natural chasm, or other inequality of ground that occurred in his course. Clinging to his grandson with the tenacity of a bird of prey, Peter for some time kept his station in security; but, unluckily, at one dike rather wider than the rest, the horse, owing possibly to the mismanagement, intentional or otherwise, of Luke, swerved; and the sexton, dislodged from ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and, dissected, realized, it was rather an awful thing that she had said. It showed an amount of hatred and contempt which went far beyond his dislike for her, and made him shudder at the strength of feeling, the tenacity of hate, in one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... a warning cry from those on board the wreck, as they saw this terrible wall of water rushing down upon them, and each seized with desperate grip whatever came nearest to hand, clinging thereto with the tenacity of despair. Bob heard the cry, saw the danger, and had just time to struggle clear of the wreck and pass under her stern when the breaker burst upon them. Blinded, stunned, and breathless, he felt himself whirled helplessly ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... as deep as a maiden's is at the death of her lover, spread over the land; and people who had married their romance away, and fathered off their enthusiasm, abandoned themselves to even deeper anguish at the insecurity of property. So deeply had England's faith been anchored into the tenacity of Nelson. The fall of the funds when the victory was ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Mr. Casaubon showed a tenacity of occupation and an eagerness which are usually regarded as the effect of enthusiasm, and Dorothea was anxious to follow this spontaneous direction of his thoughts, instead of being made to feel that she dragged him away from it. But she was gradually ceasing to expect with her former ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot |
