"Unbending" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... outlook, he gave himself entirely to his master-principle of loyally to the feudal lord whom he had sworn to obey. This simple conception enabled him to subordinate his interests as a marcher potentate to his duty to the English monarchy. It guided him in his difficult work of serving with unbending constancy a tyrant like John. It shone most clearly when in his old age he saved John's son from the consequences of his father's misdeeds. A happy accident has led to the discovery in our own days of the long poem, drawn up in commemoration ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... that no quality but sincerity can bestow, since his words go directly to the heart, finding their support in the understanding. Thus it was with Deerslayer and Judith. So soon and so deeply did this simple hunter impress those who knew him with a conviction of his unbending honesty, that all he uttered in commendation was as certain to please, as all he uttered in the way of rebuke was as certain to rankle and excite enmity, where his character had not awakened a respect ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... she couldn't expect him to continue that development. A different man might; and Nettie wasn't sure of her refusal to listen...to the end. But she was familiar with Gerrit's unbending conception of the necessity of truth alone. If he married a woman, yellow, black, anything, he would perform, the obligation to the entire boundary of his promise. Good and bad seemed equally united against her. Little ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the proper circumscription of the constituencies which elect the local representative bodies, the principle which, when applied as an exclusive and unbending rule to Parliamentary representation, is inappropriate, namely community of local interests, is here the only just and applicable one. The very object of having a local representation is in order that those who have any interest in common which they do not share with ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... myopia, and a landscape meant nothing to him; when he tried to describe one as he did in the chapter on the "happy valley" in Rasselas he failed. What he did not see he could not appreciate; perhaps it is too much to ask of his self-contained and unbending intellect that he should appreciate the report of it ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... said with a deferential bow, but unbending mind, "must accept my zeal in the cause as my justification." Trusia was much hurt at this intentional and undisguised evasion of her behest, as much on the strangers' as on her own account, so hastened to supplement such an ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... articles in the room seemed to symbolise the owner's mental furniture, while his personal neatness was a habit acquired during his stay at West Point, where he had once occupied the chair of a modern language. There was a suggestion of the soldier also in his unbending back as he sat at his desk, so absorbed in his work that he did not at first look up to see who had answered ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... strength failed Tiberius, but not his habitual dissimulation. He retained the same unbending soul, and by his fixed countenance and measured language, sometimes by an artificial affability, he tried to conceal his approaching end. After many restless changes, he finally settled down in a villa ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... hand across his forehead, held his long hair back from his face, and stared about him; his eye wandering from Grosket to Jones, and around the room, and then resting on the floor. He sat for some time looking steadfastly down, his face gradually regaining its stern, unbending character; his thin lips compressing themselves, until his mouth had assumed its usual expression of bitterness, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... (river). Indien, m., Indian. indigne, unworthy, shameful. indompt, wild, untamed, indomitable. invitable, unavoidable. inexorable, inexorable, unmovable. infecter, to pollute. infidle, faithless, infidel, heretic. inflexible, inflexible, unbending. infortun, unhappy, unfortunate. ingnieux, ingenious, skilful. ingrat, ungrateful. injure, f., wrong, insult, injury. innocent, innocent, pure. innombrable, innumerable. inou, unheard of. inqui-et, -te, anxious. inquiter, to make anxious. inquitude, f., anxiety. insens, senseless, foolish. ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... enter the right path, is to put us back so far, in the everlasting pursuit of happiness; and every sin, even of the best men, is to be thus answered for, if not according to the full measure of its ill-desert, yet according to a rule of unbending rectitude and impartiality. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... and her lord; and they ought to be holding hands, and approaching it and the thought of their fond life together there with full hearts,—well, her heart was full enough, but only of anguish and pain. For Tristram, afraid of the smallest unbending, maintained a freezing attitude of contemptuous disdain, which she could not yet pluck up enough courage to break through to tell him she knew how unjust and ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... is to win my heart, my dear, must be harsh and unbending with men, but gentle with women. His eagle eye must have power to quell with a single glance the least approach to ridicule. He will have a pitying smile for those who would jeer at sacred things, above all, at that poetry of the heart, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... representing this froward hero, in a tall hat and little frilled trousers, with a bag the size of a slack balloon dragging on the ground behind him, proceeding towards the neighbor's apple-tree, which bore fruit as large as the thief's head upon its unbending boughs. ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... surprise had apparently so far stirred them up and awakened them to a perception of their opportunities, that the six-pounder languidly swallowed Bunco's hook and was in a moment whisked out of his native pool and landed on the bank,—for the anglers fished with stout cord and unbending rods! ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... important than mine, and vice versa. To clear this difficulty, let us have that same statistical information which the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Vinton] suggested at the beginning of this session. In that information we shall have a stern, unbending basis of facts—a basis in no wise subject to whim, caprice, or local interest. The prelimited amount of means will save us from doing too much, and the statistics will save us from doing what we do in wrong places. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... these errors; but, more distinctly, I hold that our Puritan brethren (to come back to the point of departure) are over-strict and unwise in applying a Procrustean measure in their discipline, and, for that reason, if for no other, they cannot be a Church universal. Too stiff, unbending and unforgiving are they to the weaknesses of human nature, and, therefore, (without more,) I predict utter failure to every attempt of theirs to make the natives like themselves. They do forget that milk, not flesh meat, is ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... a stiff, unbending man in some matters—especially in politics—but he was in many respects broad-minded and large-hearted. He was thoughtful for those in his employ, especially the young people, and his son ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... approved of it as a means of spiritual power. But He did object to the formal use of it or of any outward form. The formalist's form, whether it be the elaborate ritual of the Catholic Church, or the barest Nonconformist service, or the silence of a Friends' meeting-house, is rigid, unbending, and cold, like an iron rod. The true Christian form is elastic, like the stem of a palm-tree, which curves and sways and yields to the wind, and has the sap of life in it. If any man is sad, let him fast; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... a little while, and noticing that Vronsky glanced at the clock, Yashvin asked her whether she would be staying much longer in Petersburg, and unbending his huge figure reached after ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... capable of indignation or contempt. Nearly always Daudet's books present to us, if only incidentally, some favourite character which does credit to humanity. Out-and-out pessimists accuse him of distorting human nature by attributing to it imaginary graces and virtues: but does not their unbending pessimism distort it in another direction by showing to us, under the pretext of being truthful, only its meannesses and its horrors?—From PELLISSIER, Le Mouvement littraire au ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... cognizance as they fell within that of the Royal Council, and to these were added disputes respecting the wardship of infants, dower, rent-charges, or tithes. Its equitable jurisdiction sprang from the defective nature and the technical and unbending rules of the common law. As the Council had given redress in cases where law became injustice, so the Court of Chancery interfered without regard to the rules of procedure adopted by the common law courts on the petition of a party for whose grievance ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... mist and in darkness and fire they were shrouded, Yet the souls of the righteous were calm and unclouded; Their dark eyes flash'd lightning, as, proud and unbending, They stood like the rock ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... great difference made between the measures which you take to prevent wrong, and the feelings of displeasure which you express against the wrong when it is done. The former should be strict, authoritative, unbending; the latter should be mild and gentle. Your measures, if uniform and systematic, will never give offense, however powerfully you may restrain and control those subject to them. It is the morose look, the harsh expression, the tone of irritation and fretfulness, which is so unpopular in school. ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... were other conferences, the Major unbending sufficiently to come and sit on the Gordon porch in the cool of the evening. The iron-master, as one still in touch with the moving world, gave good advice. Failing to buy, the railroad company might possibly seek to bully a right ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... figures broke into song. They sang of the glories of Jerusalem and the great king. Herod's hand was up—he would have no more of it. The song ceased, the circles, one by one, rolled into helices which, unbending into slender lines, vanished quickly beneath a great arch. Then a trumpet peal and a rattle of iron wheels. Brawny arms were pushing a movable arena. Swiftly it came into that ample space between the king and the great fountain. Behind its iron bars a large lion paced ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... in life, he is little stagier in Lucan. And yet, in spite of his absurdity, he has a nobility and a sincerity of purpose which is without parallel in that corrupt age. He was the hero of the Stoic republicans[280] of the early principate, the man of principle, stern and unbending. He requires no fine touches of light and shade, for he is the perfect Stoic. But from the very rigidity of his principles he was no statesman and never played more than ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... that followed was great, and the consuls prepared to meet the storm. These were Appius Claudius, the proud Sabine nobleman who had lately become a Roman, and who now led the high patrician party with all the unbending energy of a chieftain whose will had never been disputed by his obedient clansmen; and P. Servilius, who represented the milder and more liberal party of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... Arpinum's Cicero. "Twill be better if you go late in the day, when the evening lamps are lit; that is YOUR hour, when the Wine God is at his revels, when the rose is Queen of the feast, when men's locks drip perfume. At such an hour even unbending Catos may read my poems." Was I not right to take a most friendly farewell of a man who wrote a poem like that about me, and do I do wrong if I now bewail his death as that of a bosom-friend? For he gave ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... heart were useful in softening her husband's severity. Once, when Ptolemy was unbending his mind at a game of dice with her, one of his officers came up to his side, and began to read over to him a list of criminals who had been condemned to death, with their crimes, and to ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... same stern, unbending rule prevailed. I have been told by my aunt, Gainor Wynne, that when he was young my father was not always so steadfast in conduct as to satisfy Friends. When I was old enough to observe and think, he had surely become strict enough; but this ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... objected equally to work and to Methodism; and as his father cared for nothing beyond those sources of interest, and had no patience for any one who did, the two did not always see eye to eye. Perhaps if Maria had been more unbending, things might have turned out differently; but Methodism in its severest aspects was not more severe than Maria Farringdon. She was a thorough gentlewoman, and extremely clever; but tenderness was not counted among her excellencies. ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... the history a little earlier; facts will prove that the defection of Sweden was as much attributable to the jealous ambition of Bernadotte as to the unbending pride of Napoleon. It will be seen that her new monarch assumed to himself a great part of the responsibility of the rupture, by offering his alliance at the price ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... he appeared to extract out of the beastly country every available ounce of enjoyment. In affable moments, he could even manage to forget his career—and unbend. He was unbending now. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... of making the unbending iron pliant was wholly changed; the recruiting officer whom his companions and subordinates knew and feared as one of the sternest of their number, showed himself to Barbara the most yielding of men. The passionate tenderness with which he loved her had only increased with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... stern, serious and deeply in earnest. He seldom smiled and never laughed. He was uncompromisingly religious, conscientious and morally unbending. In his life there was no soft sentiment. The fact that he ran a brewery can be excused when we remember that the best spirit of the times saw nothing inconsistent in the occupation; and further than this we might explain in extenuation ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... revealed to our knowledge may really in themselves be ambiguous. Of two {151} alternative futures which we conceive, both may now be really possible; and the one become impossible only at the very moment when the other excludes it by becoming real itself. Indeterminism thus denies the world to be one unbending unit of fact. It says there is a certain ultimate pluralism in it; and, so saying, it corroborates our ordinary unsophisticated view of things. To that view, actualities seem to float in a wider sea of possibilities ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... stoicism in the demeanour of all of these great chieftains. The subject of this text is not lacking in this prominent Indian element. A keen and piercing eye, a sadly kind face, a tall and erect figure, Apache John bears his sixty years of life with broad and unbending shoulders. He was fond of becoming reminiscent and said: "The first thing I can remember is my father telling me about war. We then lived in tepees like the one in which we are now sitting. We were then moving from place to place, and the old people were constantly talking ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... "up head" in the spelling-class. There is reason to believe that young Calhoun took the prediction of the Doctor very seriously. He took everything seriously. He never made a joke in his life, and was totally destitute of the sense of humor. It is doubtful if he was ever capable of unbending so far as to play a ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the head and front of all Willowfield's social efforts, and represented the button factory with a lofty grace and unbending dignity of demeanour which were the admiration and envy of all aspirants to social fame. It was said that Mrs. Stornaway had been a beauty in her youth, and there were those who placed confidence ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and, hat in hand, somewhat impatiently awaited the arrival of his hostess and parishioner. The door opened to a tall, white-haired woman in lustreless black silk. She was regular and resolute in features, of fine but unbending presence, and, though somewhat past middle age, showed no signs of either the weakness or ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... heard men say, to prove their independence, their proud spirit, their unbending self-respect, "I never apologize." They say it in such conscious pride, and so honestly expect me to admire them, and I am so amiable, that I never dare remonstrate. I simply keep out of their way. But I feel like ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... new to her. Hitherto, though she had never desired that he should assume such attitude as this, she had constantly been unconsciously wounded by his coldness by his cold propriety and unbending self-possession. His cold propriety and unbending self-possession were gone now, and he was there at her feet. Such an argument, used at Aylmer Park, would have conquered her would have won her at once, in spite of herself; but ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... or whose mother has adopted an orphan, or taken charge of a missionary's daughter, or in some way or other have been brought for the first time in your life into daily and hourly collision with another young will just as strong and unbending as yours—can't you bear me witness that, in these little contests between Joy and Gypsy, I am telling no "made-up stories," but ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... or what the world would say of her, was manifested in her squalid appearance and total neglect of personal neatness. The pride of the girl's heart had vanished with her self-respect, and she stood before the strange group with a bold front and unbending brow; yet her eye wandered vacantly from face to face, as if perfectly unconscious of the real meaning ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... After having been long retained in prison, ill fed and ill clothed, after supporting, with unbending dignity, the unmanly insults of the republican mob before whose tribunal she was dragged. The young dauphin expired under the ill-treatment he received from his guardian, a shoemaker. His sister, the present Duchess ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... should like the torrent roar: When Ajax{18} strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labors, and the words move slow: Not so, when swift Camilla{19} scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main. Hear how Timotheus'{20} vary'd lays surprise, And bid alternate passions fall and rise! While at each change, the son of Libyan Jove{21} Now burns with glory, and then melts with love; Now ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... by some scandal, only results were regarded by the Bakufu. But his household could not regard with any easiness a devotion of his lordship to the wine cup, which turned his court into a wine feast. Up to this time Aoyama Shu[u]zen in all official duty had shown himself hard, unbending, callous, conscientious. Now the element of cruelty appeared, to develop rapidly with exercise until it was the predominant tone. Some illustrations are to be given from events occurring in these first three years ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... Giovanna's unspeakable amazement, the unbending nature was breaking down, the marble saint, with the still white face, who had bidden her pray, and never see Giovanni again. She felt herself lifted from her seat and clasped in a despairing embrace; she felt the small nervous frame ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... incivility of my countryfolk to their cousins from beyond the sea; I grill in my blood over the silly rudeness of our newspaper articles; and I do not know where to look when I find myself in company with an American and see my countrymen unbending to him as to a performing dog. But in the case of Mr. Grant White example were better than precept. Wyoming is, after all, more readily accessible to Mr. White than Boston to the English, and the New England self-sufficiency no ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was grave and imposing on serious occasions, but not unbending. He delighted in social conversation, in which he was sometimes tempted to what he called rodomontade. But he seldom fatigued those who heard him; for he mixed so much of natural vigor of fancy and illustration with the store of his acquired knowledge, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... parsonage. He observed, when she expressed a wish, that neither the wayward boys nor the strong-minded Kirstin had the least thought of acting in opposition to it, and he felt an interest in the opportunity of seeing her in society, and observing whether there would be the same unbending nature. ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... intently at the man, a tall, delicate-featured personage, with a lofty and narrow forehead, scarred like his cheeks with the deep furrows of many a doubt and woe. Resolve, gentle but unbending, was expressed in his thin close-set lips and his clear quiet eye; but the calm of his mighty countenance was the calm of a worn-out volcano, over which centuries must pass before the earthquake-rents be filled with kindly soil, and ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... yoke-fellow. Their stupefaction refreshed him. Yet he was a gentleman capable of apprehending simultaneously that he sinned against his pride in the means he adopted to comfort his nature. But the wound was a perpetual sickness needing soul-medicine. Proud as he was, and unbending, he was not stronger than his malady, and he could disguise, he could not contain, the cry of immoderate grief. Adiante had been to him something beyond a creature beloved; she had with her glorious beauty and great-heartedness been the sole object ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Engines by unbending springs May walk on earth, or flap their mimic wings; In tubes of glass mercurial columns rise, Or sink, obedient to the incumbent skies; Or, as they touch the figured scale, repeat The nice gradations of circumfluent heat. But REPRODUCTION, when the perfect Elf Forms from fine ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... serenity forever sits. This year, too, is to many lonely hearts a redeemer; and no heavens will be darkly clouded when it is over, but still stars will shine unsurprised. Pale scholars in midnight vigils, golden gayety wreathing the hours with flowers and gems, unbending sorrow pressing heavy seals upon yielding wretchedness, it will steal surely from all these, and on the morrow be a colorless ghost in the distant past. Its constancy will secure our immortality. The grandeur of the year may be ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... light as that of her whose flying step scarcely brushed the "unbending corn," and limbs whose agile grace moved in harmony with the curves of her swan-like neck, and the beams ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... usually marks the temples his swelled boldly out, rounding the entire outline of the splendidly developed brow. He wore neither moustache nor beard, and every line of his handsome mouth and finely modelled chin indicated the unbending tenacity of purpose and imperial pride which had made him a ruler even in his cradle, and almost a ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... rewarded—was capable of urging penal laws against them in a speech from the Throne, and of stimulating with provocatives the wearied and half-exhausted bigotry of the then Parliament of Ireland." But Burke was a man whose public virtue was too high and unbending to permit him to make allowance for the political arts and crafts of a Chesterfield. It is quite true that Chesterfield recommended in his speech that the Irish Parliament should inquire into the working of the Penal Laws in order to find out ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... philippic, went its various ways, and Francois was left alone with his opponent. Benham had been consuming more small glasses of cognac than were good for him, and had reached the boastful and confidential stage of intoxication. He ranged up beside Francois, besought that unbending though polite man to eschew his evil ways, and hinted openly at the folly of those who pinned ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... girls one after the other straggled into the parlor with its gray plush furniture and blue lantern. They entered, extended to every one in turn their unbending palms, unused to hand-clasps, gave their names abruptly in a low voice—Manya, Katie, Liuba ... They sat down on somebody's knees, embraced him around the neck, and, as usual, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... solemnly proclaimed, amid the firing of cannon from the batteries and ships; and the day closed with a bonfire and a general illumination. On the next evening, Frontenac gave Schuyler a letter in answer to the threats of the earl. He had written with trembling hand, but unshaken will and unbending pride:— ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... books was determined by a reference to the circumstances in which he was placed; and in the canon law, the histories of the martyrs, and the Holy Scriptures he sought for advice and consolation. On a mind naturally firm and unbending, such studies were likely to make a powerful impression; and his friends, dreading the consequences, endeavored to divert his attention to other objects. But their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... when Mignon, Duthibaut, Menuau, Meunier, and Barot, having lost their cause before the Archbishop of Bordeaux, and finding themselves threatened by Grandier with a prosecution for libel and forgery, met together to consult as to the best means of defending themselves before the unbending severity of this man, who would, they felt, destroy them if ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... in that stern sadness of hers was a dignity, a majesty, that he had not appreciated until now, when she jostled without rudeness in this jostling crowd. This dark background of submissive yielding, of hopeless patience, threw into full light the unbending resolution carved in every line of her passionate face and lithesome figure. Yet he noticed now on her forehead two faint wrinkles showing, and in the corners of her mouth an overhanging fold; and this he saw as if reflected in a thousand ill-made ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... child! Thou too hast lost a most affectionate godmother In the empress. Oh, that stern, unbending man! In this unhappy marriage what have I Not suffered, not endured? For even as if I had been linked on to some wheel of fire That restless, ceaseless, whirls impetuous onward, I have passed a life of frights and horrors with him, And ever to the brink of some abyss With ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... James Grahame of Claverhouse a man well known to fame, by his subsequent title of viscount Dundee, but better remembered, in the western shires, under the designation of the bloody Clavers. In truth, he appears to have combined the virtues and vices of a savage chief. Fierce, unbending, and rigorous, no emotion of compassion prevented his commanding, and witnessing, every detail of military execution against the non-conformists. Undauntedly brave, and steadily faithful to his prince, he sacrificed ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... task. It was plain he gloried in the exercise of his trained faculties, in the clear sight which pierced at once into the joint of fact, in the rude, unvarnished gibes with which he demolished every figment of defence. He took his ease and jested, unbending in that solemn place with some of the freedom of the tavern; and the rag of man with the flannel round his neck was hunted ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with the air of a man who had always been accustomed to traveling with such people and was now unbending to confide familiar items of special interest to some unsophisticated listener. "You'd find ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... then sum up by saying that Lord Byron generally established on an impregnable rock, guarded by unbending principles, those great virtues to which principles are essential; but that, after making these treasures secure—for treasures they are to the man of honor and worth—once having placed them beyond the reach of sensibility and sentiment, he may sometimes have allowed the lesser ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... A handful of your fellow-citizens, sir, hearing of your arrival at the National Hotel, and feeling the patriotic character of your public services, wish, sir, to have the gratification of beholding you, and mixing with you, sir; and unbending with you, sir, in those ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the inevitable fate of Felix, and the family would very probably have suffered for the fault of one of its members. But independent and determined to the last degree, Felix ran any risk rather than surrender that which he had found, and which he deemed his own. This unbending independence and pride of spirit, together with scarce concealed contempt for others, had resulted in almost isolating him from the youth of his own age, and had caused him to be regarded with dislike by the elders. ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... thought him harsh, in the servants'-hall?" I said tentatively to Jane. "You thought him hard and unbending?" ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... like rusty hinges. They worked harshly in their sockets, with much friction, and each bending or unbending was accomplished only through a sheer exertion of will. When he finally gained his feet, another minute or so was consumed in straightening up, so that he could stand erect as ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... 'I would fain hear the tale. I marvel much that one so faithful and unbending as thyself was ever let loose by the unclean ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Vicomte and Madame de Morteyn, he pale, dignified, exquisitely courteous, she equally pale but more gentle in her sweet dignity. On the right sat the Red Prince, stiff as steel, jerky in every movement, stern, forbidding, unbending as much as his black Prussian blood would let him; on the left sat a thin old man, bald as an ivory ball, pallid, hairless of face, a frame of iron in a sombre, wrinkled tunic, without a single decoration. His short hawk's nose, keen and fine as a falcon's beak, quivered with every breath; his ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... Love's fuel, suddenly enkindled grew! Not like a mortal's did her step appear, Angelic was her form; her voice, methought, Pour'd more than human accents on the ear. A living sun was what my vision caught, A spirit pure; and though not such still found, Unbending of the bow ne'er heals ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Clemens tired of the unpromising life of Florida and removed to Hannibal, Missouri. He was a stern, unbending man, a lawyer by profession, a merchant by vocation; after his removal to Hannibal he became a Justice of the Peace, an office he filled with all the dignity of a local autocrat. His forum was a "dingy" office, furnished with ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... high-stepping horses, a natty turn-out, and the smile of Vanity Fair. Ethel's tastes were similar, and their lives so far had fitted into each other without a single crevice. The Cumberlands were grim and unbending, it is true, and after that one concession to fraternal feeling, made no more; they held themselves rigidly aloof from the pair, and invested all intercourse with paralyzing formality. Ethel did not care a pin for them or their opinion; if they chose to be old-fogyish and disagreeable, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... stern and unbending on parade, was adored by his men. Often he had been known, when acting as "orderly officer" (as the officer is called who has to keep order), to carry round with him a light camp-stool, which, with his unfailing charm of manner, he would offer to some weary sentry. "There, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... few weeks suggest! Now borne aloft upon the billows of hope, sparkling in the fitful brightness of a feverish sun, and then plunged into the slough of despair, his proud, dark soul disclaiming all human participation in a misery exaggerated by his own unbending pride. Let us not talk of denying sympathy to persons who create their own miseries; they endure agonies thrice told. The paltry remuneration he received for his productions is recorded by himself. Among the items ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... which 'blood and judgment were so well co-mingled'—so well, in such new degree and proportion, that their balance made a new force, a new generative force, in history—not in that one only, the one in whom this new historic form is visible and palpable already, but in the haughtier and more unbending historic attitude, at least, of his great 'co-mate and brother in exile.' It is here in the form of the great military chieftain of that new heroic line, who found himself, with all his strategy, involved in a single-handed ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... consolations of religion, and went through these pious and touching ceremonies with an apparently firm and undisturbed conscience. The man of blood knew no remorse. His acts had all been, he asserted, for his country's good; and the same unbending pride and unshaken confidence that had commanded the respect of men, seemed to accompany him into the presence of his Maker. He died like a hero of the Stoics, though clad in the trappings of a prince of the church. Most of those present were edified by his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... became canvassed of the newspapers and the politicians. Mr Dillon seemed to be sceptical of it, as a transparent landlord dodge. It was, however, enthusiastically welcomed by the Freeman, whilst The Daily Express, the organ of the more unbending of the territorialists, denounced it mercilessly, and no sooner did the Duke of Abercorn, Lord Barrymore, the O'Conor Don and Colonel Saunderson learn that Mr Redmond, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr T.W. Russell and Mr O'Brien were willing ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... himself, or save Elizabeth from him. But he did love her, in spite of his treason to her soul, for he was tender with her, and almost humble; yet his purpose was inflexible. It seemed to him it must find response in her. Such purpose might strike fire from the most unbending steel—why not from this yielding, silent thing, Elizabeth's heart? But numb and flaccid, perfectly apathetic, stunned by that paroxysm of fury, she no more responded to him than down would have responded to the ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... at the head of the Admiralty, though formal and unbending in outward bearing, was a just and kind man, and one fully appreciative of professional worth. A mutual friend acquainted him with Nelson's irritation, and Howe wrote a private letter asking that he would call upon him as soon as he came to town. Though ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... hostility to such an epitome of the world as he looked, although any Bond street tailor would have impeached his waistcoat, and one shabby glove had manifestly never been on. Yet Miss Filbert's first words seemed to show a slight unbending. "Won't you sit there?" she said, indicating the sofa corner she had been occupying. "You get the glare from the window where you are." It was virtually a command, delivered with a complete air ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... deny the fact of creation, and the doctrine of a living, personal God, distinct from nature, and superior to it. The only apparent difference between the two consists in this,—that the former speaks more of the rude materials, and the cold, hard, unbending laws, which exist in Nature; the latter speaks more of the vital powers, the subtle and ethereal forces, which are at work in her bosom, and which may seem to impart warmth and animation to a system that would otherwise be felt to be ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... you," she said in the same unbending tone. "You have given me a fright, but now I am recovered and I ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... although he loved me dearly, was a man who was stern and unbending, a man of iron will, a man always accustomed to have his way. For years I had looked on him with a kind of awe, and had never once dared to disobey him. His word had always been law to me, and even although practically I had ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... of Song from distant lands shall call To that great King; shall hail the crowned Youth Who, taking counsel of unbending Truth, By one example hath set forth to all How they with dignity may stand; or fall, If fall they must. Now, whither doth it tend? And what to him and his shall be the end? That thought is one which neither can appal Nor chear him; for the illustrious Swede hath done The thing which ought to be: ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... you! This is no trembling, sighing, blushing, sentimental love of a young maiden. I offer you the love of a bold, proud woman, who looks shame and death in the face. In the fire of my anguish, my love has become purified and hardened; in this flame it has forgotten its girlish blushes, and is unbending and unconquerable. I have baptized it with my tears; I have taken it to my heart, as a mother takes her new-born child whose existence is her condemnation, her dishonor, her shame; whom she loves boundlessly, and blesses ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... always been a little in awe of the Butcher. Not that the Butcher had not been friendly; but he was so blunt and rough and unbending that he rather repelled intimacy. He watched him covertly, admiring the bravado with which he pretended unconcern. It must be awful to be threatened with expulsion and actually to be expelled, to have your whole life ruined, once ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... taking, he appeared to bid defiance to all the usual attacks of human infirmities. Though evidently so near its dissolution, his attenuated frame still stood like the shaft of seasoned oak, dry, naked, and tempest-driven, but unbending and apparently indurated to the consistency of stone. On the present occasion he conducted the search for a resting-place, which was immediately commenced, with all the energy of youth, tempered by the discretion and ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... much moved by this burst of affection in one to whose character it seemed an unusual attribute, was, at the same time, pleased and proud that he could have awakened an affection so genuine and so gentle in a soul so high-spirited and so unbending. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... remarkable that a man of such strong self-reliant spirit as Master Wacht, who had borne with unshaken courage and unbending steadfastness the most terrible misfortunes that had befallen him, and that would have crushed many less stouthearted spirits, could be thus put beside himself with passion at an occurrence which any other father of a family would have regarded as ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... view the Shunammite recognized the sovereignty of God; his indisputable right to dispose of her and her affairs as he pleased. "Shall the clay say to him that formed it, What doest thou?" The unbending temper of infidelity will, perhaps, receive this as "a hard saying;" but it is affirmed in the inspired page, and must ever be admitted by him who is in his "right mind." Uncontrollable power, acting irrespectively of wisdom or goodness, would be ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... oneself somewhat to the more pagan character of the place. Of irreverence, in the sense of a desire to laugh at things that are of high and serious import, there is not a trace, but at the same time there is a certain unbending of the bow at Montrigone which ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... she tears, the bloodless eyes Drags from their cavities, and mauls the nail Upon the withered hand: she gnaws the noose By which some wretch has died, and from the tree Drags down a pendent corpse, its members torn Asunder to the winds: forth from the palms Wrenches the iron, and from the unbending bond Hangs by her teeth, and with her hands collects The slimy gore which drips ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... seen him cry like a child at evidences of their love for him, he whose courage no danger could daunt, and who was never seen to blench before hatred nor change his stern immobility in the face of his foes. Iron to enmity, he was soft as a woman to kindness; unbending as steel to pressure, he was ductile as wax to love. John Stuart Mill had the insight in 1868 to see his value, and the courage to recognise it. He strongly supported his candidature, and sent a ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... protests against this insolent desecration of God's day that the Methodists of Octavius still felt themselves peculiarly bound to hold this horse-car line, its management, and everything connected with it, in unbending aversion. At least once a year they were accustomed to expect a sermon denouncing it and all its impious Sunday patrons. Theron made a mental resolve that this ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... was the trouble. Michael, so Mark Rutherford tells us, was a Puritan of the Puritans, silent, stern, unbending. Between his wife and himself no sympathy existed. They had two children—a boy and a girl. The girl was in every way her mother's child: the boy was the image of his father. Michael made a companion of his son; took ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... savage warfare, he unflinchingly went forward in his enterprise, daring and conquering every obstacle nature and the savages interposed. He was an uneducated man; but of strong mind, ardent temperament, and most determined will. Many anecdotes are related of his intrepidity, self-respect, and unbending will. He was a native of Augusta County, Virginia, and emigrated to Georgia about the same time that Elijah Clarke came from North Carolina and settled in that portion of the new territory now known as ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... declared, with frown severe, That none should pawn a robe that kings might wear; And much it moved him, when he Hamlet play'd, To see his Father's Ghost so drunken made: Then too the temper, the unbending pride Of this ally, would no reproof abide: - So leaving these, he march'd away and join'd Another troop, and other goods purloin'd; And other characters, both gay and sage, Sober and sad, made stagger ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... a man of Knox's unbending honesty was glad to have thrown off his functions as secretary to the brethren. Far from disclaiming their idolatrous King and Queen (the ideal policy), they were issuing proclamations headed "Francis and Mary," ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... stream of straw looks that flows from the blower of a threshing machine when you stand straight in its line and behind it. But, of course, it did not curve down. It seemed to stretch and to rise, growing more and more like an arm with a clumsy fist at its end, held unconceivably straight and unbending. This cloud, I have no doubt, was forming right then by condensation. And it stretched and lengthened till it obscured ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... Yes, my poor child! Thou too hast lost a most affectionate godmother In the Empress. O that stern unbending man! In this unhappy marriage what have I Not suffered, not endured. For ev'n as if 20 I had been linked on to some wheel of fire That restless, ceaseless, whirls impetuous onward, I have passed a life of frights and horrors with him, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... them for this compromise with the anti-Reformers, and they have now no alternative but to unite with those who call themselves the Conservative party against the rebels, republicans, associators, and all the disaffected in the country. After all their declarations and their unbending insolence, to have brought down their pride to these terms, and to the humiliation of making overtures to a party whose voice was only the other day designated by John Russell as 'the whisper of a faction,' shows plainly how deeply alarmed they are at the general state ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... like a huge serpent through the gap. They were riding in single file, across the Crows' line of march, clearly with the purpose of surrounding them and cutting them off from the ford. They continued in a straight, unbending column, but were still beyond range, when suddenly the Crows halted, turned right about face, and retired once again in the direction of the creek, apparently unwilling to engage so formidable ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... Goteway—beaming, expansive, from the sense of a merciful action accomplished—she received him in a distinctly repressive manner. The great, white and gold drawing-rooms in Albert Gate were not more frigid or unbending than the bearing of their mistress as she suffered her father's embrace. And that amiable nobleman, notwithstanding his large frame and exalted social position, felt himself shiver inwardly in the presence of his daughter, even as he could remember shivering ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... from the door-sill and made way for the Trust president. He strode into the room with a quick glance round and a short, harsh "Howdy?" for the lesser members of his corporation. His manner towards Scipio was no less unbending. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... the body lay in state upon a pine slab, and the bereaved partner of the deceased was unbending in a game of seven-up with a friendly Chinaman, the game was interrupted by a familiar voice which seemed to proceed from the jaws of the corpse: ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... sincerely," she answered, unbending still more from her almost stately manner. "Friendly consideration I shall need, of course—as who does not in this world? And I repeat my thanks, that you have so kindly and so promptly anticipated my needs So far as the remains of my unhappy ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... restless expression. He did not look like a man who had found peace. Lady Charteris told him of her last visit to Earlescourt—how his mother never ceased speaking of him, and his father still preserved the same rigid, unbending silence. ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... the family lawyer to remain on good terms with him nothing more than a very perfunctory account of his stewardship had been demanded. The late owner of Carnaby had been a man of simple tastes and unbending pride, who had a faint contempt for his kinsman, and refrained from inquiries respecting finances while there was no stoppage of supplies. There were one or two men who suspected that Deringham had profited ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... straining, When the knee in dust is crouching, And the spear-shaft in the onset Of the battle snaps asunder. But as things are now, so are they, So, as destined, shall the end be. Nor by tears nor yet libations Shall he soothe the wrath unbending {70} Caused ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... the old gentleman, unbending urbanely toward the young man, 'is both honorable and considerate. Of course you know that my child's happiness is my chief solicitude. If, after several years, when Rita's mind has grown more ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... foremost your own honesty and self-control, then the scrupulous conduct of all your staff, the exceedingly cautious and careful selection in regard to intimacies with provincials and Greeks, the strict and unbending government of your slaves. These are creditable even in the conduct of our private and everyday business: in such an important government, where morals are so debased and the province has such a corrupting influence, they must needs seem divine. Such principles and conduct on your part are ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... enough, for he drew his materials from the fountain-head. With the exception of the original sin of gallantry, he succeeded also pretty well with the Romans: of one part of their character, at least, he had a tolerable conception, their predominating patriotism, and unbending pride of liberty, and the magnanimity of their political sentiments. All this, it is true, is nearly the same as we find it in Lucan, varnished over with a certain inflation and self-conscious pomp. The simple republican austerity, and their religious submissiveness, was beyond his reach. Racine ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... place, sent to the regions in proximity garrisons sufficient for immediate needs, and repulsed a cavalry attack upon the city. Altogether, he displayed neither dejection nor terror, but with an unbending spirit, as if no serious evil had befallen them, he both planned and executed all measures of immediate benefit. (Valesius, p. 598. Zonaras, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... great a rage, that the one was inarticulate and the other unintelligible. At length the object of their indignation spoke for itself. From the inn yard came a hackney chaise, in a most deplorable crazy state; the body mounted up to a prodigious height, on unbending springs, nodding forwards, one door swinging open, three blinds up, because they could not be let down, the perch tied in two places, the iron of the wheels half off, half loose, wooden pegs for linch-pins, and ropes for harness. The horses were worthy of the harness; ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... species of animals have perished owing to their inability to follow her steps! How immense fortunes have been lost in vain from man's ignorance of her order! How many human beings disappeared on earth from their disobedience to her unbending will! She is, nevertheless, true to those who obey her rules. Has not science proved that she is truthful? Has not art found ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... of all this, Lady Carbury came out to him in the garden. She had changed her travelling dress, and made herself pretty, as she well knew how to do. And now she dressed her face in her sweetest smiles. Her mind, also, was full of the Melmottes, and she wished to explain to her stern, unbending cousin all the good that might come to her and hers by an alliance with the heiress. 'I can understand, Roger,' she said, taking his arm, 'that you ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... moment Aunt Emily looked as rigid as the post beside a five- barred gate. The old unbending attitude took possession of her once again. Her eyes took on the tint of soapy water. Her elastic nose looked round the corner. She frowned. Her black dress crackled. The mention of a tramp and the End of the World woke all her savage ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... but notice once more the union in our Lord's character of the greatest tenderness with unbending severity whenever the cause of truth demanded severity. He opened his ministry at Nazareth by reading from the prophet Isaiah a portraiture of his own character: "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... directed against him especially, and that he had already called upon Maurice to banish this "arch-heretic." It certainly served the purpose of Maurice well that he had to deal with Melanchthon, whose fear and vacillation made him as pliable as putty, and not with Luther, on whose unbending firmness all of his schemes would have foundered. However, it cannot have been mere temporary fear which induced Melanchthon to barter away eternal truth for temporal peace. For the theologians of Wittenberg and Leipzig ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... and walked to the door. Her mother watched her wistfully. It was in her mind to call her back, fold her in her arms, and appeal for sympathy. But the severity of the child's pose was too suggestive of the Vicar's unbending attitude towards feminine weakness, and she restrained the impulse, knowing that she would appeal in vain. There was infinitely more comfort to be found in the society of Baby Phil, and, smiling wanly at the thought, she went up to the nursery in ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... over his head he turned a deaf ear to his wife's panegyrics on striking and her heartfelt tribute to the end of a perfect day. Even when standing on the cold floor while she remade the bed he maintained an attitude of unbending dignity, only relaxing when she smote him light-heartedly with the bolster. In a few ill-chosen words he expressed his opinion of her mother and her deplorable methods of bringing up ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... a later time, ere yet the Boy Had put on Boy's attire, did Michael love, Albeit of a stern unbending mind, To have the young one in his sight, when he Had work by his own door, or when he sate With sheep before him on his Shepherd's stool, Beneath that large old Oak, which near their door Stood, and from it's enormous breadth of shade Chosen ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... influence over her husband. He loved her very tenderly; and was ever loth to do any thing to which she made opposition. She was no creature of mere impulse—of weak caprices—of captious, yet unbending will. If she opposed her husband in any thing, it was on the ground of its non-agreement with just principles; and she always sustained her positions with the clearest and most direct modes of argumentation. Not with elaborate reasonings, but rather in the declaration of things ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... terrible punishment upon the guilty, would not permit you to slay an innocent man. Even a negro, as long as he behaves himself and keeps in his place, is entitled to the protection of the law. We may be stern and unbending in the punishment of crime, as befits our masterful race, but we hold the scales of justice with ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... nor thankfulness, nor the unbending from labour, was there among those poor Israelites—those people of the Lord in name; but only lawless ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... of suicide was the culminating point of Roman stoicism. The proud, self-reliant, unbending character of the philosopher, could only be sustained when he felt that he had a sure refuge against the extreme forms of suffering or of despair. Although virtue is not a mere creature of interest, no great system has ever yet flourished which did not present an ideal ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the facts are incompatible with such a theory. Instead of being fanatical idealists, incapable of compromises and adjustments, the Bolsheviki have, from the very beginning, been loudly scornful of rigid and unbending idealism; have made numerous compromises, alliances, and "political deals," and have repeatedly shifted their ground in accordance with political expediency. They have been consistently loyal to no aim save one—the control of power. They ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... companionship of a man of domestic tastes, accustomed to the society of superior women. There was nothing to fall back upon, nothing to make a home, she was listless and weary whenever gaiety failed her—and he, disappointed and baffled, too unbending to draw her out, too much occupied to watch over her, yielded to her tastes, and let her ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... independent of his own. And she, the polluted one, had risen to the dignity, had cut herself sternly away from all that related to her past life, and had shown signs already of being a great Queen, stronger and wiser than her husband, but fierce, vindictive, and unbending, a firm support to her friends, but a terror to her foes. This was the woman to whom the Abbot Luke of Antioch was bringing Leon, her forgotten son. If ever her mind strayed back to the days when, abandoned by her lover Ecebolus, the Governor of the African Pentapolis, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his family, descendants of the old Borderers, Scott owed that intensely patriotic quality which glows in all his work. He is said to have borne strong resemblance to his grandfather, "Old Bardie Scott," an unbending clansman who vowed never to cut his beard till a Stuart prince came back to the throne. The clansmen were now citizens of the Empire, but their loyalty to hereditary chiefs is reflected in Scott's reverence for everything ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... minister's chair, with her small feet placed as his stiff boots had been, and a copy of his solemn expression before they came to speaking of Emerson and of the guitar. "I wish I had asked him if he would be so kind as to climb the cherry-tree," said Helena, unbending a little at the discovery that her cousin would consent to laugh no more. "There are all those ripe cherries on the top branches. I can climb as high as he, but I can't reach far enough from the last branch that will bear me. The minister ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Her sudden unbending was so gracious, so sweet that, bewildered, he remained silent for a while, recovering his ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... primeval earth, Surely was with magic fraught That upon my pulses wrought: I too felt the air of June Humming with a merry tune, I too reckoned, like a boy, Less of Time and more of Joy: Till, as homeward I was wending, I perceived my back unbending, And before the mile was done Ran beside ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... dexterity, even when I was myself the object of it.' He was under the impression that he would be 'liberally understood,' as 'knowing very well what I was about.' But, he adds, 'it seems I judged too well of the world'; and he points his moral with a story of 'the great Dr. Clarke,' who, 'unbending himself with a few friends in the most playful and frolicsome manner,' saw Beau Nash in the distance, and was instantly sobered. 'My boys,' quoth he, 'let us be grave—here comes a fool.' Macaulay was not exactly Beau Nash, nor was Boswell 'the great Dr. Clarke'; but, as Macaulay, working on Wolcot's ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... Speed took refuge behind an attitude of unbending dignity, but the young widow would have none ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... great Dr. Clarke[56], that when in one of his leisure hours he was unbending himself with a few friends in the most playful and frolicksome manner, he observed Beau Nash approaching; upon which he suddenly stopped:—'My boys, (said he,) let us be grave: here comes a fool.' The world, my friend, I have found to be a great fool, as to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... was not at all like her brother, in feature, though the moral characteristics suited the relationship sufficiently well. There was the expression of strong sense and great benevolence; the unbending uprightness of mind and body at once; and the dignity of an essentially noble character, not the same as Mr. Ringgan's, but such as well became his sister. She had been brought up among the Quakers, and though now, and for many years, a ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... "Perhaps," said Mr: Mavering, unbending with dignity, "the young married women have held another meeting, and resolved to give ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... night a fitful wind was blowing—one moment of silence and then a throb of rain at the windows. In his office the Major sat, looking over the affairs of his estate. It was noted that he preferred a stormy night thus to apply himself; the harshness of figures, the unbending stubbornness of a date, in his mind seemed to find a unity with the sharp whistle of the wind and the lashes of rain on the moss-covered roof. Before him, on yellowing paper, was old Gid's name, and at it he slowly shook his head, for fretfully he nursed the consciousness ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... epistles we see also Paul's intense personality, his frank egotism, his devotion to his work, his sincerity and earnestness, his affectionate nature, his tolerant and catholic spirit, and also his power of sarcasm, his warm passions, and his unbending will. He enjoins the necessity of faith, which is a gift, with the practice of virtues that appeal to consciousness and emanate from love and purity of heart. These letters are exhortations to a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... repudiate, the policy of grab which is commonly associated with the name of Jingo.... I submit that the worst policy in these matters is to have regard to our own rights only, and not to the rights of others. We want our country to be viewed with that respect which men will ever cherish for unbending integrity of purpose. We should be more scrupulous with regard to asserting nominal rights which we do not ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... instance, can forget the famous message which ran: "October 21st. All well. Four hours' bombardment. One dog killed"? In an instant the gloom was dispelled. In 'bus and tram and railway carriage men chuckled over the exquisite humour of that telegram. Leader writers, unbending, referred to it decorously. The funny men on newspaper staffs made jests about it, and the "Oldest Evening ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... she too soon discovered her husband was not one to aid her in her unsuspected task, to soothe and guide, and by his affection demand her gratitude and reverence. Enwrapped in selfishness or haughty indifference, his manner towards her ever harsh, unbending, and suspicious, Isabella's pride would have sustained her, had not her previous trial lowered her in self-esteem; but as it was, meekly and silently she bore with the continued outbreak of unrestrained passion, and never wavered from the path of duty her clear ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... on fairly well together, meeting on most days at tea-time in the kitchen, when we would have nice sober little talks and look at her lessons and books and pictures, sometimes unbending so far as to draw pigs on her slate with our eyes shut, and laughing at the result ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... very different from Mr. Scott; he was not sociable, but rather stern and unbending. Judge then of Robert's surprise, and my own, when, after saying a few words to me, Mr. Lombaert added: "You must come down and take tea with us to-night." I stammered out something of acceptance and awaited the appointed hour with ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... following meant something essentially different. He was not a messenger to his own people, nor their leader. He was a messenger to the great world-rulers of his time, through the visions he interpreted, and through his unbending faithfulness and purity of life; The thing that stands out largest is the life he lived, a life of simplicity in habit, of purity and consistency, with an unwavering faith in God. God could use him to speak to the great emperors. So he helped God to get His message to men so hard ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... was applied to these prints and to impressions from copperplates. A certain prettiness was the highest aim of most of the latter, and very few were designed only to amuse a child. It seems as if all concerned were bent on unbending themselves, careful to offer grains of truth to young minds with an occasional terrible falsity of their attitude; indeed, its satire and profound analysis make it superfluous to reopen the subject. As one might expect, the literature, "genteel" and dull, naturally desired pictures ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... which meant greater freedom in the matter of wash dresses; and also, to Sextoness Jane herself, the certainty of a day's outing every week. To Sextoness Jane, those Tuesdays at the parsonage were little short of a dissipation. Miranda, unbending in the face of such sincere and humble admiration, was truly gracious. The glimpses the little bent, old sextoness got of the young folks, the sense of life going on about her, were as good as a play, to quote her own simile, confided of an evening to Tobias, her great black cat, the ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... The man, still sitting on his haunches, still clasping the feet of the pendent bird, moves over beside his fire, faces his dwelling, and voices the only words of this strangely cruel scene. His eyes are open, his head unbending, and he gazes before him as he earnestly asks a blessing on the people, their pigs, ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... husband drive away that morning fifteen years ago. She was stout and comely; the auburn hair was darker and arched away from her face in smooth, shining waves instead of the old-time curls. Her face was unlined and fresh-coloured, but no woman could live in subjection to her own unbending will for so many years and not show it. Nobody, looking at Theodosia now, would have found it hard to believe that a woman with such a determined, immoveable face could stick to a course of conduct in defiance ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... still smiling at Essie Tisdale's sallies as he came up the stairs. Her droll originality amused him as he had not been amused in a long time, and he found himself unbending to a degree which often surprised himself; besides, with her frankness, her naturalness and perfect unconsciousness of any social barrier, she seemed to him a perfect western type. He prized the novel friendship, for it had become ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... chest of drawers and the wall. Through that interminable half-hour she sat upright upon it, her hands folded upon her knees, quite cold and motionless, her eyes closed, and her lips parted in an expression of bodily pain. Then she rose suddenly, all straight at once, tall and unbending, and stood still while one might have counted ten, and she opened and shut her eyes slowly, two or three times, as though she were comparing the outer world with that within her. So Clytemnestra might have stood, before she laid her hands to ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... The Roman's gift was unbending devotion to duty. With a genius for rule he forced men into one polity; and by levelling material barriers he enabled the nations to commune, and made a highway for the message of freedom and brotherhood. But, intoxicated ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... unyielding man, with his piercing eyes, his strong mouth and chin—I see him there still, like a lion fallen into a snare. He will not, he cannot, but he must give up the struggle! I still see the stern faces of the officers, who up to that moment had been so unbending. I see them staring as if into empty space. I see engraved upon their faces an indescribable expression, an expression that seemed to ask: 'Is this the bitter end of our sufferings and our sorrows, of our faith and our strong crying to God?' How great was their ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... his extended paws—betraying, in both attitude and look, a sober self-satisfaction so entire as made it seem that for him the world had nothing more to offer. But this morning, notwithstanding the successful, even brilliant, winding up of their great adventure, our war-dog, instead of unbending as usual, held grimly aloof from the rest of the party, still seated on his tail, to which he had retired, snubbed, in the very flush of victory, by his ungrateful leader. Evidently our canine hero had got his nose knocked out ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... residence in Hanover, N. H., September 26, 1873. Dr. Crosby was born February 7, 1800, at Sandwich, N. H., of pure New England stock,—strong in the best Puritan element, where self-reliance, love of justice, and unbending will, formed the basis of character and the mainspring of action. His father's father was a captain in the Revolutionary army, and served with two of his sons at the battle of Bunker Hill. His maternal grandfather (Hoit) ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith |
