"Ungovernable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the thing was over, his spirits were rapidly becoming ungovernable. 'I can see their faces!' he said. 'As a matter of fact, though, nobody else was ever in danger. There wasn't a shred of evidence against any one. I looked up Murch at the Yard this morning, and he told me he had come round to Bunner's view, ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... became still more squally. The wind rushed through the white, foaming waves, and the ship groaned with its own wild and ungovernable labors, while nothing could be seen but the wild waste of waters. The scene was indeed one ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... as of sudden, ungovernable terror, rose from her lips and rang with piercing shrillness through ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... vote on a defined issue would be valuable, significant, desired by the people themselves; but the machinery of representative government, however faulty, is the only machinery by which the people can in some sense govern itself, instead of making itself ungovernable. Above all, in a serious crisis it is supremely repugnant to the spirit of popular government that the men chosen by a people to govern it should throw their responsibility back at the heads of the electors. It is well to be clear as to the kind ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... possible for two natures so incapable of disguise—the one from simplicity and frankness, the other from ungovernable temper,—to have continued in relations of amity, notwithstanding their disagreement upon a question which was at that moment setting the world in arms, both themselves and the country would have been the better for such a compromise between ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... engaged crooning to himsel; and Mrs. Burns, perceiving that her presence was an interruption, loitered behind with her little ones among the broom. Her attention was presently attracted by the strange and wild gesticulations of the bard, who was now seen at some distance, agonized with an ungovernable access of joy. He was reciting very loud, and with tears rolling down his cheeks, those animated verses which he had ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... wish to tell me you have hunted the lion?" Ali smiled with triumphant pride as he signified that he had indeed both chased and captured many lions. "But do you believe you could arrest the progress of two horses rushing forwards with ungovernable fury?" The Nubian smiled. "It is well," said Monte Cristo. "Then listen to me. Ere long a carriage will dash past here, drawn by the pair of dappled gray horses you saw me with yesterday; now, at the risk of your own life, you must manage to stop ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... came straight to the inner room in search of something, saw me, and knew I must have heard all he had concealed from me so carefully. If you have ever seen him when that fierce temper of his grows ungovernable, you can guess what I endured. He said such cruel things I could not bear it, and cried out that I would come to you, for I was quite wild with terror, grief, and shame, that seemed like oil to fire. He swore I should not, and oh, Pauline, he struck me! See, ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... person, no doubt," she said, "but an ungovernable tongue. She never ceased talking while we were there. No wonder himself died peacefully. How he must have longed ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... despises. Could she be punished again? It was strange that though for years she had defied the world's opinion, since she had married again she had again begun, almost without being aware of it, to tend secretly towards desire of conciliating it. Perhaps that was ungovernable tradition returning to its work within her. To-day she felt, in her middle life, something of what she had felt then in her youth. When she had met for the first time at the opera the man for whom afterwards she had ruined herself, his fierce attraction ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... tremulous cry came out of a throat near me. It grew and spread to a mighty roar and then such a shout went up to Heaven, as I had never heard, and as I know full well I shall never hear again. It was like the riving of thunderbolts above the roar of floods—elemental, prophetic, threatening, ungovernable. It did seem to me that the holy wrath of God Almighty was in that cry of the people. It was a signal. It declared that they were ready to give all that a man may give for that he loves—his life and things far dearer to him than his ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... must desire health. Nothing can save him but a blind hunger for normality, like that of a beast. A man cannot think himself out of mental evil; for it is actually the organ of thought that has become diseased, ungovernable, and, as it were, independent. He can only be saved by will or faith. The moment his mere reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut; he will go round and round his logical circle, just as a man in a third-class carriage ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... like most of the descendants of Duke Robert "the Devil" and the daughter of the Falaise tanner, his appearance was not calculated to inspire respect. His grey bloodshot eyes and tremulous voice, were neither knightly nor kingly qualifications; his savage and ungovernable temper, made him appear at times rather like a demon than a man. He was charged with having violated the most solemn oaths when it suited his convenience. A cardinal had pronounced him an audacious liar. Count Thiebault of Champagne had ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... the slight blow on his face. He became deadly pale, and a dangerous flame darkened his eyes. For some seconds he could not speak, his lungs were so suffused with blood, his heart stretched almost to bursting with a great gush of ungovernable emotion. It was as if some reservoir of black emotion had burst within him, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... doubtless, as the more important personage of the two. In a word, while William was engaged in England, prosecuting his conquests there, Robert was growing up in Normandy a vain, self-conceited, and ungovernable young man. ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of languors; a mere system of inert dejected cells when alone, pure destructive principle, if you like,—yet she held this boy's heart to her, without a letter, possibly with little or no thought of him, across a thousand leagues of sea—and this, through those frequently ungovernable years in which so many men become thick ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... effect. To Sara there was one only consuming interest in life—love. All her talents were directed to the gaining, understanding, and keeping of this wonderful human mystery. She wanted wild scenes and ungovernable emotions: she was beautiful enough to figure in such situations, and fascinating enough to indulge in such crises without offence to the artistic proprieties. But she had resolved that the hero of her existence ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... had felt his heart beginning to warm towards her. But the charm with which she had been invested, faded away the moment the change of which we have spoken became apparent. He was not a man of strong, ungovernable impulses; all his passions were under the control of right reason, and this gave him a clear judgment. Consequently, he was the last person in the world for an experiment such as Margaret Hubert was making. ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... came down thickly, were black also. The eyes themselves, peering out beneath overhanging brows, gleamed with a mixture of sullen intelligence and implacable savagery. In its slow, forbidding strength, and in its tameless reserve, which yet held the capacity for outbursts of ungovernable rage, this strange beast seemed to incarnate the very spirit of the bitter and indomitable North. Its name was various, for hunters called it sometimes wolverene, sometimes carcajou, but oftener "Glutton," or ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... three hundred captives to whom he had given a standard as a pledge of his protection and a guarantee of their safety. Such misplaced mercy was a crime in the eyes of the crusaders. The massacre of the first day may have been aggravated by the ungovernable excitement of victory; but it was resolved that on the next day there should be offered up a more solemn and deliberate sacrifice. The men whom Tancred had spared were all murdered; and the wrath of Tancred was roused, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... boats, which obliged him to quit the canoe and take to the water. The people in the boat made several attempts to lay hold of him; but he as often dived under the boat, and at last having unshipped the rudder, which rendered her ungovernable, by this means he got clear off. Some other very daring thefts were committed at the landing-place. One fellow took a seaman's jacket out of the boat, and carried it off, in spite of all that our people in her ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... the exception of his occasional contributions to the press, whatever he committed to paper during these years exists only, if at all, in a fragmentary form. And his restlessness, continually on the increase, appears by the end of 1802 to have become ungovernable. In November of that year he eagerly accepted an offer from Thomas Wedgwood to become his companion on a tour, and he spent this and the greater part of the following month in South Wales with some temporary ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... People are not "sensual" when death is right before them, as it is here. I do not wish to be understood as meaning that Wagner excluded sensuality from his works, or that he did not treat the most universal and most ungovernable of human impulses in accordance with its character. The drama must include everything human, and when passionate sexuality is a necessary part of the dramatic development, Wagner no more shirks it than did Shakespeare or any other great dramatist. But Wagner always ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... flight from the cruelty of her brother in law Pigmalion, who had murdered her husband Sicheus.—Venus dreading for her son AEneas, the influence of Juno upon the mind of Dido, makes Cupid assume the forme of his child Julus or Ascanius, and raise in the bosom of the Queen the most ungovernable passion for AEneas. The fourth book begins by Dido's confessing her weakness to her sister Anna, who gives her many plausible reasons for indulging it, and advices her to make her peace with heaven and marry her lover. Juno, finding herself outwitted by Venus and her favourite Dido irrecoverably ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... high-tempered. The taking of the warrant was an act of resentment, she thought. He had had two or three quarrels or fights, she believed, with the man from whom he took the warrant. He was a very talented young man, but very ungovernable in ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... kindled when Peter of Amiens, a returned hermit, aroused the martial nations to a bloody war on these enemies of God and man. He was a mean-looking man, with neglected beard and disordered dress. He had no genius, nor learning, nor political position. He was a mere fanatic, fierce, furious with ungovernable rage. But he impersonated the leading idea of the age,—hatred of "the infidels," as the Mohammedans were called. And therefore his voice was heard. The Pope used him as a tool. Two centuries later he could not have made himself a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... the "Insania" of excessive sin: and all this, if not a shallow and false, is a smooth and artistical, conception. On the other hand, I have always felt that there was a peculiar grandeur in the indescribable, ungovernable fury of Dante's fiends, ever shortening its own powers, and disappointing its own purposes; the deaf, blind, speechless, unspeakable rage, fierce as the lightning, but erring from its mark or turning senselessly against itself, and still further ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... too-pressing attentions of their father's valet had caused her to fly this sheltered spot, against the express advice of her educational superiors, who implied that, in their own case, refinement and self-respect had always sufficed to keep the most ungovernable passions at bay. The experience of the guardian's widow having been precisely similar, and the deplorable precedent of Laura's career being present to all their minds, none of these ladies felt any obligation to intervene farther in Sophy's affairs; and she was accordingly ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the fury of the mob became ungovernable. At length, at the end of a passage, next to the cell where Mrs. Sheppard had been confined, Blueskin discovered a trap-door which he had not previously noticed. It was instantly burst open, when the horrible stench that issued from it convinced them that it must be a receptacle for ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... seem, to measure his greatness by that standard; but when they were told that he had only one, (and, if they had felt disposed, they might have extended their information, by telling the inquirers that she was too much for him,) they gave themselves up to a long and ungovernable fit of laughter, followed by expressions of pity and wonder how he could possibly exist in that destitute condition. The king of Youriba's boast was, that his wives, linked hand-in-hand, would reach entirely across the kingdom. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... falling from the yardarm—cannot help thinking that Mr. Masefield put a good deal of himself into this strange hero. The adoration of beauty, which is the lodestar of the poet, lifted Dauber into a different world from the life of the ship. He had an ungovernable desire to paint the constantly changing phases of beauty in the action of the vessel and in the wonders of the sea and sky. In this passion his shy, sensitive nature was stronger than all the brute strength enjoyed by his shipmates; they could destroy ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... its stead, the ridiculous, but marvelously perfect imitation of the "priming" of a pump, while Billy's hands forget the "chiggers" on the bare backs of his feet, as, with clapping palms, he dances round the room in ungovernable spasms of delight. And then we all laugh; and Billy, taking advantage of the general tumult, pulls Bob's head down and whispers, "Git 'em to stay up 'way late to-night!" And Bob, perhaps remembering that we go back home ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... more unreasonable and ungovernable than a crowd of people. Men who standing alone or in small groups are deliberate in all they do, lose their self-control when they come to stand in a crowd. You have noticed this, if you have heard a cry of fire in a large assemblage, or have seen people moving about in great excitement ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... take an oath that they never would consent to such an union, or give any vote contrary to the true interest of Ireland. Divers coaches belonging to obnoxious persons were destroyed, and their horses killed; and a gibbet was erected for one gentleman in particular, who narrowly escaped the ungovernable rage of those riotous insurgents. A body of horse and infantry were drawn out on this occasion, in order to overawe the multitude, which at night dispersed of itself. Next day addresses to the lord-lieutenant were agreed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... most easily and most largely obtained from the court of Versailles; and Sunderland was eager to sell himself to that court. He had no jovial generous vices. He cared little for wine or for beauty: but he desired riches with an ungovernable and insatiable desire. The passion for play raged in him without measure, and had not been tamed by ruinous losses. His hereditary fortune was ample. He had long filled lucrative posts, and had neglected ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... cooking frogs, snails, and cats, making fancy coats, and topping off the human head with elegant hats and bonnets; the Austrians in the manufacture of shin-plasters for their soldiers, and the making and breaking of constitutions for ungovernable dependencies; the Prussians in the blasphemous necromancy of receiving crowns for their kings direct from God; and all in some shape or other professing devotion to human liberty, and doing every thing in their power to subvert it. Truly it is enough to puzzle one who seeks for truth amid the ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Fields persist in harnessing themselves, a pair of ungovernable coursers, to the chariot of Mr. Snagsby's imagination; and Mr. Bucket drives; and the passengers are Jo and Mr. Tulkinghorn; and the complete equipage whirls though the law-stationery business at wild speed all round the clock. Even in ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... voice stirred every antipathy I had. Shaking from head to foot, thrilled with ungovernable ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... straight on with desperate hardihood to his doom. Therefore, after having early acquired and long preserved the reputation of infallible wisdom and invariable success, he lived to see a mighty ruin wrought by his own ungovernable passions, to see the great party which he had led vanquished, and scattered, and trampled down, to see all his own devilish enginery of lying witnesses, partial sheriffs, packed juries, unjust judges, bloodthirsty mobs, ready to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be getting the best of him. Johnson, as he grew older and got into more polished society, became milder in his manners; but he had enough of the old spirit left in him to break forth at times with ungovernable fury, and astonish the well-regulated minds of ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... to put off his departure for some weeks longer. Upon this, although Leontes had so long known the integrity and honourable principles of his friend Polixenes, as well as the excellent disposition of his virtuous queen, he was seized with an ungovernable jealousy. Every attention Hermione showed to Polixenes, though by her husband's particular desire, and merely to please him, increased the unfortunate king's jealousy; and from being a loving and a true friend, and the best and fondest of husbands, Leontes became suddenly a savage ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... touched him, though never so lightly; but for that, the sudden removal of so great a load might have brought about some wholesome change even in him. With that deed done, however; with that unnecessary wasteful danger haunting him; despair was in his very triumph and relief; wild, ungovernable, raging despair, for the uselessness of the peril into which he had plunged; despair that hardened him and maddened him, and set his teeth a-grinding in a ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... wonderful faculty of acquiring knowledge by the simplest means. For instance, what method do you suppose he took to find out the strength of the wind? You will never guess how the boy could compel that unseen, inconstant, and ungovernable wonder, the wind, to tell him the measure of its strength. Yet nothing can be more simple. He jumped against the wind; and by the length of his jump he could calculate the force of a gentle breeze, a brisk gale, or a tempest. Thus, even in his boyish sports, he was continually searching ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... evidence of having fully inherited the family character. As I advanced in years it was more strongly developed; becoming, for many reasons, a cause of serious disquietude to my friends, and of positive injury to myself. I grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices, and a prey to the most ungovernable passions. Weak-minded, and beset with constitutional infirmities akin to my own, my parents could do but little to check the evil propensities which distinguished me. Some feeble and ill-directed efforts resulted in complete failure on their part, and, of course, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... woman who inspired Sir Lucius Grafton with an ungovernable passion. Despairing of success by any other method, conscious that, sooner or later, he must, for family considerations, propagate future baronets of the name of Grafton, he determined to solicit her hand. But for him to obtain it, he was well aware, was difficult. ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... was dreamy, delightful, soothing, all save his heart—there was the conflict—there the change. Was it a troubled dream, with the dark oppression of which he was struggling, or was it stern, waking, actual life? That moment's review of his wild career was terrible. He saw to what extremes his ungovernable passions had hurried him; he saw their inevitable consequences; he saw also his own fate; ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was of humble birth, and possessed little of what we call culture. But, nevertheless, she was to me the dearest creature that I have ever met on my wanderings through two continents; a wonderful compound of savagery and goodness of heart, of ungovernable pride and unselfish, devoted affection—a child and a heroine. She had given herself to me, and followed me on my journeys from pure inclination, not for the sake of any advantage. It had been her own wish to play the part of a servant. I do not, however, mean to say that she never made use of ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... continued howling and shrieking and working themselves into what seemed an ungovernable fury, while they were, however, biding their time, knowing that probably a strong sea-breeze would soon spring up and cast the ship helpless into their power. Thus another night closed on us. Ere long great was our joy to feel a light air blowing off ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... a successful ruler, it must be borne in mind that the men he was expected to rule were a most ungovernable lot. But even so, it is difficult to believe that among them all there was not one big enough to forget that the man who had been an unsatisfactory colonial governor had been the bravest explorer ever known. But no, they were pitiless. His own cook was ordered to fasten ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... and qualifications were equal, upon which his Majesty was required by his nomination to fix the professor; his answer was, let the best-natured man have it; to which they who heard him, immediately replied; 'then we are certain it cannot be Milton's, who was ever remarkable for a stern ungovernable man.'—Whether this conjecture is absolutely true, we cannot determine; but as it is not without probability, it has a right to be believed, till a more ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... said the old gentleman with the haunted head. "A picture!" cried the narrator with the waggish nose. "A picture! a picture!" echoed several voices. Here there was an ungovernable peal of laughter. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... of Jack's wrath had only needed this breeze to set it into a flame. His undisciplined spirit immediately showed itself in an outburst of ungovernable anger. ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... on his guard against the poison of anarchy. But all the old learning, all the happy texts of bygone days—in a word, all the theology of the worthy priest—was swept away like a fragile bridge by the torrent of wild eloquence and ungovernable enthusiasm which Patience had accumulated in his desert. The vicar had to give way and fall back terrified upon himself. There he discovered that the shrine of his own science was everywhere cracking and crumbling to ruin. The ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... sustaining existence as other wild animals, would be stupid, without language, without intellect, and with no greater instinct than that which governs the brute creation. We can conceive nothing reduced to a more savage condition; with cannibal propensities, an ungovernable ferocity, or a timid apprehension, there can be but a link that separates them from other classes of animal creation. So with herds of men in a savage state, like herds of buffalo or wild horses ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... I've learned a healthy scorn of beds. You, of course shall rest where you please, but as for me—I've an ungovernable desire to sleep ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... own words, it will be perceived that his comprehension of the situation was a little different from the actual fact. His idea was that his last letter had been received by Minnie in England, whereupon she had been seized with such an ungovernable longing to see him that she at once set out for Rome. She had not sent him any message, for she wished to surprise him. She had done so effectually. He was not merely surprised; he was overwhelmed, overjoyed, ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... training in the etiquette of calm behavior. Manifestations of ill-temper may be the occasional outburst of a spirit that dwells under the shadow of an ancestral curse, but which in its better moments grieves in sackcloth and ashes over its yielding to wild, ungovernable impulse. Such people are often generous and self-sacrificing in the main, though causing so much sorrow and disaster to others by these occasional whirlwinds of passion. In all that delicacy of feeling and usual regard for "the amenities" ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... signs of this most portentous time. Pronounce in a manner worthy of the expectation with which this great debate has been anticipated, and of the long remembrance which it will leave behind. Renew the youth of the State. Save property, divided against itself. Save the multitude, endangered by its own ungovernable passions. Save the aristocracy, endangered by its own unpopular power. Save the greatest, the fairest, and most highly civilised community that ever existed, from calamities which may in a few days ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... immediately dropping the kedge and taking the warp in his hand in order to check the scow. The Ark turned slowly round under this restraint, and when it was quite stationary, Hetty was seen at its stern, pointing into the water, the tears streaming from her eyes, in ungovernable natural feeling. Judith had been present at the interment of her mother, but she had never visited the spot since. The neglect proceeded from no indifference to the memory of the deceased; for she had loved her mother, and bitterly had she found ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... many excellences Vespasian had an infirmity. This was an ungovernable itch for brushing whites. If he was talking with one of that always admired, and now beloved, race, and saw a speck of dirt on him, he would brush him unobtrusively, but effectually, in full dialogue: he would steal behind a knot of whites and brush whoever needed it, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... feelings, could not, for a long time, listen to the kind voice of her consoler—she could only repeat her own faults, recapitulate all the crimes she had been guilty of, and display, in all their native hideousness, such traits of ill-humour, petulance, ungovernable fury, outrageous passion, and vile revenge, as are the natural offspring of the human heart, when its bad propensities are matured by indulgence, particularly in those warm countries, where the mind partakes the nature of the soil, and slavery in one race of beings gives power to all ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... dissuading the departing garrison from destroying the citadel. He was, however, placed instantly under arrest, and hurried away with the enemy's march. Napoleon, whose temper was by this time embittered into ungovernable rage, charged the General with being the leader of the Cossacks, and threatened to have him shot, on the instant, as a brigand. Witzingerode replied, that "he commanded not the Cossacks, but a part of the regular army; and that, in the character of a Russian soldier, he was ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... himself, and an enormously exaggerated opinion of his own importance as master of this ridiculous little brig; together with, perhaps, an unusually violent and ungovernable temper, I imagine," answered Leslie, with a smile. "I am afraid," he continued, "that those mad antics of his with his revolver must have been rather terrifying to you. However, that sort of thing will not occur again— unless he happens to have another of ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... characteristic of the criticism then prevalent in the Norwegian capital was long a puzzle to me. Every time a new author published a book or had a little play acted, our critics were in the habit of flying into an ungovernable passion and behaving as if the publication of the book or the performance of the play were a mortal insult to themselves and the newspapers in which they wrote. As already remarked, I puzzled long over this peculiarity. At last I got ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... turned in pity toward Caracalla. If she fled, she would deprive the emperor of the only being on whose love he felt he had some claim. If she listened to the wooing of her noble lover, she would be able to tame this ungovernable being and soothe his fury, and would gain in return for a sacrifice such as many had made before her, the blissful consciousness of having rendered an inestimable service to the whole world. For by her means and her love, the imperial tyrant would be ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... under the heat haze, stark sand in wind-blown dunes, tall stakes of sahuaro marching wide apart, hot, trackless sand in which a horse's foot sinks to the fetlock, and here and there raw gashes in the earth for rivers that did not run, except now and then in fierce and ungovernable floods. Northward the plains passed out of sight in trackless, grass-covered prairies, ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... back to Hugh, whom we left driving furiously along the road, his heart full of bitter, angry feelings. He reproached Dexie for her cold, heartless words, and himself for his ungovernable temper. He would give worlds to recall those hasty words spoken on the roof, but it was too late; he doubted if ever Dexie would forgive them. He felt that he could not meet Mrs. Gurney's searching glance while in such a mood, so he kept on, ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... that you give all you can; some form of refusal becomes necessary at last, and the gentlest—it is worth while to remember—is the most effectual. An indignant tourist, one who to the portent of a puggaree which, perhaps, he wears on a grey day, adds that of ungovernable rage, is so wild a visitor that no attempt at all is made to understand him; and the beggars beg dismayed but unalarmed, uninterruptedly, without a pause or a conjecture. They beg by rote, thinking of something else, as occasion arises, ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... down to dinner. The wounded officer, whose wound in the temple has affected the muscles of the left cheek, eats as though he had a bit in his mouth. I roll up little balls of bread, think about the dog licence, and, knowing the ungovernable violence of my temper, try to avoid speaking. ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... spoken of thy faults: now for mine. My choler is ungovernable; furious. It is by the grace of God I am not a murderer, I repent the next moment; but a moment too late is all too late. Mary, had the churls laid finger on thee, I should have scattered their brains with my crucifix, Oh, I know myself; go to; and tremble ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... stories of the time. Friends and foes agree in attributing the schism, at least the immediate schism, to the imprudent zeal, the imperiousness, the ungovernable temper of Pope Urban. The cardinals among themselves talked of him as mad; they began to murmur that it was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the most irresponsible spirit, but he was quite certain that telegrams could not reach this particular village. Then something exploded in me; that element of the outrageous which is the mother of all adventures sprang up ungovernable, and I decided that I would not be a cad merely because some of my remote ancestors had been Calvinists. I would keep my appointment if I lost all my money and all my wits. I went out into the quiet London street, where my quiet London cab was ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... Ursins exercised a power almost absolute. If, however, the beneficent traces of her influence and sway are sought for, the search proves futile; though doubtless, after so many crises and revolutions Spain has experienced since her time, that ungovernable country must have lost all such advantages; but at any rate posterity would have preserved a remembrance of them. We must not, however, accuse Madame des Ursins too severely. One of those vigorous geniuses was needed which ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... book no more. He drew down his handsome childish brow and stared straight before him through the window. He was a boy with a fiery spirit, despite his general amiability of demeanour, and, had he lived among tormentors and tyrants and been ill-treated, would have had an ungovernable temper. The thing he had heard filled him with a kind of rage against this big handsome man who treated his lady cruelly and hated her infants. 'Twas all brutal and wicked and unfair, as if one should heartlessly beat a ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... But the poor governess saw no humour in the affair; the comparison of Molly to a hen-sparrow was lost upon her. She was sensitive and conscientious, and knew, from home experience, the evils of an ungovernable temper. So she began to reprove Molly for giving way to her passion, and the child thought it hard to be blamed for what she considered her just anger against Betty. But, after all, these were the small grievances of a ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the character of the Indian from the aforesaid representation, we should say that he was cunning, excitable, treacherous, fitful, taciturn, or violently demonstrative. His constitution is very susceptible to diseases of the bowels and blood. His appetite is ungovernable, and his love of stimulants is strong. Syphilitic poison, small-pox, and strong drink will annihilate all these tribes sooner than gunpowder. Their physical traits of constitution are no less contradictory ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... choice peculiarly felicitous, Ethelrida, do not you? But I fear her ladyship"—and he glanced timidly at his wife—"will not take this view. She has a most unreasonable dislike for young women with red hair. 'Ungovernable temperaments,' she affirms. I trust she won't ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... said, and then found it was not nearly a strong enough expression. And in a moment of ungovernable ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... find it impossible, by exhortation or entreaty, to banish from the room, so great is their amusement and curiosity at my outlandish modes of proceeding. This morning, upon my entreating them not to persist in waiting upon us at breakfast, they burst into an ungovernable titter, and withdrawing from our immediate vicinity, kept poking their woolly heads and white grinders in at the door every five minutes, keeping it conveniently ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... under all circumstances, his nervous system was shaking and shivering, keeping the head in that continual quiver which is so melancholy to behold because it suggests involuntary labor that must exhaust and wear out the system, and making the weak hand so ungovernable that even the cup of tea put to his mouth required to be held and guided by others to prevent the contents being spilled and the vessel falling to the floor. Nothing could be more pitiable, when watched for a considerable ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... this Church, January, 1879." Owindia was one of the many red waifs that the good Bishop and Mrs. Bompas took into their big hearts. Her story is a sad one. Along the beach at Simpson, Friday, an Indian, in a burst of ungovernable temper murdered his wife and fled, leaving their one baby to perish. It was not until next day that the little one was found, unconscious and dying. The Bishop and Mrs. Bompas took the child into their loving care. To the name Owindia, which means The Weeping One, was added the modern Lucy ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... curiously enough, toward Mary herself, in the scheme of the burglary, which she had forbidden. But, in the last analysis, here his deceit had been designed to bring affluence to her. It was his abhorrence of treachery among pals that had driven him to the murder of the stool-pigeon in a fit of ungovernable passion. He might have stayed his hand then, but for the gusty rage that swept him on to the crime. None the less, had he spared the man, his hatred of the betrayer would have been the same.... And the other virtue of Joe Garson was the complement of this—his own loyalty, ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... have observed that in its flaccid state it can be folded and unfolded with the greatest ease, and it is manageable even by a child; but when once filled, the force of multitudes cannot restrain, nor the art of man direct its course. Such is the human mind—so tractable before, so ungovernable after it fills with passion. By slow degrees, unnoticed by our heroine, the balloon had been filling. It was full; but yet it was held down by strong cords: it remained with her to cut or ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... seductiveness, skilfully granting by a kiss that kindled the blood in Jose's veins the promise of more ardent caresses. In this very exercise, she assumed a passionate tenderness like a courtesan accustomed to easy defeat who resists her very disposition so that she may not be too soon vanquished. She had ungovernable impulses that carried her toward Rosas as to ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... ocean beneath us, was rapidly changing into a current which set to the eastward. Even while I gazed this current acquired a monstrous velocity. Each moment added to its speed—to its headlong impetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea as far as Vurrgh was lashed into ungovernable fury; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into frenzied convulsion—heaving, boiling, hissing—gyrating in gigantic and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... season when this melancholy earth Has to put on the appearance of ungovernable mirth— When you substitute a chuckle for your ordinary sigh, And you give each other presents that you can't afford to buy— When the little boys with snowballs are so shockingly unkind, And improve on the occasion to attack you from behind— When the mistletoe its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... encountered his Auriola in this retreat. Who shall tell their joy? Herbert urged his suit—Auriola followed him through bush and thicket, and was powerless before his ardent supplications. Wittehold surprised the pair. His fury and indignation were ungovernable. Herbert, in self-defence, had recourse to his good sword, but this was as a lath against the ire of his assailant. Wittehold slew his lord. Not yet satisfied, the madman pursued his fugitive child, whose screams for aid only brought her to a speedier end. He met her at the spring—there seized ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... raving mania set in. Incoherently he called his family around him, and addressed his sons as to their peculiar avocations for life, giving advice to one ever to be temperate in all things, and to another urging the importance of knowledge. After midnight he became much worse, and was ungovernable. With herculean strength he now raised himself from his pillow; with eyes of meteoric fierceness, he grasped his bed covering, and in a most vehement but rapid articulation, exclaimed to his sons, "Boys! study Bolingbroke for style, and Locke for sentiment." He spoke no ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Genlis and his fellow-prisoners. But, when he was informed that Alva had put French soldiers to the torture, in order to extract the admission of their monarch's complicity in the enterprise, his passion was almost ungovernable, as he asked his attendants again and again: "Do you know that the Duke of Alva is putting me on trial?"[937] It seems to have been at this juncture that Catharine and her favorite son came to the definite determination to ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... by ungovernable curiosity; and, like a child laying his hand upon a strange fruit, he tremblingly and lightly touched the top of her chest with the tip of his finger: the flesh, which was somewhat cold, yielded ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... knowledge of the family of the bride to recognize her by a general resemblance, rendered conspicuous as it was by a pallid face and an almost ungovernable nervous excitement. He pointed her out to the officer, who ordered her to approach him,—a command that caused her to burst into tears. The agitation and distress of his wife were near proving too much for the prudence of the young husband, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... our State of Louisiana, and the plantations of my family and his father were contiguous to each other on the Mississippi, some leagues up the coast above New Orleans. We had the same tutor when we were children, and we grew up from infancy to boyhood together. He was passionate and ungovernable even as a child; but as he was the heir to a large estate, and his father dead, his weak mother humored and allowed no one to curb him. I myself, one of a numerous family, was put in the navy, and I went away on cruise after cruise, and did not ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... of queens. She twists about like a colt broken loose, exposing her virgin charms, and a thousand things so fair that a pope would peril his salvation for her at the mere sight of them. During these wild pranks of the ungovernable beast you meet fools and friends, who say to the poor poet, "Where are your tales? Where are your new volumes? You are a pagan prognosticator. Oh yes, you are known. You go to fetes and feasts, and do nothing between ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... increase my sufferings, as part of the same inquisitorial process. But had a confession been due, I could hardly have made it, for that part of my brain which controls the power of speech was seriously affected, and was soon to be further disabled by my ungovernable thoughts. Only an occasional ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... and the moth!" he mused, watching her slight figure till it had disappeared. "Yes, it is the only fitting symbol. Love must be always so. Sudden, impetuous, ungovernable, and then—the end! To stretch out the divine passion over life-long breakfasts and dinners! It would be intolerable to me. Lord Fulkeward could do that sort of thing; his chest is narrow, and his sentiments ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... men-at-arms, mechanics, attendants, and servants, they were mostly greedy, vicious, ungovernable, ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... death to a million people. Again, as late as 1898, fifteen hundred villages to the northeast of Tsinan and a much larger area to the southwest of the same city were devastated by it, and it is such events as these which have won for the river the names "China's Sorrow," "The Ungovernable" and "The Scourge of ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... Revolution, Mayor Rhodes of Philadelphia was in correspondence with Franklin in London concerning the experiences of European engineers in harnessing foreign streams. That sage philosopher, writing to Rhodes in 1772, uttered a clear word of warning: "rivers are ungovernable things," he had said, and English engineers "seldom or never use a River where it can be avoided." But it was the birthright of New World democracy to make its own mistakes and in so doing to prove for itself the errors ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... hand and angrily rubbed his eyes with his bony knuckles. He sobbed twice, and then burst forth in a shrill tirade of abuse. Quivering with ungovernable rage, he called Dick every vile name he could lay ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... a twin-sister of Peace. It is a temper of mind not easily provoked to resentment. The word used in the original signifies easiness of mind. The cultivation of this grace resembles the taming of wild animals. It is the bringing of all our wild and ungovernable passions under control. It is an eminent work of the Spirit; and we may judge of our spiritual attainments by the degree of it which we possess. The Scriptures abound with exhortations to the cultivation of it. It is preeminently lovely in the female character. Hence, the apostle ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... in a state of intoxication becomes an ungovernable maniac, who in the violence of his fury will rush into any excess and commit any crime. At the epoch which our history has now reached, the terrible vice threatened to demoralize the entire country, ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... that tremendous first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, as being "without natural affection." Notwithstanding all these faults, he had naturally a strong mind and good talents; so that by the time he had attained his eighteenth year he was, at one and the same time, one of the most ungovernable and ill-tempered boys and best scholars in Parson Crabtree's seminary of ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... quality, I once resolved to make trial of her, and put a check upon her, not allowing her to devote herself to her wonted exercises. I felt that she was chafing and fretting, and yearning for meditation with an ungovernable desire, and was utterly unable to incline to any contrary thought. No sooner had I given her the reins than immediately she ran in hot haste to her own task, as saith the Prophet, 'Like as the hart desireth the water brooks, so longeth my soul after the strong, the living God.' Wherefore from all ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... barriers between them. Though the old man thought he saw in this the finger of God, and although he had forced the duke to pass his word, he was seized with such fear, as his thoughts reverted to the violence of that ungovernable nature, that he returned upon his steps when, on reaching the summit of the hill above Ourscamp, he saw the smoke of his own chimneys among the trees that enclosed his home. Then, changing his mind once more, the thought of the illegitimate relationship decided him; ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... several admixtures is described as patient in labor, imperturbable in danger, equally eager for riches and honor, proud of itself even to contempt of others, devout and grateful to strangers for any act of kindness, but also revengeful, and of such ungovernable passions in victory as so regard neither conscience nor honor in the case of an enemy. All this is foreign to the character of the Belgian, who is astute but not insidious, who, placed midway between France and Germany, combines in moderation the faults and good qualities of both. He is ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... can assure you, Sir, is not true. What might have given a Handle to this Charge, must be a Political Dissertation concerning the best Method to guard and preserve Women of Honour and Virtue from the Insults of dissolute Men, whose Passions are often ungovernable. As in this there is a Dilemma between two Evils, which it is impracticable to shun both, so I have treated it with the utmost Caution, and begin thus: I am far from encouraging Vice, and should think it an unspeakable Felicity for a State, if the Sin of Uncleanness ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... the Scots to the 'Celts;' and by people in the rural districts of our own country to the 'carls,' or 'old men'—carl being indicative of extreme antiquity. In Ireland, the pipes are believed to have belonged to the cluricaunes—a kind of wild, ungovernable, mischievous fairy-demon—who were held in awe by the 'pisantry;' and whenever found, these pipes were, with much superstitious feeling, immediately broken up, so as to destroy and break up the spell their finding might have cast around the finder. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... letter, I might prefix to it, as a motto, old John Willett's remark: "What's a man without an imagination?" Certainly it would not apply to the Gipsy, who has an imagination so lively as to be at times almost ungovernable; considering which I was much surprised that, so far as I know, the whole race has as yet produced only one writer who has distinguished himself in the department of fiction—albeit he who did so was a giant ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... till midday of the next day. When I awoke the hot noontide sun had made the tent like an oven. I felt better, but very stiff and sore, and I had a most ungovernable thirst. There was a pail of water with a tin pannikin beside the tent pole, and out of this I drank repeated draughts. Then I lay down again, for ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... truant and a deceiver, she was prepared for any crimes. Good children would not associate with her, and consequently she had to choose the worst for her companions and her friends. She learned wicked language; she was rude and vulgar in her manners; she indulged ungovernable passion; and at last grew so bad, that when her family afterwards removed to the city, the House of Correction became her ignominious home. And there she is now, guilty and wretched. And her poor mother, in her solitary dwelling, is weeping over her daughter's disgrace. ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... listlessly as me passed. A bell tolled; in the distance we heard the wailing of women. The silent ways, the black cross which marked every second door, the frightful faces which once or twice looked out from upper windows and blasted our sight, infected my men with terror so profound and so ungovernable that at last discipline was forgotten; and one shoving his horse before another in narrow places, there was a scuffle to be first. One, and then a second, began to trot. The trot grew into a shuffling canter. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... breath of God, another; and that is love. I see this love forsaking even the most learned, and in its stead appear indifference toward God; contempt of authority, a trampling upon law and judgment, a life of ungovernable passion. Exert your utmost strength, honored teacher, to prevent it from vanishing altogether. The mere knowledge of the Word cannot protect us, if every one is allowed to interpret it as he pleases, if the spirit of concord, the Holy Spirit does not dwell in them, who use it. The generosity, ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... to do so dispassionately, and in each case I discovered something dishonourable in their characters. One I found was on the brink of pecuniary ruin, I therefore considered I had a right to think he loved my fortune and not myself. The next, though a man of honour and probity, I found had such an ungovernable temper that his own sisters failed to live with him. The third was a widower. He had broken his wife's heart by his cruelty, and since her death his life had been one long scene of dissipation. Was it any wonder that I rejected them all? and learnt to distrust ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... perceive in time to check, caused a tumult in Echague, which, owing to wise councils and efforts at pacification, was appeased without it being followed by serious consequences; but I have no doubt that this tumult was due only to the suggestions of ungovernable and passionate persons animated by the spirit of faction, since those who took part in it were all Ilocanos, no native of Echague having any hand in it. The same thing occurred in Naguilian, where the disorders ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester |
