"Tenacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... As Isidore says (Etym. x) "a person is said to be pertinacious who holds on impudently, as being utterly tenacious." "Pervicacious" has the same meaning, for it signifies that a man "perseveres in his purpose until he is victorious: for the ancients called 'vicia' what we call victory." These the Philosopher (Ethic. vii, 9) calls ischyrognomones, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... studies are more perplexing and tormenting than those which have to do with the policy of the Brothers as to what shall, and what shall not, be revealed to the outer world. In fact, it is only by students at the same time tenacious and patient—continuously anxious to get at the truths of occult philosophy, but cool enough to bide their time when obstacles come in the way—that what looks, at first sight, like a grudging and miserly policy in this matter on ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... not for nothing that Rover is dog's most common name, and would be ours, but for our too tenacious fear of losing something, to admit, even to ourselves, that we are hankering. There was a man who said: Strange that two such queerly opposite qualities as courage and hypocrisy are the leading characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon! But is not hypocrisy just a product of tenacity, which is again the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... chiefly the surgeons for not letting him die. No one ever desired life more passionately than Bernard desired death. For some time he clung to the hope that his mind would wear his body out. But his body was too young, too strong, too tenacious of earth to be betrayed by the ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... merely an impairment of the principle of self-government of the States; it constitutes an absolute abandonment of that principle. This does not mean, of course, an immediate abandonment of the practice of State self-government; established institutions have a tenacious life, and moreover there are a thousand practical advantages in State selfgovernment which nobody will think of giving up. But the principle, I repeat, is abandoned altogether if we accept the Eighteenth ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... ass, carried me home; where I languished for a considerable time, and never could recover my health sufficiently again to attend to my school. Thus did I suffer for my foolish pride: for had I not been so tenacious of respect from my scholars, they would not upon my sneezing have let go their hold ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... recapitulation, and as presenting the main thesis of these papers, that to the British mind, at any rate, so inarticulate often, yet so tenacious, the Western campaign of last year presents itself as having been fought by three ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... these duties. A good judge should have no wish that the guilty should escape, or that the innocent should suffer; no false pity, no undue severity, should bias the unshaken rectitude of his judgment; calm in deliberation, firm in resolve, patient in investigating the truth, tenacious of it when discovered, he should join urbanity of manners, to dignity of demeanor, and an integrity above suspicion, to learning and talent; such a judge is what, according to the true structure of our courts, he ought ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Spain, ever tenacious of ancient ideas, appears to have preserved longer than other countries the ancient classic traditions in regard to the foot as a focus of modesty and an object of sexual attraction. In Spanish religious pictures it was always necessary that the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... it; and Captain Scott is just as tenacious in keeping his own counsels as the commander of ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... conjectured. The thicket that he had spoken of was composed chiefly of daphne shrubs—judging by the appearance of the fallen leaves, and some berries that still remained on the branches, Karl believed them to be of this species. But the bark was also a characteristic: being exceedingly tenacious, and moreover of a strongly acrid taste—so much so as to cauterise he skin of Ossaroo's mouth, who had been foolish enough to chew it ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... of pie was served on a huge china plate that had been packed over the mountains with much trouble and when every inch of room was needed for the bare necessities. Thus tenacious were the women in coming to this raw country to preserve their womanliness. I might have thought I was being favored had not Mrs. Davis frankly informed me that her few pieces of china were shunned by her men-folks on the plea the ware "dulled ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... Torsion. Flexure. Tenacity. The Most Tenacious Metal. Ductility. Malleability. Hardness. Alloys. Resistance. Persistence. Conductivity. Equalization. Reciprocity. Molecular Forces. Attraction. Cohesion. Adhesion. Affinity. Porosity. Compressibility. Elasticity. Inertia. Momentum. Weight. Centripetal Force. Centrifugal Force. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... follow as well as he could. They who were foremost had not, however, got above half over when the difficulty of progress was sensibly experienced. We were immersed, nearly to the waist in mud, so thick and tenacious, that it was not without the most vigorous exertion of every muscle of the body, that the legs could be disengaged. When we had reached the middle, our distress became not only more pressing, but serious, and each succeeding ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... it is only by means of instruments that tonal combinations can be exactly repeated, the voice mastering the more difficult relations of tones only when the ear has become quick to perceive tonal relations, and tenacious to retain them—in other words, educated. Hence in the pages following, the instruments peculiar to each epoch will receive the attention their importance deserves, which is considerably more than that usually ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... spider. The tall duke, now, has just the look of your garden spider; not the large-bellied kind, they are less dangerous; but your long-footed, meagre-bodied gentleman, that does not fatten on his diet, and whose threads are slender indeed, but not the less tenacious. ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... prophetess, though she believes not in prophecy; she is a physician, though she will not taste her own philtres; she is a procuress, though she is not to be procured; she is a singer of obscene songs, though she will suffer no obscene hand to touch her; and though no one is more tenacious of the little she possesses, she is a cutpurse and a ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... Redgrave. "I suppose that's what the last remnants of the Lunarians have come to. Evidently once men and women, something like ourselves. I daresay the ancestors of that thing have lived here in coldness and darkness for hundreds of generations. It shows how tremendously tenacious Nature is ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... even necessary to descend so low as primitive beings to obtain an insight into the utter powerlessness of reasoning when it has to fight against sentiment. Let us merely call to mind how tenacious, for centuries long, have been religious superstitions in contradiction with the simplest logic. For nearly two thousand years the most luminous geniuses have bowed before their laws, and modern times have to be reached for their veracity to be merely contested. The ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... "You are as tenacious as the ghost of buried Denmark But you shall be satisfied. I swear by the mystic gridiron of the fraternity, and by the legs thereof, of which the images are Beelzebub, Mohammed, Johannes Secundus, and so forth—nay, by that memorable volume, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... of entire scenes, or of particular incidents, that Turner's memory is thus tenacious. The slightest passages of color or arrangement that have pleased him—the fork of a bough, the casting of a shadow, the fracture of a stone—will be taken up again and again, and strangely worked into new relations with other thoughts. There is a single sketch from nature in one of the portfolios ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... French missionaries, whom no hardships could stop, had made converts among the Onondagas, an enlightened nation with kindly and gentle instincts, and of all these missionaries Father Drouillard had the most tenacious and powerful will. And piety and patriotism could dwell together in his heart. The love of his church and the love of his race burned there with an equal brightness. He, too, had seen the clouds of war gathering, thick and black, ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... lack of imagination and nervous sensibility, partly through his inbred dislike of extremes and habit of minimizing the expression of everything, is a perfect example of the conservation of energy. It is very difficult to come to the end of him. Add to this unimaginative, practical, tenacious moderation an inherent spirit of competition—not to say pugnacity—so strong that it will often show through the coating of his "Live and let live," half-surly, half-good-humored manner; add a peculiar, ironic, "don't care" ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the road beyond the creek; and acacia in full golden bloom, glorious, yet modest tree, a very rare, non-self-assertive tree, a truly Christian tree, beautiful but not prideful. Bamboo in great clumps, erect, yielding but not to be broken—wise, tenacious orientals! And I walked on the off-cast seed of the pepper, and beside cacti higher than my head with spears of crimson, and across a sweep of lawn over which oranges had been dropped, by the generosity of an up- hill row of trees that were saying, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... and ran over all the hard terms of art which a tenacious memory supplied, and which, from circumstances hereafter to be noticed, had been familiar to ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... of all questions of Isthmian transit upon our national progress, safety, and honor, is more direct and more urgent than upon hers. That she has felt so is plain from the manner in which she has yielded before our tenacious remonstrances, in cases where the control of the Isthmus was evidently the object of her action,—as in the matters of the tenure of the Bay Islands and of the protectorate of the Mosquito Coast. Our superior interest appears also from the nature ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... of cards, plumped herself cross-legged on the floor, and dealt them out in a wide circle. Patty seized the gentleman's hand in her two coffee-stained little paws, and turned it palm up for inspection. He made an embarrassed effort to draw away, but she clung with the tenacious grip ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... and less tenacious than herself, would have gone into liquidation a score of times had it not been for his wife's firm obstinacy. She longed to be rich. She perceived that her ambition could only be attained by fortune. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... large. His nose was well shaped, with wide nostrils that hinted of a fiery, passionate nature; his thrusting chin and the heavy neck muscles told of strength, both mental and physical—of mental strength that was of a tenacious character, of physical strength that would respond to any ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... which is so tender, that the cold air soon renders it motionless; and a larger kind above an inch long, and nearly as thick as a very small crow-quill, and which is very hard in respect to its texture, and very tenacious of life. One of these last was brought to me, and was immediately immersed in a strong solution of sugar of lead, and lived in it a very long time ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... to quit the scene of her splendid triumphs. So in 1866 she again essayed to tread the stage as a lyric queen, in the role of Lucrezia, but the result was a failure. It is not pleasant to record these spasmodic struggles of a failing artist, tenacious of that past which had now shut its gates on her for ever and a day. Her career was ended, but she had left behind a name of imperishable luster in the annals of her art. She died of inflammation of the lungs during a visit to Berlin, November 25, 1869. Her husband, Mario, retired from the ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... ductile, very hard, very tenacious, and capable of receiving a beautiful polish; their color varies from white to rose color, according to the respective proportions of the two bodies; they are particularly interesting on account of the results which were obtained by adding them to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... backwards and forwards down below without uttering a sound. These crevasses were not deep, but they were steep-sided, so that the dog could not get out without help. The two dogs I have mentioned undoubtedly met their death in this way: a slow death it must be, when one remembers how tenacious of life a dog is. It happened several times that dogs disappeared, were absent for some days, and then came back; possibly they had been down a crevasse, and had finally succeeded in getting out of it again. Curiously enough, they did not ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... said one who knew them, 'are coarse and heavy, jealous, distrustful, avaricious.' The dwellers in Lower Limousin had a less repulsive address, but they were at least as narrowly self-interested at heart, and they added a capacity for tenacious and vindictive hatred. The Limousins had the superstitious doctrines of other semi-barbarous populations, and they had their vices. They passed abruptly and without remorse from a penitential procession to the tavern and ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... grove of cedars, old, gray, and drear, as weirdly impressive as the cacti in a Mexican desert. Torn by winds, scarred by lightnings, deeply rooted, tenacious as tradition, unlovely as Egyptian mummies, fantastic, dwarfed and blackened, these unaccountable creatures clung to the ledges. The dead mingled horribly with the living, and when the wind arose—the wind that was robustly cheerful ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... there were, of course, as there are in every community, who seemed all defects and possessed of no redeeming qualities whatever. But, taken as a whole, the men of Sark were simple, honest according to their lights, brave and hardy, very tenacious of their own ideas and their island rights, somewhat stubborn and easier to lead than to drive, and withal red-blooded, as the result of their ancestry, and given to a large despite of foreigners, in which category ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... martin begins to think in earnest of providing a mansion for its family. The crust or shell of this nest seems to be formed of such dirt or loam as comes most readily to hand, and is tempered and wrought together with little bits of broken straws to render it tough and tenacious. As this bird often builds against a perpendicular wall without any projecting ledge under, it requires its utmost efforts to get the first foundation firmly fixed, so that it may safely carry the superstructure. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... itself served to enhance the danger; for although Indians lived much dispersed, yet they united under one chief, and formed different towns, all the lands around which they claimed as their property. The boundaries of their hunting grounds being carefully fixed, each tribe was tenacious of its possessions, and fired with resentment at the least encroachment on them. Every individual looked on himself as a proprietor of all the lands claimed by the whole tribe, and bound in honour to defend them. This ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... if, in the interim of his absence, which was often prolonged, she either took a book, or had recourse to any female occupation,—if, in short, he did not find her in the attitude of waiting for the signal to take her place at table. Perhaps a sense of his inferior birth made Napoleon more tenacious of this species of form, as what he could not afford to relinquish. On the other hand, Maria Louisa is said to have expressed her surprise at her husband's dispensing with the use of arms and attendance of guards, and at his moving ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... cruel, staring, and now by no means approving eyes of her schoolmates. She had overheard several of their whispers, and felt rather alarmed at her own act. But Hester, shy as she was, could be very tenacious of an idea. She had taken a dislike to Annie Forest, and she was quite determined to be true to what she considered her convictions—namely, that Annie was under-bred and common, and not at all the ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... growing class of readers. For, while he represents all the intellectual complexities of a time bewildered by the range and number of its own acquisitions, the religious instinct in him is as strong and tenacious as in any of the representative exponents of the life of faith. The intellect is clear and unwavering; but the heart clings to old traditions, and steadies itself on the rock of duty. His Calvinistic ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Morrice, "you members of parliament have an undoubted right to be tenacious of your privileges." Then, bowing with a look of veneration to Cecilia, he resigned her hand with an air of as much happiness as he had ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... solitarily on the Argentine plains. The enormous and twisted trunk of this tree is planted firmly in the soil, not only by its great roots, but still more by its vigorous shoots, which fasten it down in the most tenacious manner. This was how it stood proof against the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... across the forest of Catuaro resembled the descent of the mountain Santa Maria; here also, the most difficult and dangerous places have fanciful names. We walked as in a narrow furrow, scooped out by torrents, and filled with fine tenacious clay. The mules lowered their cruppers and slid down the steepest slopes. This descent is called Saca Manteca.* (* Or the Butter-Slope. Manteca in Spanish signifies butter.) There is no danger in the descent, owing to the great address ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... floated towards her; but it came from that quarter, and believing it laden with every sweet which love can fancy, she threw back her veil to inhale its balm, then, blaming herself for such weakness, she turned, blushing, homewards and wept at what she thought her unreasonably tenacious passion. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... sceptical and Pyrrhonian dubitation and uncertainty, so that there shall never be an end of controversy, nor any settlement of truth and of the ordinances of Jesus Christ, so long as there shall be but one tenacious disputer to hold up the ball of contention. One egg is not liker another than Mr Hussey's tenet is like that of the Arminians, for which see the Synod of Dort, sess. 25.(1356) It was the ninth condition which the Arminians required in a lawful and well-constituted synod, that there might ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... of labor this most resolute and tenacious of men was obliged to give it up. It was too expensive, too cumbersome, too difficult; it required a vast amount of space; and, in short, it was a system which could not, and cannot, be worked to profit. But though the logographic printing was a failure, the "Daily Universal ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... degradation. Such is human nature that the unwillingness to give up something to which one is accustomed is a far stronger spur to action than the ambition to get something to which one is not accustomed; and a social rank once attained is not surrendered without a struggle. A tenacious maintenance of status is the motive which figures most prominently in controlling the growth of population and the increase of capital. The rich maintain the status of the family by means of invested wealth, the poor do it by education, and members of the middle class do it by ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... commodious, and situated; but, for the most part, they are miserable enough. Our noblesse, notwithstanding their origin, and the cheap rate at which their titles have been obtained, are nevertheless extremely tenacious of their privileges, very delicate in maintaining the etiquette, and keep at a very stately distance from the Bourgeoisie. How they live in their families, I do not choose to enquire; but, in public, Madame appears in her robe of gold, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... tenacious hold of the alcohol trade lies, however, in two things not yet enumerated. The one is, that much use of alcohol creates a pathological craving for it; the man who is accustomed to his beer or whiskey is restless and depressed ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... by Isdigerd sent emissaries to the various towns of the Sawad, urging them to rise in revolt and promising to support such a movement with a Persian army. The situation was critical; and if the Mohammedans had been less tenacious, or the Persians more skilfully handled, the whole of the Sawad might have been recovered. But Rustam allowed his troops to be defeated in detail. Al Mothanna and Abu Obediah, in three separate engagements, at Namarik, Sakatiya, and Barusma, overcame the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... solidification? How came the laws of its motion, attraction, repulsion, condensation, to be so fixed as to lead to a beautiful and harmonious system in the end? How came it to be neither too fluid nor too tenacious, to contract neither too quickly nor too slowly for the successive formation of the several planetary bodies? How came that substance, which at one time was a luminous vapor, to be at a subsequent period solids and fluids of many various kinds? What but design and intelligence ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... question these days of monotonous speculation was how long would this ebb-tide of a tenacious life flow. She took a guilty interest in her uncle's condition, and yet she more than half wished him to live. Sometimes he would rally. Something unfulfilled troubled his mind, and once he even crawled downstairs. She ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... So tenacious are we of the old ecclesiastical modes and fashions of institution, that very little alteration has been made in them since the fourteenth or fifteenth century: adhering in this particular, as in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that, though we are all fond of money, not over one in a thousand, prove miserable misers, and go on to amass dollar upon dollar, until the shining heaps of garnered gold and silver become a god, and a faith, that the rich wretch worships with the tenacious devotion of the most frenzied fanatic. In the accumulation of a competency, against the odds and chances of advanced life, a man may be pardoned for a degree of economical prudence; but for parsimonious meanness, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... at the mare with new interest. And the longer he gazed the more his anger subsided, became finally downright compassion. For he was reviewing a something he had contemplated at odd times for weeks with many misgivings and tenacious unbeliefs. Never had he understood it! Never would he understand that thing! So why lose time in an effort to understand ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... increased depth to which the shafts will soon be carried. No difficulties whatever are apprehended here in going to a very considerable depth, as the slate is not hard, and easily permits the miner in his progress to bear in upon it without drilling upon the closer and more tenacious quartz. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... of King Childerick the iron relicks were found all rusty and crumbling into pieces; but our little iron pins, which fastened the ivory works, held well together, and lost not their magnetical quality, though wanting a tenacious moisture for the firmer union of parts; although it be hardly drawn into fusion, yet that metal soon submitteth unto rust and dissolu- tion. In the brazen pieces we admired not the duration, but the freedom ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... select the red soil as the best for fine tobacco. Some planters, however, prefer a soil mixed of 1/4 sand and 1/2 to 3/4 of decayed vegetable matter. In St. Domingo the soil is not uniform. The planters select a deep black loam or tenacious clay, or even loams mixed with sand. The most fertile places are on the banks of the Yuna, from Laxay to Jaigua, in the vicinity of Mocha, on the banks of the Camoo, and around La Vega. Around Santiago, clay and sand predominate, and the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... jacket pocket and dropped it with a musical crash on the chipped office table. His eyebrows went still higher, as the old man unfastened the string, and emptying the contents on to the table, knitted his brows into reflective wrinkles, and began to debit the firm with all the liabilities of a slow but tenacious memory. ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... Great Britain probably did not, to so great an extent as was then alleged and widely believed, spring from monarchical feeling. It was due rather to old memories, as pleasant as they were tenacious, that would not be dissociated from England; to the individualistic tendencies of republicanism, alarming to many; and to conservative habits of political thinking, the dread of innovation and of theory. The returned Tories had indeed all become Federalists, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Wellington was tenacious; that was his merit, and we do not deny it to him, but the lowest of his privates and his troopers was quite as solid as he, and the iron soldier is as good as the iron duke. For our part, all our glorification is offered to the English soldier, the English army, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... tenacious and obstinate people, and their character is not likely to change; but God forbid that they should again deem it necessary to visit Stockholm. They were doubtless just as brave in the year 1743 as in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... surrender should be placed to the credit of loyal Cornwall. It tallies with the brave struggle of the previous century, on behalf of the old faith and the old tongue. We may not wish that either struggle had terminated differently, but they were both in keeping with the tenacious character of the Cornish people. As a striking proof of their desperate resolution, the defenders of Pendennis themselves fired the manor-house of Arwenack, in order that it might not be occupied by the Parliamentary troops, and these had to be content with such trenches and defences as they could ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... called the Prussians of the Balkans, and in this characterization there is a large measure of truth. A hard-working, tenacious folk, capable of great patience, docile to iron discipline, and appreciative of governmental efficiency, the material progress made by the Bulgarians during their forty years of independence is as striking in its way as the similar ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... too many prepossessions and too much pride, easily to retract an opinion he had once adopted, or to forgive an opposition to his judgment. The narrow education of a tradesman it was natural to suppose had rendered the mind of Mr. Hartley still more tenacious, and unmanageable. And neither would sir William have been willing to see his friend, nor would the lover readily have involved his mistress in circumstances ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... brethren everywhere are reaching out their hands to grasp more freedom. In the place of absolute monarchies they have limited monarchies, and in the place of limited monarchies they have republics: so tenacious are they of their ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... small parties of men with limited or no capital, procures first a half hogshead for a puddling tub, a "cradle," or "long tom," and tin dish. The "wash dirt," as the auriferous drift is usually termed, contains a considerable admixture of clay of a more or less tenacious character, and the bulk of this has to be puddled and so disintegrated before the actual separation of the gold is attempted in the cradle or dish. This is done in the tub by constantly stirring with ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... the smoke and excitement, Frank Mayne's adversary struck at him once more, and made a leap to escape, dragging the half-insensible assigned servant with him; but the grasp was too tenacious, and though he tried hard, Mayne held on to the end; only sinking back when a pair of handcuffs had secured the ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... in the Scriptures as Hittites. Placed on the road, between the Assyrians and the Egyptians, by whom they were at last vanquished, they placed well nigh insuperable obstacles in the way of the conquests of these two powerful nations, which found in them tenacious and fearful adversaries. The Khati had not only made considerable improvements in all military arts, but were also great and famed merchants; their emporium Carchemish had no less importance than Tyre or Carthage. There, met ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... thanks I pay; my city share "Amongst my subjects new; and all my lands, "(Of those who till'd them, empty.) Myrmidons, "From whence they sprung, I call them. You have seen "Their bodies,—still their habits are the same: "A frugal race as wont, patient of toil; "On gain still bent; tenacious of that gain. "These equal all, in courage and in years, "Shall follow you to battle; when the east "Which blew you here so prosperous, (for the east "Had brought him) to the southern gales shall yield." With these and such like speeches, all ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... England to publish poems or in search of preferment. His residence in that country has been compared to that of Ovid in Pontus. And, no doubt, there were certain outward points of likeness. The Irishry by whom he was surrounded were to the full as savage, as hostile, and as tenacious of their ancestral habitudes as the Scythians[271] who made Tomi a prison, and the descendants of the earlier English settlers had degenerated as much as the Mix-Hellenes who disgusted the Latin poet. Spenser himself looked on his life in Ireland as a banishment. In his "Colm Clout's ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... seems reasonable to you:—I will not fail to be at the place you mention; but oh! my dear count, I hope you will never give me cause to repent this step;—if you should, I must be the most miserable of all created beings; but I am resolved to believe you are all that man ought to be, or that fond tenacious woman can desire; and in that confidence attend with impatience the hour in which there shall be no more reserve between us, and I ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... was at one side, and the old soldier, whose wrists had been freed, had been looking down upon the scene, and wondering in his tenacious way whether all hope must really be abandoned. It was evident that the Arabs who were grouped round the victims were to remain behind with them, while the others who were mounted would guard the three women and himself. He could not understand why the throats of his companions ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... candour, than by the liberty I am now going to take, of presuming to offer you advice, upon a subject concerning which you have so just a claim to act for yourself; but I know you have too unaffected a love of justice, to be partially tenacious of ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... tenacious hold that Anglophobia has on a certain class of our people—might it not be worth your while to make, at some convenient time and in some natural way, a direct attack on it—in a letter to someone, which ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... humility, which contrasted strongly with a spirit as free and tried as mine. But this humility proceeded from my heart: I respected my husband so much, that I always liked to suppose that he was superior to myself. I had such a dread of seeing a shade over his countenance, he was so tenacious of his own opinions, that it was a long time before I ventured to contradict him. To this labour I joined that of my house; and observing that his delicate health could not endure every kind of diet, I always prepared his meals with my own hands. I remained with him four years at Amiens, and ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... mysterious stranger; who, at this period of his life, appears to have been about seventy years of age, but did not look more than forty-five. His easy assurance imposed upon most people. His reading was extensive, and his memory extraordinarily tenacious of the slightest circumstances. His pretension to have lived for so many centuries naturally exposed him to some puzzling questions, as to the appearance, life, and conversation of the great men of former days; but he was never at a loss for an answer. Many who questioned him ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... the hot liquid in close, and allowing it to harden in the cracks. His first coating of gum was very satisfactorily applied, and it seemed as though a few more coatings ought to secure the boat from the entrance of the water. The gum was tenacious, and its only bad quality was its brittleness; but, as it would not be exposed to the blows of any hard substances, it seemed quite able to serve ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... pleasure-loving in their customs. Everywhere, this new life of Englishmen in a new land developed their self-reliance, their power of work, their skill in arms, their habit of common association for common purposes, and their keen, intelligent knowledge of political conditions, with a tenacious grip on ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... who he was certain never meant anything disrespectful to Mr. Spraggon, who, Mr. Sponge thought, seemed rather quick at taking offence; though, doubtless, as Mr. Sponge observed, 'a man was perfectly right in being tenacious of his integrity,' a position that he illustrated by a familiar passage from Shakespeare, about stealing a purse and stealing ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... the loyalty and confidence of General Lee in the high military ability of the old War Horse, his commander of the First Corps, in all probability his official head would have fallen in the basket. But President Davis was strong in his prejudices and convictions, and as usual, tenacious in his friendship and confidence towards his favorites. Bragg, in President Davis' estimation at least, was vindicated, but at the expense of his subalterns, and was, therefore, retained in command in the face of overwhelming discontent among the ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... charge of inconsistency. Inconsistent, in the ordinary sense of the word, he was not, much less changeable. He was really, in the main features of his political convictions and the main habits of his mind, one of the most tenacious and persistent of men. But there were always at work in him two tendencies. One was the speculative desire to probe everything to the bottom, to try it by the light of general principles and logic, and where it failed to stand this test, to reject it. The other was the sense of ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... wait at the elevators after he had twice narrowly escaped being seen by Tetlow. He was indifferent to Tetlow, except as meeting him might make it harder to see Dorothy. He drank hard. But drink never affected him except to make him more grimly tenacious in whatever he had deliberately and soberly resolved. Drink did not explain—neither wholly nor in any part—this conduct of his. It, and the more erratic vagaries to follow, will seem incredible conduct for a man of Norman's character and position to feeble folk with ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... carried him on his back out of a wild place in Alaska, and had nearly starved himself that the sick man's strength might not fail him utterly. He had remembered—had Ches Mason; and, being one of those tenacious souls who cling to friendship and to a resilient faith in the good that is in the worst of us, he had thrown out a tentative life-line, as it were, and hoped that Ford might clutch it before he became quite submerged in the sodden ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... surrender the Kalda, who had always served him faithfully: he entered into negotiations which were interminably prolonged, neither of the two parties being anxious to bring them to a close. After the fall of Babylon, Assur-bani-pal, who was tenacious in his hatred, summoned the Elamite ambassadors, and sent them back to their master with a message conceived in the following menacing terms: "If thou dost not surrender those men, I will go and destroy thy cities, and lead into captivity ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... ripe." It may assume various changes—an image of beauty, a figure of philosophy, a voice from the other world, a type of heavenly wisdom and joy—but still it holds, in self-imposed and willing thraldom, that creative and versatile and tenacious spirit. It was the dream and hope of too deep and strong a mind to fade and come to naught—to be other than the seed of the achievement and crown of life. But with all faith in the star and the freedom of genius, we may ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... sanguine hopes, confided his son to this man's care. The boy's natural quickness mastered readily all that pleased his taste; he learned to speak and write French with rare felicity and precision. His tenacious memory, and those flexile organs in which the talent for languages is placed, served, with the help of an English master, to revive his earlier knowledge of his father's tongue and to enable him to speak it with fluent correctness,—though there was always in his accent something ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mr. Hancock, had killed an immense number of pheasants upon his lordship's manors; but at the same time this worthy intelligencer took care not to state where, and upon what manor we had been sporting. The old earl, who was the most tenacious, perhaps, about his game of any man in England, no sooner got the letter than he came post from town, in a great passion; and when he arrived at Tottenham, he immediately summoned all his keepers, to demand an account of their conduct for suffering his game to be destroyed in such a way. It was ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... secrecy. Such was the excellence of the magic science of the British Druids, that Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxx.) was induced to suppose that the Magi of Persia must have derived their system from Britain. For the most part the Kelts then, as in the present day, were peculiarly tenacious of a creed which it was the interest of a priestly caste to preserve. On the other hand, the looser religion of the Teuton nations, of the Scandinavians and Germans, could not find much difficulty in accepting the particular conceptions of the Southern conquerors; ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... principles and opinions he was anti- Liberal, and latterly an alarmist as well as a Conservative. He had always opposed Catholic Emancipation, which it is difficult to account for in a man so sagacious and benevolent, except from the force of prejudices early instilled into a mind of tenacious grasp which was not exposed to the changeful influence of worldly commerce and communication. It is probable that Lord Egremont might have acted a conspicuous part in politics if he had chosen to embark on that stormy sea, and upon the rare ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... content. These gave Tecumseh greetings fair and kind, Knowing the purpose havened in his soul. And he, too, joined the chase as few men dare; For I have seen him, leaping from his horse, Mount a careering bull in foaming flight, Urge it to fury o'er its burden strange, Yet cling tenacious, with a grip of steel, Then, by a knife-plunge, fetch it to its knees In mid-career, and pangs ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... will return but three. The peasant is not so foolish. From the moment he owns a piece of ground the size of a handkerchief, he wants to make it as large as a tablecloth. He is slow as the oxen he ploughs with, but as patient, as tenacious, and as obstinate. He goes directly to his object, pressing firmly against the yoke; and nothing can stop or turn him aside. He knows that stocks may rise or fall, fortunes be won or lost on 'change; but the land always remains,—the ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... interment of dead bodies in the midst of their populous cities, but have thrust them also into places of public worship, where crowded congregations are constantly exposed to the nauseous effluvia, and perhaps infection, arising from putrid carcases. Yet so tenacious are the people of the privilege of interment within the walls of the church, in some countries of Europe, that any attempt to discontinue the imprudent custom would be attended with some degree of danger, as happened to the late Grand Duke of Tuscany who, having ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... actual death those clutching hands held their tenacious grip, but the aroused soldiers wrenched the interlaced fingers apart with every tenderness possible in such emergency, shocked at noting the expression of intense agony stamped upon the man's face when ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... efforts of the kings of France. They had long cultivated intimate relations with England, and their dukes had long hankered for its possession. William, the natural son of Duke Robert—known to history and musical romance as Robert le Diable—was a man of strong mind, tenacious purpose, and powerful hand. He had obtained, by promise of Edward the Confessor, the reversion of the crown upon the death of that monarch; and when the issue came, he availed himself of that reversion and the Pope's sanction, and also of the disputed ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... about their Necks, which they look'd upon as the greatest Honour; and when call'd for by his Lordship's Cook, run exulting, and offer their Throats to his Knife; tho' this Nation was, in Time past, the bravest, and the most tenacious of their Liberty, of any of the feather'd Race. But I have digress'd ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... Chancellor of Frederick Barbarossa, and was with the latter on the Crusade when Barbarossa was drowned in the Syrian river, Calycadmus, in 1190. The American seat of this old family was in York county, Pennsylvania, where the first Spanglers settled in 1731. It was from this tenacious and courageous ancestry that there sprang this figure of a border warfare in a region wild ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... these things he was as industrious, as laborious, as calmly persevering and tenacious, as he was in his pursuit of his philosophical speculations. He was a compound of the most adventurous and most diversified ambition, with a placid and patient temper, such as we commonly associate ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... stood up and made as much as she possibly could of poor Kitty's little escapade in front of the "Spotted Leopard." The story so described made anything but a pleasant picture. Miss Sherrard who was tenacious with regard to the school, and most anxious that each and all of her girls should bear the highest character for quiet and orderly behavior, ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... the obvious classifications of pupils is that of "quick" and "slow." The former learns easily, but often forgets quickly; the latter learns slowly, but usually retains well. The former is keen and alert; the latter, dull and passive. The former frequently lacks perseverance; the latter is often tenacious and persistent. The former unjustly wins applause for his cleverness; the latter, equally unjustly, wins contempt for his dulness. The teacher must not be unfair to the dull plodder, who in later years may frequently outstrip his brilliant competitor ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... was young, knew how to love truly and faithfully, but she was shamefully deceived, and now rancor, not against an individual, but against life, has taken possession of her, and her noble loyalty has become tenacious adherence to bad wishes. How this has happened you will learn, if ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... noticed is that of Charles I. in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge; but I shall not be surprised to find that the system was continued down to George I., or later still. Conservatism is displayed in its perfection in the tenacious adherence of official underlings to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... suddenly, in a tender moment, offer their hands to the very first young woman they may chance to cast their eyes upon, even if she be only a kitchen wench. Or it may be some old inclination which, after years and years, suddenly springs into life again, like some tenacious animal that has lain imprisoned for centuries in a coal-seam, and the ideals which at sixteen he was unable to make his own, possibly because he had other ties, he turns to again at seventy when he ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... assembled brethren all misers and skinflints. The managers had succumbed, in the most friendly manner, all except Sandy Graham. He had resigned instead, and had tended his grievance carefully until, from a small shoot, in ten years it had grown up into a flourishing tree with deep and tenacious roots. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... training, that no story of any antiquity exists which does not contain a substantial substratum of mythical circumstance. So speedy is the crystallization of myth around the nucleus of historical fact, and so tenacious is its hold, that to disentangle it from the factors of reality is a task of the most extreme difficulty, requiring careful handling by scholars who possess a wide and accurate knowledge of mythological processes. Even to-day, when students of history have recovered from the first shock of ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... taken by him to preserve it for aftertime in such fullness of finished form as might make it worthiest of profound and perpetual study by the light of far other lamps than illuminate the stage. Of all vulgar errors the most wanton, the most wilful, and the most resolutely tenacious of life, is that belief bequeathed from the days of Pope, in which it was pardonable, to the days of Mr. Carlyle, in which it is not excusable, to the effect that Shakespeare threw off Hamlet as an eagle may moult a feather or a fool ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... never ceased to show her the outward respect of which she was so tenacious that she would never call the kings her sons anything but "Monsieur," the queen-mother had detected in her son's manner during the last few months an ill-disguised purpose of vengeance. But clever indeed must be the man who counted ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... looked upon as reasonably certain any season when properly sown. It would also be correct to say that on the volcanic soils of the mountain States in the West, clover will grow equally well when supplied with moisture, and in these it is also very tenacious of life. ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... little good. As for myself, I now mused on the character of the things of this world. Here were people of the very humblest class known in a nation—nay, of a class sealed by nature itself, and doomed to inferiority—just as tenacious of the very distinctions that were making me so miserable, and against which certain persons, who are wiser than the rest of the world, declaim without understanding them, and even go so far, sometimes, as to deny their existence. My cook reasoned, in her sphere, much as ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... All their water and food and munitions and reenforcements had to be brought ashore across the exposed beach, while the landing of the necessary artillery in the face of the Turkish fire was a feat to appal the bravest. But though their hold on their position was precarious it was tenacious and, in the end, effective. If they had not won all they expected to win they had at least won a foothold in ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... always been her gift. The slow-drawn monosyllable was pregnant with revelations which his knowing mind could readily supply. She had been in the midst of the fury of the most tenacious fighting within a small space that the war had yet to chronicle. She had been an intimate of the splendid desperation of the Browns; known their thoughts and feelings. What a multitude of impressions were ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... talents, and succeed in all the arts to which they apply. Had they the same motives to stimulate them as are found in Europe, they would make as great progress in the useful sciences as they have already made in metaphysics. They do not readily imbibe prejudices, and are not tenacious in retaining them. As however, scientific books and philosophical instruments are very scarce and difficultly attainable in Chili, their talents have no opportunity of being developed, and are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... will be devoted. Of Madame Ida Pfeiffer we think it may justly be said that she stands in the front ranks of the great travellers, and that the scientific results of her enterprise were both valuable and interesting. It has been remarked that if a spirit like hers, so daring, so persevering, so tenacious, had been given to a man, history would have counted a Magellan or a Captain Cook the more. But what strikes us as most remarkable about her was the absolute simplicity of her character and conduct; the unpretending way in which she accomplished her really great achievements; her modesty of ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... scorching violent type that rapidly consumes the vital forces, but a low tenacious fever that baffled all opposition, and steadily gained ground, creeping upon the nerve centre, and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... she quickened by a few smart puffs from a little bellows which lay beside her. As the flame kindled, and the sharp, red jets rose like tongues on either side of the plate, she poured into it something like a gill of a thick tenacious liquid, that looked like, and might have been, honey. Above this she brooded for awhile with her eyes immediately over the vessel; and the keen ear of the stranger, quickened by excited curiosity, could detect the muttering of her lips, though the foreign syllables ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... down at Zoie, undecided whether to strangle her or to return her embraces. As usual, his self-respect won the day for him and, with a determined effort, he lifted her high in the air, so that she lost her tenacious hold of him, and sat her down with a thud in the very same chair in which she had lately dropped his hat. Having acted with this admirable resolution, he strode majestically toward the inner hall, but before he could reach it, Zoie was again on her feet, in a last ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... time, to give them positive place, identity—saturating them with that vehemence of pride and audacity of freedom necessary to loosen the mind of still-to-be-form'd America from the accumulated folds, the superstitions, and all the long, tenacious and stifling anti-democratic authorities of the Asiatic and European past—my enclosing purport being to express, above all artificial regulation and aid, the eternal bodily composite, cumulative, natural ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... much exact information as well, to dismiss them as rot. The dusk of this narrow lane took on a sinister tint from the dark, frail little figure, its back to the wall, and speaking with a weak, self-confident voice. To the vigorous, tenacious vitality of the Chief Inspector, the physical wretchedness of that being, so obviously not fit to live, was ominous; for it seemed to him that if he had the misfortune to be such a miserable object he would not have cared how soon he died. Life had such ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... pain, the mute eloquence of her profound grief, and became once more a prey to the fiercest jealousy. He could not help envying the fate of this deceased, who was mourned in so tender a fashion. Again the mystery of an attachment so evident and so tenacious, followed by so strange a rupture, tormented his uneasy soul. "She must have loved Claudet, since she is in mourning for him," he kept repeating to himself, "and if she loved him, why this rupture, which she herself provoked, and which drove the ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... woman, that she is to remain a general overseer, an autocrat within small compass but on all sides. On the one or two points on which she really misunderstands the man's position, it is almost entirely in order to preserve her own. The two points on which woman, actually and of herself, is most tenacious may be roughly summarized as the ideal of thrift and the ideal ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... these aborigines the possession of the gloomy jungle solitudes. Great trees of wondrous dimensions and strange foliage rear their stately heads to heaven, and are matted and entwined together by creepers of huge size and tenacious hold. ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the intelligent reader, should this record ever see the light, would naturally infer, as I myself imagined would be the case, that the unnatural condition of the body would soon become changed into a state of average health. In this I was mistaken. So tenacious and obstinate in its hold upon its victim is the opium disease, that even after the lapse of ten years its poisonous agency is still felt. Without some reference to these remoter consequences of the hasty abandonment of confirmed habits of opium-eating, the chief object of this narrative ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... enforced leisure afforded by its polish; because this high heel obviously makes any, even the simplest and most necessary manual work extremely difficult. The like is true even in a higher degree of the skirt and the rest of the drapery which characterizes woman's dress. The substantial reason for our tenacious attachment to the skirt is just this; it is expensive and it hampers the wearer at every turn and incapacitates her for all useful exertion. The like is true of the feminine custom of wearing the ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... importance. This fact came to the writer, through the late Commodore (Charles Valentine) Morris, from Sir Alexander Ball, in the early part of the century. In that day it would not have done to proclaim it, so tenacious is public opinion of its errors; but since that time, naval officers of rank have written on the subject, and stripped the Nile, Trafalgar, &c, of their poetry, to give the world plain, nautical, and probable accounts of both those great achievements. The truth, as relates ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... is a suspicious fancy, which if it be long cherished, introduces the mind into societies of similar spirits, from whence it cannot without difficulty be rescued; it also confirms itself in the body, by rendering the serum, and consequently the blood, viscous, tenacious, thick, slow, and acrid, a defect of strength also increases it; for the consequence of such defect is, that the mind cannot be elevated from its suspicious fancies; for the presence of strength elevates, and its absence depresses, the latter causing the mind to sink, give way, and become feeble; ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... of the sons of Shem. And, on the contrary, whatever may be urged against Hebraism in excess, it is all the better for human life that men should have the capacity for emotional depth and fervour, for tenacious adherence to some high moral purpose. In these days of clamour and dispute we need a diffusion of the Hellenic spirit to enable us to look out on things exactly as they are, and to deliver us from fads and ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... uncommon degree vigorous and active. His judgment was accurate, his apprehension quick, and his memory so tenacious, that he was frequently observed to know what he had learned from others, in a short time, better than those by whom he was informed; and could frequently recollect incidents, with all their combination of circumstances, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... and his cheeks, hollow. His countenance, which is of a melancholy cast, expresses much sagacity and reflection: his manner is grave and deliberate, but at the same time open. On the whole, his aspect announces him to be of a temperate and phlegmatic disposition; but warm and tenacious in the pursuit of his object, and impatient of contradiction. Such, at least, is the judgment which I should form of BONAPARTE ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... cited to show the tenacious conservatism of the Artesians. I believe, however, it only proves that the people of Aire, dwelling in a region which has been fought over from time immemorial, had a well-grounded objection to the exclusively military views with which Marshal Soult then desired that the Government of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... he should drive our flocks? The same compliant genius grants him the requisite size, intelligence, energy and vigilance. Do we intend him to watch and defend our house? His head becomes round and monstrous, in order that his jaws may be more powerful, more formidable and more tenacious. Are we taking him to the south? His hair grows shorter and lighter, so that he may faithfully accompany us under the rays of a hotter sun. Are we going up to the north? His feet grow larger, the better to tread the snow; his fur ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck
... children.—A notice, indeed, just posted on the walls, prohibits any assemblage, and the municipal officers appear in their scarves and command or entreat the crowd not to break the law.[2534] But, in a working-class brain, ideas are as tenacious as they are short-lived. People count on a civic procession and get up early in the morning to attend to it; the cannon have been hitched up, the maypole tree is put on wheels and all is ready for ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... giraffae'), white-thorned mimosa ('Acacia horrida'), and baobabs. In sandy spots there are palmyras somewhat similar to the Indian, but with a smaller seed. The soil on all the flat parts is a rich, dark, tenacious loam, known as the "cotton-ground" in India; it is covered with a dense matting of coarse grass, common on all damp spots in this country. We had the Chobe on our right, with its scores of miles of reed occupying ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... reign he and his people lived together, happily free at last from danger of invasion or attack. Dying at eighty, Count Pierre ended a reign, shared peacefully with his uncle and brother, of over sixty years. Strong and tenacious of character, hospitable and courageous as all his acts declare, he was the exemplar of all the traits which have united to express the typical Gruyere prince, and under him his pastoral domain blossomed into its climax of idyllic ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... out, and placing the stick with the rubber ferrule beside it, he sat perfectly still. There was something rigid about him. Did he think? Probably the same thoughts again and again. But were they "nice" thoughts, interesting thoughts? He was a man with a temper; tenacious, faithful. Women would have felt, "Here is law. Here is order. Therefore we must cherish this man. He is on the Bridge at night," and, handing him his cup, or whatever it might be, would run on to visions of shipwreck ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... did he fall in with any of the depraved fashions of his country, or with the natural bias of his own education. Bred up a Jew, under a religion extremely technical, in an age and amongst a people more tenacious of the ceremonies than of any other part of that religion, he delivered an institution containing less of ritual, and that more simple, than is to be found in any religion which ever prevailed amongst mankind. We have known, I do allow, examples of an enthusiasm which has swept ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... pleaded the Pope's own cause before the Pope himself, he obtained an easy victory over the king's ambassadors. Henry, on the other hand, took every measure to maintain his authority: he did everything worthy of an able politician, and of a king tenacious of his just authority. He likewise took measures not only to humble Becket, but also to lower that chair whose exaltation had an ill influence on the throne: for he encouraged the Bishop of London to revive a claim to the primacy; and thus, by making the rights ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... fighting. From what I know of the old earl, I am sure that he will never forgive Hotspur's death; and although, at present, he is reinstated in his estates, there can be no doubt that the king will strike further blows against the power of the Percys. Northumberland is a valiant soldier, tenacious in his purposes, and lasting in his hatreds. Had it not been that he was utterly broken by the news that we brought him, he would assuredly have marched down with his army, and tried to join Glendower and Mortimer; and at least have died fighting, ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... prudent efforts to serve him. I am therefore to desire, that you will avail yourself of every opportunity of sounding the way towards his liberation, of finding out whether those in whose power he is are very tenacious of him, or insinuating through such channels as you shall think suitable, the attentions of the government and people of the United States to this object, and the interest they take in it, and of procuring his ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... muscles were already overstrained from the excessive effort of struggling along in the tenacious mud, like a fly escaping from the edge of ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... have forgotten it, for the children got tired of it, and asked for new songs and stories; it was never written down, and I never can recollect my own verses. It shows that they are not genuine poetry, for I have a tenacious memory for anything good of other people's. So, as it is lost for ever, you may imagine it to have been as ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... scandens, Mr. Hamilton Buchanan says, that of all the fish with which he was acquainted it is the most tenacious of life; and he has known boatmen on the Ganges to keep them for five or six days in an earthen pot without water, and daily to use what they wanted, finding them as lively and fresh as when caught.[1] Two Danish naturalists residing at Tranquebar, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... in outsailing the pirates, but frequently the result was most disastrous. Often a stout-hearted merchantman, seeing that capture was inevitable, would offer battle in desperation, firing volley after volley of stone shot, the pirates, stubborn, furious, tenacious, fighting with all the ferocity their natures were capable of, resulting, after a decisive contest, in the lowering of the merchantman flag in disgrace and humiliation. With the lowering of the sails as an indication of surrender, the pirates sent out several boats with armed men, under ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... retain a hold on results in a field with which they were not sufficiently trained to operate in it independently. It is frequently alleged, and is implied in Professor Vogt's report, that women are distinguished by good memories and poor powers of generalization. But this is to mistake the facts. A tenacious memory is characteristic of women and children, and of all persons unskilled in the manipulation of varied experiences in thought. But when the mind is able at any moment to construct a result from the raw materials ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... rights, Indisputable claim of Fruits and Fields Contending, oft their massive clubs they raise Against each other's life: often, alas, The needy cravings of the unportion'd poor Provoke their jealous wrath; relentlessly Tenacious of their store, they shut him out, 'Midst desart Famine, and ferocious Beasts, To guard his life and till the steril soil; And thus extend the range of human feet. Still as Experience, in her tardy school, Instructs the Shepherd and the Husbandman ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... in all things avoid the example of his father. On the near prospect of his decease, Michael, the great master of the palace, and the husband of his sister Procopia, was named by every person of the palace and city, except by his envious brother. Tenacious of a sceptre now falling from his hand, he conspired against the life of his successor, and cherished the idea of changing to a democracy the Roman empire. But these rash projects served only to inflame the zeal of the people and to remove the scruples of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... sure the Colonel was wrong, but knowing him to be tenacious of his own opinions, I made ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... blotted from the right of manhood, is sensitive of the power that crushes him. He has been robbed of the means of elevating himself by those who now accuse him of the crime of degradation: and, wherever the chance is afforded him of elevation, as that increases so does a tenacious knowledge of his rights; yet, he feels the prejudice that cuts and slights him in his progress, that charges him with the impudence of a negro, that calls his attempts to be a man ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... accomplish the work without either hesitation or inconvenience. He waited for me when he had surmounted the steepest part of the acclivity, and I grew more and more convinced that it was my uncle's form, as I had seen him in my boyhood. Memory was sufficiently tenacious on this head; and knowing the great need, as it concerned family affairs, that his fate should be clearly ascertained, I braved all hazards, and still followed this mysterious conductor. I do not recollect I felt any apprehension that I was following ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... so execrated the flesh, never had he felt such repugnance and lassitude, as when he issued from that room. He strolled haphazard down the rue Soufflot, and the image of the unknown obsessed him, more irritating, more tenacious. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... building was 120 feet long and 20 feet wide. The walls were about three feet thick, and built of large pieces of rough sandstone and red bricks, all cemented strongly together with a white cement that is still hard and tenacious. It is possible there was no fachada to the chapel at the southwest end, for a well-built elliptical arched doorway, on the southeast side, most probably ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... and sometimes attains a thickness of 500 feet. It consists of tenacious brown and bluish-grey clay, with layers of concretions called septaria, which abound chiefly in the brown clay, and are obtained in sufficient numbers from sea-cliffs near Harwich, and from shoals ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... grew up into a strong, slow man, gentle of manners, shy of the sound of his own voice, but tenacious of purpose and stubborn when his will was crossed. Except for the few months when he went wooing after Ruth Cara—in the year after his mother's death—his life, hopes, purposes, dreams and waking thoughts concentrated ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the Indies now occupy my attention; I have myself already damned them repeatedly. I am, as you know, the original person the wheels of whose chariot tarried; but though I am so slow, I am rootedly tenacious. Do not despair. Hester and the Don are sworn in my soul; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Tokosusi, which is said to rise at Nombe Rume, about twenty yards wide and knee deep, swollen by the rains: it had left a cake of black tenacious mud on its banks. Here I got a pallah antelope, and a very strange flower called "katende," which was a whorl of seventy-two flowers sprung from a flat, round root; but it cannot be described. Our guide would have crossed the Tokosusi, which was running north-west to join the Loangwa, and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... gray ghosts, still reach their naked arms high on many West Tennessee hillsides, and occasionally one finds a farmer splitting posts from their remains, for chestnut is an enduring wood. A few of these tenacious individuals are still sending up sprouts that may reach considerable size before they are ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... pieces the several parts may still be seen contracting and relaxing; so that in these creatures the body of the heart may be seen pulsating and palpitating, after the cessation of all motion in the auricle. But is not this perchance peculiar to animals more tenacious of life, whose radical moisture is more glutinous, or fat and sluggish, and less readily soluble? The same faculty indeed appears in the flesh of eels, which even when skinned and embowelled, and cut into pieces, are ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... looking back over the lives of our departed brother and sister, there is a great lesson to be learned—that of example. Such example as theirs possesses incalculable power of effecting good. It takes deep and tenacious root; it fructifies with amazing rapidity and profusion, and flourishes where precept would utterly perish. Its impression is so indelible, that the greatest difficulty is experienced when attempting to eradicate it. The salutary influence which good example ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... on Erris Begh (in Connemara), this summer, I passed through many spider-lines so strong as to offer a very sensible resistance before breaking. I don't remember to have ever before met with them so strong and tenacious, and the makers of optical instruments might there have found abundance of threads which I am told are valuable as cross-wires for transit- instruments and theodolites. I did not meet with any of the ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... summit reaching, stood To view another gap, within the round Of Malebolge, other bootless pangs. Marvellous darkness shadow'd o'er the place. In the Venetians' arsenal as boils Through wintry months tenacious pitch, to smear Their unsound vessels in the wintry clime. * * * * * So, not by force of fire but art divine, Boil'd here a glutinous thick mass, that round Limed all the shore beneath. I that beheld, But therein ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... " 'Dalinda mine,' he said, his project brewed, (Dalinda is my name) 'you needs must know, That from the root although the trunk be hewed, Successive suckers many times will grow. Thus my unhappy passion is renewed, Tenacious still of life, and buds; although Cut off by ill success, with new increase: Nor, till I ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... in February, 1895. It is not my purpose at this time to recall its remarkable increase or to characterize its tenacious resistance against the enormous forces massed against it by Spain. The revolt and the efforts to subdue it carried destruction to every quarter of the island, developing wide proportions and defying the efforts ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Davenant left him alone with her for twenty minutes, at the end of which she returned to take him away. This interview was not fortifying to the girl, whose idea—the idea of which I have said that she was tenacious—was to go after her sister, to take possession of her, cling to her and bring her back. Lionel, of course, wouldn't hear of taking her back, nor would Selina presumably hear of coming; but this made no difference in Laura's ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... strong and so weak, so delicate and so tenacious, that he was as constant a puzzle to those who loved him as to his enemies, to the best-informed as to the most ill-informed. Those very near to him took the liberty of laughing at him about his two overcoats, ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... through a country of such gloomy desolation, that Mr. Boswell thought no part of the Highlands equally terrifick, yet we came without any difficulty, at evening, to Lochbuy, where we found a true Highland Laird, rough and haughty, and tenacious of his dignity; who, hearing my name, inquired whether I was of the Johnstons ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... been lifted, and had just time to grasp it again and crawl upon it, when the man fell, turning a complete somerset over him, fearful to witness! revolving slowly in his swift descent through the air; still holding with tenacious grip the rope; plunging through the boughs like a mere log tumbled from the cliff, ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... on the north of the Ciminian Forest, and that an Umbrian population maintained itself there even after the Tuscan conquest. In this fact we may presumably find the ultimate explanation of the surprising rapidity with which the southern portion of Etruria became Latinized, as compared with the tenacious retention of the Etruscan language and manners in northern Etruria, after the Roman conquest. That the Umbrians were after obstinate struggles driven back from the north and west into the narrow mountainous country between the two arms ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen |
