"Browbeat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her anchorage he was on the lookout for her, and at once came aboard with much blustering, to demand her immediate delivery. He believed he had some unsophisticated livyeres to deal with, whom he could easily browbeat out of their rights. What was his surprise, then, when Douglas stepped forward, and ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... among his other good qualities, possessed an enormous quantity of that which schoolboys in these days call 'cheek.' He was not easily browbeaten, and was generally prepared to browbeat others. Mr. Chaffanbrass certainly did get the better of him; but then Mr. Chaffanbrass was on his own dunghill. Could Undy Scott have had Mr. Chaffanbrass down at the clubs, there would have been, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... compositions. His friends, presuming to judge of this artist's qualifications, ventured to counsel him accordingly, and were thanked for their pains in the usual manner. We had in the first place to bully and browbeat Clive most fiercely, before he would take fitting lodgings for the execution of those designs which we had in view for him. "Why should I take expensive lodgings?" says Clive, slapping his fist on the table. "I am a pauper, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to the theft which he had suffered, or a party to assisting the fugitives. The important official, if he did not actually accuse the manager of having aided the prisoners supposed to have purloined the articles of clothing, inferred it certainly, glared at the unhappy man, browbeat him in regular Germanic manner, and made him regret deeply that he had ever called for ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... work, his attitude expressing indifference. The second dog rose leisurely, and a silent argument over some old-time dispute proceeded in true husky fashion. They walked round and round each other, seeming almost to tiptoe in their efforts to browbeat. Their manes bristled and their fangs bared to the gums, but never a sound came from their deep-toned throats. And such is ever the way of the husky, unless stirred to the wildest fury. The other dogs paid no heed; the smell which emanated from Ralph's cooking-pot held them. ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... asked, and an attempt had been made to confuse and browbeat the youth, when the Nestor of the Lexington Bar expectorated at a fly ten feet away, and remarked, "Oh, the devil! there is no need of tryin' to keep a boy like this down—he's as fit ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... office by a policeman. Mackintosh listened to it all with sullen irritation. On the whole, perhaps, it might be admitted that rough justice was done, but it exasperated the assistant that his chief trusted his instinct rather than the evidence. He would not listen to reason. He browbeat the witnesses and when they did not see what he wished them to ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... thought of becoming Christians from fear of Hell. Such men are not honest with God, and are simply trying to browbeat God on the subject of Hell. Proof: the same men will flee to safety from fear of smallpox, from fear of yellow fever, etc. Shall men be looked upon as sensible when they flee to safety for their bodies, and be scorned for fleeing to safety ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... specialties to sell. Yet, in nine cases out of ten, policyholders will agree that their benefits far exceed those derived by the salesmen who persuade them to purchase. The life insurance salesman is not attempting to hoodwink, hypnotize, cajole, or browbeat his client in a case where their interests clash, but simply, by skilful setting forth of facts and appeals to the feelings, to persuade his client to act in ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... to browbeat the accused, in its empty airs of authority, in its utter indifference to the truth involved, in its contempt for the preachers and their message, in its brazen denial of responsibility, its dread of the mob, and its disregard of the far- off divine ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... a thousand of it. It strikes me, that you would do well to put on a manner in your intercourse with the tenants, as much opposed to Hickman's as possible. Be generally angry, speak loud, swear roundly, and make them know their place. To bully and browbeat is not easily done with success, even in a just cause, although with a broken-spirited people it is a good gift; but after all I apprehend the best method is just to adapt your bearing to the character of the person you have to deal with, if ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... hat, evidently a little nonplussed that she should know his name, and by now she was ready even to browbeat him a little ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... justice will undergo reform. They will cease to be "little better than caverns of murderers,"[1] where judges like Scroggs and Jeffreys (SS478, 487) browbeat the prisoners, took their guilt for granted, insulted and silenced witnesses for their defense, and even cast juries into prison under penalties of heavy fines, for venturing to bring in ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... rebuked him for this illiberal sentiment; and while he was doing so, I added that I had no desire to meet Poodles, as proposed. I now think I was wrong; but I had a feeling that the principal intended to browbeat ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... his side; if he allowed these Dickersons, father and son, to browbeat him this once, it would only ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... might have put an end to heresy. Philip would have seen every soul in Europe consigned to eternal perdition before he would have yielded up an iota of his claims to universal dominion. He could send Alva to browbeat the Pope, as well as to oppress the Netherlanders. He could compass the destruction of the orthodox Egmont and Farnese, as well as of the heretical William. His unctuous piety only adds to the abhorrence with which we regard him; and his humility in face of death is neither better nor worse than ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... against the motion in the coarse and savage style of which he was a master; but he soon found that it was not quite so easy to browbeat the proud and powerful barons of England in their own hall, as to intimidate advocates whose bread depended on his favour or prisoners whose necks were at his mercy. A man whose life has been passed in attacking and domineering, whatever may be his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... story has not York to browbeat withal the storyless New-Yorker who visits her! That Henry IV. was he whom I had lately seen triumphing near Shrewsbury in the final battle of the Roses, where the Red was so bloodily set above the White; and it was ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... William the Conqueror, and that he was descended from any number of potentates. But he lived. He was a rip at first—ah, yes, I'm glad of that as well, —and he became a religious fanatic because his oldest son died very horribly of lockjaw. And he browbeat people and founded banks, and made a spectacle of himself at every Methodist conference, and everybody was afraid of him and honoured him. And I fancy I am prouder of Old Tim Ingersoll than I am of any of the emperors and things that make such a fine show in the Musgrave family tree. For I am like ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... flow, and yield once more to depression and apathy. The house was stronger than she. But—but—only stronger, surely, if she consented to turn craven and give way to it?—Whereupon she consciously, of set purpose, defied the house, denied its right to browbeat thus and enslave her. For had not she this afternoon, up on the moorland, found a finer manner of mourning than it imposed, a manner at once more noble and so more consonant with the temper and achievements of her beloved dead? She ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... assumption of political prerogatives by the Bishops of Rome. Cavour did not suffer his sovereign to eat humble pie like King John, or to go to Canossa like Henry IV., but neither did he ever entertain the wish to turn persecutor as Pombal was, perhaps, forced to do, or to browbeat the head of the Church as the first Napoleon took a pleasure in doing. He aimed at keeping the two powers separate, but each ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... a sense of shame, which was due not solely to the fact that she was a little conscience-stricken because of her innocent complicity, nor that her husband did not resent an obvious attempt of a high-handed man to browbeat him; but also to the feeling that the character of the discussion had in some strange way degraded the house itself. Why was it that everything she touched seemed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... tacitly transferring to him a large part of the disposition of public affairs. This was a thunderbolt for the ministers; who, accustomed to have almost everything their own way, to rule over everybody and browbeat everybody at will, to govern the state abroad and at home, in fact, fixing all punishments, all recompenses, and always sheltering themselves behind the royal authority "the King wills it so" being the phrase ever on their lips,—to these officers, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... that day, and all the next, and a great part of the third, but we do not purpose going into it in detail. The way in which Mr Rasp (Captain Dunning's counsel) and Mr Tooth (Captain Dixon's counsel) badgered, browbeat, and utterly bamboozled the witnesses on both sides, and totally puzzled the jury, can only be understood by those who have frequented courts of law, but could not be fully or adequately described in less than six ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... angel. By-and-by Adolphus said to Pauline,—"If any one else had undertaken this job in our place, we should have deserved to be shut out of heaven for it. Thinking twice about it! I'm ashamed of myself. Why,—why,—he looks like a ghost. But he won't look that way long! We aren't here to browbeat a man, and kill him by inches, I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... to deliver the city. Nothing crude, partial, superficial, or one-sided, ever came from him. His judgments were clear, comprehensive, and decisive. He was slow, critical, and cautious in forming his opinions, and where he settled there he stayed. No man could cajole or browbeat him ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... circulated them as representing my views, during the School Board election of 1888. I had against me the Solicitor-General, Sir Edward Clarke, at the bar, and Baron Huddleston on the bench; both counsel and judge did their best to browbeat me and to use the coarsest language, endeavouring to prove that by advocating the limitation of the family I had condemned chastity as a crime. Five hours of brutal cross-examination left my denial of such teachings unshaken, and ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... unfortunate class. On her way, a strong hand is put out to save her. It is that of a gigantic young clergyman, who allows her to think that she has decoyed him to her room, but who really goes there to endeavor to turn her from her course of life. She scorns his exhortations, and attempts to browbeat him; but she finds him ready for a row upon the spot. He offers to fight her crowd of bullies singlehanded, and when she locks the door upon him, twists the lock off, hasp and all, with a turn of his wrist. Although they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... himself before the judge, quietly submitted to the laws of the realm. His counsel behaved like men of consummate abilities in their profession; they exerted themselves with equal industry, eloquence, and erudition, in their endeavours to perplex the truth, browbeat the evidence, puzzle the judge, and mislead the jury; but the defendant found himself wofully disappointed in the deposition of Trapwell's journeyman, whom the solicitor pretended to have converted to his interest. This witness, as the attorney afterwards declared, played booty, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... interest in giving it up, no great capacity will be required to destroy it. On the contrary the meanest, lowest, dirtiest fellow, if such an one should ever have the assurance in future ages to mimick power, and browbeat his betters, will be as able as Machiavel himself could have been, to root out the liberties of the bravest people." From the solemnities of the Dedication we come to the "humming deal of satire," and the boisterous action, of the play itself. As ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... cackled and rubbed his hands at the admission. "But I'm going to find out. So, probably, is Brodie. Now, look here, Honeycutt; I haven't come to browbeat you as Brodie did. I am for making you a straight business proposition. If you know anything, I stand ready to buy your knowledge. In ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... Instinctively Val refrained from speaking her mind about Arline and her dance before Polycarp, but afterward, in their own room, she grew rather eloquent upon the subject. She would not go. She would not permit that woman to browbeat her into doing what she did not want to do, she said. In her honor, indeed! The impertinence of going to the bottom of her trunk, and meddling with her clothes—with that reception gown, of all others! The idea of wearing that gown to a frontier dance—even if she consented to go to such a dance! ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... it has such a tendency to overshadow, to browbeat the heart. In its strength it so often grows arrogant. The juste milieu—I think you have it. Be content, and never let your brain cry out for more, lest your heart should have to put ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... it was a mistake for a man to allow events to browbeat him. He ought to fight back, hitting where he could. An event, once in a while, was strangely a coward. Besides that, if Destiny found a man always ready to strip, she came after a while to accord to him the courtesies of a duellist, and if he were ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... could do," cried old Mr. Loughead, whose chief object in life since Pickering had been pronounced out of danger, had been to browbeat the trained nurse, and usurp the authority in Pickering's sick-room, "if Mrs. Cabot would keep out, or take it into her head to return home. To state it mildly," continued the old gentleman, not lowering his tone in the least, "that ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... convinced that his gaolers knew it, his imprisonment under any conditions appeared a monstrous iniquity. He could never desist from protesting against the wrong. It was the grievance as much of his enemies that they had him fast in prison, and could neither browbeat him into acknowledging the justice of his doom, nor prove its justice. They had obtained his condemnation rather than his conviction. They were incited by his appeals to redoubled efforts to establish his original guilt. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Authorities Browbeat wholesome common-sense into the self-distrust Comfort from the thought that most things cannot be helped Concerning popularity as a test of merit in a book Critical vanity and self-righteousness Critics are in no sense the legislators of literature Dickens ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... hand, there are women of coarse fibre, who imagine that they vastly increase their own importance by being selfishly exacting in the matter of men's self-sacrificing attentions. They may browbeat the men who are in their power; but, outside of this narrow world of their own, they are held in thorough contempt by the very men whose admiration they had hoped to gain by their aggressive and ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... again from this paper. (An extract implying that among the measures taken to browbeat the Convention into receiving Miss Brown, was the forming of a society instantly, under the special urgency of herself and friends, for this especial object, etc.) That again is a statement without foundation. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... this. It seems never to have entered his mind, (or if it did, he intended that it should never enter the mind of anybody else,) that the object of the chapter could be to deprive the king of the power of putting his creatures into criminal courts, to pack, cheat, and browbeat juries, and thus maintain his authority by procuring the conviction of those who should transgress his ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... resemble them the more. . . Learning . . . is a great lover of rules and boaster of famed examples . . . and sets rigid bounds to that liberty to which genius often owes its supreme glory. . . Born originals, how comes it to pass that we die copies?. . . Let not great examples or authorities browbeat thy reason into too great a diffidence of thyself. . . While the true genius is crossing all public roads into fresh untrodden ground; he [the imitative writer], up to the knees in antiquity, is treading the sacred footsteps of great examples with the blind veneration of a bigot saluting ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... came Mr Stumfold in person, and, of course, nothing about the assembly rooms was said by him. He made himself very pleasant, and Miss Mackenzie almost resolved to put herself into his hands. He did not look sour at her, nor did he browbeat her with severe words, nor did he exact from her the performance of any hard duties. He promised to find her a seat in his church, and told her what were the hours of service. He had three "Sabbath services," but he thought that regular attendance twice every Sunday was enough for people ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... a few petty officers an' 'prentices half out their time. The men 'll soon make a sailor of you: you'll soon see what a seaman is; you'll larn ten times the knowledge; an', add to that, you'll not be browbeat ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... I blame people for things. There are times when it seems as if we were all puppets, pulled this way or that, without control of our own movements. Hamlet was able to browbeat Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with his business of the pipe; but if they had been in a position to answer they might have told him that it required far less skill to play upon a man than any other instrument. Most of us, in fact, ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... What's all this trouble about? You mustn't think you can browbeat these boys, because you can't. See? I'm telling you the law and you can take it or leave it just as you like. If you've got any kick, go to the railroad. If you're not satisfied to wait until this ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... cool inside. He knew the man, a preemptor of Folly Bay, a truckler to the cannery because he was always in debt to the cannery,—and a quarrelsome individual besides, who took advantage of his size and strength to browbeat less able men. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... guess; but, young man, she is as dear as the apple of our eyes, and I charge you to treat her well. She has never had a crossways word spoke to her all her life, and don't you be the first to speak it, nor let your folks browbeat her." ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... of Kaunitz himself is altogether life-like: a solemn, arrogant, mouthing, browbeating kind of man,—embarrassed at present by the necessity not to browbeat, and by the consciousness that "King Friedrich is the only man who refuses to acknowledge my claims to distinction:" [Rulhiere (somewhere) has heard this, as an utterance of Kaunitz's in some plaintive moment.]—a Kaunitz whose arrogances, qualities and claims this King is ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... words involuntarily, not intending that they should be heard. Little he thought Cripps or any one would heed them. But Cripps did heed them. His quick ear caught the words, and they had a meaning for him; for he might be able to cheat and browbeat and swindle a boy, but when it came to dealing no longer with the boy, but with the boy's father, Cripps was sharp enough to know that was a very different matter. He had relied on the boy's fears of exposure ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... funny to live. You feel like kissing them and sending them to bed. And the airs they put on! One of their soldiers happened to elbow a lieutenant the other day, and the chap ran him through with his sword, and no one called him to account. The officers jostle and browbeat any civilian who will submit to it, and then try to get him into a duel, but I believe they're a cowardly lot at bottom. No man of real courage would bluster all over ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... childish in thine old age. When we were wed, thou left all things to the Lord; I would never have married thee else. Nay, lass,' said she, catching the expression on Lois's face, 'thou art never going to browbeat me with thine angry looks. I do my duty as I read it, and there is never a man in Salem that dare speak a word to Grace Hickson about either her works or her faith. Godly Mr. Cotton Mather hath said, that even he might learn of me; and I would advise thee ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Gorman, somewhat firmly, though not sternly, for he knew that Ned Hooper was not to be browbeat; "are you sober enough to attend to what I've ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... interpretation", as complete as the most rabid muckraker could desire! It appears that the king wanted a new wife, and demanded that the Pope should grant the necessary permission; in his efforts to browbeat the Pope into such betrayal of duty, King Henry threatened the withdrawal of the "annates" and the "Peter's pence". Later on he forced the clergy to declare that the Pope was "only a foreign bishop", and in order to "stamp ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... of itself a sufficient proof of guilt. The chief justice,[**] in particular, gave sanction to all the narrow prejudices and bigoted fury of the populace. Instead of being counsel for the prisoners, as his office required, he pleaded the cause against them, browbeat their witnesses, and on every occasion represented their guilt as certain and uncontroverted. He even went so far as publicly to affirm, that the Papists had not the same principles which Protestants have, and therefore were not entitled to that common credence, which the principles ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... still more provoked to see that such a low-born fellow as the squire should and could laugh and make others laugh. For the lack of wit the colonel had recourse to insolence, and went on from one impertinence to another, till the squire, enraged, declared that he would not be browbeat by any lord's nephew or jackanapes colonel that ever wore a head; and as he spoke, tremendous in his ire, Squire Burton brandished high the British horsewhip. At this critical moment, as it has been asserted by some of the bystanders, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... vials of apocalyptic wrath. He exhausts all the resources of rhetoric, and plays upon every note in the gamut of public feeling; that he may rouse the apathetic, confirm the wavering, dumbfound the malignant; where there was zeal, to fan it into flame; where there was opposition, to sow and browbeat it by indignant scorn and terrific denunciation. The first of these manifestoes was (1) Of Reformation touching Church Discipline, of which I have already spoken. This was immediately followed by (2) Of Prelaticall ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... to the centre of the glade with the sculptors, between Acis and the Newly Born] Do not try to browbeat me, Arjillax, merely because you are clever with your hands. Can you ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... after the ball, Ashton had returned to the bridge sobered and chastened. The change in him may have been due to another cut in his allowance, or to a peppery interview during which Mr. Leslie had sought to browbeat him into resigning ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... account, both privately and at the inquest, was this: As they talked further together, after Michael left the room, the Vicar went on to browbeat him shamefully about the new chimes, vowing they should never play, never be heard; at last, rising in an access of passion, the Parson struck him (the Captain) in the face. He returned the blow—who wouldn't return it?—and the Vicar fell. He believed his head must have struck ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... killed?" exclaimed the cowboy. "Everythin' square? Why, when he said that Johnnie was cheatin' and acted like such a jackass? And then in the saloon he fairly walked up to git hurt?" With these arguments the cowboy browbeat the Easterner and ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... crime—it was blunder of the very first magnitude, and such a blunder as could only have been made by a very stupid as well as a very arrogant man. Doria by this time was a warrior of European celebrity, and one to whom even kings used the language of persuasion; to attempt to browbeat him ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... am going to let you browbeat me," he began. "Well, my dear woman, you're mistaken. Listen! Are you angry at me because I have created for you and your children a dignified existence? Do you take it amiss of me for having kept your sister from going to the poor-house? You act as though I had won that much money ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... beginning of the seventh canto of Dante's "Inferno." But the most picturesque group in the whole scene presented to us is that made by Cellini himself, armed and mailed, and attended by his prentices in armour, as they walked into the court to browbeat justice with the clamour of their voice. If we are to trust his narrative, he fought his way out of one most dangerous trial by simple vociferation. Afterwards he took the law, as usual, into his own hands. One pair of litigants were beaten; Caterina was nearly kicked to death; and ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... tintype, you yapping hound! I'm about ready to freeze you, anyway, for the second time—mark that, will you?—for the second time. No, keep your hands where I can see 'em, or I'll knife you right where you sit! You can bully and browbeat a lot of railroad buckies when you're playing the boss act, but I know you! You come with me or I'll give the whole snap away to Vice-President Ford. I'll tell him how you built a street of houses in Red Butte out of company material ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde |
