"Defiant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... observed by his nephew: the Comanches had ceased their whooping and firing, though the tramping of their mustangs proved that most of the warriors were still mounted and circling back and forth in the aimless effort to detect some means of getting at the defiant ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... cruiser lay close aboard, and her machine-guns could sweep the transport's decks from stem to stern; moreover, the rapid and ominous slackening of the rifle-fire testified eloquently to the frightful carnage that was proceeding. The cries of "Banzai Nippon!" were no longer thundered forth in a defiant roar, but were raised by a few voices only, which were almost drowned by the dreadful shrieks and moans of the ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... break down local mediaeval customs and privileges, to the greater benefit of the State. The result was a compromise, and it is that compromise which is revealed by Burgundian municipal architecture. The town was still exalted, but it was no longer the free defiant town which wrested its charters from a reluctant suzerain; it was, if one may so express it, a tamed town, developing its resources under the protection and the control of its master, while still keeping alive its pride by a great display of luxury. The failure of the Ghent revolt ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... passing one arm around the younger girl, "I didn't quite dare to object too strongly. You looked so—so interested, so deliciously defiant—so like ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... an influential publicist, despite the irregularity of his morals and the small esteem excited by his life; "there may, there should come a creation out of it." The Parliament had soon resumed its defiant attitude; like M. de La Fayette at the Assembly of notables, it demanded the convocation of the States-general at a fixed epoch, in 1792; it was the date fixed by M. de Brienne in a vast financial scheme which ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... brethren, and so it came to pass that once one of these six-feet-four rampaging creatures was threatening annihilation to a little forecastle colony, and, indeed, to the after-end colonists also, when there was heard, amid a flow of sulphurous curses, a quiet, defiant word of disapproval. It came from a Scottish able seaman who had served long in American sailing vessels. The orator promptly struck out at the semi-inanimate Sandy, who woke up, went for his man in true British style, and had him ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... temper he was said to possess. Treating his colleagues and all whom he met with the utmost affability, never sullenly silent and often even brilliant in conversation, he nevertheless had struck me as a man who hated and despised his fellow-creatures. There had been then a sort of scornful, defiant look on his large features, which inevitably repelled a stranger until he began to talk. But he understood eminently the science of making himself agreeable, and, when he chose, few could so well lead conversation without imposing themselves upon their hearers. I well ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... they sprang at each other open-jawed; wriggled over the ground a moment—their tails flying in the air—then separated, and again assumed their defiant attitudes, manoeuvring as before. In this manner they met and parted several times, neither seeming to have gained ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... sullen unrest and rebellion it was that, transmitted to his son, had made Buzz the unruly braggart that he was, and which, twenty or thirty years hence, would find him just such a one as his father—useless, evil-tempered, half brutal, defiant of order. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... fellow paused to gather a bunch of the good-tasting grass and was butted out of the path, and now some curly-shouldered belligerent roared his defiant bellow and it went rumbling through the hills. We drove the cattle through the open gate of the pasture and down a long lane to ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... than the two young fellows hastened to count over to her such monies as they possessed, while the girl watched sullen and defiant. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... its course for the second time through Parliament, a course that was now farcically perfunctory, and Carson returned to London to repeat in the House of Commons on the 10th of June his defiant acceptance of responsibility for the Ulster preparations. He was back in Belfast for the 12th of July celebrations, when 150,000 Orangemen assembled at Craigavon to hear another speech from their leader full of confident challenge, ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... hand. Denis Ryan was beside him. Behind him were the other four men pressing in. In the chimney nook, in front of the still glowing embers of the fire, were Mrs. Drennan and her daughter. Mary stood, fearlessly, holding a candle in a steady hand. Mrs. Drennan was more than fearless. She was defiant. She had armed herself with a long-handled hay-fork, which she held before her threateningly, as a soldier holds a rifle with a ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... him why trouble about him?" Sally replied in her usually defiant manner. "You always take good care to trouble about my men. You tried all you could to get Jimmy away from me, yet you pretend to father that you never flirted ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... on, down a broad promenade, where the ground glistened with autumn damps, and the unlighted lamps looked wan and spectral. There was a bear-pit hard by, over the railings of which Ada leaned and shouted a defiant "Boo;" but the bears had turned in for the night, and the stone re-echoed her voice with a hollow ring. Indistinct bird forms were roosting in cages; but her umbrella ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... During a long defiant pause, their eyes held, both pairs unwavering; then the girl said quietly: "I'll ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Her manner was defiant, her tone was positive; I doubted both. Under the surface of her assumed confidence, I saw something which told me that she was trying to read my thoughts in my face. Many other women had tried to do that. They succeeded when I was young. ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... sent her defiant answer to the Powers, they had a long conference, and after much talk, decided to ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... with one hand on her grandfather's shoulder and the other grasping the carved elbow of the old oak settle. Her lips were firmly shut, and her whole bearing determined, almost defiant. Presently she said,— ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... found the soldiers unwelcome visitors on the scene, and the streets were soon cleared. No prisoners were made. Capt. Ferrand took part in leading the soldiers, and those who were so valiant before were now no longer to be seen defiant; they had fled. Mr John Garnett, school-master, wrote some lines on the affair, called "The ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... was in the last stages of that dread disease, consumption. A murder case was on trial in which he felt a deep interest. The case was one of unusual atrocity, and the accused—a man of some local prominence—had been exceedingly defiant towards the wan and emaciated prosecuting attorney from its beginning. With much difficulty Colonel Lee succeeded in getting to the court-room in order to make the closing speech to the jury. Utterly exhausted,—after depicting the horrible crime in all its enormity and demanding ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... defiant was the voice in which Agnes Barker said this—a young girl expressing her first love without a blush, and with that air of ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... before his death he sent for a lawyer and made his will, the sanity of which no one can challenge. At the end he directed that his body should be interred in the parish churchyard of St. A—, 'as close as may be to the cross by the church porch.' As a last challenge to scepticism this surely was defiant enough. ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the gibes of his associates had stung him to a feeling of forward, lawless mutiny; a defiant, challenging, atavistic recklessness. Spirit of corsair, adventurer, lover, poet, bohemian, possessed him. The stars he saw above him seemed no more unattainable, no less high, than the favour of Miss Peek or the fearsome sweetness of her delectable lips. His ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... I found it hard to preserve my self-control, when I looked round, and saw women who were nurses, as I was, and only one shade lighter in complexion, eyeing me with a defiant look, as if my presence were a contamination. However, I said nothing. I quietly took the child in my arms, went to our room, and refused to go to the table again. Mr. Bruce ordered meals to be sent to the room for little ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... J. Wynne. He reported to me, after some investigation, that in his belief there was doubtless corruption, but that it was very difficult to get at it, and that the offenders were confident and defiant because of their great political and business backing and the ramifications of their crimes. Talking the matter over with him, I came to the conclusion that the right man to carry on the investigation was the then Fourth Assistant Postmaster-General, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... frequent to the helmsman, "How does she carry her helm?" varied sometimes to, "What sort of helm does she carry?" Now we had among our green midshipmen one from the West, tall, angular, swarthy, with a coal-black eye which had a trick of cocking up and out, giving a queer, perplexed, yet defiant cast to his countenance; moreover, he stuttered a little, not from imperfection of organs, but from nervous excitability. We had also a lieutenant from far down East, red-haired, sanguine of complexion, bony ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... Katie, looking defiant. "If I good would her put me in the closet? I don't like her ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... as he was called, stood for a few moments half defiant, growling and distorting his face until it looked more like a wild animal's than a man's, then jerked out ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... their feet. One girl leant with her arms on the fence rail and her face buried in them, another was trying to comfort her. The third girl and the woman stood facing our way. The woman was good-looking; she had a hard face, but it might have been made hard. The third girl seemed half defiant, half inclined to cry. Presently she went to the other side of the girl who was crying on the fence and put her arm round her shoulder. The woman suddenly turned her back on us and stood looking away over ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... bad that we carried him in from the wagon and put him to bed; but we did not know that we had no right here," said Nealie, her voice quavering a little, although she held her head at its proudest angle and tried to look as defiant as possible. ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... hooking fast to the Revenge on either side. "Boarders away!" yelled the Spanish colonels. "Repel Boarders!" shouted Grenville in reply. And the boarders were repelled, leaving a hundred killed behind them. Only fifty English now remained. But they were as defiant as before, giving the Spaniards deadly broadsides right along the water-line, till two fresh enemies closed in and grappled fast. Again the boarders swarmed in from both sides. Again the dauntless English drove them back. Again the English swords ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... special, an individual faculty. When one is poetizing in an amateur, a dilettante way, as most of us poetize, a picture of Courbet, which seems to flaunt and challenge the imagination in virtue of its defiant reality, its insistence on the value and significance of the prosaic and the actual, appears coarse and crude. It is not, however. It is very far from that. It is rather elemental than elementary—in itself a prodigious distinction. No modern painter has ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... handsome, and ugly dissonance in the voice that all Hendrik praised for its music. Was he on both sides of that card?—Ah, well! it might be just nothing, after all; the poor lady might be ill, or vexed past endurance at home; or some unhappy love affair might have come to fret her proud, impatient, defiant temper. But not Withers,—oh, of course not Withers!—for was it not well known that Adelaide was his choice, that his assiduous and graceful attentions to her silenced even his loudest enemies, who could no longer accuse him of duplicity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Katy, left below, felt very miserable: repentant, defiant, discontented, and sulky all at once. She knew in her heart that she had not meant to hurt Elsie, but was thoroughly ashamed of that push; but Aunt Izzie's hint about telling Cousin Helen, had made her too angry to allow of her confessing this to ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... The failure to secure the prosecution of the destroyers of the "Gaspee" caused the British government to distrust American courts as well as American juries. One political writer, Dean Tucker, declared that the American colonies in their defiant state had ceased to be of advantage to England, and that they had better be allowed quietly to separate. Pitt denied the right to tax, but declared that if the colonies meant to separate, he would be the first to enforce the ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... half-hour, it might be, after our talk she came back, her countenance wearing the same defiant air which it had borne when she left us. She held a shagreen-case in her hand; Esmond knew it as containing his diamonds which he had given to her for her marriage with Duke Hamilton, and which she had worn so splendidly on the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... position of the atheist. In fact, I have come to disbelieve in his existence, and to look upon the word as a mere term of theological reproach. It may represent a temporary condition, a passing mental phase, a defiant reaction against an anthropomorphic ideal; but I cannot conceive that any man can continue to survey Nature and to deny that there are laws at work which display intelligence and power. The very existence of a world carries with it the proof of a world-maker, as the table ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... as was justifiable in the protection of my own name. As your recommender and endorser for the position you hold, I had a right, when you showed yourself heedless of my counsel and defiant of my injunctions, to say to your immediate superior that he should be cautious about allowing your intimacy with Mr. Forrest to be prosecuted within the shelter of his sanctum and practically under his ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... in the very recklessness of despair, I resolved to see him, plead with him, threaten him if need be, and risk all my fortunes on one desperate chance. I wrote him a somewhat defiant letter, stating my aspirations, and, as I flattered myself, shrewdly giving him a week to get over the first shock of horrified surprise. Then I was to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... from her wound. Even the most desperate—Boucher himself—drew back, faltered away, scowled, and finally went off, muttering curses on the master, who stood in his unchanging attitude, looking after their retreat with defiant eyes. The moment that retreat had changed into a flight (as it was sure from its very character to do), he darted up the steps to Margaret. She tried to rise without ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... cocks in Sikhim.[427] The crow of the Cochin is notoriously and ludicrously different from that of the common cock. The disposition of the different breeds is widely different, varying from the savage and defiant temper of the Game-cock to the extremely peaceable temper of the Cochin. The latter, it has been asserted, "graze to a much greater extent than any other varieties." The Spanish fowls suffer more ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... Scindia's court was ordered to leave it, unless that prince retired from his position on the Nizam's frontier. Scindia, when summoned, sent a defiant reply and, as it was now evident that war was impending, General Wellesley was invested with full powers; and Lord Lake, who commanded the army of Hindustan, was ordered to advance to attack the formidable force of French infantry, under Perron, and take ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... sign of life left in it. Everything that is brilliant and beautiful is withdrawn and shrouded in the "bare grain" when we strip off the sheath and hold it in our hand: everything has gone down in defiant faith to the last ebb. Nothing is left to it, as far as we can discern, but the invisible, miracle-working power of God. Shall we not learn of the dried-up seed, to rejoice when in our seed-sowing we are shut up to God alone—when ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... halted before Tungku Indut's house, the shrill screams of defiance from three hundred dainty throats pierced my ear-drums like a steam siren, and they were all so marvellously noisy, brave, and defiant, that, in spite of an occasional girlish giggle from one or another of them, I began to fear there would be bad trouble before the dawn. So wild was their excitement, and so maddening was the din ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... his motto: "Immediate and unconditional emancipation!" He promised his readers that he would be "harsh as truth and uncompromising as justice"; that he would not "think or speak or write with moderation." Then he flung out his defiant call: "I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... immortality, of the Ego against the Universe. They are, he went on to expound, a recurrence of the ancient question: "How are the dead raised, and with what body do they come?" "How shall I bear my light across?" and of the defiant cry: "If Christ be not raised, then ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... describe her. I knew her at once, for thus had I seen her last before the Fire of Life, and, strangely enough, through the mask of unutterable age, through that cloak of humanity's last decay, still shone some resemblance to the glorious and superhuman Ayesha: the shape of the face, the air of defiant pride that for an instant bore her ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... threat, yet hoping that its influence upon a people accustomed to sleep securely might further his designs. But, though the enchanter wove his spells to rouse the demon of fear, their one effect was to bring up once more, over against him, the defiant form of his arch-subverter. Both the Prime Minister, Addington, and the First Lord of the Admiralty assured Nelson that his presence in charge of the dispositions for defence, and that only, could quiet the public mind. "I have seen Lord St. Vincent," he wrote ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... with the terrible chit. But FRANK SWINNERTON, of course, is able to hold these astonishing briefs with ease. Here is a girl who first turns the head of Marian Forster's middle-aged husband in a pure fit of experimentalism, and then sets her cap with defiant malice at the young man who seems likely to bring real love into the elder woman's life. And yet Marian grows always fonder of her, and she, in the manner of a wayward and naughty child, of Marian. Insolence and gaucherie are on the one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... responses in the canticle which followed the lesson. Scarcely, however, had the congregation resumed their seats for the reading of the second lesson when the offending flock again gathered round the west door, and again, as if in defiant derision of Russell, raised their mocking cry of "Come back! come back! come back!" And back accordingly he went clatter, clatter down the aisle, a stern resolution flashing from his eye, and causing the little boys as he passed to quail before him. Now it so happened that the lesson was ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... his coat pocket a small parcel wrapped in paper, and tore off the covering. Beryl stood faint and dizzy, resting against the window, but erect, on guard and defiant. He shook out and held up a square of fine linen, daintily hem-stitched. Along the border ran graceful arabesques, swelling into scallops and dotted with stars, embroidered in some rich red thread; and in one corner, enclosed ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... and faced each other, the woman defensive and defiant, the man somber, quiet, with a certain savage dignity and slowly smoldering like an inactive volcano. You couldn't see their features, only a white flashing of eyes and teeth in such light ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... said, defiant. "And I think this ought to teach you what a comrade's perfect confidence can be. Never complain to me of my want of trust ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... February Anthony had gone to the imposing offices of Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy and listened to many vague instructions delivered by an energetic young man of about his own age, named Kahler, who wore a defiant yellow pompadour, and in announcing himself as an assistant secretary gave the impression that it was ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... consequence as in the West End of London. The clergymen, as they file in along with the gayly-accoutred young guards-men, have a meek and gentle air which makes one feel that they had better have stayed away. They do not look half defiant enough. No person who is not already in such a position as to need no pushing could becomingly make his appearance at court. I remember in Shropshire to have heard a family who went down to London to be presented made the target for the ridicule of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... political situation with force and frankness that recalled his father's platform speeches delivered in his prime. Demonstration repeated when later he rose to answer question concerning his department. Fresh storm of cheering from Ministerialists responded to by defiant shouts from Opposition. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... him, flushed, dogged, defiant. He had a vivid beauty at the moment, and Alston woke to a startled sense of what the young Jeff used to be. But this was better. There was something beaten into this face finer far ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... but something pathetic in Sarah's defiant little figure touched Doctor Hugh. She so evidently ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... of the baby hand upon his rough finger. I see the hard look coming back into his face as the policeman, red and out of breath, twisted the nipper on his wrist, with a half-uncertain aside to me, "Them toughs there ain't no depending on, nohow." Sullen, defiant, planning vengeance, I see him led away to jail. Ruffian and thief! The police blotter ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... keeps up its importunate cry of hope. We dare not crush out within us the sweet thought of reunion. Upon that earth I lost a wife, who summed up to me everything of value, virtue, and beauty human life can claim. The passionate desire to regain her, the defiant mutiny of my heart against any thought of her annihilation, made me turn to the shining hosts of heaven for reassurance. In them somewhere I believed the vanished soul of my companion had flown. This wonderful world was known to me, and what the wise ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... he is coming in! He had still that defiant, devil-may-care step, that haughty, insolent look, as if the whole world were full of his lackeys, that repellent beauty, for his features were as vacant ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... leaned soothingly above the other linen spectre, with a bottle of camphor in her hand, near the bureau upon which the back-hair of both was piled; and in the flash of her black eyes, and the defiant flirt of the kid-gloves dipped in glycerine which she was drawing on her hands, lurked death by lightning and other harsh usage for whomsoever of the male sex should ever be caught looking down in the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... hundred to-night; I must pay it, or be disgraced forever; I have not a farthing; I cannot get the money for my life; no Jews will lend to me, I am under age; and—and"—his voice sank lower and grew more defiant, for he knew that the sole thing forbidden him peremptorily by both his father and his brothers was the thing he had now to tell—"and—I borrowed three ponies of Granville Lee yesterday, as he came from the Corner with a lot of banknotes after settling-day. I told him I would ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... holes in the mud, and in them await your coming, and more often than not baffle your ingenuity to extricate them. Among other stalked-eyed crustaceans is that with one red, shielding claw, absurdly large, and which scuttles among the roots, making a defiant clicking noise—the fiddle or soldier crab (GELASIMUS VOCANS). Oysters seal themselves to the roots, and various sorts of shell-fish gather together—two or three varieties appear to browse upon the leaves ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... his saddle, once more laid hold of the plume, and stuck it under the gold band of his hat. Then, turning a defiant glance upon the officer, he said, "Don't lose your temper, Captain Roblado. A jealous lover makes but an indifferent husband." And transferring his look to Catalina, he added with a smile, and in a changed tone, ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... Babe spoke with a gentleman friend long since passed on, and Kitty with a deceased husband, and began to cry quite sobbily and took little sips of highball quite gulpily. May Denison, who was openly defiant, allowed herself to be hypnotized and lay rigid between two chairs, and Kitty went off into rampant hysteria until Wheeler finally placed a hundred-dollar bill over the closed eyes, and whether under it, or to the legerdemain of madam's manipulating hands, the tight eyes opened, May, ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... now she had been careless of her destiny. She had been so joyous, so defiant in her sinning. By that charm of hers, younger than youth, indestructibly childlike, she had carried it through with the audacity of chartered innocence. She had propitiated, ignored, eluded the more feminine amenities of fate. Of course, she ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... they are rather necessary to the story. Anyway, by the time the company was settled Ancoats suddenly threw off his embarrassment, and, with some defiant looks at me, behaved himself, I imagine, much as he would have done without me. When all the guests were gone, I asked him whether he was going to keep up the farce of a grande passion any more. He got in a rage and ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... coming. A sweep of her white arm dashed the mirror to the floor, smashing it. Then she cast off the head-piece, and leaping to her feet, faced us, blazing and defiant. ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... Lamb was reasoned with privately upon the sentiments expressed in this essay; and perhaps we may take the following sonnet which he contributed over his own name to, the London Magazine for April, 1821, as a kind of defiant postscript thereto, a further challenge to those who reproached him for his remarks concerning death, and who suggested that he did not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Tacitus says, "Securi adversus homines, securi adversus Deos." This individuality, which had only itself for an end, must necessarily be destroyed, and was saved only by Christianity, which overcame and enlightened its daemonic and defiant spirit. We cannot speak here of a system of Education. Respect for personality, the free acknowledgment of the claims of woman, the loyalty to the leader chosen by themselves, loyalty to their friends (the idea of fellowship),—these features should all be well-noted, because from ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... tenderness apparent now in the tones of her voice, which the girl was swift to perceive and respond to, yet she held back, her independence unshaken. With the quick intuition of a woman, Mrs. Herndon bent down, placing one hand on the defiant shoulder. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... craft. It sped swift and true, and a moment later there was but one German left in condition to continue the fight. Thinking to avoid unnecessary loss of life, Captain Fox called upon the German to surrender. The kindly offer was rewarded with a defiant reply, and the German made another swift attack ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... door opened and Hoodie appeared. She marched in with a half-defiant air—evidently "humble-pie" had at present no attraction for her. No one took any notice of her. This did not suit Hoodie. She dragged her little chair across the room and placed it beside ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... bound the Sioux to keep to the north of the Platte stood sole sentinel over his vine and fig tree. True there had been one or two instances of depredation, but they could be fastened on no particular band, and all the chiefs, even defiant Red Cloud, and insolent, swaggering Little Big Man, denied all knowledge of the perpetrators. Spotted Tail, it was known, would severely punish any of his people who transgressed, but he could do nothing with the Ogallallas. Now they were not two hundred miles away to the north, ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... this will never give us the power to act wisely, for wisdom is ever the twin sister of charity that loves the neighbor even while differing from him in opinion. True courage of every kind is perfectly self-possessed, but never defiant. A spirit of defiance springs from envy or hate if it be honest, and from a consciousness of inferiority if assumed; and is sometimes only a disguise self-assumed by fear, when it seeks to be unconscious of itself. True moral courage results from the hope that we are acting in harmony with ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... by the revealed shame, crept over her face, lighting it to the extreme corners under the temples and ears. As she stood there, humiliated, yet defiant of him and of the world, Sommers remembered the first time he had seen her that night at the hospital. He read her, somehow, extraordinarily well; he knew the misery, the longing, the anger, the hate, the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Malden, begging me to come to her. I could not resist such an appeal; and one of Josephine's little nieces having come to spend the winter with her, I hurried to Slepington,—not, I am sure, in the least regretted by Mr. Waring, who had begun to look at me with uneasy and sometimes defiant eyes. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... in his carpetbag were papers which, it was said, implicated prominent antislavery workers. Now his friends were fleeing the country, Sanborn, Douglass, and Howe. Gerrit Smith broke down so completely that for a time his mind was affected. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, defiant and unafraid, stuck by John Brown to the end, befriending his family, hoping to rescue him as he ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... back into hell. Just give me the money to go out into the city and I'll not bother anybody any more. I'll take the child and I'll die for all anybody in Goodloets ever knows. Lend me the money; I'll send it back!" The girl's voice was hard and defiant and she turned and faced the minister as if at bay. "Give me that money, if all that praying and singing and preaching that you've done is true. I want to go in the morning before he follows her here and puts me in hell again. God ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... eyes supported her defiant word and openly challenged his interference, but he met her once more quietly. "I am sorry to hear it," he rejoined. "But that won't make any difference. You can't ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... to give information to those ladies in opposition to her sister's wishes, she would express suspicion on her own part by doing so; and she was silent. On that same Thursday Priscilla had written her last defiant letter to her aunt,—that letter in which she had cautioned her aunt to make no further accusations without being sure of her facts. To Priscilla's imagination that coming of Lucifer in person, of which ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... indeed beautiful. The brow was wider and whiter, perhaps, than it had been in the old days under the bark slant, and the look out of the eyes a trifle softer, and with a certain tenderness in them— not quite so defiant and fearless; but there had been no other changes. Certainly none in the gold-brown hair that Oliver so loved. That was still her glory, and was still heaped up in magnificent masses, and with the same look about it of being ready to ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was no resemblance in him to his brother, the Alderman. He was a tall, spare, fresh-coloured man, apparently about fifty years of age, well-bred of feature, carefully groomed; something in his erect carriage, slightly swaggering air and defiant eye suggested the military man. Closer inspection showed Brent that the grey tweed suit, though clean and scrupulously pressed, was much worn, that the brilliantly polished shoes were patched, that the linen, freshly-laundered though it was, was far from new—everything, indeed, about Krevin ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... a sport, I am!" was the defiant remark. "So was Mr. Carwell—Old Carwell we used to call him. But he had more pep than some of you ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... approbation of his political views, excites some indignation and a sympathetic reaction in his favour. One can imagine the ghost of Byron rebuking his critic with the words of the Miltonic Satan, 'Ye knew me once no mate For you, there sitting where ye durst not soar'; for in his masculine defiant attitude and daring flights the elder poet overtops and looks down upon the fine musical ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Hugers. And yonder is a stump-orator perched on his barrel, pouring out his exhortations to fidelity in war and in religion. To-night for the first time I have heard an harangue in a different strain, quite saucy, sceptical, and defiant, appealing to them in a sort of French materialistic style, and claiming some personal experience of warfare. "You don't know notin' about it, boys. You tink you's brave enough; how you tink, if you stan' ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... outcropping of that personal comradeship I look forward to as the subtlest, strongest future hold of this many-item'd Union—are not only constantly visible here in these mighty channels of men, but they form the rule and average. To-day, I should say—defiant of cynics and pessimists, and with a full knowledge of all their exceptions—an appreciative and perceptive study of the current humanity of New York gives the directest proof yet of successful Democracy, and of the solution of that ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... footsteps fell away there was a great silence. Not a sound could be heard. The bells were not chiming, the rooks were not cawing (it was not as yet their time) nor was the voice of Mrs. Crumpleton to be heard, shrill and defiant, as was too often the case. The house was dead; the town was dead; had the world itself suddenly died, like a candle whose light is put out, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... excuses for him even in his worst moods. His new machinery was standing idle, his business was getting worse and worse, he was greatly pressed and worried, and it was monstrous, she told herself, that at such a time he should be troubled with Ned's defiant behavior. ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... high spirit, for ease, serenity, politeness,—the great virtues, as Mr. Carlyle says, of aristocracy,—in this beautiful and virtuous mean, there seemed evidently some insufficiency of light; while, on the other hand, Sir Thomas Bateson, in whom the high spirit of aristocracy, its impenetrability, defiant courage, and pride of resistance, were developed even in excess, was manifestly capable, if he had his way given him, of causing us great danger, and, indeed, of throwing the whole commonwealth into confusion. Then I reverted to that old fundamental notion of mine about the grand merit of ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... clothed in pine forest, hung over them, the soft haze of Indian summer fled, and in its place came a low, gray sky, somber and chill. Sharp winds cut them, but the blood flowed warm and strong in their veins as they trod the upward path between the ridges. Once more a verse of the defiant Dixie rolled and echoed through the lofty and ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... instantly, and his eyes flamed, dull and defiant. The lines of his heavy jaw appeared to deepen, his shoulders lifted a trifle, as if the muscles of him had suddenly tensed for combat, and his lips had a trace of the ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... stopped, amazed. Mozart, likewise, was too much surprised to speak, and, sitting as if nailed to his chair, half laughing yet blushing, looked the gardener somewhat boldly in the face with his big, blue eyes. Then—it would have been most amusing for a third person—with a sort of defiant courage he set the apparently uninjured orange in the middle of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... amendment on the original plan, when the rumours of meditated insult became alarming. Mr. Tryan declared he would have no precautions taken, but would simply trust in God and his good cause. Some of his more timid friends thought this conduct rather defiant than wise, and reflecting that a mob has great talents for impromptu, and that legal redress is imperfect satisfaction for having one's head broken with a brickbat, were beginning to question their consciences very closely as to whether it was not a duty ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... his portraits in the National Gallery. Observe the Old Lady, aged 83, the massive painting of her face, and the outline of her figure set so firmly against the background. Here is Realism, frank and straightforward, almost defiant in its strength. Turn to the portrait of A Jewish Rabbi. Here is Idealism. You peer and peer, and from the brown background emerges a brown garment, relieved by the black cap, and the black cloak that falls over his left shoulder. Luminous black and luminous brown! Brown is ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... quickly, which outdo the worst imaginings of the dirty-minded men who applaud her. She springs upon the backs of the men, she swaggers, she kicks off hats. She is a small sensation in herself, and feels it, and goes about with a defiant and pitiless recklessness, reigning for the few brief hours over the besotted men who feel a fiend's satisfaction in the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... had been hidden from them all these days? It was not what they had pictured beneath the proud, defiant carriage of its concealing veil. Was that the face ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... too; I 'll show you some day); whereas Mr. Hudson will never have them. And yet, somehow, one sees he 's a gentleman. He seems to have something urging, driving, pushing him, making him restless and defiant. You see it in his eyes. They are the finest, by the way, I ever saw. When a person has such eyes as that you can forgive him his bad manners. I suppose that is what they call ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... note this, for it is a part of his story. Jack wrote seldom, having a sense that I didn't want to hear. When he did write, however, he was liable at any time to break away from the light, half-jesting, half-defiant tone which he had purposely chosen to cover our disagreement, and to give me a sentence or two, or even a page, of cold-blooded confession. It may have been that his purpose, at that point, suddenly absorbed him, sucked ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to speak of their past, as great men might be whose reputation was world-wide. Somehow the names stuck in my memory. I was certain that I had heard them linked with some stalwart fight or some moving civil deed or some defiant manifesto. The making of history was in their steadfast eye and the grave lines of the mouth. Our friendship flourished mightily in a brief hour, and brought me the invitation, willingly accepted, to sit with ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... murmured comment to understand its significance. It had been difficult for them to control their emotions as they kept slow step with the throng down the broad sidewalk. Susan, mortified but loyal to the core, had set her face in defiant smile lest she burst into tears: Ellis, devoted to Terry but tickled by the situation, had smothered his snickers in protracted fits ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... the daughter of Thord the Tall," she answered, drawing herself up with a touch of half defiant pride. "He was the enemy of your family, but a lender-man [Footnote: Nobleman.] of high birth, and ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... including some of the ablest naval officers of the day, was hailed with high hopes that the mysterious north would at length be {90} robbed of its secret. Then, as the years passed and the ships never returned, and no message from the explorers came out of the silent north, the nation, defiant of difficulty and danger, bent its energies towards the discovery of their fate. No less than forty-two expeditions were sent out in search of the missing ships. The efforts of the government were seconded by the munificence of private individuals, and ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... books; and then a great reverence for his piety and learning fell upon her, and a homesick regret; and Scheible and the wedding frolic did not seem so attractive after all. Nevertheless she held up her head like a defiant Hofcavalier. ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... little that she will not feel it as much as if she were bigger. She will get over it, darling. Very little girls do not remember things long." Oh, how coarse and crass and stupid it sounded—how course and crass and stupid to say it to this small defiant scrap of what seemed the inevitable suffering ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... as I am he will not find there," said the girl proudly, glancing into the tremulous water-mirror which threw back a distorted likeness of her defiant face—"and besides he knows very well that I should murder him were such ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... completely by surprise. At the first note of alarm, the women, wild with terror, snatched up their infants and fled shrieking to the woods. Tecumseh and the older children followed, hastily gathering a few treasured possessions. The warriors, awakening the forest echoes with their defiant war-cries, took up their position in an old fort which commanded the river. From the opposite side the Kentucky rifle-men assailed the fort, which, in its decayed and ruinous condition, offered but poor shelter. The Indians quickly evacuated it, but not before several had been killed. While ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... natives. They took the Endeavour for a gigantic white-winged sea-bird, and her pinnace for a young bird. They thought the sailors gods, and the discharge of their muskets divine thunderbolts. Yet, when Cook and a boat's crew landed, a defiant war-chief at once threatened the boat, and persisted until he was shot dead. Almost all Cook's attempts to trade and converse with the Maoris ended in the same way—a scuffle and a musket-shot. Yet the savages were never cowed, and came again. They were shot for the smallest thefts. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... was led away to his cell. "I hope," said the Prince, "that you noted the defiant ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... vengeance that Taras Bulba takes on the enemy; fearful is his own death, lashed to a tree, and burned alive by his foes. He dies, merrily roaring defiant taunts at his tormentors. And Gogol himself closes his hero's eyes with the question, "Can any fire, flames, or power be found on earth, which are capable of ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... scene; and already in the earliest of his coast drawings there are as daring and strange decisions touching the site of the spectator as in his latest works; lookings down and up into coves and clouds, as defiant of all former theories touching possible perspective, or graceful componence of subject, as, a few years later, his system of color was of the theory of the brown tree. Nor was the step remarkable merely for its magnitude,—for the amount of progress made in ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... rather the worse for you," was the defiant rejoinder. "Acting for my father and the minority stock-holders, I shall try to have you and your son held in America, pending an expert ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... his cousin)—he had openly shown his preference for Blossom—but she insisted passionately that she was free and would dance with whomsoever she pleased. To Abel's demand that she should give up "round dances" entirely, she had returned a defiant and mocking laugh. They had parted in an outburst of temper, to rush wildly together a few days later when they met by chance ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... machinery. He happened to be from home at the time, and when he returned it was to find this disorder, and the Maoris in possession. 'The scheme thus to dispossess him and the "Lonely Sparrow on the House Top," had been headed by the chief Rewi. It was Rewi who flung, from a besieged pa, the defiant message that the Maoris would never surrender, that they would fight "For ever, For ever, For ever!" I am inclined to believe that he put himself at the head of the raid upon Sir John Gorst, in order to be able to protect him ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... disloyal retaliation was made against the Tories. On the other hand the Whigs in power showed such a defiant attitude, in the absence of any attempt to conciliate their antagonists, even when the welfare of the Government's motions, and the interests and feelings of the Queen and the Prince demanded the first consideration, that Lord Melbourne's party were suspected ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... purple visage deepened in its hue, and the Major's lobster eyes stood out in bolder relief, as he shook Mr Dombey by the hand, imparting to that peaceful action as defiant a character as if it had been the prelude to his immediately boxing Mr Dombey for a thousand pounds a side and the championship of England. With a rotatory motion of his head, and a wheeze very like ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Ginger, but of course I knew very little then, and I thought most likely she made the worst of it; however, I found that as the weeks went on she grew much more gentle and cheerful, and had lost the watchful, defiant look that she used to turn on any strange person who came near her; and one day James said, "I do believe that mare is getting fond of me, she quite whinnied after me this morning when I had been ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell |
