"Inflexibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her as at that moment of gentleness, compunction, and inflexibility, and thought, for a moment, was obscured by a rush of bitter pain that could almost have cast her upon his breast, weeping and suppliant for all that his words shut the door ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... suffer most from the unrivalled delicacy of her sentiments, I cannot but admire. Ah, cruel Matilda, and will not one banishment satisfy the inflexibility of thy temper, will not all my past sufferings suffice to glut thy severity? Is it still necessary that the happiness of months must be sacrificed to the inexorable laws of decorum? Must I seek in distant climes a mitigation of my fate? Yes, too amiable tyrant, ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... looked much thinner and older. I saw him very near, and once through my glass; the resemblance to Branwell struck me forcibly—it is marked. He is not ugly, but very peculiar; the lines in his face show an inflexibility, and, I must add, a hardness of character which do not attract. As he stood near me, as he looked at me in his keen way, it was all I could do to stand my ground tranquilly and steadily, and not to ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... by this untimely arrest, he was powerless to avert. Knowing nothing of the true contents of the letter which Philip had substituted for the one received from Beverly, he could not imagine an excuse for the marshal's inflexibility. He was quite ill, too, and what with fever and agitation, his brain was in a whirl. He leaned against the chair, faint and dispirited. The painful cough, the harbinger of that fatal malady which had already brought ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... who, taking a stand upon his own vanity, traced every event in life from that one center, and resolutely declined to look at it from any other point of view. "For the purpose of influencing me. He knew the inflexibility of my character; to a certain degree he was acquainted with me, and knew that all attempts at softening my decision, or moving me from the fixed purpose of my life, would fail. He therefore tried extraordinary means; he has kept out of the way in order to alarm me, and when after due time he ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... man opposite him had a manner as deft and unassuming as his own; it masked a cynical inflexibility of purpose proof against ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... imposed upon him by his friend Sir Roderick Murchison. To the stern dictates of duty, alone, has he sacrificed his home and ease, the pleasures, refinements, and luxuries of civilized life. His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the enduring resolution of the Anglo-Saxon—never to relinquish his work, though his heart yearns for home; never to surrender his obligations until he can write FINIS to ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... had crossed from the main land, all bearing towards the same point. Puritans, whose cloaks were of the most formal cut, and whose hats emulated the steeple of St. Paul's; Levellers, with firm steps, wrinkled and over-hanging brows, and hard unchanging features, all denoting inflexibility of purpose and decision of character; Cavaliers, whose jaunty gait was sobered, and whose fashionable attire was curtailed in consideration that such bravery would be noticed and reproved by the powers that were; women attired in dark hoods and sad-coloured kirtles; some of demure ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... took measures to have De Soto assassinated. Such is the uncontradicted testimony of contemporary historians. But every day revealed to him more clearly the strength of Isabella's attachment for De Soto, and the inflexibility of her will. He became seriously alarmed, not only from the apprehension that if her wishes were thwarted, no earthly power could prevent her from burying herself in a convent, but he even feared that if De Soto ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... unanimous, the commodore and Capt. Hutchinson came on board to inquire into the cause of the dispute; and this lucky, and well timed visit, saved our credit; and established the Yankee character for inflexibility, beyond all doubt or controversy. These two worthy gentlemen soon discovered that Mr. O. had made representations not altogether correct. They therefore ordered the hatches to be taken off, and proper bread to be served out, and so ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... required for their perfect accomplishment a few years of time and a large share of vital force: one was the education of the brain, the other of the reproductive system. The schoolmaster superintended the first, and Nature the second. The school, with puritanic inflexibility, demanded every day of the month; Nature, kinder than the school, demanded less than a fourth of the time,—a seventh or an eighth of it would have probably answered. The schoolmaster might have yielded somewhat, but would not; Nature could ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... to have Grotius continue in Holland was so great, that his friend's inflexibility gave him much uneasiness. He wanted him to make application to the Prince of Orange, and, after obtaining his consent, to write to those in power, asking permission to stay in the Country: but this was precisely the step to which Grotius ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... Inflexibility. This seemed to be the characteristic that marked Baker and his kind. Defender of the Fixed Position might well have been his title. With all his might and power, Bill Baker defended the Fixed Position he had chosen, the Fixed Position behind ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... broker, and steals his Mississippi bonds (engraving), i. 21; efforts to save his life, inflexibility of the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... so that they protruded a little, as one who runs ahead of herself in her haste. Hannah had just time to note, in a flash, that the woman's smart hat was slightly askew and that, though she walked very fast, her trim ankles showed the inflexibility of age, when she saw that the woman was not going to get out of her way. Hannah Winter swerved quickly to avoid a collision. So did the other woman. Next instant Hannah Winter brought up with a crash against her own ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... her to authority on the subject with Anna-Felicitas, and by dint of doing all her calculations roughly, as she was careful to describe her method, she allowed room for withdrawal and escape where otherwise the inflexibility of figures might have caught her tight and held her down while Anna-Felicitas looked on and ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... fact she was inwardly quivering, and every moment found it more and more difficult to control herself. Never in all her life before had she been so relentlessly, harshly accused. In trying to conceal her emotion she only gave herself the appearance of rigid inflexibility. ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... but not obstinate. Never change your mind when the result of the alteration would be detrimental to your comfort and interest; but do not maintain an inconvenient inflexibility of purpose. Do not, for instance, in affairs of the heart, simply because you have declared, perhaps with an oath or two, that you will be constant till death, think it necessary to make any effort to remain so. The case ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... the communication made to Major Blackwater by the Adjutant Lawson. Bowed down to the dust by the accomplishment of the curse of Ellen Halloway, the inflexibility of Colonel de Haldimar's pride was not proof against the utter annihilation wrought to his hopes as a father by the unrelenting hatred of the enemy his early falsehood and treachery had raised up to him. When the adjutant entered his apartment, the stony coldness ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... movement; her inflexibility recalled one who long ago had renounced his fealty to the throne; her resistance kindled the flame that had been smoldering in ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... constructed, if I may use the expression, to ignore all the good points, and to feel with hysterical sensitiveness all the bad ones, of the French nation; and more especially of the French nation of the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary era. Alfieri's reality and Alfieri's ideal were austerity, inflexibility, pride and contemptuousness of character, coldness, roughness, decision of manner, curtness, reticence, and absolute truthfulness of speech; above all, no consideration for other folks' likings and dislikings, no mercy for their ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... to Madrid with the Archduke, proclaim him King there, and thus terrify all Spain by seizing the capital. Staremberg, who admitted that the project was dazzling, sustained, however, that it was of little use, and of great danger. He tried all in his power to shake the inflexibility of Stanhope, but in vain, and at last was obliged to yield as being the feebler of the two. The time lost in this dispute saved the wreck of the army which had just been defeated. What was afterwards done saved the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was a kind of steward, and had distinguished himself in his office by his address in raising the rents, his inflexibility in distressing the tardy tenants, and his acuteness in setting the parish free from burdensome inhabitants, by shifting them off ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... she had granted him a private interview,—that she was sitting by his side, but resolute, unconvinced, unmoved, while he besieged her with arguments, appealed to her with all the passionate fervor that convulsed his soul, portrayed in darkest colors the fearful results of her inflexibility. Now he painted her overwhelmed by his reasoning, melted by his application, terrified by that terrible menace, and finally consenting ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Lord Milner's inflexibility was, in its essence, a keener perception of duty than the ordinary: it was a determination to do what he believed to be for the good of South Africa and the Empire, irrespective of any consideration ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... quantities so minute, that our throats could count it by drops, I never sought to qualify its nauseous taste, or increase its quantity, by the addition of spirits, when spirits were more plentiful than the much-courted water. This trait proves, if it proves nothing else, that I had a good deal of that inflexibility of character, which we call in others obstinacy, when we don't like it, firmness, when we ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Christian Church in its infancy only. So long as the band of believers was a small and persecuted one, no temptation to violate the rule could exist. But as the Church grew, and acquired influence and position, it discovered that good policy demanded that the sternness and inflexibility of its youthful theories should undergo some modification. It found that it was not the most successful method of enticing stragglers into its fold to stigmatize the gods they ignorantly worshipped as devils, and to ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... His guest could not help thinking to himself that however pacific might be Mr. Ringgan's temper, no man in those days that tried men could have brought to the issue more stern inflexibility and gallant fortitude of bearing. His frame bore evidence of great personal strength, and his eye, with all its mildness, had an unflinching dignity that could never have quailed before duty or danger. And now, while he was ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... was just one passage which suited the mood of this group of younger Republicans. After a recital of injuries at the hands of the British ministry, Madison wrote with unwonted vigor: "With this evidence of hostile inflexibility in trampling on rights which no independent nation can relinquish Congress will feel the duty of putting the United States into an armor and an attitude demanded by the crisis; and corresponding with the national spirit ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... severe law: nevertheless, man approves of clemency in a sovereign, when its too great facility does not become prejudicial to society; he esteems it, because it announces humanity, mildness, a compassionate, noble soul; qualities he prefers in his governors to rigour, cruelty, inflexibility: besides, human laws are defective; they are frequently too severe; they are not competent to foresee all the circumstances of every case: the punishments they decree are not always commensurate with the offence: he therefore does not always think them just: but he feels very well, he understands ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... and his national outlook enabled him to give each aspect of a complicated and confused situation its proper relative emphasis. At a later date, when he had become President and was obliged to take decisive action in order to prevent the House from utterly collapsing, he showed an inflexibility of purpose no less remarkable than his previous intellectual insight. For as long as he had not made up his mind, he hesitated firmly and patiently; but when he had made up his mind, he was not to be confused ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... the prisoner was strung up by them accordingly. It is a savage legend which deserves to be remembered in justice to the audacity of the nameless peasant. Probably invented to glorify a renowned Englishman's inflexibility, it illustrates at all events the temper in which the war was waged. Ferocity to Irishmen was accounted policy and steadfastness. Every advantage was taken of the superiority of English steel and ordnance. Writing in 1603 for ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... hundred different tribes in Amazonia, each having a different language; even the scattered members of the same tribe can not understand each other.[181] This segregation of dialects is due in great part to the inflexibility of Indian character, and his isolated and narrow round of thought and life. When and where the Babel existed, whence the many branches of the great Tupi family separated, we know not. We only know ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... lower rooms of the Museum in Bruton-street. It is called the Chlamyphorus, and may be said to unite the habits of the mole with the appearance of the armadillo. Its upper parts and sides are defended by a coat, or rather cloak, of mail, of a coriaceous nature, but exceeding in inflexibility sole-leather of equal thickness. This cloak does not adhere, like that of the armadillo, to the whole surface, occupying the place of the skin—but is applied over the skin and fur, forming an additional covering, which is attached only along the middle of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... reputation of learning and piety which this prelate enjoyed in common with so many of his clerical contemporaries, he added an extraordinary earnestness in the promotion of Christian knowledge, and a courageous inflexibility on points of professional duty, imitated by few and excelled by none. His manly spirit disdained that slavish obsequiousness by which too many of his episcopal brethren paid homage to the narrow prejudices and state-jealousies ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... lips, she informed him, speaking with an unexampled severity of tone, that he was on no account to think of going to the office as usual, but was to wait at home until his father's return—and then hurried from the room. The fact was, that Mrs. Thorpe distrusted her own inflexibility, if she stayed too long in the presence of her penitent son; but Zack could not, unhappily, know this. He could only see that she left him abruptly, after delivering an ominous message; and could only place the gloomiest interpretation ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Michigan, at a place called Green Bay, which serves as the extreme frontier between the United States and the Indians on the northwestern side. Here I became acquainted with an American officer, Major H., who, after talking to me at length on the inflexibility of the Indian character, related the following fact: "I formerly knew a young Indian," said he, "who had been educated at a college in New England, where he had greatly distinguished himself, and ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... Blanchard knew inflexibility when he saw it; and he knew Stewart Morrison when it came to matters of business. He did not attempt argument. "Well, I'll be good ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... existence of love Lady Audley had little conception; and she attributed her son's conduct to wilful disobedience and obstinacy. In proportion as she had hitherto found him complying and gentle, her wrath had kindled at his present firmness and inflexibility. So bitter were her reflections on his conduct, so severe her animadversions on the being he loved, that Sir Edmund, fired with resentment, expressed his resolution of acting according to the dictates ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... bequeathed it to his heirs, rather attribute that unswerving architectural purpose of his, conceived and carried out through long years of systematic personal exertion, to something of the fervour of genius, as well as inflexibility of will; and in walking through those rooms, with their splendid ceilings and their meagre furniture, which tell how all the spare money had been absorbed before personal comfort was thought of, I have felt ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... representative themes, an illustration of which was also noted in "The Redemption." The first one, consisting of four notes, presenting a sequence of three major seconds, is intended to express "the terror inspired by the sense of the inflexibility of justice and, in consequence, by that of the anguish of punishment. Its sternness gives expression both to the sentences of divine justice and the sufferings of the condemned, and is found in combination throughout the whole work, with melodic forms which express ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... with, their tricks a settled and weighty sternness, and that a mighty mass cannot be shaken with the idle puffing of the lips. For Starkad had set his face so firmly in his stubborn wrath, that he seemed not a whit easier to move than ever. For the inflexibility which he owed his vows was not softened either by the strain of the lute or the enticements of the palate; and he thought that more respect should be paid to his strenuous and manly purpose than to the tickling of the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... run away. She surveyed them in turn, leisurely and perfectly self-possessed. Even the optimist recognized inflexibility when he was bumped against it hard enough! She stepped backward, challenging reply, but they were ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... attended by earnest supplication for the impressing influences of the Holy Spirit. The mind must thus be drilled to reflection upon them till they become principles of action, so vital and permanent, that a shape and inflexibility shall be given to the moral sensibilities, which no wear of time or circumstances shall ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... court-martial must directly contradict that which Captain Longmore offered at the trial in Clonmel. But while Mr. O'Brien viewed the conduct of Captain Longmore as cowardly submission, it would be unjust to conclude that it imparted a single shade of inflexibility to his principles or purpose. On the contrary, they assumed their attributes of most rigid sternness as his fortunes became clouded by a deeper gloom. He was averse to everything which bore the stamp of desperation, or could possibly imply a ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... been a sturdy cottage, with a grim endurance and inflexibility which even some later and lighter additions had softened rather than changed. On either side of the door, against the bleak whitewashed wall, two tall fuchsias relieved the rigid blankness with a show of color. The windows were prettily draped with ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... superior; nay, one might ask, what equal he has? The heart of him is of the true Prophet cast. "He lies there," said the Earl of Morton at his grave, "who never feared the face of man." He resembles, more than any of the moderns, an old Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking adherence to God's truth, stern rebuke in the name of God to all that forsake truth: an old Hebrew prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh minister of the sixteenth century. We are to take him for that; not require ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... thought. We live alone with majestic forces,—forests greater than an empire, unmapped waters, and strange, savage men. We are pygmies; yet, if we have spirit we can grow into some measure of the greatness and inflexibility around us. Monsieur, when you asked me—what you asked me now—you were thinking of France and its standards. Of little, tidy, hedged-in France. You were not—— Oh, monsieur, I am sorry you asked me that question. Of course ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... notions of his own, and he's as far as the poles asunder from what I was at his age." This state of feeling was kept up by the mental balance in Deronda, who was moved by an affectionateness such as we are apt to call feminine, disposing him to yield in ordinary details, while he had a certain inflexibility of judgment, and independence of opinion, held ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of the last week. She wore also a large, loose, dark-coloured wrapper, which came well up round her neck, and which was not buoyed out, as were her dresses in general, with an under mechanism of petticoats. It clung to her closely, and added to the inflexibility of her general appearance. And then she had encased her feet in large carpet slippers, which no doubt were comfortable, but which struck her visitor as being strange and unsightly. "Do you find a difficulty in getting your people together for early morning prayers?" ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... ought to be hissed, instead of being applauded. This it is to be so excellent a judge; this it is which gives a critic that exalted gratification which can never be attained by the illiterate,—the supreme power of pointing out faults, where others discern nothing but beauties, and preserving a rigid inflexibility of muscle, while the sides of the vulgar herd are shaking with laughter. These merry mortals, thinking with Plato that it is no proof of a good stomach to nauseate every aliment presented them, do not inquire too nicely into causes, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... contend with observations and prayers of all sorts, and resolved not to yield, determined to cut short all useless supplications, which would only make him lose precious time. He said, therefore, with a grave, severe, and almost solemn air, which showed the inflexibility of his determination: "Listen to me, wife—and you also, my son—when, at my age, a man makes up his mind to do anything, he knows the reason why. And when a man has once made up his mind, neither wife nor child can alter it. I have resolved ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... sexual habits, variations being much less frequent among animals that pair and breed slowly, than among those which do not mate and breed more freely. After running rapidly over several animals, and discussing the flexibility or inflexibility of their organizations, he declares the elephant to be the only one on which a state of domestication has produced no effect, inasmuch as "it refuses to breed under confinement, and cannot therefore transmit the badges of its servitude ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... and coat, found them and put her into them, handling her with an extreme inflexibility of manner and tenderness of touch, as if she had been ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... Seigneur, the Cure, and the Abbe Rossignol, an ascetic, severe man, with a face of intolerance and inflexibility. Two constables in plain clothes followed; one stolid, one alert, one English and one French, both with grim satisfaction in their faces—the successful exercise of his trade is pleasant to every craftsman. When they ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Urbain gave of this inflexibility was in 1620, when he gained a lawsuit against a priest named Meunier. He caused the sentence to be carried out with such rigour that he awoke an inextinguishable hatred in Meunier's mind, which ever after burst forth ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Elisabeth with a gentle inflexibility of purpose. "Will you give a message to Sara for me?" Audrey nodded. "Ask her to come and see me to-morrow, and tell her that—that I will explain." Suddenly she stretched out an impulsive hand. "Oh, Mrs. Maynard! If you knew how much I dread ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... suit with her young mistress, because she now considered his interest as inseparably connected with her own. Surely nothing could be more absurd or preposterous than the articles of this covenant, which she insisted upon with such inflexibility. How could she suppose that her pretended lover would be restrained by an oath, when the very occasion of incurring it was an intention to act in violation of all laws human and divine? and yet such ridiculous conjuration is commonly ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... abandoned their hopes of relief, but they spurned the summons to surrender. Leyden was sublime in its despair. A few murmurs were, however, occasionally heard at the steadfastness of the magistrates, and a dead body was placed at the door of the burgomaster, as a silent witness against his inflexibility. A party of the more faint-hearted even assailed the heroic Adrian Van der Werf with threats and reproaches as he passed through the streets. A crowd had gathered around him, as he reached a triangular ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "social order" were now destined to be forever ended. Irrevocable was the doom, and the lowering aspect of the proud dame of Waddow, as the door unclosed, and a faint light from the loophole opposite revealed her enemy in all the mockery of repose—grim, erect, and undisturbed—showed the inflexibility of her purpose. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Every day Lizaveta received from him a letter, sent now in this way, now in that. They were no longer translated from the German. Hermann wrote them under the inspiration of passion, and spoke in his own language, and they bore full testimony to the inflexibility of his desire, and the disordered condition of his uncontrollable imagination. Lizaveta no longer thought of sending them back to him; she became intoxicated with them, and began to reply to them, and little by little her answers became longer and more affectionate. At last she threw out of ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... even after her marriage, found it easier to submit than contend; and so Dinah had ruled supreme. This was the easier, in that she was perfect mistress of that diplomatic art which unites the utmost subservience of manner with the utmost inflexibility ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... object of sight, the White Pine is free from some of the defects of the Fir and Spruce, having none of their stiffness of foliage and inflexibility of spray, that cause them to resemble artificial objects. It has the symmetry of the Fir, joined with a certain flowing grace that assimilates it to the deciduous trees. With sufficient amplitude to conceal a look of primness that often arises from symmetry, we observe a certain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... had good reason to be more amazed than any other human being. Here his character displayed itself; he was more amazed than overcome. Made a judge, and the judge of an adored woman, he found in his soul the equity of a judge as well as the inflexibility. A lover still, he thought less of his own shattered life than of his wife's life; he listened, not to his own anguish, but to some far-off voice that cried to him, "Clemence cannot lie! Why ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... insulting!" cried he, half to himself; and then, with a quick motion hastening to open the door for her, "Go, madam," he added, almost breathless with conflicting emotions, "go, and be your happiness unalterable as your inflexibility!" ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... fatigue, he displayed in such matters as he took in hand a want of prudence and of judgment. His desire for glory sprang rather from impulse than from reason. His liberality was inconsiderate, immoderate, promiscuous. When he displayed inflexibility of purpose, it was more often an ill-founded obstinacy than firmness, and that which many people called his goodness of nature rather deserved the name of coldness and feebleness of spirit.' This is Guicciardini's portrait. De Comines is more brief: 'The king was young, a fledgling from the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... servants that she regards it as even a greater desideratum than the efficient discharge of duties. The mistress must not lose her temper. She must be calm, imperturbable, and dignified, always. If she gives an order, she must insist, at whatever personal cost, that it shall be obeyed. Pertinacity and inflexibility on this ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... deterred her from taking the step he so strongly disapproved. He had, in fact, made this threat as a last effort to save her from a union that would, inevitably, lead to unhappiness. But having made it, his stubborn and offended pride caused him to adhere with stern inflexibility ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... to make preparations for their journey. Edmund made his report of Sir Robert's inflexibility to his father, in presence of Sir Philip; who, again, ventured to urge the Baron on ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... Reproduction have much to do with determining pen methods they become important factors for consideration. While their waywardness and inflexibility are the cause of no little distress to the illustrator, the limitations of processes cannot be said, on the whole, to make for inferior standards in drawing, as will be seen by the following rules which they impose, and for which a ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... modern times. We were slaves, and we deserved to be so. In almost every country there now appeared a king, that puppet pageant, that monster in creation, miserable itself, a combination of every vice, and invented for the curse of human kind. "Where now," she asked, "was the sternness and inflexibility of ancient story? Where was that Junius, that stood and gazed in triumph upon the execution of his sons? Where that Fabricius, that turned up his nose under the snout of an elephant? Where was that Marcus Brutus, who sent his dagger to the heart of Caesar? For her ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... to the skill and courage of Jones, and his inflexible resolution to conquer." That resolution, which was indeed a characteristic of Jones, reached on at least one occasion, that of the later battle with the Serapis, a degree of inflexibility which ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... whether at home or abroad. Gracchus saw that the question of rapid and easy communication between the existing towns was all important. The great roads of Rome betrayed their military intent in the unswerving inflexibility of their course. The positions which they skirted were of strategic, but not necessarily of industrial, importance. To bring the hamlet into connection with the township, and the township into touch with the ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... comparative stranger in Carleton, having but recently purchased the factories from the heirs of the previous owner; but he had been in charge long enough to establish a reputation for sternness and inflexibility ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... here practised gives a disagreeable expression to their countenances. The complicated but symmetrical figures covering the whole face puzzle and mislead an unaccustomed eye: it is moreover probable that the deep incisions, by destroying the play of the superficial muscles, give an air of rigid inflexibility. But, besides this, there is a twinkling in the eye which cannot indicate anything but cunning and ferocity. Their figures are tall and bulky; but not comparable in elegance with those of the working-classes ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Para Indians are applicable, of course, to some extent, to the Mamelucos, who now constitute a great proportion of the population. The inflexibility of character of the Indian, and his total inability to accommodate himself to new arrangements, will infallibly lead to his extinction, as immigrants, endowed with more supple organisations, increase, and civilisation advances in the Amazon region. But, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... the pause and run-on lines freely, the regularity of the foot makes for a certain stiffness and inflexibility. ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... other, anti-mercurial. But the main cause of this reserve lay in the infrequency of visits consequent upon the difficulties of local movement. The other frost lay in the Spanish stateliness and the inflexibility of our social ceremonies. Our social meetings of this period, even for purposes of pleasure, were true solemnities. With usage of politeness that laid a weight of silence and delay upon every movement of a social company, rapid motion of thought or fancy became in a literal sense physically impossible. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... inflexibility, rigidity, firmness; prudery, constraint, precision, formality; tension. Antonyms: pliability, limpness, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... hypothesis is the true one for the reasons about to be given; and if so, the finality of the process of domestication must be accepted as one of the most striking instances of the inflexibility of natural disposition, and of the limitations thereby imposed upon the [15] choice of careers for animals, and by analogy for ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... of colour and lack of reflection in cottons; the other quality of stiffness, or want of flexibility, is occasionally overcome by methods of weaving. Indeed, if the manufacturer or weaver had a clear idea of excellence in this respect, undoubtedly the natural inflexibility of fibre ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... and the little they have set loosely about them. In their own cases, their appeals to arms are not always so prompt; but in that of their friends, their perceptions of honor are intuitively keen, and their inflexibility in preserving it from reproach unbending; and such is the weakness of mankind, their "tenderness on points where the nicer feelings of a soldier are involved, that these machines of custom, these thermometers graduated to the scale of false honor, usurp the ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... been pursued unless he and they had been in the nicest mechanical relations and unison, it is curious to consider that the spirit of the man was in moral accordance or interchange with nothing around him. This indeed he had confided to his lost nephew, before the occasion for his present inflexibility arose. ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... of misery results from man's helplessness and ignorance and nature's inflexibility in this one matter of crossing the ocean! What agonies of prayer there were during all the long hours that this ship was driving straight on to these fatal rocks, all to no purpose! It struck and crushed ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... dressed in a dark grey frock-coat suit, and wore a pinky-red wild rose, which he had plucked on the Common, in his button-hole. As he shook hands with him the Professor made a mental note of him as an embodiment of strength, keenness, and quiet inflexibility: a summing-up which was pretty near ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... addressed my father, only to receive from him a sharp refusal to entertain the matter, I was threatened with imprisonment in the case of longer default of payment. And I actually had to submit to this punishment. My step-mother inflamed the displeasure of my father, and rejoiced at his inflexibility. My trustee, who still had the disposal of some property of mine, could have helped me, but did not, because the letter of the law was against any interference from his side. Each one hoped by the continuance of my sorry plight to break the stubbornness ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... The woman, born housekeeper as she considers herself, is rigid in her ideas of what she thinks she wants, but when the builder has followed her plans she is far from satisfied with the result. She is used to material which puckers and stretches in her clothing; she cannot understand the inflexibility of wood and stone. The remedy is for high-school girls, probably even grammar-school pupils as well, to have along with their drawing some problems in house-planning and ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... Wolsey.—The inflexibility of your mind had like to have ruined you in some of your measures; and the bigotry which you had derived from your long abode in a cloister, and retained when a Minister, was very near depriving the Crown of Castile of the new-conquered ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... generous action: into believing that in the course of a very few days—or weeks, at the most, he would have recalled his erring son and have given Cynthia his blessing. He would, he told himself, have been forced eventually to yield when that paragon of inflexibility, Bob, dictated terms to him at the head of the locomotive works. Better let the generosity be on his (Mr. Worthington's) side. At all events, victory had never been bought more cheaply. Humiliation, in Mr. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in which I was placed by Mr. Forester's letter, not merely a willingness, but an alacrity and impatience, to return. We procured a second horse. We proceeded on our journey in silence. My mind was occupied again in endeavouring to account for Mr. Forester's letter. I knew the inflexibility and sternness of Mr. Falkland's mind in accomplishing the purposes he had at heart; but I also knew that every virtuous and magnanimous principle was ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... his friend had that inflexibility of principle in criticism and literary utterance which they adhered to as though it were a matter of high morals. This feeling contrasts with the easy adaptability of our day, when the critic so often has to shape his views according to interested aims. ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... substitute for the rigidness of God, for the aim of the development is death—the death of the individual as well as of the universe. "He who has learned to get comfort in the deepest affliction from the absolute impartiality of the causal law, is on so good terms with death, whose inflexibility he comprehends, that without reluctance he gives to it the universe into the bargain." ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... the commencement of the Consulate affords an example of Bonaparte's inflexibility when he had once formed a determination. In the spring of 1799, when we were in Egypt, the Directory gave to General Latour-Foissac, a highly distinguished officer, the command of Mantua, the taking of which had so powerfully contributed ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... and the hero of unnumbered drinking bouts in the not so very distant past. But—two months before—Jim had startled Links and horrified his priest by marrying Kitty Muckevay of the gold-red hair. Kitty had a rare measure of good sense but was a Protestant of Ulster inflexibility. She had taken Jim in hand to reform him, and for sixty days he had not touched a drop! Moreover he had promised Kitty to keep out of mischief on this day of days. All that morning he had worked among the horses in Downey's livery stable ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Should he be less courageous, less master of himself than that young wife? Neither Claire, nor Fromont, nor anybody else suspected what was in his mind. They could barely detect a severity, an inflexibility in his conduct, which were not habitual with him. Risler awed the workmen now; and those of them upon whom his white hair, blanched in one night, his drawn, prematurely old features did not impose respect, quailed before his strange glance-a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... slide," for we were going down an inclined plane with perfect ease. The compass indicated that we were moving in a southeasterly direction. The flow of lava had never turned to the right or the left. It had the inflexibility of a straight line. ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... continued firm in his belief that the crime had been committed by Bucholz, and being a man of stern inflexibility of mind, and of a determined disposition, he was resolved that justice should be done and the guilty parties brought ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... you please,' interrupted M. de Veron. 'The affair, as I have told you, is decided. You will marry Mademoiselle de Merode; or if not, he added with iron inflexibility of tone and manner—'Eugene de Veron is likely to benefit very little by his father's wealth, which the said Eugene will do well to remember is of a kind not very difficult of transference beyond the range ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... tall, hard-featured lady, but by no means ill-looking. There was an inflexibility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and carriage, amply sufficient to account for the effect she had made upon a gentle creature like my mother; but her features were rather handsome than otherwise, though unbending and austere. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... home, not in Philadelphia. In the convention, Madison wrote a month after it adjourned, "South Carolina and Georgia were inflexible on the point of the slaves." What was to be the union which that inflexibility carried was not foreseen. It was the children's teeth that were to ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... health and welfare. The current government has lowered income taxes and introduced measures to boost employment. At the end of 2002 the government was focusing on the problems of the high cost of labor and labor market inflexibility resulting from the 35-hour workweek and restrictions on lay-offs. The government was also pushing for pension reforms and simplification of administrative procedures. The tax burden remains one of the highest in Europe. The current economic slowdown and inflexible ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... trusting in their recovery, abhorring apostasy, able to bear all things and hope all things with the consciousness of being steadfast to spiritual obligations, the kernel of their number would harden into an inflexibility more and more insured by motive and habit. They would cherish all differences that marked them off from their hated oppressors, all memories that consoled them with a sense of virtual though unrecognised superiority; and the separateness which was made ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... had enemies to contend with, from whom they obtained little, the manners and laws, the mode of education, and the government of their country, remained pure as at first. Their business, indeed, became more easy; for the terror of their name, their inflexibility, and the superior means they had of bringing their powers into action, all served to facilitate their conquests. But when they conquered Carthage, and begun sic to taste the fruits of wealth, their ground-work altered by degrees, and the superstructure ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... Fayette's countenance in presence of Marie Antoinette. There was perceptible in the general's attitude, it was to be seen in his words, distinguishable in his accent, beneath the cold and polished forms of the courtier, the inflexibility of the citizen. The queen preferred the factions. She thus plainly spoke to her confidents. "M. de La Fayette," she said, "will not be the mayor of Paris in order that he may the sooner become the maire du ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... reader will readily perceive, that if I have not scrupled to profit from his discoveries, at least I have freely and largely dissented from him, where he appeared to me to wander from the path of truth. For my own part, I am persuaded that it can only be by striking off something of inflexibility from his system, and something of pedantry from the common one, that we can expect to furnish a medium, equally congenial to the elegance of civilization, and the manliness ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... with herself; and although his early military services, and her frequent visits to the family of her sister, and subsequent establishment at its head, had prevented their ever meeting, still she was familiar with his domestic virtues, and well knew that the rigid inflexibility for which his public acts were distinguished formed no part of his reputation in private life. He was known in Virginia as a consistent but just and lenient master; and she felt a kind of pride in associating in her ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... his sturdy, weather-beaten countenance and forest attire, lending an air of romantic wildness to the aspect of an individual, who, seen by the sober light of day, would have exhibited the peculiarities of a man remarkable for the strangeness of his dress, the iron-like inflexibility of his frame, and the singular compound of quick, vigilant sagacity, and of exquisite simplicity, that by turns usurped the possession of his muscular features. At a little distance in advance stood Uncas, his whole person thrown powerfully into view. The ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... moment the indomitable inflexibility of purpose of our heroine had not faltered for an instant, neither had she suffered the slightest despondency, in view of the terrible array of disheartening circumstances that had continually confronted her, but when ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Bignon remarks that the queen, Louisa, who left no means untried in order to save as much as possible of Prussia, came somewhat too late, when Napoleon had already entered into an agreement with Russia. Hence Napoleon's inflexibility, which was the more insulting owing to the apparently yielding silence with which, from a feeling of politeness, he sometimes received the personal petitions of the queen, to which he would afterward ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... fact is very remarkable in the history of nations), these analogous circumstances have not effaced the individual features, or the shades of character which distinguish the American tribes. We observe in the men of copper hue, a moral inflexibility, a steadfast perseverance in habits and manners, which, though modified in each tribe, characterise essentially the whole race. These peculiarities are found in every region; from the equator to Hudson's Bay on the one hand, and to the Straits of Magellan ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... no hope for her; the repeated visits of the doctor and his decided judgments left her no illusions as to the possibility of escape. "The very first cold snap you must certainly go," he said, with the inflexibility of the young. "Mr. Prentiss is likely to have one of his bad turns and you simply cannot give him the are he must have. Besides, when he is sick, you will have to look after the fires, and the slightest ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... raging zeal, by which he was, indeed, so much distinguished, that, in a satire mentioned by Wood, he is dignified by the title of archvisiter; an appellation which he seems to have been industrious to deserve by severity and inflexibility; for, not contented with the commission which he and his colleagues had already received, he procured six or seven of the members of parliament to meet privately in Mr. Rouse's lodgings, and assume the style and authority of a committee, and from them ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... proceeding always took place in the afternoon of the day succeeding his return; perhaps, because the boys acquired strength of mind from the suspense of the morning, or, possibly, because Mr Squeers himself acquired greater sternness and inflexibility from certain warm potations in which he was wont to indulge after his early dinner. Be this as it may, the boys were recalled from house-window, garden, stable, and cow-yard, and the school were assembled ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... differences urged in section 1 necessitates a differentiation and a flexibility of the high school curriculum that is limited only by the social and individual needs to be served, the size of the school, and the availability of means. The rigid inflexibility of the inherited course of study has contributed perhaps more than its full share to the waste product of the educational machinery. The importance of this change from compulsion and rigidity toward greater flexibility has already received attention and commendation. One authority[57] states ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien
... resolution with which, after a hundred successive defeats, they still renewed their attacks; the spirit with which they continued to repeat their arguments in the senate, though they found a majority determined to condemn them; and the inflexibility with which they rejected all offers of places and preferments, at last excited my curiosity so far, that I applied myself to inquire, with great diligence, into the real motives of their conduct, and to discover ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... it passionately with a pole, and a long line of sneering camels confronted them, treading stealthily, and turning their serpentine necks from side to side as they came onwards with a soft and weary inflexibility. In the distance there was a vision of a glaring market-place crowded with moving forms and humming ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... that a right which all men claim for themselves, with the most sensitive and pertinacious inflexibility, they have not yet learned to accord to their fellow men, in cases where their own interests are involved. Every man is saying, "Let me have full liberty to propagate my opinions, and to oppose all that I deem wrong and injurious, but let no man take this liberty with my opinions and practices. ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... exaggeration, and a good lesson to biographers in general. The intimacy of the friendship between the writer and his subject might have interfered with his impartiality and repelled our confidence if the case had been more complex and had made greater demands on the inflexibility of the judge. But in the case of a character and a life so perfectly simple, pure, and transparent as the character and the life of Keble, there was but one ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... sink under, or resist. Amongst shopkeepers, servants, &c. without incurring personal odium, it has the effect of what would be deemed in England impenetrable assurance. It forces pertinaceously an article not wanted, and preserves the inflexibility of the features at a detected imposition: it inspires servants with arguments in defence of every misdemeanour in the whole domestic catalogue; it renders them insensible either of their negligences or the consequences of them; and endows ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... no ordinary man to succumb to the fascinations of a woman. She had experienced his obstinacy, and knew the inflexibility of his nature. His determination was a rock against which she had been broken too many times not to know its strength. For a moment she despaired, then courage came to her again, thrusting away the doubts that crowded in upon her and leaving the hope that still lingered in ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... desire to extend the circle of figures or to alter their wretched appearance. The same uncouth forms return with a killing monotony. Centuries do not change them. The uniformity of monastic life by no means tended to relax the inflexibility of invention. Religion, not art, was the sculptor's or the painter's object; his production was a creation of faith, not of beauty. Such is the character of almost all the carvings in wood and stone which have been found in the catacombs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... into them, provided the senate would first banish Arnold of Brescia out of Rome, abolish the republic, and, together with the citizens, return to their duty. After much hesitation, and some attempts to procure a modification of such sweeping terms,—attempts which the inflexibility of the pope entirely frustrated,—those terms were accepted. On their completion, Adrian revoked the interdict, held his triumphant entry into Rome, and celebrated in the church of St. John Lateran, with great pomp and jubilee, ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... of this family, bound together by the force of religious ties, by the inflexibility of its customs, by one solitary emotion, that of avarice, a passion which was now as it were its compass, Elisabeth was forced to commune with herself, instead of imparting her ideas to those around her, for she felt herself without equals in mind who could comprehend ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... questioned whether a single suggestion was of sufficient moment to justify a revision of the system. There is abundant reason, nevertheless, to suppose that immaterial as these objections were, they would have been adhered to with a very dangerous inflexibility, in some States, had not a zeal for their opinions and supposed interests been stifled by the more powerful sentiment of selfpreservation. One State, we may remember, persisted for several years in refusing her ...
— The Federalist Papers
... ship's deck at sea is a piece of household work which in all times but raging gales is regularly attended to every evening; it has been known to be done in the case of ships actually foundering at the time. Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of sea-usages and the instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom would not willingly drown without first washing their faces. But in all vessels this broom business is the prescriptive province of the boys, if boys there be aboard. Besides, it was the stronger ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... power is felt in the army, and his patronage being almost unlimited, it was natural, they say, that he should be received with cheers. From a lieutenant up to a general, all are dependent on his favor for promotion. At all events, his austerity and inflexibility have been relaxed, and he has made popular speeches wherever he has gone. I hope good fruits will ensue. But he returns to find the people here almost in a state of starvation in the midst of plenty, brought on by the knavery or ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... to be saved. He has all his father's inflexibility, but an intellect as clear as that of the most practical man. He has a will of iron, dauntless resolution, and an implacable temper. At the same time he has the open generosity and the tender ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... a dangerous heretic and schismatic, he is attached to orthodoxy by cords stronger than steel; henceforth all his earnest enthusiasm shall be directed to the advancement of his order, and consequently of his church. Does one exhibit inflexibility in some matter of conscience upon which the church insists, there are many of God's children in the wilderness starving in spirit for the bread of life; and to these, with that bread, shall the refractory son be sent. He receives the commission; departs upon his ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... thronged the narrow street of the Faubourg St. Honore, and waited patiently for hours outside the Embassy to catch one glimpse of the strong, stern, thoughtful face of the man who had come with his legions to assist France in the great hour of need. They talked to each other about the inflexibility of his character, about the massive jaw which, they said, would bite off Germany's head. They cheered in the English manner, with a "Heep! heep! hooray!"—when they caught sight for the first time of the khaki uniforms of English officers on the steps of the Ministry of ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... grace of French cleverness with a reserved style and refined pride gained from the English blood of the Maldens. For his part, Felix really loved the girl, and had let his impatience, that very day, carry him into a step that failed to move the elder Montmorot's inflexibility. He refused absolutely to give his daughter to a man without fortune or prospects. Felix was crushed, his hopes all shattered at a blow, by this answer, though he had a thousand reasons to expect it. And at what a moment! A half-unfolded red ticket, stuffed with disgusting threats, peeped out ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... said, nature itself suggests such correctives and preventives. To save men from being victims of their occupations is often to add a better and larger half to their motor development. The danger of the system, which now best represents this ideal, is inflexibility and overscholastic treatment. It needs a great range of individual variations if it would do more than increase circulation, respiration, and health, or the normal functions of internal organs and fundamental physiological activities. ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... quietly her reason for the delay. Few people argued with Mrs. Ogilvie; there was an inflexibility about her which made protest impossible. He knew that the case was a hopeless one, but life might certainly be prolonged if she would submit to ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... recognized the genuine ring of the other, and admired and respected that which was most true and noble. The purity, simplicity and high-minded honor which distinguished the younger, had its effect on the elder, even while he smiled at the inflexibility which would not swerve one hair's breadth from the line of right. The story is often told, how, when this young man's conscience stood bolt upright in the way of what was deemed a desirable arrangement, Stevens one day exclaimed: "It don't do, Pennypacker, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... point of view. The ladies saw only theirs. In this respect, at least, they closely resembled the lady of the feathers. When Lawler at length returned with his grave: "This way, if you please, ma'am," Cuckoo rose to her feet with the inflexibility of some iron thing set in motion by mechanism, and marched in his ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... game leg: the inflexibility of my pantaloons put any acrobatics out of the question: Berry's action, at any rate, was more than usually unrestricted. Moreover, it was Berry whom we had ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates |
