"Intractable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... special sharpness in the moral life, where the irreconcilable demands of natural self-interest and of Spirit assume their most intractable shape. Old habits and paths of discharge which have almost become automatic must now, it seems, be abandoned. New paths, in spite of resistances, must be made. Thus it is that temptation, hard conflict, and bewildering perplexities usher ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... those of the cabbage, which on the rocky face of oceanic precipices is nothing but a weed, "with a tall stem and scanty disordered leaves of a crude green, an acrid savour, and a rank smell"; he speaks of wheat, formerly a poor unknown grass; the primitive pear-tree "an ugly intractable thorny bush, with detestable bitter fruit"; the wild celery, which grows beside ponds, "green all over, hard, with a repulsive flavour, and which gradually becomes tenderer, sweeter, whiter," and "ceases ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... looks—like the falling of a tumbler-pigeon, but on closer examination proves to be simply a closing of the wings, and a consequent drop of about a foot. Sometimes, this is repeated every few yards, as long as in sight. It is occasioned by some large and intractable insect having been captured, and the anterior joint of the wing, with its well-armed thumb, is required in retaining it until masticated." Notwithstanding this little difficulty, however, the Noctule is pretty rapid in disposing even of his most ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... tedious task, but Colwyn lightened it with the aid of a bottle of gun oil which he found in one of the presses. Some of the screws yielded immediately to that bland influence, and came out easily. Others remained fast in the intractable way of rusty screws, but Colwyn persevered, and by dint of oiling, coaxing, and unscrewing, finally had the satisfaction of seeing all the screws lying in a little greasy brown heap on the faded green cloth of the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... become his wife; she resisted prayers, tears, and objurgations, she refused her husband's lightest caresses, and rushed off to shut herself into the Cabinet of the Unfortunate Princesses, where she remained, alone and intractable, for whole nights ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... a work of no small difficulty. McKinley suffered severely for a time from the effects of his wounds, but at length fully recovered, and lived to a good old age. He was heard to say, that of all the pupils that ever came to his school, the wildcat was the most intractable; that he would at any time rather fight two Indians ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... developed under the iron control of her father, Manuel del Popolo Garcia, who compelled to submission her seemingly intractable voice until it became sonorous, superb, a brilliant and fascinating contralto, with a range of over three octaves, reaching E in alt. Her own indomitable will and exceptional artistic intelligence were prime factors in the training. In her heart-searching tones and passionate ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... off the face of modern London without in any way interfering with the supply of their daily wants. They were doubtless dull as acquaintances, but as sons they would have been eminently restful. With a growing sense of irritation Francesca compared these deserving young men with her own intractable offspring, and wondered why Fate should have singled her out to be the parent of such a vexatious variant from a comfortable and desirable type. As far as remunerative achievement was concerned, Comus copied the insouciance ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... to the central desert. In the north a formidable barrier to Seleucid expansion arose within five years of Seleucus' death, namely, a settlement of Gauls who had been invited across the straits by a king of Bithynia. After charging and raiding in all directions these intractable allies were penned by the repeated efforts of both the Seleucid and the Pergamene kings into the upper Sakaria basin (henceforth to be known as Galatia) and there they formed a screen behind which Bithynia and Paphlagonia maintained sturdy independence. The north-east also ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... during the former era, is Gothic. Dante, endeavoring to conform himself to literary tradition, began to write the Divina Commedia in Latin, and had elaborated several cantos of it in that dead and intractable material. But that poetic instinct, which is never the instinct of an individual, but of his age, could not so be satisfied, and leaving the classic structure he had begun to stand as a monument of failure, he completed his work in Italian. Instead of endeavoring to manufacture ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... child!" he cried, in affectionate distress, "I know that you will not forget that rank, birth—" He looked at her, and, seeing that she appeared intractable, exclaimed further, "It's no new thing that ladies should, in a fit of madness, demean themselves—young ladies frequently marry grooms; but, believe me, my dear Sophia"—earnestly—"no happiness ever came of such a thing—only ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... it, but whatever rude matter it receives, it instantly so arranges that it comes right; all things fall into their place and appear in that place perfect, useful, and evidently not to be spared, so that of its combinations there is endless variety, and every intractable and seemingly unavailable fragment that we give to it, is instantly turned to some brilliant use, and made the nucleus of a new group of glory; however poor or common the gift, it will be thankful for it, treasure it up, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... a number of improbabilities and contradictions, that it is altogether unworthy of Euripides. But this is by no means a legitimate conclusion. Do not the faults which they censure unavoidably follow from the selection of an intractable subject, so very inconvenient as a nightly enterprise? The question respecting the genuineness of any work, turns not so much on its merits or demerits, as rather on the resemblance of its style and peculiarities to those ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... found an opportunity of discussing. It was necessary to arrive at some new arrangement regarding Wager's children; for the boy, Albert, would soon be nine years old, and, as Mrs. Abbott confessed, he had given her a great deal of trouble. Both the children were intractable, hated lessons, and played alarming pranks; Master Albert's latest feat might have cost him his life, for he struck furiously through a pane of glass at a child mocking him from the other side, and was all but fainting from loss of blood when Mrs. Abbott came to his help. Plainly this youngster ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... appear, at a distance, a delicate and frail shape, are really heavy. Even in so small a craft as a ketch they are massive enough to surprise you into wondering at the cunning of shipwrights, those artists who take gross lumps of intractable timber and metal, and compel them to subtle mouldings and soft grace, to an image which we know means life that ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... in intractable cases, in whom mental peculiarities are most frequently seen—either dullness, stupidity and ungovernable temper, or very marked talent in one direction with as marked an incapacity in others. In all epileptics, the pupils of the eye are larger than normal, and, after contracting to bright ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... shores, straight to Pylos. Wondrous were the tracks, a thing to marvel on, work of a glorious god. For the black dust showed the tracks of the kine making backward to the mead of asphodel; but this child intractable fared neither on hands nor feet, through the sandy land, but this other strange craft had he, to tread the paths as if shod on with oaken shoots. {153} While he drove the kine through a land of sand, right plain to discern were all the tracks in the dust, but ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... the east by the mountain country of the Lolos, which extends north nearly to Yachau (supra, pp. 45, 48, 60), and which, owing to the fierce intractable character of the race, forms throughout its whole length an impenetrable barrier between East and West. [The Rev. Gray Owen, of Ch'eng-tu, wrote (Jour. China B.R.A.S. xxviii. 1893-1894, p. 59): "The only great trade ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... fresh razor did its work admirably, in the adroit hand of Joshua. The hitherto intractable beard flew off rapidly, and Joshua's tongue moved more glibly even than his razor. Barbers in the act of office have, like the House of Commons, the privilege of speech. They are not amenable afterwards for what they say. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the evidence of this love of the soil in a region so wild and intractable! High above we obtain a glimpse of some ancient village, its scrambling roofs shining amid orchard-trees and firwoods, or an isolated chalet of goatherd or shepherd breaks some solitude. One ruined ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Gluck could hardly tell where they ended; they seemed to melt into air. The features of the face, however, were by no means finished with the same delicacy; they were rather coarse, slightly inclining to coppery in complexion, and indicative, in expression, of a very pertinacious and intractable disposition in their small proprietor. When the dwarf had finished his self-examination, he turned his small, sharp eyes full on Gluck, and stared at him deliberately for a minute or two. "No, it wouldn't, Gluck, my boy," said the ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... interesting sidelights on the times. It appears that ecclesiastics had already been forbidden to keep women servants in their houses, but the rule was so often disregarded that it was enacted that in the future, as a punishment for such intractable churchmen, their servants should be sold as slaves and the proceeds handed over to some charitable organization. In just what way this punishment was to affect the clergy, beyond causing them temporary annoyance, it is difficult to ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... these separately, and see if we cannot reduce any of them to rule. In this respect the subject will be found somewhat intractable. Scarcely two subjects will be found to send exactly the same amount of light through the lens. However, a broad classification may be made, and this has been done by Mr. Burton in his Table of Comparative Exposures. A glance at this table will show how greatly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... eager for peace with the Iroquois at any price; but Dongan was using every means to prevent their treating of peace with the French governor until he had complied with all the English demands. In this extremity, Denonville sent Father Vaillant to Albany, in the hope of bringing his intractable rival to conditions less humiliating. The Jesuit played his part with ability, and proved more than a match for his adversary in dialectics; but Dongan held fast to all his demands. Vaillant tried to temporize, and asked for a truce, with a view to a ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... air of his nose being too big for his face, and his feet for his legs, gave him a look of awkwardness and extreme youth. His robes were red, according to the King's heraldry, and, alone among the Provosts, he was girt with a great sword. This was Adam Wayne, the intractable Provost of ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... passed my evil grew worse, my moments of malignity and irony became more somber and intractable. A real physical fever attended my outbursts of passion; I awakened trembling in every limb and covered with cold sweat. Brigitte, too, although she did not complain of it, began to fail in health. When I began to abuse her she would leave me without a word and lock herself in her room. Thank God, ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... violent wish to carry it out. I can do nothing with my son; reason has no power with the stubborn child. Who knows whether folly would not be more successful? If I thought so, I would make Pazza Charming's teacher. The intractable boy, who rejects all masters, might be defenseless before a child. The only objection is that no one will be of my opinion; I ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... "Intractable, like the rest of your race! Well, Fate may lead those who cannot be driven, and this matter I leave in the hands of Fate. While you are under age—that is, for two years or more—you may not marry without my consent, and have just promised not to do ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... study comes hard to you, my dear Enrico, as your mother says: I do not yet see you set out for school with that resolute mind and that smiling face which I should like. You are still intractable. But listen; reflect a little! What a miserable, despicable thing your day would be if you did not go to school! At the end of a week you would beg with clasped hands that you might return there, for you would be eaten up with weariness ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... exemplary punishment—the hand of Justice being made heavier by two considerations, viz: difference of opinion, and a desire to drive away recusants, who were regarded as vessels doomed to destruction, and whose presence was held to be dangerous. That was no era of toleration, but of fierce, intractable dogma. The breach betwixt Protestants then was almost, if not quite, as wide as between Protestants and Catholics now. Opinion, bold, enthusiastic opinion, calling itself by the gracious name of ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... opposite, adverse, counter, opposed; repugnant, incompatible, contradictory, retroactive, antagonistic, conflicting, abhorrent, inconsistent; perverse, wayward, refractory, headstrong, intractable. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... their lot at any time during the journey. There were a few who manifested sorrow at having been separated from relatives or friends with whom they had succeeded in travelling to the very gates of the city; and some others, as yet unbroken to misfortune, maintained a rebellious and intractable demeanor. But the majority had already made up their minds that slavery was henceforth their inevitable fate, and that their highest future happiness must be looked for in its alleviation rather than in its abolition; and they now appeared to take pleasure in the thought that their ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... in Greek and English, of which some may be managed while others remain intractable. (1). The structure of the Greek language is partly adversative and alternative, and partly inferential; that is to say, the members of a sentence are either opposed to one another, or one of them ...
— Charmides • Plato
... do with this intractable boy? And, she almost knew that King would feel the same way. Perhaps, if she could win Tom over to her way of thinking, King might ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... to succeed, it was necessary that Lily should supply him with money, more money, lots of money. The apparatus was incomplete and had probably got damaged in the London warehouse; it would need repairs, improvements. Now Lily seemed intractable. She was vexed at having to earn money for two, pretended to have none too much for herself; it was her costumes now: six sets of tights, one for each evening, pink, green, red, blue, gray, white ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... it put him out, Although he went on steadily, but faster. There were some maladies he'd read about Which seemed, at first, most difficult to master; They looked intractable at times, no doubt, But all they needed was a little plaster; This was a thing physicians long had pondered, Considered, weighed ... and then ... and then ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... appeared advisable but to engage some of the Bhotan run-aways domiciled in Dorjiling, who are accustomed to travel at all elevations, and fear nothing but a return to the country which they have abandoned as slaves, or as culprits: they are immensely powerful, and though intractable to the last degree, are generally glad to work and behave well for money. The choice, as will hereafter be seen, was unfortunate, though at ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... she was committed to custody and underwent rigorous examinations before a whole board of magistrates: but to what end? She was as wild as the sea, as intractable as the wind. What threats, indeed, what voice, what sound—except it were the sound of the last trumpet wakening her from the grave—shall ever again alarm her? What cares she for judge or jury? The last sentence, that she could ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... on in Khandawar. I doubt if there's another Resident in India who knows as little of the underhand devilment in his State as I do. His Majesty the Rana loves me as a cheetah loves his trainer. He's an intractable rascal." ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... to leave there a copy of itself. Now it is not fanciful, nor riding a metaphor to death, when I dwell upon these features of the emblem in order to suggest their analogies in Christian life. The Spirit of God comes into our spirits, and by gentle contact impresses upon the material, which was intractable until it was melted by the genial warmth of faith and love, the likeness of Himself, but yet so as that prominences correspond to the hollows, and what is in relief in the one is sunk in the other. Expand that general statement for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... finest art and the surest science, and oh, such closets, such stairways, such comforts! such defiance of the elements, such security against cold and heat, against fire, flood and tempest! such economy! such immunity from all the ills that domestic life is heir to, from intractable servants ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... the prominent features, the main chance. We are more for weight than show; care only about what interests ourselves, instead of trying to impose upon others by plausible appearances, and are obstinate and intractable in not conforming to common rules, by which many arrive at their ends with half the real waste of thought and trouble. We neglect all but the principal object, gather our force to make a great blow, bring it ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Satan himself. Their parents and employers should, besides, refuse to furnish them with food and drink, and notify them that the government was disposed to banish from the country all persons of such a rude and intractable character. ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... politics. Unprincipled flatterers, adventurers, and speculators gained a surprising influence with him. His native obstinacy showed itself especially in insistence upon his personal, ill-instructed will. He became intractable to counsels of wisdom, and seemed to be a radically different man from the sincere, modest soldier of the civil war. He affected the society of the rich, whom he never before had opportunity of knowing. He accepted with an indiscreet ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... the difference, God be with you! I see you're a travelling man, I don't want to rob you; let it go at thirty, then. What? That ain't cheap either? Well, shake hands on it! Twenty-five kopecks apiece. OI! What an intractable fellow you are! At twenty! You'll thank me yourself later! And then, do you know what else? When I come to K—, I always stop at the Hotel Hermitage. You can very easily find me there either very ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... been heard in both Houses, during the debates, of unusual violence. Bradford's letter on the succession was circulating freely among the members, and the parliament from which the queen anticipated so much for her husband's interests proved the most intractable with which she had had to deal.[521] After the difficulty which she had experienced with the first-fruits, she durst not so much as introduce the question of the crown.[522] She attempted a bill for ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... contend against difficulties not yet fully revealed. One of these was their own want of administrative experience, contrasting unfavourably with the statesmanlike capacity of Peel. Another was the intractable character of two at least within their own innermost councils—Durham and Brougham. A third was the inflexible conservatism of a great majority in the house of lords, who, unlike the people at large, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... and when, after having left you to go to my club, I returned home, and finding you fast asleep from exhaustion, I awakened you and insisted upon your frigging me with your rosy fingers, all the while licking my several parts. You implore me. You are wearied, but I am intractable. You must do it in order to excite you as much as I am myself excited. I suck your breast with frenzy. The sucking that I have given your bosoms, and the fear you have lest I should fetch a young girl to ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... rose, determined this time to depart. But Selva would not allow this, and proposed closing the meeting, intending again to summon Professor Dane, Minucci, di Leyni, and Fare, on the morrow, or perhaps later on. Salvati was intractable, and It would be wiser to let Marinier carry away the impression that the plan was abandoned. Minucci guessed his motive, and was silent; but the thoughtless Don Paolo did not understand, and insisted that they should deliberate and vote at once. Selva, and di Leyni also—out of respect for Giovanni's ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... New England States have many excellent parts, I would be the last to deny; but that they were in the main a quarrelsome, intractable, mutinous, and mischief-making element in our armies during the Revolution, is not to be gainsaid. I know, of my own knowledge, how their fractious and insubordinate conduct grieved and sorely disheartened poor Montgomery while we lay before Quebec. I could ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... aspiration again, she must make it conditional if her husband has a strong will, he must also have strong sense, a kind heart, and a thoroughly correct notion of justice; because a man with a WEAK BRAIN and a STRONG WILL, is merely an intractable brute; you can have no hold of him; you can never lead him right. A TYRANT under any circumstances is ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... rise, or that it perhaps contains: the admirable political sense, the passion for work, the perseverance, magnanimity, and devotion to the future. It has allowed him, in the course of the last few years, to a certain extent to domesticate these intractable insects, though without their knowledge; for they yield to no foreign strength, and in their unconscious servitude obey only the laws of their own adoption. Man may believe, if he choose, that, possessing the queen, he holds in his hand the destiny and soul of the ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... formerly. He always begged of God their perseverance with his tears; and frequently, when he had enjoined them some light penance, paid for them the remainder of their debts with bloody disciplining of his own body. But when he lighted on intractable and stubborn souls, he left them not off for their contumacy, but rather sought their good opinion; and, on occasion, shewed them a better countenance than usual, that thence they might be given to understand how ready ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... as proud as a peacock, and would trample upon us all, and gore us too, like one of the wild bulls of Bowland, if we would let him have his way. But I would treat him as I would the bull aforesaid, a wild boar, or any other savage and intractable beast, hunt him down, and poll his horns, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... our Lenglet. Had he composed his own life, it would have offered a sketch of political servitude and political adventure, in a man too intractable for the one, and too literary for the other. Yet to the honour of his capacity, we must observe that he might have chosen his patrons, would he have submitted to patronage. Prince Eugene at Vienna; Cardinal Passionei at Rome; or Mons. Le ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... statesman and economist, a remarkable constitutional lawyer, and a man of immense dignity, not headstrong in temper and without peculiar force of will. Jackson, on the other hand, was a rude soldier, unlettered, intractable, arbitrary, with a violent temper and a most despotic will. Two men more utterly incompatible it would have been difficult to find, and nothing could have been more wildly fantastic than to suppose an alliance between them, or to imagine that Mr. Webster could ever have done anything ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... sin,' answered the Dominie, who, recovering his voice, and finding his exorcisms only served to exasperate the intractable sorceress, thought it best to affect complaisance and submission, inwardly conning over, however, the wholesome conjurations which he durst no longer utter aloud. But as the Dominie's brain was by no means equal to carry on two trains of ideas at the same time, a word or two of his ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... fallen into trouble, of women thieves, of what is known as the White Slave traffic, of female children who have been exposed to awful treatment, of women who are drunkards or drug-takers, of aged and destitute women, of intractable or vicious-minded girls, and, lastly, of the training of young persons to enable them to deal scientifically with all these evils, or under the name of Slum Sisters, to wait upon the poor in their homes, and nurse them through the ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... wanting. Falconet had the proverbial temperament of artistic genius. Diderot called him the Jean Jacques of sculpture. He had none of the rapacity for money which has distinguished so many artists in their dealings with foreign princes, but he was irritable, turbulent, restless, intractable. He was a chivalrous defender of poorer brethren in art, and he was never a respecter of persons. His feuds with Betzki, the Empress's faithful factotum, were as acrid as the feuds between Voltaire and Maupertuis. Betzki had his own ideas about the statue that was to do honour to the founder of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... the Naloo, and like all the preceding tribes, from the Feloops downwards, pre-eminently rude, fierce, intractable, and imperfectly known. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... our American religion, baptized and reared in the faith that a man requires no master to take care of him, and that common people can work out their salvation well enough together if left free to try. But the founders had not dared to touch the great intractable exception; and slavery had wrought until at last the only alternative for the nation was to fight or die. What Shaw and his comrades stand for and show us is that in such an emergency Americans of all complexions and conditions can go forth like brothers, and meet death cheerfully if need be, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... pre-historic town of Avebury, and at Stonehenge; the smaller stones of the latter are, however, of igneous origin, and "are believed by Mr. Fergusson to have been votive offerings." These masses, of what Sir A. C. Ramsay calls "tough and intractable silicious stone," have been, he says, "left on the ground, after the removal by denudation of other and softer parts of the Eocene strata." We subsequently saw several of these "grey wethers" in the grounds of Cobham ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... an epidemic of typhoid pneumonia, the same that had prevailed in the older States. This singularly fatal disease was followed by a "bilious fever, characterized, like the plague, by a tendency to local affections. Abscesses formed among the muscles of the body, legs, and arms, and were so intractable that limbs were sometimes amputated to get rid of the evil." Recalling the use he had seen made of the bandage, while abroad, in the treatment of ulcers of the leg, Dudley applied this device to the burrowing abscesses he saw so frequently ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell
... capacities of manager and author. As regards Theophilus Cibber, his desertion of Highmore was sufficient reason for the ridicule cast upon him in the Author's Farce and elsewhere. With Mrs. Charke, the Laureate's intractable and eccentric daughter, Fielding was naturally on better terms. She was, as already stated, a member of the Great Mogul's Company, and it is worth noting that some of the sarcasms in Pasquin against her father were put into the mouth of ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... abode the hand of Providence is distinctly seen laying the foundations of our struggle of to-day, which is to prove the refining fire, the purification and regeneration of our race. Had the Cavaliers landed upon the shores of New England, the bracing winds of that northern clime, the rugged and intractable nature of the soil, the constant presence of dangers from the fiercer Indian tribes of the north, and the absolute necessity of severe and incessant toil to support existence, would have awakened and developed in them those manly qualities ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Indians, with whom their relations were generally on a friendly footing. In that year many India-rubber collectors resorted to this region, stimulated by the high price (2s. 6d. a pound) which the article was at that time fetching at Para; and then the Araras, a fierce and intractable tribe of Indians, began to be troublesome. They attacked several canoes and massacred everyone on board, the Indian crews as well as the white traders. Their plan was to lurk in ambush near the sandy beaches where canoes stop for the night, and then fall ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... custody of a maniple of soldiers. These ten men would relieve guard in turns, the prisoner being always bound to one or other of them day and night, according to the well-known Roman usage, as illustrated by the case of St Paul. The martyr finds his guards fierce and intractable as leopards. His fight with wild beasts, he intimates, is not confined to the arena of the Flavian amphitheatre; it has been going on continuously ever since he left Antioch. His friends manage to secure him indulgences by ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... secure a majority without ennobling new men in such numbers as to bring ridicule on the coronet and the ermine. But there was no extremity to which he was not prepared to go in case of necessity. When in a large company an opinion was expressed that the peers would prove intractable, "Oh, silly," cried Sunderland, turning to Churchill, "your troop of guards shall be called up to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... every now and then, if things didn't go quite as he wished, he would fly into comic rages, and become quite violent and intractable for at least five minutes, and for quite five minutes more he would silently sulk. And then, just as suddenly, he would forget all about it, and become once more the genial, affectionate, and caressing creature he ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... passion in one who is a stranger to her. Always indulgent toward the effects produced by a love we have inspired, we will pardon you many imprudences, many transports; how can I enumerate them all? All the follies of which you lovers are capable, we pardon, but you will always find us intractable when our self-esteem meets your own. Who would believe it? You inspire us to revolt at things that have nothing to do with your happiness. Your vanity sticks at trifles, and prevents you from enjoying actual advantages. Will you believe me when I say it? You will drop your ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... passage, say, love covers sins?" Answer. Whoever has hatred toward another, says Solomon, ceases not to stir up strife and bitterness. But where there is love, it covers sins and cheerfully forgives. Where there is wrath, or in other words, where there is an intractable man, reconciliation is not permitted; he remains full of wrath and hate. On the other hand, a man who is full of love is he whom one cannot enrage, however much injury may be done him; he perceives it all, but does as though he saw it not. So that the covering ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... added to the value of the claim. Such unamiable reluctance to sell advertised but one thing to him, and he was aware of a great relief when Hootchinoo Bill sank snoring to the floor, and he was free to turn his attention to his less intractable partner. ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... was mainly of one race and the poorer and subject class was mainly of another—a vertical organization in which all classes of each racial group were united under the title of their respective nationalities. Thus organized, the nationalities represent, on the one hand, intractable minorities engaged in a ruthless partisan struggle for political privilege or economic advantage and, on the other, they represent cultural groups, each struggling to maintain a sentiment of loyalty to the distinctive traditions, language, and institutions ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... confirmed. Mrs. Denyer found it difficult to assume the becoming air when she put civil questions to Mrs. Lessingham, for she was now assured that to Miss Doran was attributable the alarming state of things between Clifford and Madeline; Marsh would never have been so intractable but for this new element in the situation. Madeline herself on the other hand, was a model of magnanimity; in Clifford's very hearing, she spoke of Cecily with tender concern, and then walked past her recreant admirer with her fair head in a pose ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... utilise a good thing when he observed it, saw in this dislike of this old sleigh dog to having fresh young dogs ahead of him just the assistance he needed; and so, although he selected three other dogs, that at first were about as ugly and intractable as Spitfire had been, he was able in this way to subdue them all with firmness and patience, and he not only made them his affectionate friends, but he became the master of one of the most spirited ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... another subject, and then declared that it was not the thing after all. His life was spent in constant excitement; he was ever on the watch, on the point of setting his hand on the realisation of his dream, which always flew away. In reality, beneath his intractable realism lay the superstition of a nervous woman; he believed in occult and complex influences; everything, luck or ill-luck, must ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... the north coast of Africa. He is said to have come to Athens because of his desire to hear Socrates; but from the notices of him which we find in Xenophon's memoirs he appears to have been from the first a somewhat intractable follower, dissenting especially from the poverty and self-denial of the master's mode of life. [205] He in course of time founded a school of his own, called the Cyrenaic from his own place of birth, and from the fact that many subsequent ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... have benefited Mexico by the course we have pursued remains to be seen. Her fortunes are in her own hands. But we have at least proved that we will not take advantage of her in her distress and undertake to impose upon her an order and government of our own choosing. Liberty is often a fierce and intractable thing, to which no bounds can be set, and to which no bounds of a few men's choosing ought ever to be set. Every American who has drunk at the true fountains of principle and tradition must subscribe ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... benefit of your decision. Firmness, gentle firmness, is absolutely necessary in this and certain other relations. Mr. Rarey with Cruiser, Richard with Lady Ann, Pinel with his crazy people, show what steady nerves can do with the most intractable of animals, the most irresistible of despots, and the ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... details. This was not characteristic of the individual author only, but of the spirit of the age. It is equally present in the works of Montesquieu and Turgot. The defects of Montesquieu are chiefly due to the fact that his materials were intractable, because science had not yet reduced them to order by generalising the laws of their phenomena. In the second half of the eighteenth century the intellectual movement began to be turned directly against the state. Economical and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... leather; but modern wisdom has preferred paper. The degree of success attained by Lycurgus we do not know; but of the success of the moderns we do know, by some one hundred and fifty years of recurring disaster. There are some steeds that cannot be ridden; they are so fractious and intractable, that, put whom you will upon their back, he is thrown, and invent what snaffle or breaking-bit you may, they will not be held to an equable or moderate pace. And of this sort, judging by the past attempts, is Paper Money. All the ingenuity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... guardian of his own little girl. {317} In 1762, young Oliphant of Gask, who visited the Prince at Bouillon, reports that he will have nothing to do with France till his daughter is restored to him. He held moodily aloof, and then the Peace came. Lumisden complains that 'Burton' (the Prince) is 'intractable.' He sulked at Bouillon, where he hunted in the forests. Here is a sad and tender admonition from Murray, whose remonstrances were more softly conveyed ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... Ishmael regarded his intractable mate with a smile of indulgent pity. Observing that she had already struck out a path for herself, different both from that of Abiram and the one he had seen fit to choose, and being unwilling to draw the cord of authority too tight, just at that moment, he submitted to her will. ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... special literature, enuresis mentioned as a diseased condition peculiar from babyhood to puberty; to find it fully described and to have it stated that it is a widely-prevalent distemper, affecting both sexes alike; to know that it is an annoying, intractable, persistent condition, wearing to the child in every sense, subjecting it to a demoralizing mortification as well as to unmerited scoldings, humiliations, and punishments, and that its habit, in badly-ventilated ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... beautiful little articles made in this intractable material, such as the mirrors and masks I have mentioned, and even rings and cups. But, as I have said, ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... obliquity. It is that which, resigning irrevocably the idea of an omnipotent creator, regards Nature and Life not as the expression throughout of the moral character and purpose of the Deity, but as the product of a struggle between contriving goodness and an intractable material, as was believed by Plato, or a principle of evil as was believed by the Manicheans. A creed like this ... allows it to be believed that all the mass of evils which exists was undesigned by, and exists not by the appointment of, but in spite ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... accidental arrangement of red, white, and green among the vegetables which they exhibited in the market or carried to their homes. Nay more, the loyalty of a loyal man may in certain circumstances be more emphatically expressed by a rude, extemporaneous symbol, hastily constructed of intractable materials, than by the most elaborate and leisurely products of the needle or the loom. In such cases, the will of the man is everything; the wealth of the man nothing. The meanest rag suddenly thrown across the shoulders, arranged so as unequivocally to express ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... by a laughable manoeuvre sitting down like a dog on her haunches, slipped him off the other way. Her drollery made the poor men so fond of her that she was rarely chastised; and such a wilful, intractable wild Arab it would be hard to find. Upon her I was daily mounted; and surely the Lord watched over me then indeed. Inexperienced in riding, untaught, unassisted, and wholly unable to lay any check upon so powerful an animal, with ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... mines of gold and silver. They did not consider that the value of those metals has, in all ages and nations, arisen chiefly from their scarcity, and that their scarcity has arisen from the very small quantities of them which nature has anywhere deposited in one place, from the hard and intractable substances with which she has almost everywhere surrounded those small quantities, and consequently from the labour and expense which are everywhere necessary in order to penetrate, and get at them. They ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... basket-work of braids which seem as if they were Spun in King Minos' hall From metal, or intractable amber; ...
— Hugh Selwyn Mauberley • Ezra Pound
... 'If only!' quotha. Why, there you word the key-note, you touch the cornerstone, you ruthlessly illuminate the mainspring, of an intractable unfeeling universe. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... sharp, sluggish, snapping, snarling, sneaking, sour, testy, tiresome, tormenting, touchy, arrogant, austere, awkward, boorish, brawling, brutal, bullying, churlish, clamorous, crabbed, cross, currish, dismal, dull, dry, drowsy, grumbling, horrid, huffish, insolent, intractable, irascible, ireful, morose, murmuring, opinionated, oppressive, outrageous, overbearing, petulant, plaguy, rough, rude, rugged, spiteful, splenetic, stern, stubborn, stupid, sulky, sullen, surly, suspicious, treacherous, troublesome, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... writings. Burning and slaking afforded the only known method of reducing stone for use in sour soils. Lime in this form not only is an effective agent for correcting soil acidity, but it improves the physical condition of tough and intractable clays, rendering them more friable and easy of tillage. Caustic lime also renders the organic matter in the soil more quickly available, an increase in yield quickly following an application. These three effects of burned lime brought it into favor, and a rational ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... mentioning several instances in which I had conquered the most intractable tempers ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in a granary, for want of ventilation and stirring, perishes in its own masses. Not having attended to the process of their own minds, and little acquainted with that of other men, they cannot throw out their intractable knowledge, nor with sympathy awaken by its softening touches the thoughts of others. To conduct their native impulse, which had all along driven them, is a secret not always discovered, or else discovered late in life. Hence it has happened with some of this race, that their ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Wilds. The Remarkable Story of the Establishment of the South American Mission amongst the hitherto Savage and Intractable Natives of the Paraguayan ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... vanity will revolt? Malignity may be appeased by triumphs real or supposed, and will then sleep, or yield its place to a repentance producing dispositions of good will, and desires to make amends for past injury; but vanity is restless, reckless, intractable, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... undismayed. By this character Pollux, by this the wandering Hercules, arrived at the starry citadels; among whom Augustus has now taken his place, and quaffs nectar with empurpled lips. Thee, O Father Bacchus, meritorious for this virtue, thy tigers carried, drawing the yoke with intractable neck; by this Romulus escaped Acheron on the horses of Mars—Juno having spoken what the gods in full conclave approve: "Troy, Troy, a fatal and lewd judge, and a foreign woman, have reduced to ashes, condemned, with ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... was bitterly and impatiently hostile and intractable. Mr. Bright was burnt in effigy. Cobden, at a meeting in his own constituency, after an energetic vindication of his opinions, saw resolutions carried against him. Every morning they were reviled in half the newspapers in the country ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... sharply ocean-odorous as the beach, while the many bare feet are continually toiling slowly up and quickly pattering down it. Yet their efforts are rewarded by only meagre and stunted growths; so intractable is the material upon which they are expended. Micky Joyce has been heard to declare, as he took a despondent bird's-eye view of his holding, that "you might as well be thryin' to raise crops in the crevices of the ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... seen all winter long the thorn First show itself intractable and fierce, And after, bear the rose upon ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... an Aeon of inferior intelligence who acted in obedience to the will of the Great God; others conceived that he was no other than the God of the Jews, who, in their estimation, was a Being of somewhat rugged and intractable character; whilst others contended that he was an Evil Power at open war with the righteous Sovereign of the universe. The Gnostics also differed in their views respecting matter. Those of them who were Egyptians, and who had been addicted to the study of the Platonic ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... with the House of Commons or in defiance of all law. His choice was soon made. He dissolved his first Parliament, and levied taxes by his own authority. He convoked a second Parliament, and found it more intractable than the first. He again resorted to the expedient of dissolution, raised fresh taxes without any show of legal right, and threw the chiefs of the opposition into prison At the same time a new grievance, which the peculiar feelings and habits of the English nation made insupportably ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... however, the imprisonment of all the refractory members, one would think, were forcible enough. The princes of the house of Stuart sometimes employed the like means in order to influence some of the members of the parliament of England, and they generally found them equally intractable. The parliament of England is now managed in another manner; and a very small experiment, which the duke of Choiseul made, about twelve years ago, upon the parliament of Paris, demonstrated sufficiently that all the parliaments of France might have been managed still ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... intermingled with reverses of fortune and harassing difficulties. The aeronauts had, indeed, won the respect and admiration of the army, but this did not compensate for the terribly fatiguing work of holding on, with scarcely a moment's intermission, to the ropes of the intractable monsters during long and frequent marches. The second balloon at length succeeded in breaking loose, and was so much damaged as to become unserviceable, and the first one was afterwards found riddled with balls—destroyed, ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... there, and time passed; he had no way of measuring it, no idea whether it was hours or days. It was cold and clammy in the stone cell; they called it the "cooler," and used it to reduce the temperature of the violent and intractable. It was a trouble-saving device; they just left the man there and forgot him, and his own tormented mind ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... conclude. I am sure this is a conclusion that men nowhere allow of. For if they did, they would not make bold, as everywhere they do to destroy ill-formed and mis-shaped productions. Ay, but these are MONSTERS. Let them be so: what will your drivelling, unintelligent, intractable changeling be? Shall a defect in the body make a monster; a defect in the mind (the far more noble, and, in the common phrase, the far more essential part) not? Shall the want of a nose, or a neck, make a monster, and put such ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... reached the rival camp of Artois. The King gained courage, and on the 5th of September signed the Ordonnance which appealed from the Parliament to the nation, and, to the anger and consternation of the Ultra-Royalists, made an end of the intractable Chamber a few weeks before the time which had been ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... bigoted; prejudiced &c 481; creed- bound; prepossessed, infatuated; stiff-backed, stiff necked, stiff hearted; hard-mouthed, hidebound; unyielding; impervious, impracticable, inpersuasible^; unpersuadable; intractable, untractable^; incorrigible, deaf to advice, impervious to reason; crotchety &c 608. Adv. obstinately &c adj.. Phr. non possumus [Lat.]; no surrender; ils n'ont rien ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... claim of servitude during the whole course of my life." He then alludes to the position of political parties, and gives a sketch of the great Earl of Chatham which shows the hand of a master. "Nothing but an intractable temper in your friend Pitt can prevent an admirable and most lasting system from being put together; and this crisis will show whether pride or patriotism be predominant in his character, for you may be assured that he has it now in his power to come into the service ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... on the floor, was a small child, whose movements, and they were many, were viewed with huge dissatisfaction by Charles Gatty, Esq. This personage, pencil in hand, sat slouching and morose, looking gloomily at his intractable model. ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... had a horror of the Greeks. He said to his son: "I will tell what I have seen in Athens. This race is the most perverse and intractable. Listen to me as to an oracle: whenever this people teaches us its arts ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... a thing which never should be considered—luck—I took Haught's rifle again, and my lazy, sullen, intractable horse, and rode with Edd and George down into Horton Thicket. At least I could not be cheated out of fresh air ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... army under competent leadership could be committed to them. The same might surely be said of the route by the Nuksan Pass into the valley of Chitral and the Kunar, which joins the Khyber route not far from Jelalabad. Its length and intricacy alone, independently of the intractable nature of the tribes which border it on either side, and of the fact that the Nuksan Pass is only open for half the year, would surely place it beyond the consideration of any general who aspired to invade India after accomplishing the feat ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... came into a tangled and difficult region called Apremont, where the rocky ridges were broken into intractable ruins—the most savage portion of the forest. Strange cliffs of shale, eaten by weather and earthquake into the most picturesque columns and caves, confronted them. Here the signs became rare and the advance ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall |
