"Overbearing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... won't do any harm. The fact was, the boy was getting too overbearing, and putting on altogether too many airs. The lesson will do him ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... been reached. Sir Magnus had a wife of whom it was said at home that she was almost as popular as her husband; but the opinion of the world at Brussels on this subject was a good deal divided. There were those who declared that Lady Mountjoy was of all women the most overbearing and impertinent. But they were generally English residents at Brussels, who had come to live there as a place at which education for their children would be cheaper than at home. Of these Lady Mountjoy had been heard to declare that she saw no reason why, because she was the ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... stands, sketching the house. What wonderful eyes the man has! With what a proud, confident manner he looks around! What a brow! Truly he is a handsome fellow, and Herzberg may be right after all. That brow betokens thought, and from those eyes there flashes a divine light. But he looks overbearing and proud. Now, I am doubly pleased that I refused Herzberg to have any thing to do with him. Such presumptive geniuses must be rather kept back; then they feel their power, and strive to bring themselves forward. Yes! I believe that man has a future. He looks like the youthful ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... same suite of rooms, next to the hall of the States-general. It was in the old cabinet that Henri III. hid the murderers when he sent for the Duc de Guise, while he himself remained hidden in the new cabinet during the murder, only emerging in time to see the overbearing subject for whom there were no longer prisons, tribunals, judges, nor even laws, draw his last breath. Were it not for these terrible circumstances the historian of to-day could hardly trace the former occupation of ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... themselves had several times talked the matter over together, and agreed that there was little prospect of aught being done for many months. They felt that they were but wasting their time remaining before Oudenarde, where they were frequently offended by the overbearing manner of the Ghentois, who, on the strength of their defeat of the people of Bruges, considered themselves to be invincible. They had, during the four months that they had been in Flanders, learned ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... mine! was the second proud emotion, and my lips curled with haughty triumph. I had not been the enfant gate of the beauties of France not to have learnt the art of pleasing the soft heart of woman. If towards men I was overbearing, the deference I paid to them was the more in contrast. I commenced my courtship by the display of a thousand gallantries to Juliet, who, vowed to me from infancy, had never admitted the devotion of others; and who, though accustomed to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... political system full of bribery and corruption,—that we desire the disgrace and exposure of such men as those, who, under the pretence of serving the country, merely line their own coffers out of the taxes they inflict upon the people;—and that if we see a king inclined to favour the overbearing dominance of a political party governed by financial considerations alone,—a party which has no consideration for the wider needs of the whole nation, we from our very hearts and souls desire the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... in his way. This prejudiced and immoral old diplomatist despised and loathed an American senator as the type which, to his bleared European eyes, combined the utmost pragmatical self-assurance and overbearing temper with the narrowest education and the meanest personal experience that ever existed in any considerable government. As Baron Jacobi's country had no special relations with that of the United States, and its Legation at Washington ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... to alleviate that drawback. She fancied herself as cold, hard, analytical, and ruthless; actually she was waspish, arrogant, overbearing, and treacherous. What she considered in herself to be scientific detachment was really an isolation born of fear and distrust ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Irish advocate Curran is recalled. At the close of his celebrated encounter with one of the most overbearing of English judges, the latter insultingly remarked to the somewhat diminutive advocate: "I could put you in my pocket, sir." To which, with the quickness of a lightning flash, Curran retorted: "If you did, Your Lordship would have more law ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... company there will always be some that are rude and noisy, or otherwise disagreeable in their habits or demeanor; and those who are of a timid and gentle disposition often suffer very severely from the unjust and overbearing treatment which they receive from tyrants whom they can ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... Corioli. On his return he becomes a candidate for consul. But to win this office, he must conciliate the common people whom he holds in contempt; and instead of conciliating them, he so exasperates them by his overbearing scorn that he is driven out of Rome. With the savage vindictiveness characteristic of insulted pride, he joins the enemies of his country, brings Rome to the edge of ruin, and spares her at last only at the entreaties of his mother. ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... let them not embitter or harden it. We win by tenderness, we conquer by forgiveness. O, strive to enter into something of that large celestial charity which is meek, enduring, unretaliating, and which even the overbearing world cannot withstand forever! Learn the new commandment of the Son of God. Not to love merely, but to love as He loved. Go forth in this Spirit to your life duties, go forth, children of the Cross, to carry everything before you, and win victories for God by ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... populace against Americans, that it was unsafe for English-speaking visitors to travel there. Nothing is farther from the truth; there is no hatred of American or English, and, if there had been, they little know the innate courtesy of the Spanish people, who fear insult that is not due to the overbearing manners of ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... at this very time the minister was incensed against this prelate, whose haughtiness was so overbearing, and whose impertinent ebullitions were so frequent as to have involved him in two very disagreeable affairs at Bordeaux. Four years before, the Duc d'Epernon, then governor of Guyenne, followed by all his train and by his troops, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... "Is it true, Thorgils, that you have entertained those three men this winter, that are held to be the most regardless and overbearing, and all of them outlaws, and you have handled them so that none has hurt another?" Yes, it was true, said Thorgils. Skapti said: "That is something for a man to be proud of; but what do you think of the three, and how are they each of them in courage?" Thorgils ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... the words he had spoken to his guest; and he took Siegfried into his own chamber, and told him all; and he asked him what answer they should send on the morrow to the overbearing North-kings. ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... of a pretty, sensitive wife, to a big, strong, amiable, if somewhat thick-skinned husband. These two had one great quarrel which nearly resulted in divorce. He thought her headstrong; she thought him overbearing. The quarrel made her ill; she has been for some time recovering. But though they have settled their difficulties and are living again in amity together, and though he, man-like, has half forgotten that they ever quarreled ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... thoughts, to act contrary to the dictates of her own being. A mother happy in the friendship of her own daughter, said not long ago that she desired to erect an asylum for tormented daughters. Such an asylum would be as necessary as a protection against pampering parents as against those who are overbearing. Both alike, torture their children though in different ways, by not understanding the child's right to have his own point of view, his own ideal of happiness, his own proper tastes and occupation. They do not see that children exist as little for their parent's sake as parents ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... intolerably overbearing, insulted every one, and so much offended the Queen and Mazarin that they caused him, his brother, and the Duke of Bouillon, to be arrested and imprisoned at Vincennes. His wife, though a cruelly-neglected woman whom he had never loved, did her utmost to ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Leuchtmar, to conclude for me a temporary armistice with the Swedes, and also to negotiate the conditions of a peace. I must have peace at any price, for on no terms can I carry on a war. Chancellor Oxenstiern is indeed a proud and overbearing man, who will probably make hard conditions, but we must accommodate ourselves to them, yield gracefully now, and defer our revenge for a later day. Only if he demands Pomerania as the price of peace, you may not yield; we will indeed be yielding, but ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... ultimately became. Mitchell was a native of Ulster, and possessed much of the spirit of the old Presbyterian United Irishmen of 1798; indeed, some of their leaders were his relations. He possessed a vigorous intellect, great energy of thought and action, overbearing-purpose, and unflinching courage. His information was not extensive, nor his judgment profound, and yet he was a well-educated, well-read, and very thoughtful, reflective man. He was adapted to be the sole leader of an insurrection where the object might be clear, the undertaking desperate, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... spreading among the people. Injudicious measures enacted by the Spanish authorities, the importation of hordes of foreign officials, the overbearing manners of several local Spanish commanders, increases in the budget, intolerance on the part of the Spanish priests, and the natural unrest of the Dominicans, all combined to give rise to small revolts which were put down, until, ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... done, 'Sir George was the girl's fancy-man, then?' Pomeroy said, in the harsh overbearing ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Johnson. Reader, have a care, Tread lightly, lest you rouse a sleeping bear: Religious, moral, generous, and humane He was, but self-sufficient, rude, and vain; Ill-bred and overbearing in dispute, A scholar and a Christian—yet a brute. Would you know all his wisdom and his folly, His actions, sayings, mirth, and melancholy? Boswell and Thrale, retailers of his wit, Will tell you how he wrote, and talked, and cough'd, ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... their women, it is said, were bold and masculine, overbearing to their husbands in the first place, absolute mistresses in their houses, giving their opinions about public matters freely, and speaking openly even on the most important subjects. But the matrons, under the government of Numa, still indeed ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... warmly defended Lord Cloncurry as a magistrate and a man, and appealed to his known loyalty and respect for the King as a proof that he would never have done anything derogatory to his own situation. The Duke's letter he described to have been overbearing and insolent, Lord Anglesey's[22] temperate, but firm. Lord Anglesey declares that these were all the grounds of offence he had given. Five weeks elapsed, during which he heard nothing from the Duke, and at the end of that time he received his letter ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... our society was amused by the entrance of a foreign nobleman, exactly what we should in London emphatically call a Character,—learned, loud, and overbearing; though of a carriage that impressed great esteem. I have not often listened to so well-furnished a talker; nor one more capable of giving great information. He had seen the Pyramids of Egypt, he told us; had climbed Mount ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... technical equipment of all others, glowing with ambition, with military training second to none, and gifted with an immense rate of increase as regards population. This nation would be forced to lay down her arms, lying as it does between the overbearing gigantic realm in the east and the warlike French to the west. The idea is incomprehensible. The universe would behold a competition in armaments such as it ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that they will never follow the example. Laughable as all this may seem to English women, it is perfectly true that the theory as well as the practice of conjugal life is not the same in America as in England. There are overbearing husbands in America, but they are more condemned by the opinion of the neighborhood than in England. There are exacting wives in England, but their husbands are more pitied than would be the case in America. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... his fellow-dwarfs. He has compelled his brother Mime, the cleverest smith of them all, to fashion him a Tarnhelm, or helmet of invisibility, and the latter complains peevishly to the gods of the overbearing mastery which Alberich has established in Nibelheim. When Alberich appears, Wotan and Loge cunningly beguile him to exhibit the powers of his new treasures. The confiding dwarf, in order to display the quality of the Tarnhelm, first changes himself into a snake and then into ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... somehow. "Can it be possible? What a fool he must be! That overbearing, impudent loafer! Why! He couldn't. . . . And yet he's nearly done it, I believe; for the Harbour Office was ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... I translated swiftly, "came from a native regiment, and was overbearing in his demeanour. He suffered much from the fever of the country, and is now ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... rapidity—having increased, from 1831 to 1841, thirty-six and a tenth per cent in Monmouthshire; the greatest increase during the same period of any county in the British empire.[3] Here then, if anywhere, it might have been expected that a general feeling of insecurity, the sense of an overbearing necessity, would have overcome the general repugnance of men towards local assessment, and led to the establishment of a police force in all the counties of South Wales, on a scale adequate to the magnitude of the danger with which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... the influence of the wily and unscrupulous Murray, who flattered his weaknesses and assumed an air of deference to his opinions. Lord George Murray, on the other hand, was but too prone to give offence. He was haughty and overbearing in manner, expressed his opinions with a directness and bluntness which were very displeasing to the prince, and, conscious of his own military genius and experience, put aside with open contempt the suggestions of those who were in truth ignorant of military matters. ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... fall of snow had covered the ground, but at nine o'clock at night it was clear and cold, not a cloud to be seen in the sky, and the moon was shining brightly. A British guard was patrolling the streets with clanking swords and overbearing swagger. A sentry was stationed in Dock Square. A party of young men, four in number, came out of a house in Cornhill. One of the soldiers was whirling his sword about his head, striking fire with it; the sentry challenged one of the four young men; there was no good blood between them, and it took ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the days of slavery are no more, but men and women have their hired man and maid servant. Their duty toward such servants is to treat them with kindness, not to threaten them, or treat them in an overbearing, authoritative manner because they are servants. Be as kind and mild and respectful to them as to the children of the rich, for God is no ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... for his person. As to the other half of him, he is said to be an insinuating, creeping mortal to any body he hopes to be a gainer by: an insolent, overbearing one, where he has no such views: And is not this the genuine spirit of meanness? He is reported to be spiteful and malicious, even to the whole family of any single person who has once disobliged him; and to his own relations most of all. I am told, that they are none of them such wretches as himself. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... was a dress-maker before her marriage with his father, and besides, he had ever been taught to respect the industrious part of the community, and his high minded principles revolted from the overbearing aristocracy of the place, and therefore, he appeared reserved to those with whom ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... expressed approval of everything with his eyes. Logre sometimes opposed Charvet on the question of salaries; but the other was really the autocrat of the coterie, having the greatest fund of information and the most overbearing manner. For more than ten years he and Clemence had lived together as man and wife, in accordance with a previously arranged contract, the terms of which were strictly observed by both parties to it. Florent looked at the young woman with some little surprise, but at last he recollected where ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... the lion's share of the glory; but when they disgraced themselves, then Burlman Reynolds must take the dog's share of the blame. Now, this petting and humoring had spoiled the Fighting Nigger not a little, making him arrogant and overbearing with his humbler self, even to the extent at times of a threat to kick him bodily out-of-doors. But Burlman Reynolds, the best-natured fellow in the world, perfectly understood what all this fuming and puffing meant, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Generation to Generation, which grey Hairs and tyrannical Custom continue to support; I hope your Spectatorial Authority will give a seasonable Check to the Spread of the Infection; I mean old Mens overbearing the strongest Sense of their Juniors by the mere Force of Seniority; so that for a young Man in the Bloom of Life and Vigour of Age to give a reasonable Contradiction to his Elders, is esteemed an unpardonable Insolence, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... box that woman's ears—at least, she said so after. She was a great horny, overbearing woman, was Mrs. Sales Wilson, and Sally was frightened lest Laetitia should grow like her. Only, Tishy's teeth never could get as big ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... called Episcopalians have been told, and repeatedly told, that the more numerous denomination were seeking to deprive them of their just and equal rights, and to subject them to the tyranny of an overbearing majority—These tales were reiterated till their authors found them useless from their folly and falsehood. At another time the Baptists are addressed by a set of men who denied the reality of any religion and the most earnest yearnings for ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... captain in the Voreux pit. He was brutal and overbearing with the workmen, but humble in the presence of his superiors. Though it was well known that he was the lover of La Pierronne, he was friendly with her husband, and got information from him regarding the progress of the strike. On the day ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... Mary. Uncle 'Zeke told me that Bob Wood's father used to be the town bully, and that my father, when they were both young, gave him a good thrashing. I've watched Bob—we were in school together, and he was always impudent and overbearing to me when I was a little fellow. I've felt that some day we'd have it out together. I'm glad it's over, and that I had the good fortune to serve you at ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... the man did not want parts, though sometimes he applied them to the worst of purposes, and was cursed with an insolent and overbearing temper which hindered him from being loved or respected anywhere, and which never did him any service but in the last moments of his life, where if it had not been for the severity of his behaviour, Julian, the black boy, would ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... amusing to me to see how the detective's overbearing manner had changed suddenly to that of a child ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... connected with her, the measures adopted by those in authority on board her for the suppression of this quickly-discovered spirit of discontent were the extreme opposite of judicious. The master—as is sometimes the case with masters of very fine ships—was haughty and overbearing, possessed of a highly-exaggerated opinion of his own importance, turning a deaf ear to all the complaints of his crew, and treating them with an impatience and superciliousness of manner which made him heartily detested. The chief mate, an arrant sycophant, taking his cue from his superior ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... Bull of the caricaturists—with every quality, good or evil, at its highest? Here are the rough crust over a kindly heart, the explosive temper, the arrogance, the insular narrowness, the want of sympathy and insight, the rudeness of perception, the positiveness, the overbearing bluster, the strong deep-seated religious principle, and every other characteristic of the cruder, rougher John Bull who was the great grandfather of ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Mark said, "We will now run for our horses, for we cannot hold our own here, for the overbearing strength of ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... Here the most important affairs were decided upon without the concurrence of the other seignors, Orange, Egmont, and Glayon, who, at the same time, were held responsible for the action of government. The Cardinal was smooth in manner, plausible of speech, generally even-tempered, but he was overbearing and blandly insolent. Accustomed to control royal personages, under the garb of extreme obsequiousness, he began, in his intercourse with those of less exalted rank, to omit a portion of the subserviency while claiming a still more ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... constituency—I do not mean in his last speech, I mean in the speech in August last year—in which he entered upon a course of prophecy which, like most prophecies in our day, does not happen to come true. But he said then what he said to-night, that the American people and Government were overbearing. He did not tell his constituents that the Government of the United States had, almost during the whole of his lifetime, been conducted by his friends of the South. He said that, if they were divided, they would not be able to bully ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... am not wonderful at all. I am revealing my heart to you, now, in a way I do not often open it, but I shall, to my last day, probably, be a proud, overbearing old woman with a sharp tongue. You, however, will ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... back to shut the door, and then, returning to the dungeon, showed himself so excessively surly and overbearing, that his men whispered to one another that "he'd been having it out with his mistress." Before he recovered his equanimity, the Bailiff returned and ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... DeWitt Clinton had been of the oppressed in other lands, he lacked what Dean Swift said Bolingbroke needed—"a small infusion of the alderman." If he thought a man stupid he let him know it. To those who disagreed with him, he was rude and overbearing. All of what is known as the "politician's art" he professed to despise; and while Tammany organised wards into districts, and districts into blocks, Clinton pinned his faith on the supremacy of intellect, and on office-holding friends. The day the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... And it is immutably fixed beforehand. There can be no final deception. Take the extreme case, that of the mother and her son. One hears that the son hoodwinks his mother. Not he! If he is cruel, neglectful, overbearing, she is perfectly aware of it. He does not deceive her, and she does not deceive herself. I have often thought: If a son could look into a mother's heart, what an eye-opener he would have! "What!" he would cry. ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... a strange sight: the handsome young man on one side, overbearing confidence in his look, with his youthful form, full of grace and suppleness; and opposite him that long figure, half naked—for his blue shirt was furled up from his sinewy arm, and his broad, scarred ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... smug," the young man pronounced; "She is callous; she is, without meaning to be, hypocritical. She works herself into a terrible state of indignation about the misdeeds of her neighbours, and she does not realise her own faults. The Germans are overbearing, but one realises that and expects it. Englishmen are irritating. It is certainly true that amongst us remaining neutrals," he added, dropping his voice a little and looking around to be sure of their isolation, "the sympathy remains with ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... down. He stood impatiently, twirling a stethoscope in his hand. He had passed the schoolboy age and was a bit overbearing himself. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... it is your duty. With this candour does the gentleman speak of himself and others. The same frankness runs through all his conversation. The military part of his life has furnished him with many adventures, in the relation of which he is very agreeable to the company; for he is never overbearing, though accustomed to command men in the utmost degree below him; nor ever too obsequious, from an habit of obeying men ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... quick upon it, they show at the bottom of their souls pride and vain-glory in their very condition of masterdom. They fancy themselves more generous and noble-hearted than the plain freemen, who labor for subsistence. They look down on the simplicity of Yankee manners, because they have no habits of overbearing like theirs, and cannot treat negroes like dogs. It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very source of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice; for what can be more ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... "overhaste never churned good butter, as the old saying hath it. Moreover, I do verily believe that this overstrength of my body hath taken the nimbleness out of my heels. Why, thou didst but just now rap me thrice, and I thee never a once, save by overbearing ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... reply. He was a little ashamed of his temper. But during the past two days he had chafed under the rasp of Duff's tongue and his overbearing manner. He resented too his total disregard of Barry's weariness, for in spite of his sheer grit, the pace was wearing ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... this melancholy termination of this great conqueror's history, our minds naturally revert to the scenes of his childhood, and we wonder that so amiable, and gentle, and generous a boy should become so selfish, and unfeeling, and overbearing as a man. But such are the natural and inevitable effects of ambition and an inordinate love of power. The history of a conqueror is always a tragical and melancholy tale. He begins life with an exhibition of great and noble ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Athanasius, however, was only the signal for a fresh uproar, and the Arians complained that Egypt was kept in a constant turmoil by his zealous activity. Nor were the Arians his only enemies. He had offended many others of his clergy by his overbearing manners, and more particularly by his following in the steps of Alexander, the late bishop, in claiming new and higher powers for the office of patriarch than had ever been yielded to the bishops of Alexandria before their spiritual rank had been changed into civil rank ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... wrong me; don't suppose I wish to be overbearing, or anything of the kind; and you will allow me to say this much, at any rate, that I have become interested in your wife, as well ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... universal firmness of his the respective names of temperance, fortitude, and justice, yet, in the life of the citizen and the statesman, could not but be offended at the severity and ruggedness of his deportment, and with his overbearing, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... understand all that,' said Mrs. Nesbit, with a contemptuous accent; 'but as it cannot be at once, you will soon have enough of that overbearing temper. At twenty, there is plenty of time to get over such an affair, and form ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my attempts, treating me as he had treated the Moldavian clerk; placing myself in a position which exposed me to such treatment, would indeed be plunging into the fire after escaping from the frying pan. The publisher, insolent and overbearing as he was, whatever he might have wished or thought, had never lifted his hand against me, or told me that ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... grew. It was the old story of the few rich {244} dominating and oppressing the many poor. The minority had grown insolent and overbearing, and attempted to rule a hopeless and discontented majority. The reforms of Lycurgus led to some improvements, by the institution of new divisions of citizens and territory and the division of the land, not only among citizens but the half-citizens and ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... seen the face of the visitor at the shop; but something in the impatient, querulous tone, in the hasty, haughty step, and the proud lifting of the regal head, reminded her painfully of him whose overbearing insolence had so unwontedly stirred the ire of Aaron Hunt's genial and generally equable nature. While she pondered this inexplicable coincidence, voices startled her from the next room, whence the sound floated through ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Lear; and good Democrats, who saw every measure refracted through the dense medium of party-spirit, of course defended their leaders, and took fire at Eaton's overbearing manner and insulting intolerance of their opinions. Thus, although the general sentiment of the country was strongly in his favor, at Washington he made many enemies. A resolution was introduced into the House of Representatives ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... within a few feet of him, he said: 'This young man must be taken down, and I am truly sorry that the task devolves upon me.' He then proceeded, in a very overbearing way, and with an assumption of great superiority, to attack Lincoln and his speech. He was fluent and ready with the rough sarcasm of the stump, and he went on to ridicule the person, dress and arguments of Lincoln with so much success that Lincoln's ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... the glory of being the greatest of Irish leaders. Like O'Connell he was a landlord and his family traditions were those of an aristocrat. Like him, too, he was overbearing, even despotic in temperament. But in all else Parnell was the very opposite of the 'Liberator.' The Protestant leader of a Catholic people, he won popularity in Ireland without being at all times either understood or personally liked. In outward appearance he had nothing ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... miracles, considered as possible occurrences, is not reason, but something which on other great subjects is continually found on the opposite side to reason, resisting and counteracting it; that powerful overbearing sense of the actual and the real, which when it is opposed by reason is apt to make reason seem like the creator of mere ideal theories; which gives to arguments implying a different condition of things from one which is familiar to present experience the disadvantage ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the old are heirs of the young. Then and there I vowed to keep myself clear of the whole wretched tangle, even if I had to carry laundry all my life, so that if any one ever tried to fetter me I could fling his words back in his face! (Uncle Richard's nerves are all on edge. A terrific storm of overbearing temper visibly gathers during this speech, and the Colonel's long habit of successful domination seems about to assert itself in an explosion. But at the last moment another power, deeper than habit, older than character, ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... brother or friend, rather than as a minister; while on his part he never presumed on any liberties, and seemed simply to obey the orders of his sovereign,—orders which he himself suggested, with infinite tact and politeness; unlike Stein and Bismarck, who were overbearing and rude even in the presence of the sovereign and court. Metternich had better manners and more self-control. Indeed, he was the model of a gentleman wherever he went. He was the hardest worked man in the empire; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... consummation was scarcely to be hoped for. Angry debates arose in Parliament when the question of religion was touched. The proposals made by the Presbyterians might well provoke the anger of those who saw in them the subordination of ecclesiastical tradition to the tenets of a party which had been overbearing in their hour of triumph, and were ready now, by a cunning appeal for peace, to make their austere and unattractive ritual trample over the cherished customs of the Church. The fact that ritual, rather than doctrine, was concerned, made the fight only the more ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... there came a wonderful clearness of thought, and I realized, despairingly, that the world might wander for ever, through that enormous night. For a while, the unwholesome idea filled me, with a sensation of overbearing desolation; so that I could have cried like a child. In time, however, this feeling grew, almost insensibly, less, and an unreasoning hope possessed me. ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... and tone were consistently overbearing, if his words were inaudible to Lanyard. The lieutenant quite evidently submitted only in form; his salute was punctiliously correct and curt; and as the commander lumbered off down the landing stage, he grumbled indistinctly in ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... not be buried. While they might shed natural tears, he was not sure but that deep in their hearts would come a sense of relief should they hear that he was dead, and so could not deepen the stain he had already given to a name once so respectable. He knew that his indifference and overbearing manner toward his sisters had alienated them from him; while in respect to Mrs. Haldane, her aristocratic conventionality, the most decided trait of her character, would always be in sharp contest with her strong mother-love, and thus he would ever be only a source of disquiet ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... spring, news came from Boston that matters were growing worse and worse. The soldiers who were quartered in that city were daily becoming more insolent and overbearing. ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... your sister nurses; of the stupidity of one, the untidiness of another, or the overbearing nature of the third. It can do no good, and it lowers you in the estimation of every ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... senior instructor before experience suggests the remedy. While the principal is compelled to punish the students for their misconduct in "hazing" the obnoxious professor, he also finds it necessary to abate the nuisance of a conceited, overbearing, and tyrannical pedagogue. Boys cannot be expected to be angels in school, until their instructors have ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... the faith of a common blank passport. He solicited, he soothed, he supplicated, and made concessions in the name of his sovereign. He found the states were wholly guided by the influence of prince Eugene and the duke of Marlborough. He found these generals elated, haughty, overbearing, and implacable. He in private attacked the duke of Marlborough on his weakest side: he offered to that nobleman a large sum of money, provided he would effect a peace on certain conditions. The proposal was rejected. The duke found his enemies in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... devoted to drill was finished, and in spite of the overbearing manner of the instructor, Richard was pleased with the exercise, and even began to entertain visions ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... deal brought about by misunderstanding. Many people mistake the shy man's timidity for overbearing arrogance and are awed and insulted by it. His awkwardness is resented as insolent carelessness, and when, terror-stricken at the first word addressed to him, the blood rushes to his head and the power of speech completely fails him, he is regarded as an awful example of the evil effects ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... full of danger. Ramparts, the walls of a fortification. Bombs, shells fired from mortars. Haughty, overbearing. Fitfully, by starts. Discloses, reveals ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... road-labourer, a lumberjack in the mountains; a private tutor and court messenger. Finally he reached the metropolis and enrolled as a student at the university. But the gaunt, raw-boned youth, unpractical and improvident, overbearing of manner, passionately independent in thought and conduct, failed utterly in his attempts to realise whatever ambitions he had cherished. So it was hardly strange that this the first chapter of his Odyssey should end in the steerage of an ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... themselves at the beginning of the Long Night with empty Mother Hubbard cupboards. The Eskimo winter has many mealtimes, and Roxi had but a poor idea of the higher mathematics. Long ere the darkness of the Great Night relaxed its overbearing blackness Roxi got very hungry, and he had no food. Life is dear, even on the edge of things. So into the silence Roxi crept and dug down through the ice and frozen sand to the skeleton of a stranded whale killed three years ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... gold watch encased in a rough exterior, a noble heart in a rude setting. His horny hands were hardened by toil, but he had a clever head on his shoulders; he was well endowed with mother-wit, quick at repartee, merciless in his satire toward the haughty and overbearing, cool and good-humoured in the presence of danger,—in short, a genuine Szekler, heart ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... Polly, remembering the old Ilga and her few school friends, looked delightedly upon the popularity which this subdued, humbled girl was winning. Once such attention might have incited her to overbearing conduct; now it seemed only to make her fairly beam with good-fellowship and happiness. "And she actually loves father!" Polly would smilingly tell herself, secretly rejoicing in the fact; but she rarely spoke of the ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... an Englishman arrived there, and took up his quarters at the hotel at which I was stopping. He was one of those phlegmatic, overbearing, obstinate Britons, who consider money the engine with which every thing is to be moved and all things accomplished, the argument in short which nothing can resist. Money was every thing in his estimation of mankind; talent, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... by the wounds of Christ," he cried, stretching out his hands to me, "let the love of God come into your heart! I have not been condemned to death, there is nothing very serious against me, I have been too overbearing, that is all." ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... think there was! About three months ago he began making her acquaintance. I thought there was something particular. I did n't quite like to watch 'em very close; but I could n't help overbearing some of the things he said to her, for, you see, he used to follow her up into the parlor, they talked pretty low, but I could catch a word now and then. I heard him say something to her one day about ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... me to speak first of the Carlyles. Mr. C. came to see me at once, and appointed an evening to be passed at their house. That first time, I was delighted with him. He was in a very sweet humour,—full of wit and pathos, without being overbearing or oppressive. I was quite carried away with the rich flow of his discourse, and the hearty, noble earnestness of his personal being brought back the charm which once was upon his writing, before I wearied of ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... time, that at their hostelry they met an arrogant, overbearing knight, of gigantic stature and powerful frame, whose speech and carriage proved him to be not of German but foreign birth. He appeared to come from the land of Bohemia. He cast a contemptuous smile on Froda, who, as usual, had opened the ancient book of Aslauga's history, ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... disciples, and prevailed upon the minister to entertain him as a mosahib, or aide-de-camp. He soon became a favourite with Aga Meer, and formed a liaison with a dancing-girl, named Beeba Jan. His conduct towards her soon became too violent and overbearing, and she sought shelter with the Khasmahal, or chief consort, of the minister, who promised her protection, and detained her in her apartments. Eesa Meean appealed to the minister, and demanded her surrender. The minister told him that she was mistress of her ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... first decided, indeed, but mild in the expression of her decision. To this, and to one or two other missives couched in terms of increasing decision, Hugh answered with manly, self-asserting, overbearing arguments. The house was theirs till Christmas; between this and then he would think about it. He could very well afford to keep the house on till next Midsummer, and then they might see what had best be done. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope |
