"Rigid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if she had been stung, and a sudden tremor crossed the rigid calm of her demeanor. She had schooled herself to indifference, to neglect or to civil thanks worse than either: but this unexpected tenderness, this sisterly recognition, went straight through all its defences to her quivering heart; and she looked up piteously ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... loud beneath my tread, the lounging back stiffened and grew rigid, the face showed for an instant over the shoulder, and, with a spring, he had vanished into ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... hasty speech, called Erica into the study the moment he heard her return. He was still very pale, and with a curiously rigid look ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... a small, rose-coloured figure stood still for so long in the gardens that it began to look rigid and some one said, "I wonder what that little girl is ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Rigid propriety forbade that Mr. Palford should express annoyance, but the effort to restrain the expression of it was in his countenance. Was it possible that the American habit of being jocular had actually held its own in a matter as ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... little gathering. A woman was talking to them as one accustomed to talk from birth. They listened with the rigid attention of men early trained to listen to, but not to talk with, women. She was, to put it mildly, the mother of all she-bores, but when she moved on, no man ventured to say ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... from the green hills of the Casentino descend into the Arno, making their channels cool and soft, stand ever before me, and not in vain; for their image dries me up far more than the disease which strips my face of flesh. The rigid justice that scourges me draws occasion from the place where I sinned to put my sighs the more in flight. There is Romena, where I falsified the alloy stamped with the Baptist,[1] for which on earth I left my body burned. But ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... his abdomen. His death-pale face never changed its set look nor position toward Blue. But his gasping utterance was one of horrible mortal fury and terror. Then he began to sway, still with that strange, rigid set of his face toward his slayer, until ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... at once fluent and angular, expressionless and sensitive) told me many things whereof even The Zulu might not speak, things which in order entirely to suffer he kept carefully and thoroughly ensconced behind his rigid and ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... was noticed no more on the streets of the little city. Then, in some way, it leaked out that his father had sent him to a military boarding school where the discipline was credited with being very rigid. ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... hair, which sprang into long curls as Aunt Maria combed it, was invariably braided into two thick, tight braids, but there were always little wisps that curled about the ears and forehead. These wisps were at once the woman's despair and the child's freely expressed delight. However, through all the rigid discipline the little girl retained her natural buoyancy of childhood, the spontaneous interestedness, the cheerfulness and animation, which were a ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... folding doors, which were thrown open, was filled with the afternoon sunshine; a table strewn with maps and papers was placed near one of the long windows. Beyond it, in an armchair, was seated a man in an attitude of rigid attention. Several staff-officers ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... inspire, And seat her by a sea-coal fire; Or had the bard at Christmas written, And laid the scene of love in Britain; He surely, in commiseration, Had chang'd the place of declaration. In Italy, I've no objection, Warm nights are proper for reflection; But here our climate is so rigid, That love itself, is rather frigid: Think on our chilly situation, And curb this rage for imitation. Then let us meet, as oft we've done, Beneath the influence of the sun; Or, if at midnight I must meet you, Within your mansion let me greet you: [i.] 'There', we can love for hours together, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... back; she had said it wouldn't be polite to call us both "Happy" an' as long as I had owned both names the longest, she was willin' to give me my choice—an' then she said 'at that wouldn't be quite fair to the pinto—she was mighty rigid on bein' square—so she said 'at we'd have to draw for 'em. She wrote "Happy" on one piece of paper an' "Hawkins" on the other, put her hat in the pony's mouth,—she had taught him a lot o' tricks,—an' I had ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... Just enough so that she could re-create her world from her blessed memories, without any sharp corrective senses to interfere. That, I am sure, was what she fixed her mind upon through the prolonged autumn; bending all her frail strength to turn her brain ever so little from its rigid attitude to fact. "Pretending" was no good: it maddened. If her mind would only pretend without her help! That would be heaven, until heaven really came.... You can't sympathize with her, probably, you people who have been bred up on every kind ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... un—" "How dare you stand looking at me?" said Sarah. "It's my room as well as yourn," said Martha, for that was her name; and nothing further was said then. But Martha's eyes fixed on me as I sat naked up to my waist with my prick wet, rigid, red, throbbing, and all but involuntarily jerking out its sperm. I was in that state of lust, that I could have fucking anything in the shape of a cunt, and scarcely knew in the confusion of the moment, where I was, and what it was all about. Sarah saw my state, and began pulling down ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... of Linda Tressel, who is the heroine of the little story now about to be told, arose from the too rigid virtue of her nearest and most loving friend,—as troubles will sometimes come from rigid virtue when rigid virtue is not accompanied by sound sense, and especially when it knows little or nothing of the ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... perfect housewifery; implicit obedience; and, finally, wound up the list of requisites from mere lack of breath, and modestly intimated that youth would not be considered an objection, provided that great prudence and rigid economy accompanied it. He was the veriest antidote to matrimony I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... of the close, if somewhat formal, friendship between Jay and Hamilton, the latter was often momentarily depressed by the resemblance of this flawless character to, and its rigid contrasts from, his dead friend Laurens. Jay was all that Laurens had passionately wished to be, and apparently without effort; for nature had not balanced him with a redeeming vice, consequently with no power to inspire hate or love. Had he been a degree greater, a trifle more ambitious, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... again took him on her lap, but to her grief perceived that he did not seem to know her. Soon, his sweet blue eyes were rolled upward, his brow contracted, his lips were set, and his tender limbs grew rigid. Medical aid was called at once, but the little sufferer passed from one spasm into another, till almost ere physician and parents were aware that he was going, poor little ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... of consistency. And this same feeling showed itself in other matters besides art: in ethics, as is shown by some verses which he addressed to a young friend, urging him not to be bound by a too rigid austerity: ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... smiling if somewhat perplexed. Encouraged, the child advanced, proffering a silver card-tray at the end of an unnaturally rigid forearm. Kirkwood took the card dubiously between thumb and forefinger and inspected ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... that all this is put into words, or that we have certain hours for studying how to make good wives, or that it is as rigid or exhausting as a broom drill. It is the intangible, esoteric philosophy which permeates the households of thousands of American families, where the mothers are the companions and confidantes of the daughters. It is an understood thing. You would be surprised to know how young ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... to keep his arms rigid. Of course paralysis needles would cause this mech body no damage, but why make trouble? They had more ...
— Second Sight • Basil Eugene Wells
... Grayson stood, very rigid, and waited. And as he waited he kept his eyes on the portrait of old Anthony, in the drawing-room beyond. There was a fixed, rapt look in Grayson's eyes, and there was reassurance. It was as though he would say to the portrait: "It has all come out very well, you see, sir. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... you would tell her?" she asked, looking straight ahead of her into the shadows on the lawn. Her voice sounded less musical than it had a moment before. Her eyes avoided his, and for one unguarded instant the full sculpturesque lips were tense and rigid. ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... And every step carried Susan nearer to the world of her childhood, with its rigid conventions, its distrust of herself, its timidity of officials, and in crowded places! The influence of the Saunders' arrogance and pride failed her suddenly; the memory of Stephen's bracing belief in the power to make anything possible forsook her. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... here. The more exalted in rank reached the donjon, or castle-keep, but as they thought to set foot within it, a trap-door opened and they too found themselves prisoners. It fared better with the princes; for the success of each champion was measured by a rigid heraldic scale. These passed the donjon, but, on a bridge leading to the tower where slept the enchanted lady, a giant confronted them, and in the midst of the combat the bridge was lowered, and they were taken, as had been their predecessors. "The Duke of Vendome,[387] ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... of the old man with one of the spades, which he tremblingly seized. And then, in the instinct of terror at the deed, he shovelled the loose earth over the bleeding carcass, while the Moriscoe's pale profile looked stern and rigid in the expiring light. The work was soon complete; and the mound of earth thus hastily thrown up (soon covered with as rank weeds as ever sprang from a polluted soil) were long marked by shuddering superstition as "the grave ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... That the national faith, pledged for the redemption of the public debt, must be kept inviolate, and that for this purpose we recommend economy and rigid responsibility in the public expenditures, and a vigorous and just system of taxation: and that it is the duty of every loyal State to sustain the credit and promote the use of ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... striving towards an end in these developments, and after having climbed to that Faust-height of investigation and knowledge, to throw ourselves in spiritual suicide back into the night and barbarism of chaos, or of a rigid mechanism to which all development, all life, all spiritual and ethical tasks, are but appearance; or we should have to treat the idea of development seriously and recognize a plan and a striving towards an end in this world-process, and should ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... Saunderson, a man of powerful build, seized him by the shoulders, holding him fast; MacLean, too, hurriedly crossed from the door. There was no need, for the half-breed's frenzy was spent. He stood with glittering eyes following Haward's every motion, but quite silent, his frame rigid in the overseer's grasp. ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... In Greece an old manvantara had evolved patricianism and culture; which the pralaya following swept all away, except some relics perhaps in Thebes the isolated and conservative, certainly in Sparta. Lycurgus was wise in his generation when he sought by a rigid system to impose the plebeian virtues ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... concurrently with building for the active participle, and being built for the corresponding passive participle, we possessed the former, with is prefixed, as the active present imperfect, it is in rigid accordance with the symmetry of our verb that, to construct the passive present-imperfect, we prefix is to the latter, producing the form is being built. Such, in its greatest simplicity, is the procedure which, as will be seen, has provoked a very levanter of ire ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... a noble creature who, deserving to be beaten, approves and accepts: there are not a few such children: Cornelius was none of such; but it consoled him that he had been hardly used by his father. He had been accustomed to look vaguely up to his father as a sort of rigid but righteous divinity; and in a disobedient, self-indulgent, poverty-stricken nature like his, reverence could only take the form of fear; and now that he had seen his father in a rage, the feeling of reverence, such as it was, had begun to give way, and with it the fear: they were ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... is a very distinguished and a very independent man of Science. It was he who insisted, at a time when the domination of a very rigid form of Darwinism was much stronger than it is to-day, that the picture of Nature as seen by us is a Discontinuous picture, though Discontinuity does not exist in the environment. And it was he who asked whether the Discontinuity ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... thy sire to send on earth Virtue, his darling child, designed, To thee he gave the heavenly birth, And bade to form her infant mind. Stern, rugged nurse! thy rigid lore With patience many a year she bore; What sorrow was thou bad'st her know, And from her own she learned to melt ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... towering barrier that he wished but hardly hoped to surmount. He was the first person, I think, to see that Free Thought was no longer a young movement, but old and even fossilized. It had formed minds which were now too set to be altered. It had its own dogmas and its own most rigid orthodoxy. "You are armed to the teeth," he told the readers of the Clarion, "and buttoned up to the chin with the great agnostic Orthodoxy, perhaps the most placid and perfect of all the orthodoxies of men. . . . I ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... blacks necessitated the most rigid laws concerning them. Time had been when it was thought not dangerous to teach slaves to read. In 1742 Commissary Garden, of the English Society for Propagating the Gospel, founded a negro school in Charleston, where slaves were taught by slave teachers, these last being the society's ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Martin Warricombe's son-in-law, of the thousand respects which forbade his hoping that Sidwell would ever lay her hand in his. That deep-rooted sense of class which had so much influence on his speculative and practical life asserted itself, with rigid consistency, even against his own aspirations; he attributed to the Warricombes more prejudice on this subject than really existed in them. He, it was true, belonged to no class whatever, acknowledged no subordination save ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... throbbing across the darkness like a frightened heart terrified by its own loneliness. The hand of man was impelling it, an unseen hand, only telling of its presence by the thin tattoo it sent through the silence. Words died and they sat rigid in the sudden alarm that comes upon men in the wilderness. The doctor clutched his daughter's arm, Daddy John reached for his rifle. Then, abruptly as it had come, it stopped and they broke into suggestions—emigrants on the ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... require the production of office books and records in making such investigations. Without such a provision it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to conduct satisfactory investigations, but with the authority conferred by the act, the Board can make a rigid inquiry into the facts of every case arising under the act ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... the mark of the sacerdotal spirit. The myths, though originally derived from nature-worship, in an infinite majority of cases only reflect natural phenomena through a veil of ritualistic corruptions.(6) The rigid division of castes is seldom recognised in the Rig-Veda. We seem to see caste in the making.(7) The Rishis and priests of the princely families were on their way to becoming the all-powerful Brahmans. The kings and princes were ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... other and singing impassioned duets to keep us warm, and thinking of all the lovely things we could afford to buy if we chose, and, at the same time, planning out our lives in a spirit of the most rigid and exacting economy! RUD. It's a most beautiful and touching picture of connubial bliss in its ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... his toils, and to sympathize with him in all the legitimate concerns of manhood. But what, demands the caviler, can be expected of a child of fifteen; and should her promises be held against her for rigid fulfillment and performance? It might be enough to answer that we are writing a sober history. There is the record. The fact is as we give it. But a girl of fifteen, in the warm latitudes of South America, is quite as mature as the northern maiden of twenty-five; ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... forget the solemn significance of this interrogation. And it is a question especially for you, because you have special advantages in the matter of putting it. We older people are all fixed and fossils, as you are very fond of telling us. The iron has cooled and gone into rigid shapes with us. It is all fluent with you. You may become pretty nearly what you like. I do not mean in regard to circumstances: other considerations come in to determine these; but circumstances are second, character ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... From the rigid severity with which some of these mourning and religious ceremonies are executed, one would expect to find, that they meant thereby to secure to themselves felicity beyond the grave; but their principal object relates to things merely temporal. For they seem ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... the windows glowing like open-hearth furnaces, the glass bulging and cracking and the flames licking upward and shooting out in long streamers. The hose was coupled up in an instant, the water turned on, and the limp rubber and canvas became as rigid as a post with the high pressure of the water being forced through it. Company after company dashed into the blazing "fireproof" building, urged by the ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... melamed, and amidst this silence was heard a long, trembling passionate sighing. All looked around, desiring to learn from whose breast proceeded that noise as of the tearing out of desire, but no one could discover whence it came. They only perceived that Meir, with rigid figure, pale face and burning eyes was gazing into the great-grandmother's face. She, feeling the piercing look of her beloved child, raised her ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... with crime, a less and a less excuse suffices. He began by avenging his own wrong, becomes the avenger of others, then perhaps the tool of others, who use the wrongs of the country as a cloak for unjustified malice, and the suspected tyrant or the rigid, yet not unjust, man shares the fate of the glaring oppressors. What terror and suspicion—what a shadow as of death is there upon such a district! No one trusts his neighbour. The rich, excited by such events, believe the poor have ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... dreadful Western town where they live," she said to herself. "How foolish of Philip Carr to try to send his girls to Europe! He can't afford it, I know." Her voice was rather rigid ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... attention should be paid to the attitude and general condition of the animal. Sometimes horses assume positions that are characteristic of a certain disease. For example, in tetanus (lockjaw) the muscles of the face, neck, and shoulders are stiff and rigid, as well as the muscles of the jaw. This condition produces a peculiar attitude, that once seen is subsequently recognized as rather characteristic of the disease. A horse with tetanus stands with his muscles tense and his legs in a somewhat bracing position, as though he were ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... especially the local moral standards which play an important part and are subject to censorship in Madame Coutant's circle. The individual conduct of the entire quarter is under the most rigid observation. Lives must be pure as crystal, homes of glass. It were better to attempt to ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... least act, its last hour. My first draught of nourishment; the giving me my compound name; taking me out the first time to see the sun; investing me with the triple thread by which I became one of the twice-born; my induction into the first order—were all celebrated with sacred texts and rigid ceremonies. I might not walk, eat, drink, or sleep without danger of violating a rule. And the penalty, O brethren, the penalty was to my soul! According to the degrees of omission, my soul went to one of the heavens—Indra's ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... principle, to support itself against the force of ridicule. Half angry, half mortified, and, to say truth, half ashamed of his more manly and better purpose, Nigel was unable, and flattered himself it was unnecessary, to play the part of a rigid moral patriot, in presence of a young man whose current fluency of language, as well as his experience in the highest circles of society, gave him, in spite of Nigel's better and firmer thoughts, a temporary ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... quite a notable picture. The Lady Desdemona stood now, tense, rigid, immobile as any rock, though instinct with life in every hair. Finn became the very personification of action, eager movement, alert interest. Inside of one minute he had examined the motionless Desdemona (by means ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... or parry as occasion might demand, the guard faced about and slowly moved away from the great stone of sacrifice, rigid of face, cool of nerve, ready to die if must be, yet never once thinking of disobedience to orders, or of playing cur to ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... true reaction against tradition. It replaced an old tradition by a new one; it substituted a rigid, unprogressive authority for one capable of growth and adaptation to changing requirements. In the end, Karaism became so hedged in by its supposed avoidance of tradition that it ceased to be a living ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... ordinary type. Moreover, I have brought them under such conditions as are necessary for the full development of their characters. And last but not least, I have tried to improve this character as far as possible by a very rigid and ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... mitigate the penalties of the six articles, so far as regards the marriage of priests, which was now only subjected to a forfeiture of goods, chattels, and lands during life, he was still equally bent on maintaining a rigid purity in speculative principles. He had appointed a commission, consisting of the two archbishops and several bishops of both provinces, together with a considerable number of doctors of divinity; and by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... nearly at the voluntary retirement age for scientists when he realized what he, and his fellow scientists, had done. Their efforts to make life richer and more rewarding for mankind had made life only less strenuous and more rigid. ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... last. He had blundered clumsily, and he knew it. The colour drained from Eileen's face and she stood rigid as a statue for a moment. Then slowly she swayed forward. He stretched out his arms to prevent her from falling. She waved him aside dumbly and tottered to a couch. His directness had been more merciful than he had thought. ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... He kept a rigid and unmoved face until his visitor had gone, and then retiring to his own little room, he threw himself upon the bed and burst out sobbing with his face buried in the pillow. Of all men in England, this, the richest, was on that day the most miserable. How could he use ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I shall do!" Mr. Thorne wrapped his toga around him with an air of duty done. But a husband cannot escape so easily as that. His ministering angel sat beside his bed for half an hour longer, brooding aloud over the day's disaster, with a rigid eye upon ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... public duties; his View of the State of Ireland shows that. But it shows, too, that he brought to them singularly little sympathy or imagination. Throughout his tone is that of the worst kind of English officialdom; rigid subjection and in the last resort massacre are the remedies he would apply to Irish discontent. He would be a fine text—which might be enforced by modern examples—for a discourse on the evil effects of immersion in the government of a subject race upon men of letters. No man of action can ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... so," said the marquise, stopping Eugene with a cold and rigid manner, "you will find it difficult to explain, monsieur, why your pen should, by accident, write my name. A name, written on a letter, is not a friend's opera-hat, which you might have taken, carelessly, on ...
— Study of a Woman • Honore de Balzac
... of the water on his body will be increased by about 15 lb per square inch, and as the air pump cannot immediately increase the pressure in the dress to a corresponding extent, the man's body in the unresisting dress will be forced into the rigid helmet, and he will certainly be severely injured, ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... advantages, however. The real gain to the students is in other and most significant directions. First, the abolishing of rigid grading allows each child to follow his own bent. At the beginning of the adolescent period, when the old interests begin to lag, some new ideas must be furnished if the child is to be kept in school. We provide that new stimulus by beginning departmental ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... sat moodily in the empty room that had somehow never seemed so empty before. Her attitude was as rigid and uncompromising as usual; but there was a perplexed frown on her brow. For the first time in her life one of her girls had dared to assert her own will and to speak the truth to her; and she was utterly nonplussed. It was not too ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... you, at least so it appears to me, that American politics are very much altered. Taxation and the exercise of it are totally renounced. You never hear the right mentioned, but in order to give it up. The rigid politician of last year, such a man for instance as Wellbore Ellis, stands now almost single in the ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... stood rigid, with her hands always crossed in front of her and her eyes watching the door. The boy at the piano moved his hands over the keys without producing any sound. There was the ripple of a laugh, and Mrs. Shiffney came carelessly in with Rades, followed by a small, ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... affair, the details of which had never quite come out, had indicated a heartlessness and callousness upon his part which shocked many of his friends. But in the bachelor circles of students and artists in which he preferred to move there is no very rigid code of honour in such matters, and though a head might be shaken or a pair of shoulders shrugged over the flight of two and the return of one, the general sentiment was probably one of curiosity and perhaps of envy ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the importance and duties of religion. She would listen with approval in the evening when he said the Lord's Prayer, and was rigid in her observance of the Sabbath. Indeed, the next day being Sunday he, thinking no harm, proposed their usual game of piquet, but no, she would not play. Mr. Tebrick, not understanding at first what she meant, though he was usually very quick ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... found that although the great majority of the public bodies was naturally Nationalist and Catholic, there was no sign of that spirit of rigid exclusiveness extended towards the Catholics by the Protestants in the city of Belfast. Of course, a large number of the Protestant officials found so frequently in the service of these public bodies are appointed in Ireland by the Crown, and not, as in England, by the ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... grate as it loosened its slight hold on the rock, and began the voyage down-stream. The current was swift enough to bear it and its burden free from the island, although it moved slowly and noiselessly on its way. The two men deeply emerged on either side, with heads held rigid against the wet bark, were indistinguishable. Out from the deeper shadow of the rock they drifted into the wider stream below, Brennan gently controlling the unwieldy affair, and keeping it as nearly as possible to the centre, by the noiseless movement of a hand under water. The men scarcely ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... yet noiseless; he moves along with a rapid stealthy pace, his glance roving from side to side in a vigilant uneasy manner, arising from his eagerness to detect signs of game and his fears of hidden foes. The earth, the water, the trees, the skies, each are in turn subjected to a rigid scrutiny, and from the most insignificant circumstances he deduces omens. His head is held erect and his progress is uncertain, in a moment his pace is checked, he stands in precisely the position of motion as if suddenly transfixed, nothing about him stirs but his eyes, they ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... be pressed too far. Greek literature at the later Byzantine Court, like the polity and religion of the Empire, was a matter of rigid formalism; and so an epigram by Cometas Chartularius differs no more in style and spirit from an epigram by Agathias than two mosaics of the same dates. The later is a copy of the earlier, executed in a somewhat inferior manner. Even ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... my female detectives is generally light. Zeal and discretion are the principal requisites, though conscientious devotion to duty, and rigid obedience to orders, are also essential. They are expected to win the confidence of those from whom information is desired, and to lose no opportunity of encouraging ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... Chuck left her side and dashed around behind her in order to place himself at her right again, according to the rigid rule of Chippewa etiquette. He took her arm only at street crossings until they reached the tracks, which perilous spot seemed to justify him in retaining his hold throughout the remainder of the stroll. Usually they lost Cora and Scotty without having been ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... roused himself and sat on his haunches, his ears moving quickly backward and forward. He kept his eyes fixed on me with a look so strange that he concentered all my attention on himself. Slowly he rose up, all his hair bristling, and stood perfectly rigid, and with the same wild stare. I had no time, however, to examine the dog. Presently my servant emerged from his room; and if ever I saw horror in the human face, it was then. I should not have recognized him had we met in the street, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... the triumph of Cromwell his property was confiscated, and he had judged it prudent to escape beyond seas. The manor, however, had been purchased by his brother-in-law, Roger Willoughby, who had married his sister, and who had held it during the period of the Commonwealth. Mr Willoughby was a rigid Puritan, and had been as active in supporting Cromwell as his brother-in-law had been in the cause of the opposite party. At the Restoration the tables were again turned, and Colonel Tregellen, who had some time before ventured back to England, had, by an amicable arrangement with ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... the reader, were of deep influence to the Prince of India. While he stands there rigid as a figure marbleized in mid action, he ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... my grasp of her: she writhed from me like some glittering wounded serpent. The tears had dried on her cheeks, her features were rigid and wax-like as the features of a corpse; only her dark eyes shone, and these seemed preternaturally large, and gleamed with an evil luster. I moved a little away, and turning my own coffin on its side, I sat down upon it as indifferently as though it were ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... powerful as in former days. When she had ceased speaking, she paused, with arm still outstretched, as though transfixed. She gazed steadily across the level plain to the distant mountains, motionless and rigid, while the two young Indians waited, awed and afraid, minute after minute, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... We laid hold doggedly of little cedars; we dug our fingers into little crevices, and felt for the same with our toes; we perspired in streams and breathed in gasps; we held the strained muscles of our necks rigid, for the twisting of a pack meant here a dangerous fall; we flattened ourselves against the face of the mountain with always the heavy, ceaseless pull of the tump-line attempting to tear us backward from our holds. And so at last, when the muscles of our thighs refused to strengthen ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... grievous mistake of supposing that, in the opinion of our sacred writers, a human being can escape the operation of the law of Karma by adopting a condition of masterly inactivity, entirely losing sight of the fact that even a rigid abstinence from physical acts does not produce inactivity on the higher astral and spiritual planes. Sri Sankara has very conclusively proved, in his commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, that such a supposition is nothing short of a delusion. The great ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Koch's bacillus was almost as great as it has been in the twenty years since. In other words, the general tendency, born of civilization, toward sanitary reform, better housing, better drainage, higher wages and consequently more abundant food, rigid inspection of food materials, factory laws, etc., is of itself fighting against and diminishing the prevalence of the "great white plague" by improving the resisting power and building up the health of the individual. Civilization is ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... Irving grew rigid. His head was throbbing painfully; the continued snickering all round him and Westby's increasing confidence and fluency grated on his nerves. He ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... Tom's craft consisted first of a great semi-rigid bag, or envelope, made of specially prepared oiled silk and aluminum, to hold the gas, which was manufactured on board. There were a number of gas-tight compartments, so that if one, or even if a number of them burst, or ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... no answer, and I looked up into her dear face in alarm. It had grown rigid, and a peculiar blue tinge of pallor was spreading over it. Her head had fallen back against the chair. I had never seen her look so death-like in any of her illnesses, and I sprang to my feet in terror. She stopped me by a slight convulsive pressure of her hand, as I was about to unfasten her ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... fallacious analogy; but the soul of Anacreon speaks so unequivocally through his odes, that we may safely consult them as the faithful mirrors of his heart. We find him there the elegant voluptuary, diffusing the seductive charm of sentiment over passions and propensities at which rigid morality must frown. His heart, devoted to indolence, seems to have thought that there is wealth enough in happiness, but seldom happiness in mere wealth. The cheerfulness, indeed, with which he brightens his old age is interesting ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... had been to know their history and the purpose of their visits. Had I not learned from Mr Clayton the impropriety and sinfulness of judging humanity by its looks, I should have formed a most uncharitable opinion of their characters. They were hard-featured men, sallow of complexion, rigid in their looks. I knew that, attached to the church of Mr Clayton, were two missionaries—men of rare piety, and some of humble origin—small boot-makers, in fact; sometimes I believed that the visiters and they were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the African Church, he says, the most diligent search can scarce discover one chaste among thousands. And this, it must be borne in mind, was the African Church, which under the care of Augustine had been specially nurtured in the most rigid asceticism. Four hundred years later the state of monastic morals is sufficiently indicated by a regulation of St. Theodore Studita prohibiting the entrance of female animals into monasteries.[171] A regulation passed in Paris at a Council held in 1212 enforces the same lesson by ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... advantages over others, she opposed to the praises lavished on her reflections of her imperfections, which, though not apparent to any one but herself, she verily believed were uncommonly great, as she beheld them with very scrutinizing and rigid eyes, while she looked on those of others with the greatest lenity. But of all the means she used to preserve her humility, she was the most assiduous in praying to him who made her heart, to ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... few, and his half pay more than adequate to supply them. A happy contemplative indolence, arising from a well cultivated mind, feeding rather upon its previous acquirements, than adding to its store—an equanimity of disposition, and a habit of rigid self-command—were the characteristics of Edward Forster; whom I shall now awaken, that we may proceed ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... be seen in the France of the novelist's era, just as a naturalist aims to study beast-kind, segregating them into classes for zoological investigation. Later, Balzac's great successor (as we shall see) applied this analogy with more rigid insistence upon the scientific method which should obtain in all literary study. The survey proposed covered a period of about half a century and included the Republic, the Empire and the Restoration: it ranged through all classes and conditions of men ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... finest composing room in the world, from which speaking-tubes and vertical railways communicate with all the other parts of the building. Every department of the paper has a responsible head, and the most rigid discipline prevails throughout the office. There are twelve editors, thirty-five reporters, and four hundred and fifty-three other employes, making a total force of five hundred men engaged upon "The Herald." The circulation ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... fireplace. Then she took one of the candles which were burning on the little table, and set fire to this heap of paper. A bright flame sprang up at once, lighting up the room, the bed and the corpse with a bright, flickering light, and casting on the white bed-curtain a dark, trembling shadow of the rigid ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... disappeared to make themselves respectable. We lifted Mr. Trelawny on to the sofa where he had lain yesterday; and, having done what we could for him, turned our attention to the Nurse. In all the turmoil she had not stirred; she sat there as before, erect and rigid, breathing softly and naturally and with a placid smile. As it was manifestly of no use to attempt anything with her till the doctor had come, we began to think of the ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... cresset, charged with coarse rancid oil, hung from the roof, the dull smoky red light flickering on the dead corpse, as the breeze streamed in through the door and numberless chinks in the walls, making the cold, rigid, sharp features appear to move, and glimmer, and gibber as it were, from the changing shades. Close to the head there was a small door opening into an apartment of some kind, but the coffin was placed so near it that one could pass between ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... Endued with great might and intelligence, and above fatigue, that foremost of warriors is incapable of defeat by the very gods with Vasava at their head. The son of Pandu possesses terrible weapons and is ever victorious in battle. Avoiding his path, go thou to battle (for Bhishma's victory) O thou of rigid vows.[478] Today in this dreadful battle thou wilt behold a great carnage. The beautiful and costly coats of mail, decked with gold, of brave warriors will be pierced with straight shafts. And the tops of standards, and bearded ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... renounce what we believe to have come from God; securing the doctrine at all events, and then putting forth our very best to guard against its perversion and abuse. But surely, it well becomes our brethren of the Church of Rome, to examine with most rigid and unsparing scrutiny into the very foundation of such a doctrine as this; a doctrine which in its mildest and most guarded form is considered by a very large number of their fellow Christians, as a dishonouring of God and of his Son, our Saviour; and which in its excess, an excess witnessed ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... Until this morn, I snapped the ignoble tie, By calling on the Mother of our Lord. O for the power to stand again erect, And look men in the eyes! What penitence, What scourging of the flesh, what rigid fasts, What terrible privations may suffice To cleanse me in the sight of God and man?" Ill-omened silence followed his appeal. Patient and motionless he lay awhile, Then sprang unto his feet with sudden force, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... governments of the Empire seem reluctant to admit the natural excellence of our food productions and to accept the evidence we constantly tender of the care with which their purity is guarded by rigid inspection from the farm, through the slaughterhouse and the packing establishments, to the port of shipment. Our system of control over exported food staples invites examination from any quarter and challenges ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... ideas of discipline were extremely rigid, at once suggested that the colony should be put under the surveillance of the police, that the cardinal points should be placed under restraint, and that the sun should be shot ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... into a sweeping whirl of waters. She was close by a vortex near the mouth of the river, a ravenous little whirlpool that threatened to swallow her up. The oars dropped from her hands; she seized the sides of her boat and sat still, rigid as stone, white as death. Then a great arrow, or what seemed to be one, shot through the water close by her, ploughing it white with foam. Then a man leaped into her boat, pitching a pair of oars in before him, and holding the ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... keepers was clamoring for admittance, while the other bent over a rigid form lying there, prone and ghastly, in the gray morning light stealing in at the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... Chappie, Muscadin, Petit Creve, Gommeux—call him by what name you will. From these he feared no evil. But in that one follower who gave no outward token of his worship he dreaded peril. It was Montesma he watched, while dragoons with close-cropped hair, and imbecile youths with heads rigid in four-inch collars, were hanging about Lady Lesbia's low bamboo chair, and administering obsequiously to the ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the twig, he throws it at a mark with great speed and accuracy. Perhaps the most popular sport among the children is what they term the stick game. Again willow rods are used without the bark, only this time they are cut short enough to be rigid, and they drive them with great velocity up an inclined board. When the stick leaves the board it speeds like an arrow far in the distance. Every Indian boy and girl owns a pony, from which they are almost inseparable, and which ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... a standard to which all science which did struggle up through this atmosphere must be made to conform—a standard which favoured magic rather than science, for it was a standard of rigid dogmatism obtained from literal readings in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. The most careful inductions from ascertained facts were regarded as wretchedly fallible when compared with any view of nature whatever given or even hinted at in any poem, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... as to claim in anticipation the severest analysis. Entertaining these views, I recur with satisfaction to the experience and action of the last session of Congress as furnishing assurance that the subject will not fail to elicit a careful reexamination and rigid scrutiny. It was my intention to present on this occasion some suggestions regarding internal improvements by the General Government, which want of time at the close of the last session prevented my submitting on the return to the House of Representatives with objections of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... hand, we are told that Miss Austen owed her lively sense of humor to her habit of dissociating the follies of mankind from any rigid standard of right and wrong; which means, I suppose, that she never dreamed she had a mission. Nowadays, indeed, no writer is without one. We cannot even read a paper upon gypsies and not become aware that its author is deeply imbued ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... devoutly pious, and rigid in never permitting before him any licentious language or manners. It is well known that James the First had a habit of swearing,—expletives in conversation, which, in truth, only expressed the warmth of his feelings; but in that age, when Puritanism ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... inhabitants, I design here to give a history of the calamitous events which have so lately occurred within its limits. No one who knows me will doubt that the duty thus self-imposed will be executed to the best of my ability, with all that rigid impartiality, all that cautious examination into facts, and diligent collation of authorities, which should ever distinguish him who aspires to the title ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... long softening lashes. The whole was spoilt by a want of light—of the sunshine one loves to see in a young face—the expression was too grave and impassive; there was the suggestion of future hardness, unless time should mellow instead of stiffening and accentuating the already somewhat rigid lines. ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... handful of picked nobles, who, themselves, were never seen except by their underlings. It was a long, roundabout way of doing business, but it was the only way Saarkkad would do any business at all. To violate the rigid social setup of Saarkkad would mean the instant closing off of the supply of biochemical products that the Saarkkadic laboratories produced from native plants and animals—products that were vitally necessary to Earth's war, and ...
— In Case of Fire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... ten minutes before Willett again overtook the pale-faced young officer at the front. Harris's mouth looked like a rigid gash, and his battered felt was pulled down over a deep-lined forehead, as with stern eyes he turned his head, but never his shoulder, in answer to his ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... cause must lie either in the environment which surrounds the variety or in the selection which it has received, or in a combination of the two. It is held also by some that aside from the influence of soil and climate, and in spite of the most rigid selection, there is an inherent tendency in varieties to depart in a more or less marked degree from the type in which they first appeared. This is particularly true of new varieties that have not yet become established. Almost before the plant breeder ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... You would like Vienna, Kindchen. You would like the gayety, and the brightness of it, and the music, and the pretty women, and the incomparable gowns. Your sense of humor would discern the hollowness beneath all the pomp and ceremony and rigid lines of caste, and military glory; and your writer's instinct would revel in the splendor, and color ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... he took and then looked, and looking, staggered back with hands thrown up before his face. Slowly, as he cowered back with hands upraised and straining eyeballs, I saw those eyeballs grow rigid, freeze and turn to stone, while through his gaping, bloodless lips came a hoarse and gasping sound that ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to the story in silence. Then with a last long look at the rigid features below him, he replaced the covering. Passing on to the other table, he raised the sheet from the face of a splendid young Englishman, whom he had last seen the week before at Regina; an English public-school boy of the manliest type, full of hope for himself, and of ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the pliability of some consciences, of this apparently rigid class, where interest or inclination demands it, has often been told by the late Governor Morrow, of Ohio. An old Scotch "Cameronian," in Eastern Pennsylvania, became a widower, shortly after the adoption ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... done so much less harm; he would have been much less agonized too. At any rate, he would have had fewer chances of ruining and of remorse. For Edward was great at remorse. But Leonora's English Catholic conscience, her rigid principles, her coldness, even her very patience, were, I cannot help thinking, all wrong in this special case. She quite seriously and naively imagined that the Church of Rome disapproves of divorce; she ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... are of a more sedate, contemplative character. Philosophy becomes the rigid mistress of your life, enchanting enthusiasm the companion of mine. Suppose she lead me now and then in pursuit of a meteor; am not I happy in the chase? When one illusion vanishes, another shall appear, and, still leading ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... the sole interruption of the symmetrical perspective. Above the beds ran a continuous shelf, bearing the hut-inhabitants' equipment, or at least that portion of it—great-coat, water-bottle, mess-tin, etc.—not continually in use. Below each bed its owner's box and his boots were disposed with rigid precision at an exact distance from the box and boots beneath the adjacent bed. In the ceiling hung two electric lights. These, with the stove, beds, shelves, boxes and boots, constituted the entire furniture of the hut—unless you count an alarm-clock, bought by public ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... for an iron pen, has come to designate the art that handles, with ever fresh vitality and wary alacrity, the fluid elements of speech. By a figure, obvious enough, which yet might serve for an epitome of literary method, the most rigid and simplest of instruments has lent its name to the subtlest and most flexible of arts. Thence the application of the word has been extended to arts other than literature, to the whole range of the activities of man. The fact that we use the word ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... nothing, she veiled nothing; there were intervals when her tears no longer flowed, and a cruel hardness and return of her old imperiousness of voice and manner took their place, as if she was doing a rigid penance and took a bitter satisfaction in laying bare her whole soul to him. "I never had a friend," she whispered; "there were women who persecuted me with their jealous sneers; there were men who persecuted me with their selfish affections. When I first saw YOU, you seemed something ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... passed carefully up the centre of the river, or the plash of a lighterman's huge sweep as he piloted his unwieldy craft down on the last remnant of the ebb-tide. In shore, various craft sat lightly on the soft Thames mud: some sheeting a rigid uprightness, others with their decks at various ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... around him; the blackness of darkness seemed to muffle all the earth; only a pale light like the light of earliest dawn illuminated the gray walls of the church and gleamed with strange effulgence upon the armored image of the archangel. The King, rigid with terror, beheld the image of the archangel move slowly into life. It lifted the drawn sword on which its hands had rested and pointed the weapon at the crouching King. Slowly the radiant figure seemed to leave its niche; stately it descended the rough-hewn steps. ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... very small proportions, and secured at the top by string-pieces stretched from one angle to another, in which half-notches hack been made at proper intervals to receive the uprights. The poles were then made rigid by strips nailed on half-way to the ground, giving the sides of the structure firmness, but the interstices were large and frequent; still, with the aid of some old condemned paulins obtained from the quartermaster, the walls were covered and the necessity for chinking obviated. This method ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... in his degradation must of necessity weaken his aversion to degradation. Just as the worst kings were the best kings because they hastened the fall of monarchy, so the worst capitalists, the most rapacious, the most rigid enforcers of the economic laws of a capitalistic society were the best capitalists, were helping to hasten the day when men would work for what they earned and would earn what they worked for—when every man's pay envelope ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... husband's lack of judgment. But aside from this, cards and horse races and trips to Monaco had limited their living in luxury to a periodic pleasure of three or four months. Now in order to open the palace in Rome, they had to practise the most rigid economics the other eight or nine months in their villa ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... moment, thoroughly irresolute, nay, almost subdued. Then sternness, though less rigid than before, gradually came to his brow. The demon had still its hold in the stubborn and marvellous pertinacity with which the man clung to all that once struck root at his heart. With a sudden impulse that still withheld decision, yet spoke of sore-shaken purpose, he strode to his desk, drew ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brain and force of character, has carved out a fortune of hundreds of millions. In short, an industrial and financial magnate of the first water and of the finest type to be found in the United States. Essentially a moral man, his rigid New England morality has suffered a sea change and developed into the morality of the master-man of affairs, equally rigid, equally uncompromising, but essentially Jesuitical in that he believes in doing wrong that right may come of it. He is absolutely certain that civilization ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... encircled with an iron band, the day would surely come when the tree, by the force of its own natural expansion, would either shatter the band or allow it to cut deep into its own stem. The growing consciousness of Humanity has long been encircled by a rigid and inadequate conception of God. The gradual secularisation of the West means that the soul of man is straining that particular conception of God to breaking-point: and it is infinitely better that it should be broken to pieces than that its iron should ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... one side was an extremely small tent, but Brigadier-General T. J. Jackson rarely occupied it. He sat beneath the tree, upon the kitchen chair, his feet, in enormous cavalry boots, planted precisely before him, his hands rigid at his sides. Here he transacted the business of each day, and here, when it was over, he sat facing the North. An awkward, inarticulate, and peculiar man, with strange notions about his health and other matters, there was about him no ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... says, 'Yes! you, Simon, are a great deal better than that woman was. She was coarse, unclean, her innocence gone, her purity stained. She had been wallowing in filth, and you, with your respectability, your rigid morality, your punctilious observance of the ordinary human duties, you were far better than she was, and had far less to answer for than she had.' Fifty is only a tenth of five hundred, and there is a broad distinction, which nothing ought to be allowed to obliterate, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... abruptly swung round again as he caught sight of Juve and the director just entering the gallery, driving before them half a dozen patients and orderlies. Chaleck joined this little group, which had pulled up at the end of the gallery and was making laughing comments on the rigid inspection to which Juve was just ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... sobriety, religion, and morality. These suspected lapses into her old habits should serve as seasoning to the statement of the "Biographia Dramatica" that Eliza Haywood was "in mature age, remarkable for the most rigid and scrupulous decorum, delicacy, and prudence, both with respect to her conduct and conversation." If she was not too old a dog to learn new tricks, she at least did not forget her old ones. Of her circumstances during her last years ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... collected in a moist ditch to undergo the process of fermentation, and heaps of compost were in course of preparation. The premises were kept in neat and compact order, and a scrupulous attention to a most rigid economy was everywhere apparent. The family were decently clad; none of them were ragged or slovenly, even when their dress consisted ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... Vicomte was forthcoming,—nothing, in short, beyond the infraction du domicile caused by the madness of youthful love, and for which there was no prosecution. The law, therefore, could have little to say against him. But society was more rigid; and exceedingly angry to find that a man who had been so conspicuous for luxury should prove to be a pauper, insisted on believing that M. de Mauleon was guilty of the meaner, though not perhaps, in the eyes of husbands and fathers, the more heinous, of the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... But you won't mind? It is just an illustration. I went the other day with mother to Alice's house. She was so sort of distant and reserved that I couldn't know her in the least as I know her now. And there was the rigid Puritan, her father, representing the Old Testament; and her placid mother, with all the spirit of the New Testament; and then that dear old maiden aunt, representing I don't know what, maybe a blind attempt through nature and art to escape out of Puritanism; and the typical old frame farmhouse—why, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... corners, and seemed, like the lip into the limpid cheek, quickening up the temples, as with a run of light, or the ascension indicated off a shoot of colour. Her features were playfellows of one another, none of them pretending to rigid correctness, nor the nose to the ordinary dignity of governess among merry girls, despite which the nose was of a fair design, not acutely interrogative or inviting to gambols. Aspens imaged in water, waiting for the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were rules regarding fast days, Sabbath attendance, prayer-meetings, apparel, and speech. The wrath of God and eternal punishment formed the substance of every sermon. In the church at Boston this rigid system found a standard exponent in the pastor, John Wilson; but the "teacher," John Cotton, a man of far greater ability, sometimes preached sermons in which he dwelt upon the divine mercy and love. The result ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... you, that from a very early period of my life, I had laid it down as a rule of conduct never to write a word for the public papers. From this, I have never departed in a single instance; and on a late occasion, when all the world seemed to be writing, besides a rigid adherence to my own rule, I can say with truth, that not a line for the press was ever communicated to me, by any other, except a single petition referred for my correction; which I did not correct, however, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... prayer? On joyous pinions o'er the advancing host, Doth not triumphant conquest proudly soar? And feels not every one a happier lot, Since Thoas, who so long hath guided us With wisdom and with valour, sway'd by thee, The joy of mild benignity approves, Which leads him to relax the rigid claims Of mute submission? Call thyself useless! Thou, Thou, from whose being o'er a thousand hearts, A healing balsam flows? when to a race. To whom a god consign'd thee, thou dost prove A fountain of perpetual happiness, And from this dire inhospitable shore ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... increase of the public debt and the necessity which exists for a modification of the tariff to meet even the ordinary expenses of the Government ought to admonish us all, in our respective spheres of duty, to the practice of rigid economy. The objects of expenditure should be limited in number, as far as this may be practicable, and the appropriations necessary to carry them into effect ought to be disbursed under the strictest accountability. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... as healthy and nice as could be. Nevertheless, his eyes settled deeper and deeper, and gathered more and more of a leaden color about them; his skin grew yellow, and fell into wrinkles that were almost rigid, and that beseeching, yearning expression, made up of confidence in you, and terror of some nameless thing,—that look, as of a soul calling and crying to you, which follows you when you go farther than common from a sick-pillow,—all that terrible appealing was in his face; and often Jenny ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... naked conductors" would be used. Much shocked, she was about to look at something else in the paper when she noticed that "one of the conductors was to be carried on poles," and another to be "laid rigid between the rails!" Horrified at this apparent brutality, the worthy lady has been writing letters (in draft) to the Commissioner of Police ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... scattering of French soldiers who were just emerging from the Catholic church. By the time the second verse was well under way three companies of infantry, marching from a rest camp toward the front, had also come to a rigid salute, blocking the road to a quartermaster's supply train, who had, perforce, to follow suit. The "Star Spangled Banner" has a deeper meaning to the man who has done a few turns in ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... of revelation, the amazement of discovery, the little figure at the table stood rigid and upright, then it relaxed and with a stifled sob Carmencita crossed the room and, by the side of her cot, twisted herself into a little knot and buried her face in her arms and her ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... from that to find myself marching up the stairs behind the Bishop's rigid little back. Oh, it was stiff and uncompromising! Beryl Blackburn did that for me. ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... it is that they are handling. In all such matters, absolute accuracy, absolute literalness, wherever attainable, is surely the one thing necessary. Not all the charm of diction, not all the ingenious theories in the world, can for a moment be set in the balance against rigid exactness, even if some of the concomitants of rigid exactness are such as to spoil the subject for popular treatment. The truth, the stark naked truth, the truth without so much as a loin-cloth on, should surely be the investigator's ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... two inches above the soil, becomes eminently typical of the arid, stern climate it inhabits. The latest to bloom, and earliest to mature its seeds, by far the smallest in foliage, and proportionally largest in flower, most lepidote in vesture, humble in stature, rigid in texture, deformed in habit, yet the most odoriferous, it may be recognised, even in the herbarium, as the production of the loftiest elevation on the surface of the globe—of the most excessive climate—of the joint influences ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... the lines of argument are so numerous, and the details into which we might go so varied, that a rigid and perhaps bald selection of a few topics is all that ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... shooting season, and indeed as a farewell visit, for it was my intention to take dawk the very next morning and return to my regiment. The three amateur missionaries whom I have mentioned, and some ladies in the cantonment of very rigid religious principles, refused to appear at my little party. They had better never have been born than have done as they ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it surpassed his other novels. Bishop Heber said, "There are only two men in the world,—Walter Scott and Lord Byron." Lockhart regarded "Old Mortality" as the "Marmion" of Scott's novels; but the painting of the Covenanters gave offence to the more rigid of the Presbyterians. For myself, I have doubt as to the correctness of their criticisms. "Old Mortality," in contrast with the previous novels of Scott, has a place similar to the later productions of George Eliot as compared with her earlier ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... also realized that Lucia's indulgence would be turned into an equally rigid condemnation as soon as conventional bounds were overstepped. What a young man did before his marriage had in Latin countries never yet jeopardized his honor. But her honor as a wife, the honor of the home, the honor of a family name - these were for her circumscribed realities, ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... at dinner that day she might have been warned of coming events by Bunny's excellent behavior; by Bob's rigid refusal to partake twice of an unwholesome compound, which went by the name of iced pudding; by Firefly's anxiety to be all that a good and proper little girl should be. But Nurse, of course, had nothing to say to the family ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... nothing and heard nothing; monks dragged themselves on their knees, came to warm themselves, and to take shelter near him, and he never moved, dumb and deaf, so rigid that you might have believed him dead, had not his lower lip stirred now and then, lifting in ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... cosiness, and then it is necessary to mount an accumulation of great water-rounded rocks in order to obtain convincing evidence of its actual reality. It is a long, narrow room, shut in by a straight wall sufficiently high for rigid seclusion, or protection, without preventing a ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... known names in them, the rest being inventions; and there are some without a single known name, e.g. Agathon's Anthens, in which both incidents and names are of the poet's invention; and it is no less delightful on that account. So that one must not aim at a rigid adherence to the traditional stories on which tragedies are based. It would be absurd, in fact, to do so, as even the known stories are only known to a few, though they are a delight none the less ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... "Miss Lizzie," for the Kid was known to be one who required rigid upholdment of the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... Pottinger writes that, so searching is its nature, it has been known to kill camels and other hardy animals, and its effects on the human frame are said by eye-witnesses to be the most agonizing and repulsive imaginable. Shortly after contact with the wind the muscles of the sufferer become rigid and contracted, the skin shrivels, a terrible sensation as if the skin were on fire pervades the whole frame, while, in the last stage, the skin cracks into deep gashes, producing haemorrhage, quickly followed by death. It is curious to note that the juloh is peculiar to the northern districts of ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... by fire and sword to win the Albigensian heretics to the faith. "Zeal," he cried, "must be met by zeal, lowliness by lowliness, false sanctity by real sanctity, preaching lies by preaching truth." His fiery ardour and rigid orthodoxy were seconded by the mystical piety, the imaginative enthusiasm of Francis of Assisi. The life of Francis falls like a stream of tender light across the darkness of the time. In the frescoes of Giotto or the ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green |
