"Untractable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my sentiments from you. I am much inclined to believe that the temper of my friend Swift might occasion his English friends to wish him happily and properly promoted at a distance. His spirit, for I would give it the proper name, was ever untractable. The motions of his genius were often irregular. He assumed more the air of a patron than of a friend. He affected rather to dictate ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... appeared, fully half an hour before departing time. In no little dismay, he found himself wondering if the whole of Paris was going away or, on the other hand, if the rest of the continent was arriving. He felt a fool in Medcroft's unspeakable checked suit; and the eyeglass was a much more obstinate, untractable thing than he had even suspected it could be. The right side of his face was in a condition of semi-paralysis due to the muscular exactions required; he had a sickening fear that the scowl that marked his brow was destined to form a perpetual alliance with the smirk at ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... were soon started by these untractable mercenaries; and under the instigation, as was discovered afterwards, of the great rival of Mavrocordato, Colocotroni, who had sent emissaries into Missolonghi for the purpose of seducing them, they now put forward their exactions in a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... difficulty started about [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted], not what humor those words signified (for it is certain that some, thinking that those seeds which fall on the oxen's horns bear fruit which is very hard, did by a metaphor call a stiff untractable fellow by these names), but what was the cause that seeds falling on the oxen's horns should bear hard fruit. I had often desired my friends to search no farther, most of all fearing the passage of Theophrastus, in which he has collected ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the skin is pale, lax, and wrinkled, astringent washes may be used. Strong black tea is a convenient and excellent application of this kind. When the skin and hair are dry, and the latter also stiff and untractable, a little glycerine is an appropriate addition to each of the preceding washes or lotions. The occasional use of a little bland oil, strongly scented with oil of rosemary or of origanum, or with both of them, or with oil of mace, or very slightly tinctured with cantharides, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... not always consistent; she does not always choose the best means to a given end. For instance, all the wrens except our house wren seem to use about the best material at hand for their nests. What can be more unsuitable, untractable, for a nest in a hole or cavity than the twigs the house wren uses? Dry grasses or bits of soft bark would bend and adapt themselves easily to the exigencies of the case; but stiff, unyielding twigs! What a contrast to the suitableness of the material the hummingbird ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... that had we come into Greece when Homer was the Bible of the people, with all our astronomy, chemistry, and physical science generally, and our literature, blended as it is with our religion, we should have found our Greek fellow-subjects as untractable as the Hindoos or Parsees. The fact is, that every Hindoo, educated through our language in our literature and science, must be more or less wretched in domestic life, for he cannot feel or think with his family, or bring them to feel ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... language of the late Mr. Canning—No! Unamiable and unconciliating monsters! The wildest and most ferocious inhabitants of the desert may be reclaimed from their savage nature, and taught to become the peaceful denizens of a menagerie—but ye are altogether untractable and untameable. Gratitude and sense of shame, the better parts of instinct, have never yet interposed their sacred influence to prevent the commission of one treacherous or unbecoming action of yours. The holy rites of hospitality are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... ridden a hundred yards with his guide and companion, when he drew his bridle, and refused to proceed a step farther, till he had learned what was become of Clara. The Captain began to find he had a very untractable pupil to manage, when, while they were arguing together, Touchwood drove past in his hack chaise. As soon as he recognised Mowbray, he stopped the carriage to inform him that his sister was at the Aultoun, which he had learned ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... his wit and zeal, has stigmatized the vices of the rebellious people. [16] "Who is ignorant," says the monk of Clairvaux, "of the vanity and arrogance of the Romans? a nation nursed in sedition, untractable, and scorning to obey, unless they are too feeble to resist. When they promise to serve, they aspire to reign; if they swear allegiance, they watch the opportunity of revolt; yet they vent their discontent in loud clamors, if your doors, or your counsels, are shut against them. Dexterous in mischief, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... honorable and profitable banishment. There is great reason to imagine that the temper of Swift might occasion his English friends to wish him happily and properly promoted at a distance. His spirit was ever untractable, the motions of his genius irregular. He assumed more the airs of a patron than a friend. He affected rather to dictate than advise, and was elated with the appearance of enjoying ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... that the donkey would be a very useful creature in the colony. Though rather an untractable democrat, insisting on having things his own way, he is a hardy, patient fellow, and easily kept; and though very obstinate, is by no means insensible to kind treatment, or incapable of attachment; and then, as an exterminator ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... meantime there unfordunadely seems do be very little chance of this; and in so delicade a madder as the gonsdrugdion of this ship of ours, it would be nod only unwise, but also unfair to you to run the risk of a failure through the embloymendt of untractable or unreliable workmen; and if, therefore, you had insisted on my embloying Englishmen, I should have been relugdandly gombelled do wash my hands of the whole affair. Ad the same dime I feel id due do myself do say thad, even had you nod mendioned the madder, I ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of taming their own elephants, than have submitted to the expense of bringing such vast animals from Asia. Perhaps the barbarous practice of hunting the African elephants for the sake of their teeth, has rendered them more untractable and savage, than they were found to be in ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... convince some persons at present; so that I seem now to know, what I did not know before, the meaning of the common saying, That you can neither persuade nor break a fool. May it never be my lot to have a wise fool for my friend: nothing is more untractable. "I {102} am determined," the man says. Madmen are also; but the more firmly they form a judgment on things which do not exist, the ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... matter of fact, Hester presented a funny sight. She was a plain child, and her shock of red hair was straight and untractable. Her scowling face was flushed with anger, and the gold paper crown was pushed down over ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... new law it is undoubtedly the duty of the legislator to see that no injustice be done even to an individual: for there is then nothing to be unsettled, and the matter is under his hands to mould it as he pleases; and if he finds it untractable in the working, he may abandon it without incurring any new inconvenience. But in the question concerning the repeal of an old one, the work is of more difficulty; because laws, like houses, lean on one another, and the operation is delicate, and should be ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... as having been of a wayward and violent temper in his youth—cross, untractable, and masterless—with a vast quantity of youthful energy, which exploded in a variety of youthful mischiefs. He even obtained the reputation of a roysterer in his native town, and seemed to be rapidly going to the bad, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... were like to go, resolved not to enter on a new dispute, but let him carry the point as he pleased; for he was now got into one of his mad fits, and to argue or expostulate further would only serve to render him a hundred times more untractable. ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift |
