"Contentious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... colonies, both in their ministry and civil administration, ... had lately made Acomenticus (a poor village) a corporation, and had made a taylor their mayor, and had entertained one Hull, an excommunicated person and very contentious, for their minister." Rhode Island, as a seat of separatism and heresy, was not invited and perhaps not even considered. For managing the affairs of the confederation, the main objects of which were friendship and ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... various are the forms of civil politics, there is but one form of polity in the sciences; and that always has been and always will be popular. Now the doctrines which find most favour with the populace are those which are either contentious and pugnacious, or specious and empty; such, I say, as either entangle assent or tickle it. And therefore no doubt the greatest wits in each successive age have been forced out of their own course, men of capacity and intellect above ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... had from the first an experienced leader in Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. He had seen many years of service in the Continental Congress which he first entered in 1776. He was a delegate to the Philadelphia convention, in whose sessions he showed a contentious temper, and in the end refused to subscribe to the new Constitution. In the convention debates he had strongly declared himself "against letting the heads of the departments, particularly of finance, have anything to do with business ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... looketh upon all things in reference to herself; striveth and argueth for self; but Grace bringeth back all things to God from whom they came at the beginning; ascribeth no good to herself nor arrogantly presumeth; is not contentious, nor preferreth her own opinion to others, but in every sense and understanding submitteth herself to the Eternal ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... Bond as apparently his most dangerous enemy and scowling at him with great hostility, "if you want to let the religious life of this place, nearly dead already, pass right away, choose a man like Forsyth. But I don't wish to be contentious; there's been contention enough in this place during these last months, and I'm sick and ashamed of the share I've had in it. I won't say more than this—that if you want an honest, God-fearing man here, who lives only for God and is in his most ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... presidential policy for the next four years; indeed, it contains the first statement of that famous "Article X" of the Covenant of the League of Nations which was Mr. Wilson's most important contribution to that contentious document. This was the article which pledges the League "to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence" of all its members; it was the article which, more than any other, made the League obnoxious ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... and Fletcher sent out. He was not a sodden imbecile, but he was ill-chosen for his office. He described the New Yorkers of that day as "divided, contentious and impoverished" and immediately began a conflict with them. His attitude may be judged from a passage in his remarks to the assembly soon afterward: "There never was an amendment desired by the council ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Fenwick, though turned Quakers, seem to have retained some of the contentious Cromwellian spirit of their youth. They soon quarreled over their respective interests in the ownership of West Jersey; and to prevent a lawsuit, so objectionable to Quakers, the decision was left to William Penn, then a rising young Quaker about thirty years old, dreaming of ideal colonies in ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... the Ottoman Empire in 1908. Having fought on the losing side in both World Wars, Bulgaria fell within the Soviet sphere of influence and became a People's Republic in 1946. Communist domination ended in 1990, when Bulgaria held its first multiparty election since World War II and began the contentious process of moving toward political democracy and a market economy while combating inflation, unemployment, corruption, and crime. The country joined NATO in 2004 and the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... in not walking as becomes the Gospel, according to our Solemn Engagements, neither proceeds it from irritation or inclination (by choice or pleasure) to discover our mother's nakedness or wickedeness, or that we love to be of a contentious spirit, for our witness is in heaven (whatever the world may say) that it would be the joy of our hearts, and as it were a resurrection from the dead, to have these grievances redressed and removed, and our backsliding and breaches quickly and happily healed, but it is to exoner ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... always employing for this purpose steps of ascent, and at last beautifully ends in the nature of the good. Very different therefore is it from the merely logical method, which presides over the demonstrative phantasy, is of a secondary nature, and is alone pleased with contentious discussions. For the dialectic of Plato for the most part employs divisions and analyses as primary sciences, and as imitating the progression of beings from the one, and their conversion to it again. It likewise sometimes uses definitions and demonstrations, and prior to these the definitive ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... for the rest of the journey. Godfrey's French was sadly to seek, still before it was done, he did wonder whether all their language was strictly Christian, for such words as Sapristi, and Nom de Dieu, accompanied by snapping of the fingers, and angry stares, struck him as showing a contentious and even a hostile spirit. Moreover, that was not the end of it, since of the occupants of the diligence, about one half seemed to belong to the party of the priest, and the other half to ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... certain man, jealous of Pastor Hsi's success, opened a rival opium refuge in which he treated patients according to the Pastor's methods, but with medicine of his own making. The scheme was a contentious one, and the man a cause of friction and difficulty to the Christian community. It was to this Refuge that Mr. Wang, now thirty years old, poor, sad, and dispirited, came as a patient. He found here a man who, according to the established tradition of the opium refuge, received even ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... edition of Luther's works published at Basel, among which were the "Commentaries on the Psalms," the "Sermon of Good Works," the "Commentary on the Lord's Prayer," and besides these, other Christian books, not of a contentious kind. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... obtaining a remission of taxes, and gaining two lawsuits. In every litigation he used the Public Prosecutor's name with such good effect that the matter was carried no further, and, like all undersized men, he was contentious and litigious in business, though in ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... his friends would really do with me, if they had me in their power, I cannot say, but they express in their looks and words nothing which I can fairly interpret to proceed from ill-will. I have been lately not so contentious or abusive as formerly, no more than I have flattered them, and my appearance among them is from mere curiosity, and to amuse you by my recitals more than from ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... I think," growled McCoy, who was naturally contentious and quarrelsome; "don't it warm the heart and raise the spirits and strengthen the ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... God unveiled? [11:14] Does not nature herself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace to him? [11:15]but if a woman wears long hair it is her glory; for the hair is given her for a covering. [11:16]But if any one is disposed to be contentious, we have no such custom neither have ...
— The New Testament • Various
... arose, and the men moved out into the living-room to chat on less contentious subjects. After a time the women joined them, and Grant presently found himself absorbed in conversation with the old rancher's wife. Zen seemed to pay but little attention to him, and for the first time ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... December 1747, just a month after his second marriage, that Fielding again flung himself into the arena of contentious journalism, 'brandishing' his pen as truculently as ever on behalf of the Protestant and Hanoverian succession, and in despite of the Jacobite cause. He called his new paper "The Jacobite's Journal, by John Trott Plaid Esq're.," ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... accordance with Dom Pedro's promise. Under the leadership of the two Andrade brothers the delegates insisted on the most liberal of constitutions. Dom Pedro's first attempt to suppress the liberal leaders was foiled by the Assembly. Finally he dissolved the contentious assembly and exiled the Andrade brothers to France. In the provinces of Pernambuco and Ceara a republic was proclaimed. Rebellion broke ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... while, the only trooper—of a double revolt. On the one hand he offered a courageous challenge to the intolerable prudishness and dirty-mindedness of Puritanism, and on the other hand he boldly sought the themes and even the modes of expression of his poetry in the arduous, contentious and highly melodramatic life that lay all about him. Whitman, however, was clearly before his time. His countrymen could see him only as immoralist; save for a pitiful few of them, they were dead to any understanding of his stature ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... the Canadian public excitedly interested in the discussion? Not at all. Spokesmen and penmen of the two contentious factions are victimized by their own perfervid imaginations. The electorate, the masses, are not so swayed. The Canadian people, essentially British no matter what their origins, are mainly, like ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... weeks rushed by. The first and comparatively non-contentious sections of the Bill passed with a good deal of talk and delay. George spoke once or twice, without expecting to speak, instinctively pleasing Fontenoy where he could. They had now but little direct intercourse. But George did not feel that his leader had ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is yet a vice, Or rather a gross compound, justly tried, Of envy, hatred, jealousy, and pride, Contributes moat perhaps to enhance their fame, And Emulation is its precious name. Boys once on fire with that contentious zeal Feel all the rage that female rivals feel; The prize of beauty in a woman's eyes Not brighter than in theirs the scholar's prize. The spirit of that competition burns With all varieties of ill by turns, Each vainly magnifies his own success, Resents his fellow's, wishes it were less, Exults ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... actually followed was ludicrously different. The object, as stated by the chairman, was "to avoid raising contentious issues in such a way as to divide the Convention on party lines,"[96] which, to say the least, was a curious method of handling the most contentious problem in British politics. A fine opportunity was offered to amateur constitution-mongers. Anyone was allowed to propound a scheme ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... hulls, become entangled in the cordage, and as if there were no other escape, resolve themselves into air. Fisher boats are bringing their owners home from night-work over in the shallows of Indjerkeui. Gulls and cormorants in contentious flocks, drive hither and thither, turning and tacking as the schools of small fish they are following turn and tack down in the warm blue-green depths to which they are native. The many wings, in quick eccentric motion, give sparkling ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... bad against his will. Now that an action which is voluntary should be done involuntarily is a contradiction; wherefore he who maintains that injustice is involuntary will deem that the unjust does injustice involuntarily. I too admit that all men do injustice involuntarily, and if any contentious or disputatious person says that men are unjust against their will, and yet that many do injustice willingly, I do not agree with him. But, then, how can I avoid being inconsistent with myself, if you, Cleinias, and you, Megillus, say to me—Well, Stranger, ...
— Laws • Plato
... indeed than they had read or were likely ever to read any other work of fiction; I doubt whether the house contained a printed volume, unless its head had had in hand a law-book or so: I to some extent recover Mr. Norcom as a lawyer who had come north on important, difficult business, on contentious, precarious grounds—a large bald political-looking man, very loose and ungirt, just as his wife was a desiccated, depressed lady who mystified me by always wearing her nightcap, a feebly-frilled but tightly-tied and unmistakable one, and the ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... be generally riotous and contentious, where there be many discords, many laws, many lawsuits, many lawyers and many physicians, it is a manifest sign of a distempered, melancholy state, as [500]Plato long since maintained: for where such kind of men swarm, they will make ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... managing of the contentious quarrel between the two Irish earls did not make the way to cause these lines to pass my hand, this gibberish should hardly have cumbered your eyes; but warned by my former fault, and dreading worser hap to come, I rede you take ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... particularly successful upon the stage, but the book was widely read, and occasioned much excited personal controversy. "A Bankruptcy," on the other hand, proved a brilliant stage success. Its matter was less contentious, and its technical execution was effective and brilliant. It was not in vain that Bjoernson had at different times been the director of three theatres. This play has for its theme the ethics of business life, and more ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... a young child, and placing it in the midst of his contentious disciples (Matt. xviii. 2), though as decisive a proof as any could be of the benignity of his temper, and very expressive of the character of the religion which he wished to inculcate, was not by any means an obvious thought. Nor am I acquainted with ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God; (6)who will render to every man according to his deeds; (7)to those who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; (8)but to those who are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, (9)tribulation and distress, upon every soul of man that works evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Greek; (10)but glory, and honor, and peace, to every man that works good, ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... a little purring chuckle. "Ah, there we get upon contentious ground," he remarked. "Why should 'everybody' be supposed to know anything at all? What business is it of 'everybody's' to know things? The earth was just as round in the days when people supposed it to be flat, as it is now. So the truth remains always the truth, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... From contentious people, of all conditions; who are content to waste the greatest part of their own fortunes at law, to be the instruments ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... fatigue, and that recently after his cold there were some days when his voice was little better than a very distinct, but also a very pathetic, whisper. But there is another side. Age has mellowed his style, so that now he can speak on even the most contentious subject with a gentleness and a freedom from anything like venom—with an elevation of tone—that make it almost impossible for even his bitterest opponent to listen to him without delight and, for the moment at least, with a certain degree of assent. If anybody really wishes ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... The immortal seats should ne'er behold her more; And whirled her headlong down, forever driven From bright Olympus and the starry heaven: Thence on the nether world the fury fell, Ordained with man's contentious race to dwell. Full oft the god his son's hard toils bemoaned, Cursed the dire folly, and in secret groaned. —HOMER'S Iliad, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... it discontent to keep the mind Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil[jc][316] In the hot throng, where we become the spoil Of our infection, till too late and long We may deplore and struggle with the coil, In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong Midst a contentious world, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... that it was the enviable happiness of the Serbian people to have no grammar. It was hinted by some other opponents of Vuk that he might well be an Austrian agent, who, in order to disturb the people, was now raising questions of a most contentious nature, which had previously not been thought of. But when the great philologist died in 1861 in Vienna he had long been recognized as one of the most ardent patriots. His three volumes of national songs excited the enthusiasm of Jacob Grimm, who rushed off to learn this new language, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... functions of English royalty are for the most part latent, it fulfils this condition. It seems to order, but it never seems to struggle. It is commonly hidden like a mystery, and sometimes paraded like a pageant, but in neither case is it contentious. The nation is divided into parties, but the crown is of no party. Its apparent separation from business is that which removes it both from enmities and from desecration, which preserves its mystery, which enables it to combine the affection of conflicting ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... above five hundred Years, and that we despair of ever seeing them brought to an Issue: That your Petitioners have not been involved in these Law Suits, out of any litigious Temper of their own, but by the Instigation of contentious Persons; that the young Lawyers in our Inns of Court are continually setting us together by the Ears, and think they do us no Hurt, because they plead for us without a Fee; That many of the Gentlemen of the Robe have no other Clients ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... over, I soon grew impatient to be doing something. There would be no movement in cattle before the following spring, and a winter of idleness was not to my liking. Buffalo hunting had lost its charm with me, the contentious savages were jealous of any intrusion on their old hunting grounds, and, having met them on numerous occasions during the past eighteen months, I had no further desire to cultivate their acquaintance. I still owned my horse, now acclimated, and had money in my purse, ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... another, and to show off in company, like the doctors that perform wonderful cures in the theatres as an advertisement.[469] And independently of the insult, which ought not to be an element in any cure, we must remember that vice is contentious and obstinate. For it is not merely "love," as Euripides says, that "if checked becomes more vehement," but an unsparing rebuke before many people makes every infirmity and vice more impudent. As then Plato[470] urges old men ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... cottage, Stephen," says Gwen. "She would like to see you, I know." Thereon the old man turns to go. He looks ten years older than his rather contentious self of yesterday. The young lady says no word either way of his responsibility for this disaster. She cannot blame, but she cannot quite absolve him yet, without a grudge. Her mother can; ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... 'Philanthropist' has suffered the same fate as many other words in our language. It has become hackneyed and corrupted; it has taken a professional taint; it has almost become a byword. We are apt to think of the philanthropist as an excitable, contentious creature, at the mercy of every fad, an ultra-radical in politics, craving for notoriety, filled with self-confidence, and meddling with other people's business. Anthony Ashley Cooper, the greatest philanthropist of the nineteenth century, was of a different type. By temper he was ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... circumcise Timothy. He there shut the window-shutters, and lighted an exhausted lamp, for a time, though he knew the sun was up, to gratify some who had not opened their eyes to the morning. How far from a contentious, ambitious spirit, was he, even with his intense convictions. There are many good people, in all communions, who are longing for the time when all the old walls of separation between true Christians will have as many gates in them, at least, as heaven has,—on the ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... a drink of sovereign grace. Devis['e]d by the gods for to assuage Heart's grief, and bitter gall away to chase Which stirs up anger and contentious rage; Instead thereof sweet peace and quietage It doth establish in the troubled mind ... And such as drink, eternal ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... through abstract meditation, not through ecstatic visions. We want to know more of that man than we do; but, even with the little we know of him, he stands before us as a figure second only to one in the whole history of the world. We see his zeal for God, but we never see him contentious. Though Melchisedek worshipped God under a different name, invoking Him as Eliun, the Most High, Abraham at once acknowledged in Melchisedek a worshipper and priest of the true God, or Elohim, and paid him tithes. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... best to adopt a policy of far greater secrecy and silence. If, however, we remember that Campion intended his paper to be published under quite different circumstances, we can see that he at least hardly deserves the reproach of being contentious, or if he does, his failing was venial when we consider the tastes of the age. The immediate result of the publication was ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... facts, considerations, doctrines, distinctions, can obtain a footing. Now truth is the still small voice; it subsists often upon delicate differences, unobtrusive instances, fine calculations. Whether or not man is a wholly selfish being, may be submitted to a contentious debate, because the facts and appearances on both sides are broad and palpable; but whether all our actions are, in the last resort or final analysis, self-regarding, is almost too delicate for debate. Chalmers upholds, as ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... prayer in a distant, lofty manner: "Her it would not beseem to wed any Jarl or poor creature of that kind; let him do as Gorm of Denmark, Eric of Sweden, Egbert of England, and others had done,—subdue into peace and regulation the confused, contentious bits of jarls round him, and become a king; then, perhaps, she might think of his proposal: till then, not." Harald was struck with this proud answer, which rendered Gyda tenfold more desirable ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... in these holy dispositions. Can it be that the one is ever an object of envy, or jealousy, or ever regarded with distrust, coldness, or still more with hostility, by the other? Let them beware of the first approach of a contentious spirit. Their manners,—as indeed those of all in a family circle,—should never be rude, or careless, but ordered with watchfulness, delicacy, and propriety. The manner between sisters may be such as of itself to enshrine and secure their mutual kindness. It may too, by negligence, ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... hateful, teasty, unpleasant. contentious, angry, 7. cruel, 8. and implacable, Morosi homines, sunt odiosi, torvi, illepidi. contentiosi, iracundi, 7. crudeles, 8. ac implacabiles, (rather Wolves and Lions, than Men) and such as fall out among ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... had least of his real will done in public matters has been, with infinite management, and display of such good-humor as at least deserves credit, the nominal Sovereign Majesty of Poland. Anarchic Grandees have been kings over him; ambitious, contentious, unmanageable;—very fanatical too, and never persuaded that August's Apostasy was more than a sham one, not even when he made his Prince apostatize too. Their Sovereignty has been a mere peck of troubles, disgraces and vexations: for those thirty-five ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... bodies in the hollow fen; now raise "Their heads, and skim the surface of the pool, "Often they rest upon the margin's brink, "And oft light-springing, in the cool lake plunge. "Now still their rude contentious tongues they use, "Still squabbling, lost to shame beneath the waves: "Beneath the waves they still abusings strive "To utter. Hoarsely still their voice is heard, "Through their wide-bloated throats. Their railing words, "Their jaws more wide dilate. Depriv'd of neck, "Their head ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... exemplified the saying which is written in the sacred oracles, "that when men forsake the true worship and service of the only true God, and bow down to images of silver, and gold, and four-footed beasts and creeping things, and become contentious with each other," says the inspired writer, "in such a state of things trust ye not a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide; keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom; for there the son ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... well escape the sagacity of M. Neckar, that the mode of 1614 would answer neither the purpose of the then government nor of the nation. As matters were at that time circumstanced it would have been too contentious to agree upon anything. The debates would have been endless upon privileges and exemptions, in which neither the wants of the Government nor the wishes of the nation for a Constitution would have been attended to. But as he did not choose to take the decision upon himself, he summoned ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... incapable of forming any resolution or opinion abstracted from his own prejudices—he was proud of his birth, lavish in his housekeeping, convivial with those kindred and acquaintances, who would allow his superiority in rank—contentious and quarrelsome with all that crossed his pretensions—kind to the poor, except when they plundered his game—a Royalist in his political opinions, and one who detested alike a Roundhead, a poacher, and a Presbyterian. In religion Sir Geoffrey was a high-churchman, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... continually be doing violence to my feelings,—submitting my will always to that of my superiors, never contentious, never sulky, finishing every work begun, in ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... clear in his Epistle to the Corinthians. He tells them plainly that they were yet only babes in Christ, because they were carnal and contentious (I Cor. iii. I). They were in Christ, they had been converted, but ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... thrifty beggar took from each. And when the long autumnal season came To that bleak, bitter coast, and when at night The deep was shaken, and the pent cloud broke Crashing among the lurid hills of heaven, And in brief sudden swoonings of the gale Contentious voices rose from the sand-dunes, Then to low sobs and murmurs died away, The fishwives, with their lean and sallow cheeks Lit by the flickering driftwood's ruddy glow, Drew closer to the crane, and under breath To awestruck maidens told ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... him, he, on his side, ever dealt with them in a spirit absolutely free from contention, abstaining from anything likely to give offence, having often on his lips those beautiful words of the Apostle: If any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... his fortunes to Rome and there became a leader of the metropolitan bar. He saw gallant military service in Spain and in Greece, commanded an army, held all the curule offices of state and ended a contentious life in the Senate denouncing Carthage and the degeneracy of ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... could help it? There lives not such a fellow by bread as that old Lewis Baboon: he is the most cheating, contentious rogue upon the face of the earth. You must know, one day, as Nic. Frog and I were over a bottle making up an old quarrel, the old fellow would needs have us drink a bottle of his champagne, and so one after another, till my friend Nic. and I, not being used to such heady ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... justice and in inflexibility towards partiality or favour was his great delight. He disciplined himself also in the kind of speaking which works upon numbers, considering that, as in a great state, so in political philosophy, there should be nurtured with it something of the contentious quality. Yet he did not practise his exercises in company with others, nor did any one hear him when he was declaiming; but to one of his companions who observed, "Men find fault, Cato, with your silence," he replied, "I only hope they may not find fault with my ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... different kinds of Republicans. Let us look at Mr. Hughes' first speech after accepting the nomination. [Footnote: Delivered at Carnegie Hall, New York City, July 31, 1916.] The context is still clear enough in our minds to obviate much explanation; yet the issues are no longer contentious. The candidate was a man of unusually plain speech, who had been out of politics for several years and was not personally committed on the issues of the recent past. He had, moreover, none of that wizardry which popular leaders like Roosevelt, Wilson, or Lloyd George possess, none of ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... In the busy, contentious bustle of the competition of the day, the brain, strained too often to its utmost tension, demands the relaxation of some absorbing, pleasure-yielding hobby. Those who have tried it attest the fact that few things more completely wean the attention, for the time being, from ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... murmurs of thy wandering wave below Seem like the converse of some long-lost friend. Delightful stream! though now along thy shore, When spring returns in all her wonted pride, The distant pastoral pipe is heard no more;[9] Yet here while laverocks sing could I abide, Far from the stormy world's contentious roar, To muse upon ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... through wide stretches of country to the sea, it receives greater and more numerous impurities the farther it gets from its source, until, at last, what was, in its rise, a gentle rilling through snows and over whitest stones, roars into the ocean a muddy and contentious river. Men soon long to touch and taste all that they see; savage-like, him whom to-day they deem a god and worship, they on the morrow get an appetite for and kill, to eat and barter. And thus art is degraded, made ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... a contentious blonde, with a thin, aquiline nose and a pair of flashing steel-blue eyes. Several wisps of straw-colored ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... in liquor is an irresponsible being, and Allyne, under the polish of education and training, possessed the nature of a bully—he was tyrannical and contentious. Choosing now to assume that Carnegie's partial turning away and low-voiced conversation were intended to insult him, he straightened up, and looking fiercely across the table, with eyes already watery from the heady fumes of the strong wine, tapped sharply with his glass ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... for a line now existing went before Parliament with eighteen competitors, each party relying on the wisdom of Parliament to allow their bill at least to pass a second reading! Nineteen different parties condemned to one scene of contentious litigation! They each and all had to pay not only the costs of promoting their own line, but also the costs of opposing eighteen other bills. And yet conscious as government must have been of this fact, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... did, but feeling in a contentious mood, prolonged the discussion by leisurely loading and capping a revolver; but, prescient of my argument, Mr. Masthead avoided refutation by hastily adjourning the debate. I sent him a note that evening, filling-in a few of the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... so idle as to waste This Life disputing upon Taste; And most—let that sad Truth be written— In this contentious Land of Britain, Where each one holds "it seems to me" Equivalent to Q. E. D., And if you dare to doubt his Word Proclaims you Blockhead and absurd. And then, too often, the Debate Is not 'twixt First and Second-rate, ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... that the spirit which prompted my visit was not a contentious one. I cannot accept the pass, simply because I do ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... under the title of the 'Compendium Compertorum.' There are also reports from private persons, private entreaties for enquiry, depositions of monks in official examinations, and other similar papers, which, in many instances, are too offensive to be produced, and may rest in obscurity, unless contentious persons compel us to bring them forward. Some of these, however, throw curious light on the habits of the time, and on the collateral disorders which accompanied the more gross enormities. They show us, too, that although the dark tints predominate, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... was not his custom to rely upon this contingency as a source of income, nor did he in any eventuality return the amount which had been agreed upon (and invariably deposited with him in advance) as the reward of his inspired efforts. To those who sought him in a contentious spirit, inquiring why he did not find it more profitable to secure the prizes for himself, Wang Ho replied that his enterprise consisted in forecasting the winning numbers for State Lotteries and not in solving enigmas, writing deprecatory odes, composing epitaphs or conducting any of the ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... every allowance for the high colours with which a tale that has grown stale is apt to be daubed, I am forced to admit the inference that a mean, sordid, contentious woman probably did as much as was in her power to harass and fret one of the best men in Germany, or in the world. Luckily for himself, Albrecht was a severe student, had much engrossing work which carried him abroad, and travelled once at least far away from the harassing and galling ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... speaking became more simple and plain, such as we now find it."—Blair's Rhet., p. 59. "Idleness and ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed, &c."—JOHNSON: Priestley's Gram., p. 186. "Avoid questions and strife; it shows a busy and contentious disposition."—Wm. Penn. "To receive the gifts and benefits of God with thanksgiving, and witness it blessed and sanctified to us by the word and prayer, is owned by us."—Barclays Works, i, 213. "Both minister and magistrate ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the dramatist, prohibited from representing anything else. In covering this special province, the drama is undeniably more vivid and emphatic; but many momentous phases of human experience are not contentious but contemplative; and these the novel may reveal serenely, without employment of the sound and ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... rule. Bulgaria fought on the losing side in both World Wars. After World War II it fell within the Soviet sphere of influence. Communist domination ended in 1991 with the dissolution of the USSR, and Bulgaria began the contentious process of moving toward political democracy and a market economy. In addition to the problems of structural economic reform, particularly privatization, Bulgaria faces the serious issues of keeping inflation under control and unemployment, ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was afterwards granted Williams, but he was admonished not to go about to draw others to his opinions. As Williams was one of those contentious people who must talk, this inhibition was futile. It is true that he no longer preached in his church, as the congregation had submitted to the will of those in power. But he conversed in private with some of his friends, and arranged a plan of establishing a new settlement on the shores ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... being a hot, contentious man, could not let his son alone. In the stable and out in the hayfield he was ever on his back, though Jamie was never the lad to cross him or to begin an argument. But his father would rage and ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... honor and distinction was, in his character, not unalloyed with feelings of personal rivalry and resentment. He made Epaminondas his great example, and came not far behind him in activity, sagacity, and incorruptible integrity; but his hot contentious temper continually carried him out of the bounds of that gentleness, composure, and humanity which had marked Epaminondas, and this made him thought a pattern rather of military than of civil virtue. He was strongly inclined to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Bible tells us that God will render to every man according to his deeds. "To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life: but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil." How careful we should be of our actions in all departments of our being, physical, moral, intellectual! The deeds we do, the words we speak, ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... fortuneless. Yet both have made our way without friends, and commanded our associates, though without fortune. Does not this declare we have that within us which, when we are united, can still exalt or conquer our destiny? And we—we—alone in the noisy and contentious world with which we strive—we shall turn, after each effort, to our own hearts, and find there a comfort and a shelter. All things will bind us closer and closer to each other. The thought of our past solitude, the hope of our ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Balk'st with his balking, fliest with his flight, Giv'st supple to his rearings and his falls, Nor dropp'st one coronal star about thy brow Whilst ever dayward thou art steadfast drawn! Yea, would I rode these mad contentious brawls No damage taking from their If and How, Nor no result save galloping to ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Cessation of War is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth; where the two Natural Enemies, in person, take each a Tobacco-pipe, filled with Brimstone; light the same, and smoke in one another's faces, till the weaker gives in: but from such predicted Peace-Era, what blood-filled trenches, and contentious centuries, may ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... distinct sea-smell which has added speed to the precursive flight of your imagination; then the liquid level, edged afar off by its band of undiscriminated domes and spires, soon distinguished and proclaimed, however, as excited and contentious heads multiply at the windows of the train; then your long rumble on the immense white railway-bridge, which, in spite of the invidious contrast drawn, and very properly, by Mr. Ruskin between the old and the new ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... lead to honorable living; the thousands in our great cities who are driven into surroundings which pervert and undermine character. And worse still, the good, instead of uniting to labor for a better state of things, misunderstand and thwart one another. They divide into parties, are jealous and contentious, and waste their time and exhaust their strength in foolish and futile controversies. They are not anxious that good be done, nor asking nor caring by whom; but they seek credit for themselves, and while they seem to be laboring for the general welfare, are ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... them to stir and toil, Nor is it discontent to keep the mind Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil In the hot throng, where we become the spoil Of our infection, till too late and long We may deplore and struggle with the coil, In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong 'Midst a contentious world, striving where ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... into their eyes. They laughed once more. Their days were filled with work and cheerfulness. In November Sir Anthony was elected Mayor. Being a practical, hard-headed little man, loved and respected by everybody, he drove a hitherto contentious Town Council into paths of high patriotism like a flock of sheep. And no less energy did Lady Fenimore exhibit in the sphere ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... the widows; not to despise the fatherless and poor; to redeem the servants of God from necessity; to be hospitable (for in hospitality there is sometimes great fruit); not to be contentious, but be quiet. ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... to walk hastily about the Chamber, as fearlessly as he always does when he is thinking of something else, I springing up to move one or two Chairs out of his Way. Hearing some high Voices in the Offices, he presently observed, "A contentious Woman is like a continuall Dropping. Shakspeare spoke well when he said that a sweet, low Voice is an excellent Thing in Woman. I wish you good Women would recollect that one Avenue of my Senses being ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... part of your late publication, which is no less an invective against me, than it is a defence of yourself, you have, with sufficient art, insisted on my remarkably contentious, factious,[D] and jealous spirit, which suffers no man, undisturbed, to enjoy his well-earned fame; a circumstance in my character you expected to derive considerable benefit from in the controversy between us. For this point being once gained, every suggestion, every article of charge against you, ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... also told about him going to Messina on some deputation that the Athenians wanted on some kind of matter of an intricate and contentious nature, that Phocion went with some story in his mouth to speak about. He was a man of few words—no unveracity; and after he had gone on telling the story a certain time there was one burst of interruption. One man interrupted with something he tried to answer, and then another; and, finally, ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... unwilling to be instructed, who himself knows best in all things, who yields to no one and calls good whatever harmonizes with his ideas. The Christian should be more willing to make concession in temporal affairs. Let him not be contentious, but rather yielding, since the Word of God and faith are not involved, it being only a question of personal honor, of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... of the thirteenth century the bishop had been accustomed to delegate the contentious jurisdiction of his diocese to an ecclesiastical judge, taking the name of vicar, or more commonly official ("vicarius generalis officialis"). The court itself became known as the officialite. Trials for heresy, breach of promise of marriage, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... desk with his contentious hand, opening his eyes wider, and taking a long breath, "if I understand you, Mr. ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... seeking the full development of his bodily powers. Epaminondas was the example he set himself, and he came little behind that great warrior in activity, sagacity, and integrity, though he differed from him in being possessed of a hot, contentious temper, which often carried him beyond the ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... perhaps, because of its dimensions which were just about that square. It was a little improvement, though nothing to brag of. What fitful zephyrs there might be, caused no doubt by the rapid passage to and fro on the roof above and fence-tops below of vagrant felines on Cupid's contentious battles bent, to the disturbance of the still air, soughed softly through the meshes of my hammock and gave some measure of relief, grateful enough for which I ceased the perfervid language I had been using practically since sunrise, ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... guarantees was never raised by the telegrams interchanged between Gramont and Benedetti before Leopold's retirement had become public, when both the king and the ambassador treated it as entirely new; and that at any rate such an important and highly contentious demand should obviously have been stated with unequivocal distinctness, since any other course was quite certain to produce misunderstandings and recriminations. And it is no matter for surprise that various French writers have since accused the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... principle that "God will render to every man according to his deeds,—that to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, honor, and immortality, He will give eternal life; and that to them who are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, He will recompense indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish." Nay, the doctrines of Scripture are employed throughout as motives and inducements to righteousness. This is their use. The truth is taught us that it may make us free from ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... in this reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity; the most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science; it will not require many words to prove, that all mankind have ever agreed in the doctrine of liberty as well as in that of necessity, and that the whole dispute, in this respect also, has been hitherto merely verbal. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... principal respondent; but he has a difficulty in apprehending the higher education of Socrates, and makes some false hits in the course of the discussion. Once more Adeimantus returns with the allusion to his brother Glaucon whom he compares to the contentious State; in the next book he is again superseded, and ...
— The Republic • Plato
... saying, "What was there to be done with thy son, O king, that we have not done, to induce him to follow our doctrines and serve our gods? But, as I perceive, we aim at the impossible. By nature, or, it may be, by chance, he is contentious and implacable. Now, if it be thy purpose to deliver him to torture and punishment, thou shalt do contrary to nature, and be no more called a father; and thou shalt lose thy son, willing, as he is, ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... "you do wrong to your liberty by calling it so often in doubt, and in claiming with so much contentious anxiety from your enemies a title-deed for your independence. You hold it by your own public decree. In virtue of that decree, confirmed by the success of your arms, you have enjoyed it long. Nor could anything obtained from your enemies be of use to you if those same arms ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... what we do not see, that so by the merits of that same faith we then may merit to see what we believe, and may so hold fast to it that the Equality of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the Unity of the Trinity, may no longer come to us under the garb of faith, nor be the subject of contentious talk, but may rather be what we may drink in in purest and deepest contemplation amid the silence of Eternity (De Catechizandis Rudibus, ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... for granted in this paper that the young American wife is this kind of a woman—wise and gentle and good-natured—above all things good-natured. For says the Bible, "It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and an angry woman." But read what is written in the Book of the right kind of a woman—one "in whose tongue is the law of kindness," as the ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... so gay and gorgeous a scene hours might easily pass with the swiftness of unmarked moments. Peals of laughter echoed now and again through the vaulted dome, and excited voices were frequently raised in clamorous disputations and contentious arguments that only just sheered off the boundary-line of an actual quarrel. All sorts of topics were discussed—the laws, the existing mode of government, the latest discoveries in science, and the military prowess of the King—but the conversation chiefly turned on ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... powerful stimulant for drooping ambition—the only infallible remedy for damaged honor and wounded pride. When the scales shall have fallen from our eyes in that happy day, politics will become a delightful profession, the contentious spirit of man will cease from its bickerings, the tongue of woman will settle down into a steady and respectable trot, the golden age of duelling will retreat into the shadowy past until it shall seem contemporary with the half-fabulous chivalry of the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of Hickory Sam proved the deed to the satisfaction of the manager. In every case the bank manager had full control of the disposal of the fund, and could pay it in bulk, or divide it among those who had succeeded in eliminating from a contentious world one ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... vinegar; for injustice maketh it bitter, and delays make it sour. The principal duty of a judge, is to suppress force and fraud; whereof force is the more pernicious, when it is open, and fraud, when it is close and disguised. Add thereto contentious suits, which ought to be spewed out, as the surfeit of courts. A judge ought to prepare his way to a just sentence, as God useth to prepare his way, by raising valleys and taking down hills: so when there appeareth on either side an high hand, violent prosecution, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... fascination by his personal magnetism and his eloquence, he never became the hero of the great masses of the West; he appealed rather to the more intelligent—to the men of business and of property."[5] Jackson, however, was the very personification of the contentious, self-confident, nationalistic democracy of the interior. He could make no claim to statesmanship. He had held no important legislative or administrative position in his State, and his brief career in Congress was entirely without distinction. He was a man of action, not a theorist, and his views ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... contentious article that appeared in Mechanical Engineering in 1942 under the title "What is Wrong with Kinematics and Mechanisms?" made several pronouncements that were questioned by various readers, but his remarks on the meagerness of the college courses of kinematics and the "curious ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... poet, and indeed no author whatsoever, who lays claim to a fraction of conscience, writes for money ONLY. Those with whom money is the first consideration debase their Art into a coarse huckstering trade, and are no better than contentious bakers and cheesemongers, who jostle each other in a vulgar struggle as to which shall sell perishable goods at the highest profit. None of the lasting works of the world were written so. Nevertheless, if the public voluntarily choose to ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... your contentious humours, noble lords, Peers and upholders of the English state, John silent stood, as one that did await What sentence ye determin'd for my life: But since you are agreed that I shall bear The weighty ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... ne'er, with anxious heart, explores The rugged heights Ambition climbs; Exempt from all the din, the toil, the care, That Cities for their busy Sons prepare; Fatigue, beneath the name of pleasure, Contentious law, usurious treasure, A tedious mean attendance on the Great, And emulation vain of all their pomp ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... the basis of his examination of abnormal mental states, offers a classification of types of psychopathic personalities. He distinguishes six groups: the excitable, the unstable, the psychopathic trend, the eccentric, the anti-social, and the contentious. In psychoanalysis a simpler twofold division is frequently made between the introverts, or the "introspective" and the extroverts, or ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... not much behind her sisters in contentious stubbornness. In answer to the Governor's appeal, the Assembly replied: "It appears that the French have built a fort at a place called French Creek, at a considerable distance from the River Ohio, which may, but does not by any evidence or information appear to us to ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... saying anything to Mrs. Tarbell's discredit," said the Honorable Pope. "Not a bit of it. Not a bit of it. Her feelings do her infinite honor. In her appearance on our wordy and contentious stage I see the commencement of a new era of things. Let her be guided by her feelings. Let her still preserve that beautiful sympathy which is one of the chiefest ornaments of the female sex. It will bring to her a thousand cases of injustice and oppression which we hardened lawyers of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... when the busie and open Papistes abroad, could not, by their contentious bookes, turne men in England fast enough, from troth and right iudgement in doctrine, than the sutle and secrete Papistes at home, procured bawdie bookes to be translated out of the Italian tonge, whereby ouer many yong willes and wittes allured to wantonnes, do ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... to conciliate the good opinion of his vigilant neighbours. Their character for contentious orthodoxy was well known. It was at Neuchatel that the controversy as to the eternal punishment of the wicked raged with a fury that ended in a civil outbreak. The peace of the town was violently disturbed, ministers were suspended, magistrates were interdicted, life was lost, until at ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... blow, but peace is not made when the fighting stops; and months were to pass in the troubled twilight between the two, with millions of men under arms, with budgets more suggestive of war than peace and men's thoughts more attuned to a contentious past than prepared for a peaceful future. The first act of the British Government was, indeed, to transfer hostilities from its foes abroad to those at home, and to rout its domestic enemies at a general election. The Parliament elected in 1910 ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... or made any comment as to their being "hard." Neither did he try to boastingly minimize them as nothing at all—another wretched pose. From him I learned that throughout his youth he had been carried here and there by the iron woman who was his mother and whom he seemed to adore in some grim contentious way, smothering his comments as though he disliked to say anything at all, and yet describing her at times as coarse and vulgar, but a mother to him "all right," someone who had ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... abundant supply of waters separate bathing-places should not be constructed for the two sexes, if they wish to enjoy its bounty[271]. Moreover, those secret caves, the bowels of the mountains from whence it springs, have power even to judge contentious business. For if any sheep-stealer presumes to bring to it the fleece of his prey, however often he may dip it in the seething wave, he will have to boil it before he succeeds in ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... not the same as that which has served to preserve the rook and made it so common. That is a sentiment confined to the landowning class—to those who inherit great houses where the ancient rookery with its crowd of big, black, contentious birds caw-cawing on the windy elms, has come to be an essential part of the establishment, like the gardens and park and stables and home-farm and, one might add, the church and village. This sentiment differs, too, from the heron-sentiment, which serves to keep that bird with ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... especially of workmen and servants, have lately died in the pestilence, many, seeing the necessity of masters and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they may receive excessive wages." A contemporary chronicler says that "laborers were so elated and contentious that they did not pay any attention to the command of the king, and if anybody wanted to hire them he was bound to pay them what they asked, and so he had his choice either to lose his harvest and crops or give in to the proud ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... to Pitholaus (his son's tutor), 'We have only one doctor, and that an honest one,' and went on to describe me as the first of physicians and the only philosopher, for he had tried many before who were not only lovers of money, but also contentious, ambitious, envious, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams |
