"Defiant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on, and at intervals there was the rumble of trains passing to and from Ravenscourt Park station, and the clang of distant tram-bells. The voice of mighty London mocked at Jack's misery, and he conquered his emotions. He lifted a defiant ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... door, his gun trained on Thorn. And Thorn saw that the continuous-fire stud was down. He walked composedly into the red room in which he had once awakened. Sylva gave a little choked cry at sight of him. She was standing, desperately defiant, on the other side of the induction-screen area on the floor. There was a scorched place on the floor where Thorn had shorted that screen and the bar of metal had grown red-hot. Kreynborg threw the switch ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Sieur d'Arnaye flung Francois upon the ground, where he lay quite still for a moment. Then slowly he rose to his feet. He never looked at Noel. For a long time Francois stared at Catherine de Vaucelles, frost-flushed, defiant, incredibly beautiful. Afterward the boy went out of the garden, staggering like ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... this defiant answer, Yong-tsi was very much enraged, and immediately began to prepare for war. Genghis Khan also at once commenced his preparations. He sent envoys to the leading khans who occupied the territories outside the wall inviting them to join him. He raised a ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... defiant look which she assumed every time Mrs. Grey entered the nursery, only a little harder, a little fiercer, with the black brows bent, and the under-hung mouth almost ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... wife of Ripon, the head-gardener. Mrs. Ripon bit her lip as she tugged at the blind cords savagely, and gave her master a defiant look, which he was quick to see. It apparently amused him, for he ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... on both sides of that card?—Ah, well! it might be just nothing, after all; the poor lady might be ill, or vexed past endurance at home; or some unhappy love affair might have come to fret her proud, impatient, defiant temper. But not Withers,—oh, of course not Withers!—for was it not well known that Adelaide was his choice, that his assiduous and graceful attentions to her silenced even his loudest enemies, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... had widened perceptibly. Hilary's heart gave a tremendous leap. Disclosed to his vision was a figure standing opposite the Mercutian, slim, defiant, proud—Joan. ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... King's glowering look with a gaze equally surly and defiant, while Rinkitink answered: ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... This occupation was bitterly opposed by the Ashantis, who felt that it cut them off from free trade with the coast. In return, they intercepted all trade with the coast from the tribes behind them; and finally seized some white missionaries at their capital, and sent a defiant message down to ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... grave, while Frederick William fixed his eyes on him with a sullen and defiant expression. The queen felt that it was time for her to prevent a more violent outburst of indignation on the part of her husband. "The real cradle is the tender heart of a mother," she said gently, "and all Europe knows that your majesty does not forget it; all are aware of the reverential ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... turning away he said, 'I suppose, Miss Adams, it will cause you no sorrow if I tell you this is probably the last time we shall ever meet.' I know that even then, had I answered him differently the matter would not have ended as it did, but my spirit rose proud and defiant, and I said with a tone of mock levity, 'How long a journey do you purpose taking, Mr. Blake? is it to the grist-mill, or to the sawmill, which is a little farther away?' 'You may make light of my words, if you choose,' replied he; 'but I am in no mood for jesting. The truth is, Miss Adams, that ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... merely picturesque matter for the pencil he could use so well, but the lively record of a human society. With what appetite! with all the animation of George Sand's Mauprat, he tells the story of romantic violence having its way there, defiant of law, so late as the year 1611; of the family of robber nobles perched, as abbots in commendam, in those sacred places. That grey, pensive old church in the little valley of Poitou, was for a time like Santa Maria del Fiore to [20] Michelangelo, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... a sore struggle to Polly to abdicate her royal position, it was harder to do it with befitting dignity. To evade the direct question she was obliged to abandon her defiant attitude. "If you please, Sir," she said, hurriedly, with an increasing colour and no stops, "we're not always pirates, you know, and Wan Lee is only our boy what brushes my shoes in the morning, and runs of errands, and he doesn't mean anything bad, Sir, and ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... Peter, "but he is here in London, a rebel and a defiant one. Do you know who came to ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the revealed shame, crept over her face, lighting it to the extreme corners under the temples and ears. As she stood there, humiliated, yet defiant of him and of the world, Sommers remembered the first time he had seen her that night at the hospital. He read her, somehow, extraordinarily well; he knew the misery, the longing, the anger, the hate, the stubborn power ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... because it preserved the balance of power against the gigantic confederation of Spaniards and Austrians. It is complicated by the rise of a Calvinistic and commercial power in the Netherlands, logical, defiant, defending its own independence valiantly against Spain. But on the whole we shall be right if we see the first throes of the modern international problems in what is called the Thirty Years' War; whether we call it the revolt of half-heathens against the Holy Roman Empire, or whether ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... hair—or, what amazed them even more, Estelle's light, flaxen locks, which hung soaked around her. She felt a hand pulling them to see whether anything so strange actually grew on her head, and she turned round to confront them with a little gesture of defiant dignity that evidently awed them, for they kept their hands off her, and did not interfere as she stood sentry over ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for the words that drifted across from the little figure on the opposite bank. So far as he could judge, Uncle Jim was making an appointment for the morrow. He replied with a defiant movement of the punt pole. The little figure was convulsed for a moment and then went on ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... a soft, glad cry, and seizing her husband's arm, shook it for very joy. But now, as Yolande fronted them all, pale and proudly defiant, was the ring of a mailed foot, and turning, she shrank trembling to see Duke Jocelyn hasting toward her, his black armour glinting, his embroidered surcoat fluttering, his long arms outstretched to her; thus quick-striding ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... fellow, some years older than myself, good-looking, as all the Le Marchants were, defiant of face and careless in manner. He looked, in fact, as though it would not have troubled him in the least if his bullet had ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... Dost Mahomed, had refused the Envoy's overtures to come in, and was wandering and plotting in Khooloom, quite ready to fulfil Macnaghten's prophetic apprehension that 'the fellow will be after some mischief should the opportunity present itself'; that the Dooranees were still defiant; that an insurgent force was out in the Dehrawat; and that the tameless chief Akram Khan was being blown from a gun by the cruel and feeble Timour. But unquestionably there was a comparative although short-lived lull in the overt hostility ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... found the aged Pontiff at Anagni, his birthplace, seated on a throne, crowned with the triple crown, the Cross in one hand and in the other Saint Peter's Keys, the terrible Keys of Heaven and Hell. They called on him to abdicate, but Boniface thought of Christ his Lord, and cried out in defiant answer, "Here is my neck, here is my head. Betrayed like Jesus Christ, if I must die like him, I will at least die Pope." For reply, Sciarra Colonna, one of his own Roman Counts, struck him in the face. ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... another person from that tense, saturnine, defiant, brusk person who strode through the reception-hall. He was radiantly and boyishly happy. He was clasping the girl tenderly. He directed her steps in a small circle outside the throng of dancers, and waltzed as slowly as the ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... is, this only Brann we have; genius audacious, defiant, and sublime; whose stature, though his feet be on the flat of the Brazos bottom, towers effulgent over those effigies placed on pedestals by orthodox popularity, and sickly lighted by ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... members of the Y. M. C. A. who shared the dormitory, the Three Ps always maintained a sarcastic and defiant attitude. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... show how completely Philip was the man of a new age. To the threat of the legate, who saw that the failure to make peace was chiefly due to him, that he would lay France under an interdict if he did not come to terms with the king of England, Philip replied in defiant words that he did not fear the sentence and would not regard it, for it would be unjust, since the Roman Church had no right to interfere within France between the king and his rebellious vassal and he overbore the legate and compelled ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... slightly against his shoulder; her breath fanned his cheek; her eyes, soft and lustrous, sought his. But he looked away gloomy and defiant, and she felt his grasp tighten vise-like around her. "I shall not affect any concealment of the feelings which she has recognized so often, nor shall I ask any favors," he thought. "There," he said, as he placed her in his ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... anybody here, sir?" said Henry, with a defiant eye and a hostile tone, which plainly said that at any rate no one there wanted to see the person so addressed; and as he spoke he brandished aloft his garden water-pot, holding it by the spout, ready for ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... I will be pasha," he cried; "and risk all. Haven't I got the sultan's own firman?" and he flourished that important document round his head in the most defiant manner. ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... know that?" she questioned, raising her head and looking at him with suddenly defiant eyes. "I am not aware that I told you that I was a stranger here! Don't you think you ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... back of each champion fierce, And a bow of snow-white wood Did rest in the sinewy hand of each; And the twain defiant stood. ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... power, You still march forward, giant-like and brave, Facing the morning of progress and liberty, Carrying thy cross and crown to all lands— And with thy grand flotilla, chartered by Neptune Remain mistress of all the seas, defiant— The roar of thy cannon and drum beats Heard with pride and glory around the world! Sad, how sad, to think that the day will come When not a vestige of this wonderful mass Of human energy shall remain; Where the cry of the wolf, bat and bittern Shall only be ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... a rather airily-defiant Ingred who strolled into the cloak-room and put on her hat. Francie Hall, trying to thread her boot with a lace that had lost its tag, looked up, smiled, and made room for her on ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... burst into tears then—a sudden, violent burst. She dashed them away again with a defiant, reckless sort of air, broke, into a laugh, and laid the blame on her headache. Robin said he would walk ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the luxurious eye, To catch from life it's outer loveliness, Such things as do but store the joyous memory With food for solace rather than for thought, Like light-lined figures on a painted jar. I wonder where Euktemon is to-night, Euktemon with his rough and fitful talk, His moody gesture and defiant stride; How strange, how bleak and unapproachable; And yet I liked him from the first. How soon We know our friends, through all disguise of mood, Discerning by a subtle touch of spirit The honest heart within. Euktemon's glance Betrayed him with it's gusty friendliness, Flashing ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... and sharp. I looked at him, made a big effort to be bright, and natural, and defiant, and realised suddenly that I was trembling; that, while my cheeks were hot, my hands were cold as ice; that, in short, the shock and excitement of the last half-hour was taking its physical revenge. For two straws I could have burst out crying ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... arrested and taken before the tribunal, where in the most defiant manner, he demanded to know why a person of his distinguished title and record as a servant of the ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... girls she had detained. They sat in widely separated sections of the room. Rose Clymer, pretty, fragile, curly-haired, occupied the front seat of the end row. Her face had no color and her small mouth was set in painful lines. Four seats across from her Bessy Bell leaned on her desk, with defiant calmness, and traces of scorn still in her expressive eyes. Gail Matthews looked frightened and Helen Tremaine was crying. Ruth Winthrop bent forward with her face buried in ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... Such defiant transgressions of the true Shakespearean canon as those of which Ducis and Dumas stand convicted may well rouse the suspicion that the critical incense they burn at Shakespeare's shrine is offered with the tongue ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... about, and no girl possessing any self-respect must think of wandering on the shore alone. The more she was spied upon and admonished, the more she would do what she thought right; and a man who had lived among savages for years must be a queer judge of propriety. But, in spite of all these defiant thoughts, her heart was very low, and her mind in a sad flutter, and she could not even smile as she met her father's gaze. Supposing that she was frightened at the number of the guests, and the noise of many ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... thus unprofitably ended the expedition into Romania, which had been proposed amid such enthusiastic applause at the great Council of the nation, and pressed with such loud acclamations and such brandishing of defiant spears upon the perhaps reluctant Theudemir. The Ostrogoths in 472 were an independent people, practically supreme in Pannonia. Those broad lands on the south and west of the Danube, rich in corn and wine, the very kernel of the Austrian monarchy ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... refused. Refused absolutely, flagrantly defiant. Just this little group, out of all the thousands. So they were being sent off somewhere, handcuffed, to make roads. Prisoners for three years to make roads, useless roads that led nowhere. Good roads, excellent, for traffic that never was. Some ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... slightly defiant tone of self-possession. I tried to play up to her interpretation of her role. "The little Harris boy?" I said, sitting up in bed. "What in the world is he bringing me a letter for?" Ev'leen Ann, with her usual clear perception of the superfluous in conversation, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... on, her white sails growing larger and larger, moment by moment, her tiers of guns more distinct and menacing, her whole aspect more defiant. Her waist seemed packed with men. But ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... a quandary. She knew that Miss Mercer, even though she had laughed at her suspicions of Mr. Holmes, would not approve of such a prank as this; but she knew, also, that Dolly, inclined to be defiant and to resent the exercise of any authority, would not be moved by that argument. And, in the presence of Holmes, she could hardly tell Dolly the story of Zara's disappearance and her own suspicions ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... ceased to be himself in manner completely, and even in disposition, in so far that his faded neutral eyes matching his discoloured hair so well, were discovered then to be capable of expressing a sort of underhand hate. He was at first defiant, then insolent, then broke down and burst into tears; but it might have been from rage. Then he calmed down, returned to his soft manner of speech and to that unassuming quiet bearing which had been usual with him ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... there are no little boys in the family," sighed the red-headed woodpecker; and then she added, with much determination and a defiant toss of her beautiful head: "I hate ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... resignation and impotent fury, between old-fashioned trade-unionism and the latest fashion in extremism: France, emerging nerve-racked from a fifty years' obsession and a five years' nightmare, half-dead with sorrow and suspense, yet too proud in victory to own her weakness, looking round, half-defiant, half-wistful, among her allies for one who can understand her unspoken need, and longing, with all the intensity of her sensitive nature, to be able to resume, in security and quietness of mind, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Every muscle was clamoring for bed and rest, was appalled at continuance of exertion and at thought of the trail again. All this physical protest welled up into his brain in a wave of revolt. But deeper down, scornful and defiant, was Life itself, the essential fire of it, whispering that all Daylight's fellows were looking on, that now was the time to pile deed upon deed, to flaunt his strength in the face of strength. It was merely Life, whispering its ancient ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... man, who, under different treatment would have been defiant and profane, seemed quite subdued by ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... remarkable perhaps than the success of similar endowments in other contemporaries. Leicester, although stately and imposing, had passed his summer solstice. A big bulky man, with a long red face, a bald head, a defiant somewhat sinister eye, a high nose, and a little torrent of foam-white curly beard, he was still magnificent in costume. Rustling in satin and feathers, with jewels in his ears, and his velvet toque stuck as airily as ever upon the side of his head, he amazed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... these things habitually, yet to-day you describe the investigation being conducted into your operations as an impertinence, and secretly you regard this inquisition and all that pertains to it as a waste of time and energy. You are unrepentant, unashamed, and defiant. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Peggy approached the delicate point. The Cherry Creekers no longer looked virtuous, but rather defiant. ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... word, but, as the night with its illimitable hours passed, he grew defiant of difficulties and dangers, all of which became but little things in presence of his hunger. It was his impulse to storm the Indian camp itself and seize what he wanted of the supplies there, but his reason told him the thought was folly. Then ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Fall unfailing, Dropping, sailing, From the wood, That, unpliant, Stands defiant, Like ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... minutes he talked thus, then suddenly changed his tone, and raising his right arm—it was long, thin, gaunt, and the wide-flowing sleeve of his white seamless robe, fell back showing the lean limb almost to the shoulder—he poured out a defiant speech against Apleon, adding "I have challenged! I wait for my ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... by the Innocent on a pair of bone castanets. But the crowning festivity of the evening was reached in a rude camp-meeting hymn, which the lovers, joining hands, sang with great earnestness and vociferation. I fear that a certain defiant tone and Covenanter's swing to its chorus, rather than any devotional quality, caused it speedily to infect the others, who at ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... embittered wrangles, dissolutions, protests, {46} and quarrels which left the colonists still more inflamed. Then, at the suggestion of the Commissioners of Customs, two regiments of troops were sent to Boston to over-awe that particularly defiant colony. There being no legislature in session, the Massachusetts towns sent delegates to a voluntary convention which drafted a protest. Immediately, this action was denounced by Hillsborough as seditious and was censured by Parliament; ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... amendment on the original plan, when the rumours of meditated insult became alarming. Mr. Tryan declared he would have no precautions taken, but would simply trust in God and his good cause. Some of his more timid friends thought this conduct rather defiant than wise, and reflecting that a mob has great talents for impromptu, and that legal redress is imperfect satisfaction for having one's head broken with a brickbat, were beginning to question their consciences very closely as to whether it was not a duty they owed to their families ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... so defiant with her friends as she would have wished to have been, as they were borne with and encouraged by her husband. Of Undy's wife Alaric saw nothing and heard little, but it suited Undy to make use of his sister-in- law's house, and ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... like a bayonet in sunlight; then the old half-gay, half-defiant smile flickered over ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... in the eyes of Miss Alsina Teeswater, and it was plain to see that if my husband had been merely playing with fire it had become a much more serious matter with the lady in the case. There was, in fact, something almost dignifying in that strickenly defiant face of hers. I was almost sorry for her when she turned and walked white-lipped out of the room. What I resented most, as I stood facing my husband, was his paraded casualness, his refusal to take a tragic situation tragically. His attitude seemed to imply that we were about ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... this time as an acknowledged emissary of the Government, but by ill luck his arrival coincided with the receipt of the despatch. The effect of this document was prodigious. Molteno considered that he had been personally insulted. The Legislative Assembly was defiant, and greeted the recital of Carnarvon's words with ironical laughter. A Ministerial Minute, signed by Molteno and his colleagues, protested against the Colonial Secretary's intrusion, and especially against his rather ill advised reference to a proposed separation of the eastern from the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... mean depend," he began again. "But I love you, that's all. Am I nothing—to you?" And Philip looked a little defiant, and as if he had said something that ought to brush away all the sophistries of obligation on either side, between ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... won little sleep that night, nor indeed for some days to come. For whenever I closed my eyes there rose before me the vision of that beauteous woman as I saw her last by the murky torchlight, wrapped in grave clothes and standing in the coffin-shaped niche, proud and defiant to the end, her child clasped to her with one arm while the other was outstretched to take the draught of death. Few have seen such a sight, for the Holy Office and its helpers do not seek witnesses to their dark deeds, and none would wish to see it twice. If I have ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... conspicuous characters in American public life was Oliver P. Morton of Indiana. He had been Governor of Indiana during the War. There was a large and powerful body of Copperheads among the Democrats in that State. They were very different from their brethren in the East. They were ugly, defiant and full of a dangerous activity. Few other men could have dealt with them with the vigor and success of Governor Morton. The State at its elections was divided into two hostile camps. If they did not resort to the weapons of war, they ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... had spent a brief vacation in the alley. Now that he was dead, her less successful sister came home, and with her a delegation of girls from Chinatown. In their tawdry finery they walked in, sallow and bold, with Mott Street and the accursed pipe written all over them, defiant of public opinion, yet afraid to enter except in a body. The alley considered them from behind closed blinds, while the children stood by silently to see them pass. When one of them offered one of the "kids" a penny, he let it fall on the pavement, ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... its passing teams; they were safe from accidental intrusion from the settlement; indeed they went so far as to effect the exclusiveness of "clique." At first they amused themselves by casting humorously defiant eyes at the long low Ditch Reservoir, which peeped over the green wall of the ridge, six hundred feet above them; at times they even simulated an exaggerated terror of it, and one recognized humorist declaimed a grotesque appeal to its forbearance, with delightful ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... wings for flight. The glossy ibis, acute of ear to a remarkable degree, hears from afar the unwonted sound of the paddles, and, springing from the mud where his family has been quietly feasting, is off, screaming out his loud, harsh, and defiant Ha! ha! ha! long before ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... well again," she said, laughingly defiant, and he had to stoop to avoid the assault of her ripe and laughing lips. The little struggle had brought a flame to her eye that grew large and lambent; where her lower neck showed in a chink of her kerchief-souffle ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... eyes to his for the first time. Her lost spirit looked at him, steadily defiant, out of the hell of its ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... voice, flushed face, and thick eyelids. But he had scuffled and edged his way in the thin air of Connecticut as errand-boy, daguerreotypist, teacher, doctor;—so he came into the Gurney garden that night, shrewd, defiant, priding himself on detecting shams. His waistcoat and trousers were of coarser stuff than suited his temperament; a taint of vulgarity in his talk, his whiskers untrimmed, the meaning of his face compacted, sharpened. It was many a year since a tear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... challenge with a defiant emphasis, the speaker fell back into his former attitude; and, once more folding his arms, remained ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... tastes and encircles it with art and music. A coarse nature it plunges into the vilest debauchery and vice. In good fortune it makes the temper carelessly benignant. In bad fortune it makes the temper recklessly defiant. It works these very different effects but is always the one same spirit still,—the pride of life. The gift of life which came from God, taken possession of by the world and tamed into self-sufficiency, a thing not ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... to encounter That fierce harbinger of gloom— Fain to dare the spells of magic, Fain to foil the wrath of doom. Hark! the solitary raven Croaks a note of death and pain, And a human call defiant Answers from the ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... quickly, and, in a defiant, fantastic mood—or was it the inward cry against an impending fate, the tragic future of those who will not see, because to see is to suffer?—she made some quaint, odd motions of the body which belonged to a mysterious dance of her tribe, and, with flashing ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... spot was a sore one. Grouping all these things together and brooding over them, with no sound breaking the silence save the ceaseless drip, drip of the rain, and the whirls of defiant wind, sitting there in her loneliness, the large arm-chair in which she crouched being drawn up before that glowing fire, is it any wonder that the firelight revealed the fact that great silent tears were slowly following ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... girls, whom fortune had so differently favoured, journeyed together into Ayrshire. A strange shyness seemed to have taken possession of Teen; she sat bolt upright in the corner of the carriage, clutching her tin box, and looking half-scared, half-defiant; even the red feather in her hat seemed to wear an aggressive air. In her soul she fervently rued the step she had taken, and thought with longing of her own little room, and with affectionate regret of the bundle she had so proudly returned to ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... was the matter, but was too wise to interfere. I found her, not bed-making, but in a spare room, staring at the wall. She looked at me with dry eyes, bit her lips, and folded her hands across her chest, after her old, defiant fashion. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... was a much younger man, slender, graceful in the saddle, rather handsome in a swarthy, defiant way. He ranged up beside the spokesman as if to take full share in whatever was to come. Both of them were armed with revolvers, the elder of the two with a rifle in addition, which he carried in a leather scabbard black and slick with age, slung ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... in the thronelike chair at the head of the table. His expression was still defiant, indifferent, and lordly. "Come and eat your dinner, both of you," he commanded. "You've had your lesson, Pete. After this, I guess you'll do what I tell you to—not choose the work that happens to suit your humor. Don't, for God's sake, baby him, ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... off: she screamed and laughed. Her bosom heaved against him: for a moment their cheeks touched: he tasted the sweat that lay on Anna's brow: he breathed the scent of her moist hair. She pushed away from him and looked at him, unmoved, with defiant eyes. He was amazed at her strength, which all went for nothing in ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... visitors on the scene, and the streets were soon cleared. No prisoners were made. Capt. Ferrand took part in leading the soldiers, and those who were so valiant before were now no longer to be seen defiant; they had fled. Mr John Garnett, school-master, wrote some lines on the affair, called ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... deserted his wife and child. Mrs. Byron convulsively clasped her son to her one moment and threw the scissors and tongs at him the next, calling him "the lame brat," in reference to his club foot. Such treatment drew neither respect nor obedience from Byron, who inherited the proud, defiant spirit of his race. His accession to the peerage in 1798 did not tend to tame his haughty nature, and he grew up passionately ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... has much of the witchcraft and subtlety of William Blake. Many verses of the shy recluse, whom Mr. Higginson so happily has introduced to the world, are not only daring and unconventional, but recklessly defiant of form. But, as her editor has well said, "When a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence." Emily Dickinson had more than a message, more than the charm of unexpectedness, more than the gift of phrase,—she had (and of ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... child or friend. To tease is to give some slight and perhaps playful annoyance. Aggravate in the sense of offend is colloquial. To provoke, literally to call out or challenge, is to begin a contest; one provokes another to violence. To affront is to offer some defiant offense or indignity, as it were, to one's face; it is somewhat less than to insult. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... very little as he lay there. Indeed, it had never troubled him much. He was one of those men who cannot learn to think systematically, but who make up their deficiency by feeling the more intensely. And now that the unseen Guide had given His beloved sleep, and the stern, defiant blue eyes were veiled, and the habitual frown smoothed from the fine forehead, I found something pathetic in the worn repose of the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... thirty in number, they were sitting in a glade about a little fire. All of them had blankets of red or blue about them and they carried rifles. Their faces were hideous with war paint and their coarse black hair rose in the defiant scalp lock. ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... she wished to escape. She was more nervous, though not less courageous than formerly. But the old, fierce, defiant spirit awoke. Why should she fear Stanley, or what could it be to her whether he was beside her in ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... we resolve to live: By Heaven we will be free! Defiant let the banners fly, Shake out their glories to the air, And, kneeling, brothers, let us swear We will be free or die! Then let the drums ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... Terrace, leaving behind them an animated crowd, all busy with the same subject. In the middle of it they passed Ferrier himself—flushed—with the puffy eyes of a man who never gets more than a quarter allowance of sleep; his aspect, nevertheless, smiling and defiant, and a crowd of friends round him. The wind blew chill up the river, crisping the incoming tide; and the few ladies who were being entertained at tea drew ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it is, Peter!" exclaimed Nancy; "Mr Chalk said we was to stay here, and stay we will for all the scraps of paper in the world!" And Nancy, seating herself in a chair, folded her arms, and cast defiant looks at the ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... could not be trusted. Mr. Harkutt, a little ruddier from weather, excitement, and the unusual fortification of a glass of liquor, a little more rugged in the lines of his face, and with an odd ring of defiant self-assertion in his voice, stood before them in the ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... looking at the last piece of steak on her plate. With an almost defiant gesture she speared it and put ...
— Lease to Doomsday • Lee Archer
... it," was the defiant reply. "I said it so as you shouldn't be put off coming. You looked a steady young feller, and I wanted a let. Wish I'd told you the truth, if ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... slavery, seconded by the labors of clergymen and missionaries, teachers and catechists, to improve the character of the slaves, failed to arrest the current of vice and profligacy. What few reformations were effected were very partial, leaving the more enormous immoralities as shameless and defiant as ever, up to the very day of abolition; demonstrating the utter impotence of all attempts to purify the streams while the fountain ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... in the glitter of their spears; besides it was matter of universal knowledge that the steel panoply of each rider concealed a mercenary foreigner who was never so happy as when riding over a Greek. One yell louder and more defiant than any yet uttered—"The azymite, the azymite!"—and the mob broke and fled. At a signal from the officer, the guards, as they came on, opened right and left of the chairs, and ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... driving out into the wilderness. There is less heresy hunting; persecution is frequently reluctant and can be evaded by slight concessions. The world as a whole is less harsh and emphatic than it was. Customs and customary attitudes change nowadays not so much by open, defiant and revolutionary breaches as by the attrition of partial negligences and new glosses. Innovating people do conform to current usage, albeit they conform unwillingly and imperfectly. There is a constant breaking down and building up of usage, and as a consequence ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... individual, and especially of corporate, wealth engaged in interstate business is chiefly done under cover; and especially under cover of an appeal to State's rights. It is not at all infrequent to read in the same speech a denunciation of predatory wealth fostered by special privilege and defiant of both the public welfare and law of the land, and a denunciation of centralization in the Central Government of the power to deal with this centralized and organized wealth. Of course the policy set forth in such twin denunciations amounts ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... faced the sound. The glare of the headlight fascinated, challenged, angered him. There he stood defiant, front feet planted wide apart, head lowered, gazing steadily at the unknown enemy that was rushing toward him. He was the monarch of the wilderness. There was nothing in the world that he feared, except those strange-smelling ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... horoscope scroll, placing the ashes in a paper bag on which I wrote: "Seeds of past karma cannot germinate if they are roasted in the divine fires of wisdom." I put the bag in a conspicuous spot; Ananta immediately read my defiant comment. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... that evening without rouge, and was the only woman in the room thus unadorned. Also she wore her coming-out string of modest pearls and a slightly defiant, somewhat ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Council-Chamber; and in a few minutes he appeared on the balcony. Near him were prominent citizens, both Loyalists and Whigs; below him, on the one side, were his indignant townsmen, who had conferred on him every honor in their power, and on the other side, the regiment in its defiant attitude. He could speak with eloquence and power; throughout this strange and trying scene he bore himself with dignity and self-possession; and as in the stillness of night he expressed great concern at the unhappy event, and made solemn pledges to the people, his manner must have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... stood defiant, looking his assailants in the eyes. His face seemed to have grown thinner, and his moustache twitched with the snarling movement of a brute at bay. Then he was tripped up and thrown forwards amid a storm of, ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... force at the command of Magruder could surround them. But Barney's guiding hand was now replaced by another. Jones had appeared, and with him men bearing Butler's commission. The prisoners of Libby set up a defiant cheer. They were once more under the flag. Father Abraham was ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Mr Bright with another groan, as he turned his eyes wistfully—not to the shore, at which all on board were eagerly gazing—but towards the wreck of the Royal Mail steamer Trident, the top of whose funnels rose black and defiant in the midst of ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... the sneer, And Honor turns with frown defiant, And Freedom, leaning on her spear, Laughs louder than the laughing giant:- "An islet is a world," she said, "When glory with its dust has blended, And Britain kept her noble dead Till earth and seas ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... notwithstanding that little foppery we know of in him—that walking delicately, like Agag; wild, notwithstanding the work, the ease, the neatness, the finish; notwithstanding the assertion of manliness which, in asserting, somewhat misses that mark; a wilder poet than the rough, than the sensual, than the defiant, than the accuser, than the denouncer. Wild flowers are his—great poet—wild winds, wild ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... youth spoke his message well, without pride and without insult. But he found neither knight nor emperor who would answer him. When he saw that they all held their peace and treated him with scorn, he left the court in defiant mood. But youth and thirst for daring deeds made Cliges defy him in combat as he left. For the contest they mount their steeds, three hundred of them on either side, exactly equal thus in strength. All the palace is quite emptied of knights and ladies, who mount to the balconies, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... solemn declaration, that France would never make war for conquest, or against freedom. After that, Spain had little to hope for, and Pitt became defiant. Negotiations lasted till October. The Assembly appointed a Committee on Foreign Affairs, in which Mirabeau predominated, casting all his influence on the side of peace, and earning the gratitude and the gold of England. At last, the ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... aunt looked at her and Maggie was deeply conscious of her shabby dress, her rough hands, her ugly boots. Then, as always when she was self-critical, her eyes grew haughty and her mouth defiant. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... address he had been furnished, asking for an immediate reply. It went to Philadelphia and contained a description of the lawyer, and asked if he had been sent by Mr. Herron to escort his grand-daughter to his home. When the Harvester returned to the living-room the Girl, white and defiant, waited before the fire. He knelt beside her and put his arms around her, but she repulsed him; so he sat on the rug and looked ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... I would go to bed sick at heart and with my mind half made up to drop it all, only to wake in the morning more resolute and hopeful than ever. Hopeful and defiant. It was as though somebody—the whole world—were jeering at my brazen-faced, piteous efforts, and I was bound to make good, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... next morning he found Killen waiting for him. One glance at the weak defiant face told him that the legislator was again in revolt. The lawyer felt a surge of disgust sweep over him. All through the session he had cajoled and argued the weak-kneed back into line. Why didn't Hardy do his own dirty work instead of ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... weather before, Salve had always come down from time to time to see her. Now—she didn't know what to think. From what the cook had told her, she gathered that they were beating with unjustifiable recklessness, and from the tone of Salve's voice she knew that he was in a savagely defiant mood, and that she, for some reason or other, was the cause of it. Her expression gradually changed to one of deeper and ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... political views, excites some indignation and a sympathetic reaction in his favour. One can imagine the ghost of Byron rebuking his critic with the words of the Miltonic Satan, 'Ye knew me once no mate For you, there sitting where ye durst not soar'; for in his masculine defiant attitude and daring flights the elder poet overtops and looks down upon the fine musical ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... tale!—the days when, in the first flush of their wedded life, they had set a seal of devotion and loyalty and love upon their arms, which, long ago, had gone to the limbo of lost jewels, with the chaste, fresh desires of worshipping hearts. Young egotists, supremely happy and defiant in the pride of the fact that they loved each other, and that it mattered little what the rest of the world enjoyed, suffered, and endured—these were suddenly arrested in their buoyant and solitary flight, and stirred restlessly in their seats. Old men whose ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Cornplanter, was not present, but Blue Jacket and the Shawnees were there filled with hate. They accused the Iroquois with speaking 'from the outside of their lips,' and told their chiefs that they came with the 'voice of the United States folded under their arm.' Every word was haughty, proud and defiant, but in the end the Iroquois wrung a promise from them to suspend hostilities until the ensuing spring, when a council of peace should be held with the Americans. This promise was not kept. War parties of Shawnees constantly prowled ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... treason and murder, and in his carpetbag were papers which, it was said, implicated prominent antislavery workers. Now his friends were fleeing the country, Sanborn, Douglass, and Howe. Gerrit Smith broke down so completely that for a time his mind was affected. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, defiant and unafraid, stuck by John Brown to the end, befriending his family, hoping to rescue him as he ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... with Larry's religion," pursued Miss Coppinger, with a defiant eye on her cousin, "and as soon as we are a little more settled down I shall ask the priest to lunch. Farther than that I don't ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... with long, firm strides, asked for his blessing and gave him a sounding smack on his moist, red hand, much to the discomfiture of the priest, who did not in the least expect this sort of outburst. He then turned to Solomin and gave him a defiant look. He had evidently heard something about him and wanted to show off and get some fun ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... bay mustang reached with vicious muzzle to bite at him. Lake gave a jerk on the bridle that almost brought the mustang to his knees. He reared then, snorted, and came down to plant his forefeet wide apart, and watched his master with defiant eyes. This mustang was the finest horse Shefford had ever seen. He appeared quite large for his species, was almost red in color, had a racy and powerful build, and a fine thoroughbred head with dark, fiery eyes. He did not look mean, but he ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... sort of defiant ring in her tone, "Mr. Travis is going to buy those pictures after all. And the worst of it is that I met him in the hall coming in as I was coming down here, and he tried to act toward me in the same old ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... Taras Bulba takes on the enemy; fearful is his own death, lashed to a tree, and burned alive by his foes. He dies, merrily roaring defiant taunts at his tormentors. And Gogol himself closes his hero's eyes with the question, "Can any fire, flames, or power be found on earth, which are capable ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... opportunity when he imagined himself alone with her. He caught her head in his hands almost savagely and pressed a wild, passionate kiss on her lips. Albina's defiant resolution broke down; she returned his kiss ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein |
