"Exacting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... charity at defiance. He told himself plainly that he had no desire to forgive Lord Trowbridge,—that life in this world, as it is constituted, would not be compatible with such forgiveness,—that he would not, indeed, desire to injure Lord Trowbridge otherwise than by exacting such penalty as would force him and such as he to restrain their tyranny; but that to forgive him, till he should have been so forced, would be weak and injurious to the community. As to that, he had quite made up his mind, in spite of ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... of the consistent and immemorial policy of the Church of Rome in relation to persons who refuse to submit to her claims. They know that policy to be one of absolute and uncompromising insistence on the exacting of everything which she regards as her right as soon as she possesses the power. They know that, for her, toleration is only a temporary expedient. They know that professions and promises made by individual Roman Catholics and by political leaders, ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... month past loving aunts had tenderly relieved the child's inexperienced parents of the daily ministrations and of the more exacting night watches. After the doctor's warning there came "the calm before the storm". It only lasted for one day; the deceptive strength which had temporarily buoyed the little patient up was now passing away and the inevitable reaction was setting in. Oh, if he were only a year older so that he ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... exclaim indignantly that Harry Annesley had told a lie. "A lie!" He had been surprised to find that a young man who had lived so much in the fashionable world as Captain Scarborough had cared nothing for this. And as Miss Thoroughbung became more and more exacting in regard to money, he thought, himself, less and less of the lie. It might be well that Harry should ultimately have the property, though he should never again be taken into favor, and there should be no farther question of the allowance. As Miss Thoroughbung reiterated ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... bring in slaves, if they took the oath that had been provided in the law of 1815. The evil mentioned above brought about by hiring slaves for excessively long terms was prohibited by declaring illegal any contract which extended beyond one year and exacting a penalty of $600 for each offense. This law of 1833 was destined to be the crux of many a heated argument for the remainder of the slavery period. Many a candidate for office during the next thirty years rose to victory or fell in defeat ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... peoples, yet on trivial occasions she was abjectly timid and afraid, A sufferer from chronic malarial affection, and a martyr to pains her days were filled in with unremitting toil. Overflowing with love and tender feeling, she could be stern and exacting. Shrewd, practical, and matter of fact, she believed that sentiment was a gift of God, and frankly indulged in it. Living always in the midst of dense spiritual darkness, and often depressed and ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... conduct were obtained. In January the British forces began their retreat from Kabul. Then followed a series of treacheries and mutual breaches of faith. Akbar Khan and his hordes of Afghans dogged the retreating column exacting further concessions. The English women and children were demanded as hostages. From the heights of the Khaibar Pass, the Ghilzai mountaineers poured a destructive fire into the Englishmen. Akbar Khan's followers made common cause with them. Thousands of Englishmen were slain, or perished ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... Fates, by Heaven's decree accomplish, According as right passes from this side to that. For hateful speech let speech of hate be paid back: Justice exacting her due cries this aloud: For murderous blow dealt let the murderer pay By stroke of murder felt. Do and it shall be done unto thee: Old is this saying and ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... entered, and thus protected, threw ourselves on a little straw, when we were fortunate enough to obtain it; and for several months I took my rest during the night in this manner, and even this I frequently could not enjoy for as many as five or six nights at a time, so exacting were the requirements of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... bidding to change her gown or dress her head in some new fashion, that her life was made to her a weighty burden to bear, and also a painful one. Her place had before been an easy one but for her mistress's choleric temper, but it was so no more. Never had young lady been so exacting and so tempestuous when not pleased with the adorning of her face and shape. In the presence of polite strangers, whether ladies or gentlemen, Mistress Clorinda in these days chose to chasten her language and give less rein ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... carefully, showing him the subtle points of Blake's game. During the few practices following the star's departure he had watched the new man faithfully through every play, giving him all his time. He was sorry for the sub. A man could be placed in no more exacting position. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... outsider, or layman, who simply uses a cab, or receives a letter, or goes to law, or has to be tried, these pretensions are ridiculous or annoying, according to the ascendancy of the pretender at the moment. But as the clerical pretensions are more exacting than all others, being put forward with an assertion that no answer is possible without breach of duty and sin, so are they more galling. The fight has been going on since the idea of a mitre first entered the heart ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... element from human creatures, and you have Hamlet without the ghost. Excepting, perhaps, the religious, it is the most powerful, prominent, exacting part of our nature. In 'man's unregenerate state,' at least, the love story is the most interesting book, marriage the most interesting ceremony, true lovers' dalliance the most interesting sight. For the beloved, one relinquishes all else—performs ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... today except the strange coincidence. The officials of the Board of Trade have been most exacting in seeing that every compliance has been made with existing regulations. As the matter is to be a 'nine days wonder', they are evidently determined that there shall be no cause ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... cent. in it, that makes it so deadly. It is the absinthe, the oil of wormwood, whose bitterness has passed into a proverb. The active principle absinthin is a narcotic poison. The stuff creates a habit most insidious and difficult to break, a longing more exacting than hunger. It is almost as fatal as cocaine in its blasting effects on ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... nor dogs, especially small dogs.—"Come, if thou art a Frenchman, then keep a lap-dog. Thou runnest, thou skippest hither and thither, and it follows thee, with its tail in the air ... but of what use is it to fellows like me?"—He was very neat and exacting. He never spoke of the Empress Katherine otherwise than with enthusiasm, and in a lofty, somewhat bookish style: "She was a demi-god, not a human being!—Only contemplate yon smile, my good sir," he was wont to add, pointing at the Lampi ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... discovery of a new pathologic "entity," proven and made certain from the symptoms. Lastly, if we do not hesitate to give a very broad extension to the term "scientific," and apply it also to invention in social matters, we shall see that the latter is still more exacting, for one must represent to oneself not only the elements of the past and of the present, but in addition construct a picture of the future according to ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... more talk, and then Mr. Layton started on, after exacting from Tom a further promise to let him know if any electrics were ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... very well placed in his mind—a reckless woman, pretty, with a fine character for a masterpiece of fiction (should he ever get to the story-writing stage) and a delight to think about; commanding, too, mysterious and exacting; and now he thought it might be the laughter of her voice that carried in the wind, not a mocking laugh, nor a jeering one, but one of sweet encouragement which neither distance nor circumstances could dismiss from a distressed and reluctant heart, let alone a heart so willing ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... agree with you. What you have just depicted is a beautiful sight, especially when, as you often see, the age or infirmity is not in the least selfish or exacting. ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... good will of the public. He was not, like Louis IX., a model of austerity and sanctity; but after the licentious court of Charles VII., the coarse habits of Louis XI., and the easy morals of Charles VIII., the French public was not exacting. Louis XII. was thrice married. His first wife, Joan, daughter of Louis XI., was an excellent and worthy princess, but ugly, ungraceful, and hump-backed. He had been almost forced to marry her, and he had no child by her. On ascending the throne, he begged Pope Alexander VI. to annul his marriage; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... mental sides of the fight—which, I may assure you, were annoying enough to suit the most exacting advocate of the old policy of mortifying the flesh and disciplining the mind—there came eventually the necessity of learning how to keep in the game on a water basis—or, rather, of learning how to keep in such portions of the game as seemed worth while on a soft-drink schedule. ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... graphical methods developed by numerous German and Italian writers are recommended, as they are fully as simple as the rather crude method advocated by the author, and are in almost identical accord with the most exacting analytical methods. ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... chose her time. Mrs. Lloyd, and indeed all the elders of the family, were extremely particular and punctilious about table manners; exacting the utmost care and elegance in everything that was done. One Sunday there was company at dinner; only one or two gentlemen who were familiar friends, however, so that the young people were not debarred ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... He never seemed to tire or to know what fatigue meant. Ordinary men are disposed to pleasure as well as to work, to recreation and social intercourse as well as to business, but this was not the case with Mr. Walker. It must be confessed that he was somewhat exacting with his staff, but his own example was a stimulus to exertion in others and he was well served. One who knew him well, and for many years was closely associated with him in railway work, tells me that his most striking ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... known their husbands before marriage. Few had ever seen them. Many were compelled to live with the difficulties of an exacting mother-in-law, who had forgotten that she was ever a ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... the supplies granted by parliament, which were indeed very small, but which they ever regarded as mighty concessions, she had been obliged, notwithstanding her great frugality, to employ other expedients, such as selling the royal demesnes and crown jewels,[***] and exacting loans from the people,[****] in order to support this cause, so essential to the honor and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... blackbirds are exquisite eating. We sometimes receive them at Orange, layers of them, packed in baskets through which the air circulates freely and each contained in a paper wrapper. They are in a state of perfect preservation, complying with the most exacting demands of the kitchen. I congratulate the nameless shipper who conceived the bright idea of clothing his blackbirds in paper. Will his example find imitators? ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... bed exacting a promise that I should call him at two o'clock. But I let the hour go by, and another, and yet another, until the stars were paling in the east when I got up, stiff in every joint, to meet Gifford as he came up the gulch. He was haggard and weary, ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... of which it is in need; (2) destroying munitions of war or warships which may be in a port; (3) punishing, by way of reprisal, violations by the enemy of the laws of war. Bombardments for the purpose of exacting a ransom or of putting pressure upon the hostile Power by injury to peaceful individuals or their property were to be unlawful. The views of the committee were, in substance, adopted by the Institut, with the omission only of the paragraph allowing ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... likewise assumed the patronage of Ireland. Last Thursday he asked an audience of the King, and, the moment he was admitted into the closet, began reading an Irish pamphlet, and continued for an hour, till it was so dark he could not see; and then left the pamphlet, exacting a promise on royal honour that his Majesty would finish it. Were I on the throne, I would make Dr. Monro a Groom of my Bedchamber: indeed it has been necessary for some time; for, of the King's lords, Lord Bolingbroke is in a mad-house, and Lord Pomfret and my nephew ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... suggested in it a kind of truce, during which, there should be ecclesiastical communion between them: the Lutherans, were to acknowledge the Pope, as the first of Bishops, in order, and dignity: the Church of Rome, was to receive the Lutherans, as her children, without exacting from them, any retractation of their alledged errors, or any renunciation, of the articles in their creed, condemned by the Council of Trent. The anathemas of that council, were to be suspended, and a general council was to be convened, in which the Protestants were to have a deliberative voice: ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... to the Castle of S. Angelo. Here, at the end of December 1581, she was put on trial for the murder of her first husband. In prison she seems to have borne herself bravely, arraying her beautiful person in delicate attire, entertaining visitors, exacting from her friends the honours due to a duchess, and sustaining the frequent examinations to which she was submitted with a bold, proud front. In the middle of the month of July her constancy was sorely ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... can life be simplified? In the office where I work the pressure of affairs is very exacting. Often I do not have a moment to think over my own affairs before 4 p.m. There are a great many matters that puzzle me, and I am afraid that if I go on working so hard the sweetest hours of my youth may pass before I have given them proper ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... taken it with a relish, when it so chanced that the light fell for a moment on his face, and she was startled by perceiving the effects of anxiety and want of sleep. In vain he assured her there was nothing the matter. She accused herself of having been exacting and selfish, and would not be comforted, till he had promised to take a good night's rest. He left her, at length, nearly asleep, to carry the tidings to his brother, and enjoy his look of heart-felt rejoicing. Never had the two very dissimilar brothers felt ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... types of religious men, but it must suffice to refer to Pardoners, who by virtue of papal bulls gave pardons, expecting, exacting if necessary, a reward in return, and to mention only palmers and pilgrims, who were seen in York when they came to visit the shrine of St. William in the Minster. The palmers were pilgrims who had visited the Holy Land. They liked to ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... speaking; after this, it is no wonder that the Rajah's wealth and his offence, the necessities of the judge and the opulence of the delinquent, are never separated, through the whole of Mr. Hastings's apology. "The justice and policy of exacting a large pecuniary mulct." The resolution "to draw from his guilt the means of relief to the Company's distresses." His determination "to make him pay largely for his pardon, or to execute a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... sonne Hardiknought, that succeeded Harold in the kingdome. Moreouer, Harold made small account of his subiects, degenerating from the noble vertues of his father, following him in few things (except in exacting of tributes and paiments.) He caused indeed eight markes of siluer to be leuied of [Sidenote: A nauie in a readinesse. Euill men, the longer they liue, the more they grow into miserie. Wil. Malm. Hen. Hunt.] euerie port or ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... vain on the morrow, maintaining, though with less ease, that sensitised-plate-like condition of his mind. Nothing occurred to give it an impression. Whatever it was which he so patiently wooed, it seemed to be both shy and exacting. ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... he learn forthwith what the wind Means in its moaning,—by the happy, prompt, Instinctive way of youth, I mean,—for kind Calm years, exacting their accompt Of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... ripened and lasted. When Harold An Wolf had put in his novitiate in a teeming Midland manufacturing town, it was Norman's influence which obtained the rectorship for his friend. It was not often that they could meet, for An Wolf's work, which, though not very exacting, had to be done single-handed, kept him to his post. Besides, he was a good scholar and eked out a small income by preparing a few pupils for public school. An occasional mid-week visit to Normanstand in the slack time of school work on the Doctor's part, ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... decay of intolerance an indication of the general evaporation of Christian articles of faith, and the possible loss of identity in some new form of religion. There is no danger. No religion can live in opposition to the evolution of the human spirit. It must be sufficiently deep to meet the most exacting need of individual religious experience, and it must be sufficiently broad and elastic to correspond to the ever-changing phenomena of social evolution. Christianity has this depth and this breadth. Two parallel lines of its development are clearly discernible at the present time. One ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... man or woman, with a demand that any gift of ours be returned? I am not thinking of pearls now, or annuities, or cheap wisdom, but of some piece of our real selves, some hour of our own existence, which we have surrendered to such a being without at once exacting payment for it in some sort of coin. My dear Julian, we have kept our doors open, and have allowed our treasures to be viewed—but prodigal with them we have never been. You no more than I. We may just as well join hands, Julian. I am a little less prone to complain than you are—that's the ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... off in high spirits with Bob later in the day, Nesta exacting many promises that should Aunt Dorothy by some miracle appear before she was expected, Mrs. Orban would send ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... individuals, again, or small interests, or classes, excite here a greater interest, and occupy a larger share of time, than, perhaps, in any other community. In no country, I may add, are the interests of persons or classes so favored when they compete with those of the public; and in none are they more exacting, or more wakeful to turn this advantage to the best account. With the vast extension of our enterprise and our trade, comes a breadth of liability not less large, to consider every thing that is critical in the affairs of foreign states; and the real responsibilities thus ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... And after exacting a few more signatures from the widow, who by this time had become adept in signing "Ellen Trigg Clark," the trust officer nodded ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... but you always have a sitter. You must come—it means something to me. I'll go and get a cab. It will not take half an hour. It is such a beautiful Stuart. There's no doubt about it, not the slightest; only you know Mr. Morlon, he's very exacting. He says, 'If Mr. Gregg approves I will buy it.' These were ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... The expression of Jakoff's face and the way in which he twitched his fingers showed that this order had given him great satisfaction. He was a serf, and a most zealous, devoted one, but, like all good bailiffs, exacting and parsimonious to a degree in the interests of his master. Moreover, he had some queer notions of his own. He was forever endeavouring to increase his master's property at the expense of his mistress's, and to prove that ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... ill of on account of its defeat by the Allies. It is their unjustifiable method of beginning the war, and the dirty brutal tricks by which they sought to win it, which have created enduring mistrust and animosity against them. The law of human fairness is no more exacting to small communities or individuals ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... want, or to fall into the hands of another set of masters? It is every way our interest to keep together, and to let those already on the coast become our captors, as the booty of two ships may dispose them to be less exacting with their prisoners." ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... take note how things went in that rough life he had assigned them, he felt a half liking for the boy, and bade him come down to Athens and see the sights, partly by way of proof to his already somewhat exacting wife of the difference between the old love and the new as measured by the present condition of their respective offspring. The fine nature, fastidious by instinct, but bred with frugality enough ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... means by which I endeavor to alleviate suffering and to enlighten doubt, it is impossible to speak intelligibly within the limits of an advertisement. I can only offer to submit my system to public inquiry, without exacting any preliminary fee from ladies and gentlemen who may honor me with a visit. Those who see sufficient reason to trust me, after personal experience, will find a money-box fixed on the waiting-room table, into which they can drop their offerings according ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... a little bit likely," he replied, taking her proffered hand, and there was that in his voice and in his look which made her lower her frank grey eyes. "I have only been in London a few days, and I find that Press work is more exacting than I ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... some condition or promise. Sometimes there are several of these, which the fairy ladies compel their mortal lovers to pledge them, before they agree to become wives. In fact, the fairies in Cymric land are among the most exacting of any known. ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... constitution. He was an inveterate gambler, his large professional earnings going into the coffers of the faro and monte dealers. His violations of good morals in other respects were flagrant. He worked hard by day, and gave himself up to his vices at night. Public opinion was not very exacting in those days, and his failings were condoned by a people who respected force and pluck, and made no close inquiries into a man's private life, because it would have been no easy thing to find one who, on ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... you here went over, and said, producing the bracelet, 'that the young maid, Chui Erh, had stolen it, and that she had detected her, and come to lay the matter before our lady Secunda. I promptly took over the bracelet from her; and recollecting how imperious and exacting Pao-yue is inclined to be, fond and devoted as he is to each and all of you; how the jade which was prigged the other year by a certain Liang Erh, is still, just as the matter has cooled down for the last couple of years, canvassed at times ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... seized me, and instead of sending a dozen more chapters to you as I proposed to do, I am setting to to break this love story anew under the stones of my most exacting criticism and troubled regard. I go to bury myself at a solitary little seaside place" (it was Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire), "there to live alone with Rosalie and Charley, and if I do not know them hereafter, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... you for your welcome letter, so kind in its candour, I angry that you should prefer 'The Seraphim'! Angry? No indeed, indeed, I am grateful for 'The Seraphim,' and not exacting for the 'Drama,' and all the more because of a secret obstinate persuasion that the 'Drama' will have a majority of friends in the end, and perhaps deserve to have them. Nay, why should I throw perhapses over my own impressions, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... Sweller carried off the park scene to my decided satisfaction. Even to me he was a hero when he foreswore, for the sake of his friend, the romantic promise of his adventure. It was later in the day, amongst the more exacting conventions that encompass the society hero, when we had our liveliest disagreement. At noon he went to O'Roon's room and found him far enough recovered to return to his post, ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... under the uncompromising challenge of a bright sun, Billy began to be uneasily suspicious that she had been just a bit unreasonable and exacting the night before. To make matters worse she chanced to run across a newspaper criticism of a new book bearing the ominous title: "When the Honeymoon Wanes A Talk ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... the 'septemvirate of quacks' is hymned; and the finale is quite Attic. I do not know whether the thing has ever been attempted as an actual show. Though rather exacting in its machinery, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... "pitch." I have seen a trench-mortar in action—it is like a baby howitzer, and makes a prodigious noise. Our own men deprecate it and the enemy resent it. It is an invidious thing. The gas-extinguisher is less objectionable, and, incidentally, less exacting in the matter of accommodation. It is a large copper vessel resembling nothing so much as the fire-extinguishing cylinders one sees in public buildings at home. About our gas-pumps I know nothing except by hearsay. They are in charge of "corporals" in the chemical ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... human rights by this Constitution guaranteed to the people of Japan are fruits of the age-old struggle of man to be free; they have survived the many exacting tests for durability and are conferred upon this and future generations in trust, to be ...
— The Constitution of Japan, 1946 • Japan
... countenance. The days came when, though still in the heyday of early manhood, his handsome figure was gaunt and wasted; his fine face furrowed with suffering and care; his virile strength exhausted by ceaseless toil, wearisome journeyings, and exacting ministries of many kinds. But, emaciated and worn, his face never for a moment lost its radiance. He greeted life with a cheer and took leave of it ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... A narrower and tighter loyalty and a closer companionship are needed, as every regiment knows, before men will cheerfully go to meet the ultimate realities of war. They must live together and work together and think together. Their society must be governed by a high and exacting code, imposed by consent, as the creed of all. The creation, or the tended growth, of such a society, that is to say, of the new air force, was one of the miracles of the war. The recruits of the air were young, some ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... beautiful sewer, and I am sure she never turned in a garment that had in any way been slighted. She knew how rude and exacting this class of employers were, and was nice and careful in consequence, so as to be sure of giving satisfaction. But all this care availed nothing, in many cases, to prevent rudeness, and sometimes a refusal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... deal surprised at this, but feeling that if she were to wait for the clearing up of the mystery she would infallibly be late in reaching the shop of the exacting Stickle and Screw, she swept lightly past the seaman with a short laugh, ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... like stars, don't they? Slightly overdressed, showy stars, indeed; stars in the German taste; but stars, all the same. Then, by day, you know, the purple glass is removed, and you get the sun—the real sun. Do you notice the delicious fragrance of lilac? If one hadn't too exacting an imagination, one might almost persuade oneself that one was in a proper open-air garden, on a night in May—Yes, everybody is more or less English, in these days. That's precisely the sort of thing I should have ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... that it was inevitable that I must sooner or later come to the front. So when the captain informed me that he should appoint me Corporal, I told him that I thanked him, and through him, the Nation, and would try and perform the duties of the exacting and important position to the best of my ability, and hoped that I might not do anything that would bring discredit upon our distracted country. He said that would be all right, that he had no doubt the country would pull through. ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... superbly supported by the men who have been through the exacting mill at West Point and Annapolis—their sweethearts and wives, not to mention sisters, cousins, uncles and aunts—they are urged on to battle by that great impartial public which believes that in a sense these two teams belong to it. It is not uncommon to find men who have had no connection ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... wings, with such inconsistencies as the "Doge praying" in a picture of the marriage of St. Catherine, with the mystic marriage itself. Raphael's grace of line and suave space-filling shapes are mainly what we think of; the rest we call convention. We are become literal and exacting, addicted to the pedantry of the prescriptive, if not ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... her proud little heart she wanted them to see that she was trying to earn her living and not accepting charity. But the time came when she saw that no one was softened at all; and the more willing she was to do as she was told, the more domineering and exacting careless housemaids became, and the more ready a scolding ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... were very exacting. It was not an easy party to serve, and the less so in that its ranks numbered many soldiers of fortune of the swah-buckler type, who meant to hold the power they had attained partly on the exploitation of a lie, by fair means or otherwise; ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... illustrate the veneration in which he was held. His most common name in prayers was Titlacauan, We are his Slaves. As believed to be eternally young, he was Telpochtli, the Youth; as potent and unpersuadable, he was Moyocoyatzin, the Determined Doer;[1] as exacting in worship, Monenegui, He who Demands Prayers; as the master of the race, Teyocoyani, Creator of Men, and Teimatini, Disposer of Men. As he was jealous and terrible, the god who visited on men plagues, and famines, and loathsome ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... optimistic faith or courage that appealed to her, and sheer love of effort. She also guessed that his was not a spasmodic, impulsive activity. She could imagine him holding on as steadfastly with everything against him, exacting all that men and teams and machines could do. It struck her as curious that she should feel so sure of this; but she admitted that ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... was, I think, in August, 1786—I was much surprised to meet in the salons of this lady, so exacting in the matter of gentility, two new faces which struck me as belonging to men of inferior social position. She came to me presently in the embrasure of a window where I ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... Australia these early colonists found pleasant, if somewhat lightly furnished, lodgings. In particular there were no dangerous beasts; so that hunting was hardly calculated to put a man on his mettle, as in more exacting climes. Isolation, and the consequent absence of pressure from human intruders, is another fact in the situation. Whatever the causes, the net result was that, despite a very fair environment, away from the desert regions of the interior, man on the ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... knew, by reading and instinct, that life was full of pitfalls, but her intelligence would dictate what was right, and to its mandates she would conform, if it cost her her life. And she knew that the religion she had formulated for herself in rough outline was far more exacting than the one she ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... compensation was the companionship of her daughter,—the one being in the world she loved and lived for. She thought of the unsympathetic husband whose Christianity savoured of narrow prejudices and exacting codes, and she pitied the bereaved mother from the bottom of her heart. "I feel so guilty to think that we had the doctor to dinner last night when he might have spent that time at Sombari!" Honor ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... sure, even, that you do not mingle a little of "your own hair" (you know what I mean) with the hair of your head. There is in your temperament a vein of vanity, a suggestion of selfishness, a spice of laziness. I have known you a trifle unreasonable, a little inconsiderate, slightly exacting. Unlike the heroine of fiction, you have a certain number of human appetites and instincts; a few human follies, perhaps, a human fault, or shall we say two? In short, dear Ladies, you also, even as we men, are the children of Adam and Eve. Tell me, if you know, where I may meet with this supernatural ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... opened a boundless field to the ambition of the Duke of Weimar, and the romance of his hopes was fast approaching to reality. Far from intending to surrender his conquests to France, he destined Breysach for himself, and revealed this intention, by exacting allegiance from the vanquished, in his own name, and not in that of any other power. Intoxicated by his past success, and excited by the boldest hopes, he believed that he should be able to maintain his conquests, even against France herself. At a time when everything depended upon bravery, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Le Gardeur; but there was no depth in the soil where a devoted passion could take firm root. Still she was a woman keenly alive to admiration, jealous and exacting of her suitors, never willingly letting one loose from her bonds, and with warm passions and a cold heart was eager for the semblance of love, although never ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... reply, too true; but, perhaps, there are faults on both sides. The writer is too peremptory and exacting; the reader is too restive. The writer is too full of his office, which he fancies is that of a teacher or a professor speaking ex cathedra: the rebellious reader is oftentimes too determined that he will not learn. The one conceits himself booted and spurred, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... schooled in the Arctic seas. Poul Halvard, so far as Woolfolk could discover, was impervious to cold, to fatigue, to the insidious whispering of mere flesh. He was a man without temptation, with an untroubled allegiance to a duty that involved an endless, exacting labor; and for those reasons he was austere, withdrawn from the community of more fragile and sympathetic natures. At times his inflexible integrity oppressed John Woolfolk. Halvard, he thought, was a difficult ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... indefinite in the highest degree, perilously apt to sound like nonsense if cramped by a definite utterance, but yet casting over the whole picture a kind of magical colouring, which may be mere trickery or may be a genuine illumination, but which, whilst we are not too exacting, brings out pleasant and perplexing effects. The lights and shadows fluctuate, and solid forms melt provokingly into mist; but we must learn to enjoy the uncertain twilight which prevails on the border-land between romance and reality, if we would enjoy the ambiguities and the ironies and ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... bread, or even to make "damper" properly. The fact is, you must come; and if you like to take classes, you can make use of your science degrees here, I can tell you, for they want "sweet girl-graduates;" and even if they have grown to be severe and exacting female professors, we take very ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... should be entirely dimmed. It is said that a man is young so long as he is strong, and I was strong as in the days of my youth. My cheeks were fresh, my eyes were bright, and my hair was red as when I was twenty, and without a thread of gray. Stills my temperament was more exacting and serious, and the thought of becoming settled for life, or rather for old age and death, was growing in favor with me. With that thought came always a suggestion of slim, freckled Dorothy and Sir George's offer. She held out ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... pay that in a few years would have made her independently wealthy; but the spirit of Jesus came into her heart, and she is now nursing the poor, and giving her life to them, and doing for them service the most loathsome and exacting, and doing it with a smiling face, for her food ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... at Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Educated at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. Was admitted to the bar and practiced law in Chicago for twelve years, when he gave up this profession and came to New York to become a stock-broker. Although Mr. O'Hara has followed this exacting occupation for the past ten years, it has not prevented him from writing and publishing several volumes of poetry, largely classic in theme, and handled with an adequate and beautiful art. "The Poems of Sappho", 1907, built upon the authentic fragments, are acknowledged ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... the D. R., Mrs. Trevelyan;—nothing else. The D. R. is a most grateful mistress, but somewhat exacting. I am allowed a couple of hours on Sundays, but otherwise my time is wholly passed ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... reserved for the latter half of the nineteenth century, and for the Congress of a Republic of free men, to witness the willing abnegation of all power, save that of exacting tribute. What Imperial Britain, with the haughtiest pretensions of unlimited power over dependent colonies, could not even attempt without the vehement protest of her greatest statesmen, is to be enforced in aggravated ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... husband sat with hopeless gaze fixed on the fire. She had but strength to reach the side of the bed, and fell senseless upon it. He started up with a sting of self-accusation: he had killed her, exacting from her a promise that by no word would she welcome the wanderer that night. For she would not have her husband imagine in his bitterness that she loved the erring son more than the father whose heart he had all but broken, and had promised. She was, in truth, nearly as anxious about the one ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... difference between his two sisters, and Sylvia was seldom allowed to leave the small bed until she had paid tribute to her ever-present desire to please, in the shape of a story or a song. On that day Buddy was more exacting than usual. Sylvia told the story of Cinderella and sang, "A Frog He Would a-Wooing Go," twice through, before the little boy's eyes began to droop. Even then, the clutch of his warm, moist fingers about her hand did not relax. When she tried to slip her fingers ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... all at once, and many will not understand it at all. And little blame to them, and no wonder. For, fully to understand this deep and intricate book demands far more mind, far more experience, and far more specialised knowledge than the mass of men, as men are, can possibly bring to it. This so exacting book demands of us, to begin with, some little acquaintance with military engineering and architecture; with the theory of, and if possible with some practice in, attack and defence in sieges and storms, winter campaigns and long drawn- out wars. And then, impossible as it sounds and ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... responded Mabel. "He'll be as selfish and exacting as ever he can be. He'll keep mother in a state of fret, and you in a state of excitement, and he'll insist on smoking a cigarette close to the new cretonne curtains in the drawing-room, and he'll make me go out in the hot part ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... a humorous expression himself. Swett was ready with Lincoln to give and take in storyland, as was Lamon, and either of them, and sometimes all of them, often dropped in upon Lincoln and gave him an hour's diversion from his exacting cares. They knew that he needed it and they sought him for the purpose of diverting him from what they feared ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... as he sprang to the ground a wish that those apples also could be stolen. Vera, for her part, said not a word to her aunt of this meeting, but she confided nevertheless in her friend Natalie Ivanovna after exacting a promise of secrecy. ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... morrow. The attorney had been given explicit orders and instructions by his exacting client, who had his own notions of what a teacher for his niece should and shouldn't be. Vandervelde congratulated himself on having been able to meet them so completely in the person ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... 1226, called Harald. Meantime Bishop Adam, after the death in 1213 of Bishop John, his half-blinded and mutilated predecessor, succeeded to the Episcopal See of Caithness,[5] and seems to have reversed Bishop John's policy of leniency to his flock by exacting from them heavier and heavier ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... seems involved in perplexity. How can it be otherwise if one's self is perplexed? And yet, Alban, I am serious; and I do not presume to be so exacting as my words have implied. I ask not fortune, nor rank beyond gentle blood, nor youth nor beauty nor accomplishments nor fashion, but I do ask one ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "is an admirable one enough, but just now I am beginning to feel it a little exacting. I think that the Prince expects a good deal of one. I shall certainly ask ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as for a father-confessor. He thought that Mrs. Graves had seen that Maud had been disposed to adopt him as a kind of ethical director, and had thought that he had been bored at finding a girl's friendship so much more exacting than the friendship of a young man; and that she had been exhorting him to be more brotherly and simple in his relations with Maud, and to help her to the best of his ability. He imagined that Maud had told Mrs. Graves that he had been advising her, and that she ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... denied; they were not his ordinary boots, nor did he ever wear such trousers as he saw above them! Always a careful and punctiliously neat person, he was more than commonly exacting concerning the make and polish of his boots and the set of ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... nor even wholly estimable. It is probable that he never in the course of his whole life did anything that he considered wrong; but unfortunately, examples are not far to seek of the facility with which desire can be made to confound itself with deliberate approval. That he was an exacting, if not a tyrannical husband and father, that he held in the most peremptory and exaggerated fashion the doctrine of the superiority of man to woman, that his egotism in a man who had actually accomplished less would be half ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... inflations are more disastrous even to a community than to isolated individuals, as may be abundantly proved by the early history of Virginia. It was not meanness that made the wiry New England farmer so cautious and exacting in trade, when the pennies he saved sent his son through college. It was not meanness which made him refuse to spend money; he had no money to spend, and it was a high sense of honor that kept ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... Crimson Blind.' Not only did he produce the copy, but he produced the history from some recently discovered papers relating to the Keizerskroon Tavern of the year 1656, which would have satisfied a more exacting man than Littimer. In the end the Viscount purchased ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... usually, during the cold months, stow themselves away in their, comparatively speaking, warm mountain retreats. In crossing the plains, small parties find the item of meeting Indians to be of considerable importance, as, even in the time of peace, they are very exacting and troublesome, demanding that provisions should be given them, by way of toll. To refuse is apt to bring down their ire, when they will usually help themselves to whatever suits their fancy. They are very partial ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... spell. Why, seriously, Alice, what on earth do you suppose Father Forbes knows or cares about our poor little affairs, or those of any other Protestant household in this whole village? He has his work to do, just as I have mine—only his is ten times as exacting in everything except sermons—and you may be sure he is only too glad when it is over each day, without bothering about things that are none of ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... less articulated, with a limited amount of mobility, but which become in maturity firmly joined by a rigid union and ossification of their interarticular surface. If the immature animal is compelled, then, to perform exacting tasks beyond his strength, the inevitable result will follow in the muscular straining, and perhaps tearing asunder of the fibers which unite the bones at their points of juncture, and it is difficult to understand how inflammation or periostitis can fail to develop as the natural consequence ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... 17, 1865, a New York newspaper reporter called at my army tent. I invited him in, and expressed my desire to forget all the recent sad events, and to occupy my mind with the exacting present and ...
— Lincoln's Last Hours • Charles A. Leale
... not; you have always been persistently blind to my many imperfections. Well, daughter, you need not be troubled lest I should waste too much strength on the poor captain. I do not imagine him to be an exacting person, and we have enough efficient nurses among the servants to do all the work that is needful. My part will be, I think, principally to cheer him, keep up his spirits, and see that he is provided with everything that can contribute ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... case to the New York authorities and had gone home to rest from the shock of the occurrence and to prepare for that interview with the Chief Inspector which he was satisfied would now lead to an even more exacting one with the ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... study of the violin at the age of seven, and when I was nine I went to Charles Martin Loeffler and really began to work seriously. Loeffler was a very strict teacher and very exacting, but he achieved results, for he had a most original way of making his points clear to the student. He started off with the Sevcik studies, laying great stress on the proper finger articulation. And he taught me absolute smoothness ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... Hull was the informer, and thus the murder of the man was prevented. The writer has not a particle of doubt, having been present at this meeting and heard the proposition and the vote taken, that the murder would have been perpetrated within twenty-four hours had not a single person been so exacting in regard to the facts. It may readily be believed that the writer never mingled in this murderous company without a brace of revolvers in his pocket, ready for instant use, and it may be no stretch of credulity to believe, ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... late when we got to Washington. One of Mrs. Klopton's small tyrannies was exacting punctuality at meals, and, like several other things, I respected it. There are always some concessions that should be made in ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hands of Margaret, stained with his father's gore, the success of an hour will close in the humiliation of a life. There is a third way left, and that way thou hast piously and wisely shown. Let him, like me, resign revenge, and, not exacting a confession and a cry of peccavi, which no king, much less King Edward the Plantagenet, can whimper forth, let him accept such overtures as his liege can make. His titles and castles shall be restored, equal possessions to those thou hast lost assigned to thee, and all my guerdon (if I can ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mr Podsnap's mind which he called 'the young person' may be considered to have been embodied in Miss Podsnap, his daughter. It was an inconvenient and exacting institution, as requiring everything in the universe to be filed down and fitted to it. The question about everything was, would it bring a blush into the cheek of the young person? And the inconvenience of the young person was, that, according to Mr Podsnap, she seemed always ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... had lost no time in exacting his waltz. It was the third on the programme, and the band were beginning to warm to their work They were playing a waltz by Offenbach—"Les Traineaux"—with an accompaniment of jingling sleigh-bells—music that had an almost maddening effect on ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... found with much satisfaction that he also was an ardent (not of course a blind) admirer of Whitman. Satisfaction, and a degree almost of surprise; for his intense sense of poetic refinement of form in his own works and his exacting acuteness as a critic might have seemed likely to carry him away from Whitman in sympathy at least, if not in actual latitude of perception. Those who find the American poet "utterly formless," "intolerably rough and floundering," "destitute of the A B C of art," and the like, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... because their inherent weakness renders them incapable of truth. Oh! I know the catalogue of their good qualities. They are often pitiful, self-devoting, generous; but they are so by fits and starts, just as they are cruel, remorseless, exacting, by fits and starts. They have no constancy—they are too weak to be constant even in evil; their minds are all impressions; their actions are all the issue of immediate promptings. Swayed by the fleeting ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... have satisfied the most exacting gourmet, but Hedvig was its real charm. She treated difficult theological questions with so much grace, and rationalised so skilfully, that though one might not be convinced it was impossible to help being attracted. I have never ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... her family, it is altogether probable, came over in charge of Howland, who was probably a kinsman, both he and Deacon Carver coming from Essex in England,—as they could hardly have been in England with Carver during the time of his exacting work of preparation. He, it is quite certain, was not a passenger on the Speedwell, for Pastor Robinson would hardly have sent him such a letter as that received by him at Southampton, previously mentioned (Bradford's "Historie," ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... that you're exacting, sir," said the son. "How can you expect people who have been strictly devoted to business to be grammatical? ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... paper,—Massaccio, called the father of painting, much admired—Leonardo da Vinci, beautiful and grand,—Titian, rich and splendid,—Pietro Perugino, remarkable for execution and expression,—Albert Duerer, rigid but masterly,—Gerhard Dow, finished according to his own exacting style,—and Reynolds, with fresh English face; but these are only examples of this incomparable collection, which was begun as far back as the Cardinal Leopold de Medici, and has been happily continued to the present time. Here are the lions, painted by themselves, except, perhaps, the foremost ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... has passed a resolution justifying the President in employing the military and naval forces of the United States in whatever way he deems best in exacting satisfaction for the insult to the Flag at Tampico," spread through the ship on the evening of ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... of the interest she took in passing affairs, part of a letter to Dr. Fitzwilliam, in 1689, may be quoted. After replying to some inquiries about the Cambridgeshire clergy, which she could not learn from Lord Bedford, "the parliament houses being so exacting of time," she says: "You hear all the new honours, I suppose: not many new creations, but all are stepping higher; as Lord Winchester is Duke of Bolton; Lord Montague an Earl, still Montague; Falconbridge, who married Mary, daughter of Oliver Cromwell, an Earl called the same; ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... of those exacting characters who demand that the object of their affections should never have attracted those of another; he was even reasonable enough to have forgiven her (if necessary) for having returned them, in ignorance of the existence of a more worthy admirer in himself. There are many more varieties of Love ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... and we must make the best of it. Perhaps we can train her to be a little less exacting. And then, too, you can arrange to have the servants wait on her. You needn't do it ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... were few railroads, if any, there, and one still went by diligence or vettura. The only absolutely good railroad travel is in England, where the corridor car imagined from the Pullman has realized the most exacting ideal of the traveller of any class. In the matter of dining-cars we have stood still (having attained perfection at a bound), while the English diner has shot ahead in simplicity and quality of refection. With us a ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... sound of heart, if not of head, was under a cloud at Yuma. His forceful expressions concerning the imbecility of department officials led to his being confined very closely to company work and minor, yet exacting, duties at the post, all because of his abandonment of Lieutenant Loring at a critical moment, said the few defenders of the department's letter to the post commander on that subject. "All because of his too vehement defense of Loring," said ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... more serious than "incompatibility of temper," he is probably the only living person that knows: he is not addicted to the vice of confidences. Yet he has related the incident herein set down to at least one person without exacting a pledge of secrecy. He is ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... victim goes on toiling day and night with the hidden fire consuming her, until all at once her cheek whitens, and, as we look upon her, she drops away, a heap of ashes. The more they over-work themselves, the more exacting becomes the sense of duty,—as the draught of the locomotive's furnace blows stronger and makes the fire burn more fiercely, the faster it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... subject have satisfied themselves that Schwester Katrei is the truly consistent mystic. They have come to the conclusion that the real attraction of mysticism is a pining for deliverance from this fretful, anxious, exacting, individual life, and a yearning for absorption into the great Abyss where all distinctions are merged in the Infinite. According to this view, mysticism in its purest form should be studied in the ancient religious literature of India, which teaches us how all this world ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... military knowledge and the scientific attainments of civil and military engineering. At present the cadet is bound, with consent of his parents or guardians, to remain in service five years from the period of his enlistment, unless sooner discharged, thus exacting only one year's service in the Army after his education is completed. This does not appear to me sufficient. Government ought to command for a longer period the services of those who are educated at the public expense, and I recommend that the time of enlistment be extended to seven years, and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... have ventured a hundred yards from the village without the chance of having my clothes stripped off my back. Now the whole face of the country is under cultivation, and the roads are safe; formerly the governments kept no faith with their landholders and cultivators, exacting ten rupees where they had bargained for five, whenever they found the crops good; but, in spite of all this "zulm"' (oppression), said the old man, 'there was then more "barkat" (blessings from above) than now. The lands yielded more returns to the cultivator, and he could ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... world," says he to Father Cyprian, who preached the gospel at Meliapore; "for, believe me, nothing is to be done by haughtiness and choler, when it cannot be accomplished by modesty and mildness." He continues; "We deceive ourselves, in exacting submission and respect from men, without any other title to it than being members of our Society, and without cultivating that virtue which has acquired us so great an authority in the world; as if we rather chose to recommend ourselves by that credit and reputation, than by the practice ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... were great because Love drove. He was partly betrothed to the daughter of an English Jacobite—yet she would marry none but one who had gained his spurs under his rightful king. They drank to the health of this exacting, loyal maiden, and Cross gave her name. Then Tom Lynch rose from the table, sick at heart, and went away ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... dressed like nothing on earth, in pale and faded colours; but she was not vulgar. She was rather queer and delicate, and intensely amiable. Her self-consciousness made no claim on one; she was not exacting—always pleased and good-tempered. Rathbone recognised these qualities in her, and liked her better to-day, amidst the scent of the tea-cakes and cigarettes and the whine of the violin, than he ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... for jewels, her debts to be paid, horses, coach, and female attendants, and closes by praying her husband, when he becomes an earl, to allow her L1,000 more with double attendance. These young citizen ladies were somewhat exacting. From this lady's husband the Marquis of Northampton is descended. At the funeral of "rich Spencer," 1,000 persons followed in mourning cloaks and gowns. He died worth, Mr. Timbs calculates, above L800,000 in the year of his mayoralty. There was a famine in England in his time, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Bating some few touches, Sir Thomas seems to have claimed little that he did not really possess. And if he was a little vain, why should we be angry? Vanity is only offensive when it is sullen or exacting. When it merely amounts to an unaffected pleasure in dwelling on the peculiarities of a man's own character, it is rather an agreeable literary ingredient. Sir Thomas defines his point of view with his usual felicity. 'The world that I regard,' ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the other, easily. "But you perceive, further, that the fact of our not exacting subscriptions from the poorer members of our association makes it all the more necessary that we should have voluntary gifts from the richer. And as regards a surplus of wealth, of what use is that to any one? Am I not granted as much money ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... exigeante Lady Delacour, this respite from the fatigue of admiration was peculiarly agreeable. The unconstrained cheerfulness of Lady Anne Percival spoke a mind at ease, and immediately imparted happiness by exacting sympathy; but in Lady Delacour's wit and gaiety there was an appearance of art and effort, which often destroyed the pleasure that she wished to communicate. Mr. Hervey was, perhaps unusually, disposed to reflection, by having just escaped from drowning; for he had made all ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... nothing, in the course of a few years he had squandered two plantations and several hundred negroes. Her death placed him in undisputed possession of the residue of the estate, when finding the exacting details of commerce irksome, in a moment of weakness, he was induced to dispose of some of his possessions to Yankee speculators who had come in with the flood of northern energy. Most of the money thus realized he placed in loose investments, while the remainder gradually disappeared ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... the populace exacting? GIA. Do they keep you at a distance? TESS. All unaided are you acting, GIA. Or do they provide assistance? TESS. When you're busy, have you got to Get up early in the morning? GIA. If you do what you ought not to, Do they give the usual warning? ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... help to retrieve the consequences of his false positions. Had he been surrounded with a few true friends, who could appreciate what was great in him and pity what was weak, his life would have been different. His father was hard, exacting, and unreasonable; hence he had no influence. His mother had neither the wisdom to influence him, nor the courage to rebuke her husband; and alas! poor woman, she was in such thraldom herself to conventionalisms, that she could not understand a youth who set ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... his frequent absences rather a relief. They were freer to discuss the things that did not interest him, to read aloud to each other, to play games with the exacting Apple-Blossom, an executive from her cradle. It was at last the sort of domestic life of which every girl dreams in her secret heart; and Kate grew lovelier than ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... corrections or interlineations. He wrote with the easy freedom of the stenographer; indeed it is easy to recognise in the delicate gracefully formed letters the effect of years of training in the most difficult and exacting ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... now become possible to measure exactly the elements which enter into nearly all physical phenomena, and these measurements are taken with ever increasing precision. Every time a chapter in science progresses, science shows itself more exacting; it perfects its means of investigation, it demands more and more exactitude, and one of the most striking features of modern physics is this constant care for strictness ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare |
