"Fly in the face of" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... improve it; you learn to carry your liquor; you grow accustomed to being drunk; you pass whole nights without sleep; at last you acquire the constitution of a colonel of cuirassiers; and in this way you create yourself afresh, as if to fly in the face of Providence. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... that one seldom caught her in the same company twice in succession. For this singular caprice Aholibah, oftener called the Woman from Morocco,—because she had lived in Algiers,—was the despair of her circle. Why, argued the other birds, why fly in the face of luck? To be sure, she was still young, still beautiful, with that sort of metallic beauty which reminded Ambroise of some priceless bronze blackened in the sun. She was meagre, diabolically graceful, dark, with huge saucer-like eyes that greedily drank in her surroundings. But her lashes ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... in a tight place. All woman's rights to the contrary, in a struggle of the sexes a man has to show the woman some consideration or fly in the face of public opinion. Eddie Grote, although hard pressed, realized that public opinion would not in this instance stand for what, ordinarily, would be his modus operandi, namely, to fling mud over his shoulder. If he could but gain a moment's time ...
— The Hickory Limb • Parker Fillmore
... when they put pen to paper, seem actuated by the kind and neighborly spirit of the sagacious Dogberry—namely, to "bestow all their tediousness" upon their readers; and I do not know that I have any prescriptive right—I am sure I have no intention—to depart from so well-worn a track, or to fly in the face of ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... Give up, once for ever, all fickle-mindedness and learn to accumulate Power in silence and through work. Prayer gives you strength to "work"—the answer comes from your Larger Self—which is the Spirit of God "brooding" over all and pouring strength into all. But do not fly in the face of DEITY by expecting it to "do the work" for you while you go about loafing after offering your prayer. Nonsense. That man prays who works constantly, ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... when he cleared the hedge and kept up with the huntsman—on the day when he was presented to the Prince Regent at the levee, when all Saint James's couldn't produce a finer young fellow. And this, this was the end of all!—to marry a bankrupt and fly in the face of duty and fortune! What humiliation and fury: what pangs of sickening rage, balked ambition and love; what wounds of outraged vanity, tenderness even, had this old worldling ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the condition of the last reign, and the effects were also such as we have described, we ought, no less for the sake of the sovereign whom we love, than for our own, to hear arguments convincing indeed, before we depart from the maxims of that reign, or fly in the face of this great body of strong ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... yourself as to what you are doing. A great change is coming over the country, for the king's cause is undoubtedly lost. Many who respect the old family of Royland, and would help if they dared, feel that it is unwise to fly in the face of the new power, and to go in opposition to the people, who in all directions are declaring against the king. All who respect Dame Royland join in advising her to cease the show of resistance she is making, ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... angry, but as I think conclusive, minutest Lord Kimberley, however, set his teeth, and refused point blank, and Lord Granville then backed him up, saying that "on a Colonial matter it was impossible to fly in the face of the Colonial Secretary of State." ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... this, Saltwater? do you hear what the Sergeant's daughter is saying, and she is much too upright, and fair-minded, and pretty, not to think what she says. So long as she is satisfied with me as I am, I shall not fly in the face of the gifts of Providence, by striving to become anything else. I may seem useless here in a garrison; but when we get down among the Thousand Islands, there may be an opportunity to prove that a sure rifle is sometimes ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... accomplished his mission. Once again, without recourse to violence, he had maintained his reputation as the worst man in San Pasqual, for his power lay, not in a clever bluff, but in his all-too-evident downright honesty of purpose. Had Doc Taylor presumed to fly in the face of Providence, after that warning, Mr. Hennage felt that the responsibility must very properly rest on the doctor, for the gambler would have killed him as surely as he had the strength to work ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... biographer reminds us, kindly and intelligent men and women could gravely implore the Almighty to 'take away' a child merely because it was blind; when they could argue that to teach the blind to read, or to attempt to teach them to work, was to fly in the face of Providence; and her whole life was given to the endeavour to overcome this prejudice and superstition; to show that blindness, though a great privation, is not necessarily a disqualification; and that blind men and women can ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... that he would have the law. Mr. Teeter joyfully invited him to have all he could get of it; but the enemy hesitated. He knew his case was not looked upon with favor by his neighbors, and he dreaded to fly in the face of public opinion. For a lawsuit, as everyone in the countryside knew, was held as a disgrace, no matter how righteous one's case might be. And besides, the lawyers were apt to take so much money that a thrifty man like Jake naturally ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... the sufferings to which his parent was exposed, all of them flowed from affection to him, at the same time that he could not propose removing the ground of dispute, as by so doing he would seem to fly in the face of his father's paternal kindness. Upon the present occasion, without asking any counsel but of his own impatient resentment, he went in the middle of the night, and removed all the obstructions that had been placed in the way ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... has often proudly declared, to show to the infidel world that there were some men in the parish who were true Christians. He has acquired a profound respect for Sir PETER LAURIE, since the alderman's judgments upon "the starving villains who would fly in the face of their Maker;" and, having a very comfortable balance at his banker's, considers all despair very weak, very foolish, and very sinful. He, however, blesses himself that for such miscreants there is Newgate; and more—there is Sir ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... "Yes, I wonder why. Of course I don't want to fly in the face of the professors and everybody, but I do think there's things in Shakespeare—not that I read him much, but when I was young the girls used to show me passages that weren't, really, they weren't ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... from no fault of its own, and yet greedily eager to receive from strangers; and to be quite respectable, and at the same time quite devoid of self-respect; and play the most delicate part of friendship, and yet never be seen; and wear the form of man, and yet fly in the face of all the laws of human nature: - and all this, in the hope of getting a belly-god Burgess through a needle's eye! O, let him stick, by all means: and let his polity tumble in the dust; and let his epitaph and all ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson |
