"Imperious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... city of Koenigsberg, the old seat of the Prussian kings, he had won a friend for life who, as will subsequently appear, proved of service to him. The general character of life in Prussia also greatly contributed to strengthen in him that independent bearing of which Spontini's imperious splendor had given him a hint, and which subsequently was to invest his own art with so much ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... if she checked her speech. She made a quick, imperious movement with her head, and added: "He is all rumour said of him;" and she turned away with such abruptness that the child asked himself how he had vexed her, and wondered also at her manners, he being used ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... comrades, Cary learned that the end was approaching. The great blow was at last to be struck. The whole month of December had been wasted in a fruitless siege, and Montgomery determined that, for a variety of imperious reasons, he must attempt to carry the beetling fortress by storm. It was a desperate alternative, but the single gleam of success which attended it was all sufficient ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... beauty. Her love was a blind fanaticism which, at a nod, would have sent her joyously to her death. Balthazar's own delicacy had exalted the generous emotions of his wife, and inspired her with an imperious need of giving more than she received. This mutual exchange of happiness which each lavished upon the other, put the mainspring of her life visibly outside of her personality, and filled her words, her looks, her actions, with an ever-growing love. Gratitude fertilized and ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... bridle, came thundering along the way, and made the mountains echo with his loud, shrill neighing. He had not gone far before he overtook an Ass, who was labouring under a heavy burthen, and moving slowly on in the same track with himself. Immediately he called out to him, in a haughty, imperious tone, and threatened to trample him in the dirt, if he did not make way for him. The poor, patient Ass, not daring to dispute the matter, quietly got out of his way as fast as he could, and let him go by. Not long ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... first became impressed, and it was she who took the first steps. According to the young lady, the Spaniard was the living picture of Wagner in his youth. Smiling at the pleasant memory, Febrer contemplated the prominent brow which seemed to oppress his imperious, small, ironic eyes. His nose was sharp and aquiline, the nose common to all the Febrers, those daring birds of prey who haunted the solitudes of the sea. His mouth was scornful and receding, his lips and chin prominent and covered by the soft growth of the beard ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... jumped in beside the occupant, refastened the apron, and coolly taking the reins from his companion's hand, started the horse forward. The action was that of an habitually imperious man; and the only recognition he made of the other's ownership was ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... towards the place where he had heard my voice. He complained of their abusing in such a manner one of his slaves, and that they had violated the laws of hospitality towards such a man as he was. The Arab of the mountains, in reply, told him, with an imperious tone, that during the night he watched his flock, not knowing that I belonged to his retinue; and having seen a man conceal himself in the sand, he had supposed him to be one of those robbers, who, during the night, come to carry off their young goats. ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... Basil was chosen to succeed him. It was then that his great powers were called into action. Caesarea was an important diocese, and its bishop was, ex officio, exarch of the great diocese of Pontus. Hot-blooded and somewhat imperious, Basil was also generous and sympathetic. "His zeal for orthodoxy did not blind him to what was good in an opponent; and for the sake of peace and charity he was content to waive the use of orthodox terminology when it could be surrendered ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... The ten years that followed were passed in obscure industry. Burke was always extremely reserved about his private affairs. All that we know of Burke exhibits him as inspired by a resolute pride, a certain stateliness and imperious elevation of mind. Such a character, while free from any weak shame about the shabby necessities of early struggles, yet is naturally unwilling to make them prominent in after life. There is nothing dishonourable in such an inclination. "I was not swaddled ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... standing now, endeavoring to communicate with the lad by means of signs and the drawing of crude pictures in the red sand of the cavern floor. The graceful little fellow watched him with understanding and with a smile of amused tolerance. Then he halted the big Martian with an imperious motion, ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... business, women were generally nuisances; they were always taking impossible stands. He would find some way out; he was determined not to submit to the imperious fancies of an actress, however ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... roaring confusion and the explosions far below, from high up in the sky a clear bell note floated as though out of Heaven itself—another, others, crystalline clear, imperious, filling all the sky with their amazing ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... himself, his wife, a daughter and five kinswomen, the youngest of whom was thirty-four years old. These were alike devout and impersonal, and subordinate to Antonina Ivanovna, the mistress of the house. She was a tall, thin woman, with a dark face and with stern gray eyes, which had an imperious and intelligent expression. Mayakin also had a son Taras, but his name was never mentioned in the house; acquaintances knew that since the nineteen-year-old Taras had gone to study in Moscow—he married there three years later, against his father's will—Yakov disowned him. Taras disappeared ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... absence, she shewed him that his way to his wife and throne did not lie so open, but that before he were reinstated in the secure possession of them, he must encounter many difficulties. His palace, wanting its king, was become the resort of insolent and imperious men, the chief nobility of Ithaca and of the neighbouring isles, who, in the confidence of Ulysses being dead, came as suitors to Penelope. The queen (it was true) continued single, but was little better than a state-prisoner in the power of these ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... His customary imperious manner was struggling with a special feeling for this woman before him. She did not reply, but waited to hear where her part might come in. Her eyes did not fall ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... shimmer of the tender green. He sat at his table, which was covered with open law-books and papers, but his eyes were on the distant mountain, and every scent-laden breeze wafted in at his open window seemed the bearer of a tremulous, wistful, yet imperious message—"Come!" Throughout the changing seasons Sawanec called to him in words of love: sometimes her face was hidden by cloud and fog and yet he heard her voice! Sometimes her perfume as to-day—made him dream; sometimes, when the western heavens were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... by respect and sometimes even by fear, for the cateran was not the species of man who submits to female government; but over his son she had exerted, at first during childhood, and afterwards in early youth, an imperious authority, which gave her maternal love a character of jealousy. She could not bear when Hamish, with advancing life, made repeated steps towards independence, absented himself from her cottage at such season and for such length of time as he ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... by way of the Sultan's wooden jellabs and his houses of fierce torture. By the mind's eye Israel could see him there at that instant—sightless, eyeless, hungry, gaunt. But no, he was still here—fat, sleek, voluptuous, imperious. And good men lay perishing in his prisons, and children, starved to death, lay in their graves, and he himself, his servant and scapegoat, whose brains he had drained, whose blood he had sweated, stood before him there like an old lion, who had been wandering far and was beaten ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... Peer sang louder. Then silence again. Merle never knew now when he stopped work and came to bed. She would fall asleep to the sound of his singing in his own room, and when she woke he would already be tramping up and down again in there; and to her his steps seemed like the imperious tread of a great commander. He was alight with new visions, new themes, and his voice had a lordly ring. Merle looked at him through half-closed eyes with a lingering glance. Once more he was new to her: she had never ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... head, boy!" exclaimed the elder of the gentlemen, addressing Owen in an imperious tone, while he was picking himself up. ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... and imperious sentiment is common to both sexes. It attracts them together and unites them, and when the germ of a new being is fecundated, the individuals can ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... that govern the universe. From first to last it declares itself a very strange force and, as it were, the sovereign of another element than that which nourishes our brain. Secret, indifferent, imperious and implacable, it subjugates and oppresses us from a great height or a great depth, in any case, from very far, without telling us why. One might say that figures place those who handle them in a special condition. They draw the cabalistic circle around their victim. Henceforth, he ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... been a distant kinswoman of the author's.[265] Nowhere more clearly than in this treatise does Luis de Leon justify the statement that he had a Hebrew soul. He takes for granted the Oriental point of view, and illustrates his imperious thesis with ample quotations from writers of all types—pagans, Christians, saints, and laymen. There are references to Simonides, to Sophocles, to Euripides, to Plutarch, to Saint Clement of Alexandria, to ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... powers, How much I suffered, and how long I strove Against the assaults of this imperious love! I represented to myself the shame Of perjured faith, and violated fame; Your great deserts, how ill they were repaid; All arguments, in vain, I urged and weighed: For mighty love, who prudence does despise, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw! Hamlet, Act v. Sc. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... significant inflections of his voice, "you would despise me. We can part now without pain or remorse; we have neither happiness to regret nor hopes betrayed. To you, as with some few but rare men of genius, love is not what Nature made it,—an imperious need, to the satisfaction of which she attaches great and passing joys, which die. You see love such as Christianity has created it,—an ideal kingdom, full of noble sentiments, of grand weaknesses, poesies, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... at this time thirty-five years old, his hair brown, his complexion ruddy, his moustache, on one side at least, beginning to turn grey. His features, which Nature had cast in a harsh and imperious mould, were relieved by a constant sparkle and animation such as I have never seen in any other man, but in him became ever more conspicuous in gloomy and perilous times. Inured to danger from his earliest youth, he had come to enjoy it as others a festival, hailing its advent with a reckless ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... entrance of the Straits of Malacca. And here, the monsoon which had favoured us over so many miles of the pathless ocean, suddenly forsook us. Sails were of no further use, and we braced up our sweat glands for four or five days of increasing heat. In obedience to the demands of an imperious, ever-rising, thermometer, we reduced our rig to the least possible articles consistent with decency and the regulations of the Service—which latter, by the way, discriminates not between the caloric of the north pole and ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... self-congratulation—yet in Adams' presence he invariably felt himself to be the weaker man, and the attitude he unconsciously adopted showed an almost boyish recognition of a superior intelligence. Something in Roger Adams—a quality which was neither brute strength nor imperious personality—exerted a power which Kemper generously admitted to be greater even than these. Nothing in the man was conspicuous—he exercised no dominant magnetism—but the invisible spirit which controlled his life, controlled also, in a measure, the thoughts of those ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... practice; probably to a complete setting to work of the consciousness of duty, which is what Kant claims to do with his categorical imperative: "An unreasoning, though not unreasonable, obedience to an experienced, imperious sense of duty, leaving the result to God; and this I am disposed to call ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... convalescence among his woods at Verteuil. In this enforced seclusion, at the age of forty, he turned for solace to literature, which he would seem to have neglected hitherto. We know nothing of his education, which had probably been as primitive as that of any pleasure-seeking and imperious young nobleman of the time. He went to the wars when he was thirteen. In an undated letter he says that he sends some Latin verses composed by a friend for the judgment of his unnamed correspondent, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... boy once, Mr. Lowington," said the vice-principal; "and I am free to say I would not have tolerated such an instructor as Mr. Hamblin. He hasn't a particle of sympathy with the students. He is haughty, stiff, and overbearing. He is imperious, fretful, snarling, and tyrannical. In a word, I don't blame ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... Peter was growing. With no training, no education, he was in his own disorderly, undisciplined fashion struggling up into manhood under the tutelage of a quick, strong intelligence, a hungry desire to know, and a hot, imperious temper. His first toys were drums and swords, and he first studied history from colored German prints; and as he grew older never wearied of reading about Ivan the Terrible. His delight was to go out upon the streets of Moscow and pick up strange bits of information from foreign adventurers ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... wild Bactiari, and what is a savage Turkman, and what even a disciplined and imperious Seljuk, to the warriors of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob? At the first onset, Alroy succeeded in dividing the extended centre of Togrul, and separating the greater part of the Turks from their less disciplined comrades. At the head of his Median ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... Tories. According to Swift, she began to dislike her bosom friend, Mrs. Freeman, from the moment of her accession, but though she may have chafed under the yoke of her favourite, she could not at once shake off the domination of that imperious will. The Duchess, finding the extreme Tories unfavourable to the war in which her husband's honour and interests were deeply engaged, became a hot partisan against them, and used all their blunders to break down their power at Court. ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... and moved toward the door. His hand was upon the knob, when an imperious command brought him ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... quick and imperious, brooking opposition from no one. She was also fond of approbation. She rated Gregory's hollow French gallantry at its true worth, but his subsequent sincere respect and admiration, after their mountain adventure, had unconsciously elated her, especially as she felt ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... acquainted with our treaties, so familiar with the traditions of the Government, or better informed on international law than Charles Sumner; but on almost all other Governmental questions he was impulsive and unreliable, and when his feelings were enlisted, imperious, dogmatical, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... her. There was a mute, and at once imperious and imploring demand in his eyes. But Rose had stepped across the magic barrier, she was half-way back to the work-a-day world—not very far, but still far enough to know how she would feel if Bent or Mrs. Bent surprised her in Jervis's arms. A few moments ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the pleasant, lazy voice, "you see how I have comforted Dale by taking his money; won't you tell me what is the real obstacle that blocks the way? Are you afraid to face this imperious ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... connecting the members of a chain of lakes. The hero of this epoch is the Head-Driver. The head-driver of a timber-drive leads a disorderly army, that will not obey the word of command. Every log acts as an individual, according to certain imperious laws of matter, and every log is therefore at loggerheads with every other log. The marshal must be in the thick of the fight, keeping his forces well in hand, hurrying stragglers, thrusting off the stranded, leading his phalanxes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Rivers glanced apprehensively at the Duke, and then at Grey, and then back again at the Duke, who was sipping his wine apparently quite oblivious of the approaching noise. In another moment, at the outer door an imperious voice demanded: ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... extremity we should encounter together. I was therefore determined to undertake anything, that I might show myself at least equal to the best and bravest of all my Indians: everything was comprised in that. I felt the imperious necessity of showing myself not only equal but superior in the struggle, ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... kept his promise as well as he could, and soon learned his duty as a seaman. Though he certainly improved, his violent temper and imperious manners kept him continually in hot water. He could not forget his old grudge against Burchmore, and during an excursion on one of the Aland Islands, he attacked him, but was soundly thrashed for his trouble, and punished on board when his black eye betrayed him. ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... able seamen's pay, besides other emoluments, such as the dripping saved by skimming the coppers in which the beef or pork was boiled, and casking it ready for turning into cash wherever the voyage ended. The proceeds, together with any balance of wages, were handed over to the custody of the imperious lady, who was continuously reminding the object of her affection that he should apply himself more studiously to learning during his voyages, so that he would have less time to stay at the navigation school, and more quickly ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... the throne, Godwin, Earl of Kent, was the most popular man in England; he possessed a very great estate, an enterprising disposition, and an eloquence beyond the age he lived in; he was arrogant, imperious, assuming, and of a conscience which never put itself in the way of his interest. He had a considerable share in restoring Edward to the throne of his ancestors; and by this merit, joined to his popularity, he for ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... hazard a conjecture, but checked herself, remembering that even so faint an evidence of a disposition to advise might possibly be resented by her cold and imperious lord. ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... said, firmly, no longer faltering or tremulous, but with an almost imperious gesture motioning him to enter. "You are tired?" as she noticed his stiff and dragging step. "Sit down while I get a light." She struck a match and lit the lamp. In its yellowish glare she saw that the stains upon his sleeve were red. "What is the matter? You have had some ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... stand Warding the mightier land Yielded their maidenhood To his imperious prow. The mainland within call Lay vast and virginal: In its blue porch he stood: ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... to be ruled by one woman or another. He was greatly respected in his tribe, and had much influence. When they had been a nation he had been one of their most distinguished warriors, and his word had been law. He had always maintained toward the "young men" a somewhat imperious manner. He had conducted himself with dignity and decision in all his visits to Washington, where he had been a great lion, and in all his dealings with the United States he had shown much wisdom and ability. But report said that when once within the domestic ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... secretly undertaken to rear them, and had called them by the names of dogs to cover the matter. When the young men found themselves dragged from their hiding by the awful force of her spells, and brought before the eyes of the enchantress, loth to be betrayed by this terrible and imperious compulsion, they flung into her lap a shower of gold which they had received from their guardians. When she had taken the gift, she suddenly feigned death, and fell like one lifeless. Her servants asked the reason why she fell so suddenly; and ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Glarus, because there also public opinion was rising up more and more in favor of Zwingli's reforms, which obliged the deputies to be very guarded; not by Solothurn, because she hesitated about expressing herself so strongly to her neighbor Bern, to whom she was bound by so many ties. Its imperious language, though couched in soothing terms, was ill suited to prevail with Bern. It roused there a feeling of proud independence, and how deep a wound it made, appears from ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... had dated from the night when she had entered the Kennel after a long absence, and had seen the stranger in the half light of the June midnight. He had changed somewhat since the imperious days when he had threatened the life of his trainer, and she had not recognized the Incorrigible in the handsome dog who had greeted her with such ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... while about some of his Tangier accounts; and, discoursing of the condition of Tangier, he did give me the whole account of the differences between Fitzgerald and Norwood, which were very high on both sides, but most imperious and base on Fitzgerald's, and yet through my Lord FitzHarding's means, the Duke of York is led rather to blame Norwood and to speake that he should be called home, than be sensible of the other. He is a creature of FitzHarding's, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... bird as it flashed past him, or a drop of water, as it fell from his finger: he was, perhaps, the happiest of the sons of men. Yet this man undoubtedly founded his whole polity on the negation of what we think the most imperious necessities; in his three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, he denied to himself and those he loved most, property, love, and liberty. Why was it that the most large-hearted and poetic spirits in that age found their most congenial ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... accustomed to argue in a case like this, but the girl's loving attempt to protect the insensible man, touched him to the heart; and dropping his sharp, imperious manner, he ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... manner was imperious. The black tube was less than a foot removed from my face. That I had my revolver in my pocket could avail me nothing, for in my pocket it must remain, since I dared to make no move to reach it under cover of that ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... indigenous, countries which once brought forth but the fewest products suited for the sustenance and comfort of man—while the severity of their climates created and stimulated the greatest number and the most imperious urgency of physical wants—surfaces the most rugged and intractable, and least blessed with natural facilities of communication, have been brought in modern times to yield and distribute all that supplies the material necessities, all that contributes to the sensuous enjoyments and conveniences ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... was Buffon's dictum more strikingly verified, and never did any literary style reveal so completely the personality of the man. Treitschke's style is imperious and aggressive. It has the ring of the General who gives the word of command. His sentences are not involved, as German sentences generally are. They are pregnant and concise. Treitschke often reminds ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardour ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... have been to neglect counsel, given in rather an imperious tone, he did not hesitate to profit by Fuseli's comments, and accordingly he re-arranged the grouping in the foreground of his picture. On a subsequent visit Fuseli remarked the change: 'So far you have ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... imperious, arrogant, Tory action that comes natural to the English Government, even when not natural to the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... would be worse than useless to have any words with this imperious Chilian, who in his petty command felt more arrogant than a king on this throne. Accordingly he began in ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... her in hand; imperious hunger drew her back to her late place of torture; and there she found a fire, and Hazel cooking cray-fish. She ate the crayfish heartily, and drank cocoanut milk out of half a cocoanut, which the ingenious Hazel had already sawn, polished ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... not thine; To heaven is owed whate'er your own you call, And heaven itself disarm'd me ere my fall. Had twenty mortals, each thy match in might, Opposed me fairly, they had sunk in fight: By fate and Phoebus was I first o'erthrown, Euphorbus next; the third mean part thy own. But thou, imperious! hear my latest breath; The gods inspire it, and it sounds thy death: Insulting man, thou shalt be soon as I; Black fate o'erhangs thee, and thy hour draws nigh; Even now on life's last verge I see thee stand, I see thee fall, and by ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... sea. O, haste to make the haven yours! E'en now, a helpless wrack, You drift, despoil'd of oars; The Afric gale has dealt your mast a wound; Your sailyards groan, nor can your keel sustain, Till lash'd with cables round, A more imperious main. Your canvass hangs in ribbons, rent and torn; No gods are left to pray to in fresh need. A pine of Pontus born Of noble forest breed, You boast your name and lineage—madly blind! Can painted timbers quell a seaman's fear? Beware! or else the wind Makes you its mock ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Senor Santa Maria, and in the latter capacity carried compulsory civil marriage and several other laws highly obnoxious to the clergy. In 1886 he was elected president; but, in spite of his great capacity, his imperious temper little fitted him for the post. He was soon irreconcilably at variance with the majority of the national representatives, and on the 1st of January 1891 he sought to terminate an intolerable situation by refusing to convoke the assembly and ordering the continued collection ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... ruled the teepee—all Wanta's smiles were hers; When the lodge was wrapped in sleep a star [c] beheld the mother's tears. Long she strove to do her duty for the black-eyed babe she bore; But the proud, imperious beauty made her sad forevermore. Still she dressed the skins of beaver, bore the burdens, spread the fare; Patient ever, murmuring never, while her ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... about nothing at all, to the Lord Winton of the period. The Earl dug coal-mines, and constructed "a moliminous rampier for a harbour." A "moliminous rampier" is a choice phrase, and may be envied by novelists who aim at distinction of style. "Your defending the salt pans against the imperious waves of the raging sea from the NE. is singular," adds the Professor, addressing "the greatest coal and salt-master in Scotland, who is a nobleman, and the greatest nobleman who is a Coal and Salt Merchant." Perhaps ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... Phelps was of an imperious nature. He was accustomed to having his own way, and was impatient ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... before, through all my labors' course! That virtue, which could brave each toil but late, With woman's weakness now bewails its fate. Approach, my son; behold thy father laid, A wither'd carcass that implores thy aid; Let all behold: and thou, imperious Jove, On me direct thy lightning from above: Now all its force the poison doth assume, And my burnt entrails with its flame consume. Crestfallen, unembraced, I now let fall Listless, those hands that lately conquer'd all; When the ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... even the servants who are dispatched to make the decent inquiries are not suffered to return home till they have undergone the ceremony of a previous ablution. Yet this selfish and unmanly delicacy occasionally yields to the more imperious passion of avarice. The prospect of gain will urge a rich and gouty senator as far as Spoleto; every sentiment of arrogance and dignity is subdued by the hopes of an inheritance, or even of a legacy; and a wealthy childless citizen is the most powerful ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... in the house of Porphyrius—Olympius, whose mind and will had formerly had such imperious hold on the fate of the city, and to whose nod above half of the inhabitants were still obedient. Porphyrius and his family shared his views and regarded themselves as his confederates; but, even among them, the minor details of life claimed their place, and Gorgo, who entered into the struggle ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... it any statements or assumptions of facts which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not, now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptible in it an imperious and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... boast a father great And honored in the service of the State. Public Instruction all his mind employs— He guides its methods and its wage enjoys. Prime Pedagogue, imperious and grand, He waves his ferule o'er a studious land Where humming youth, intent upon the page, Thirsting for knowledge with a noble rage, Drink dry the whole Pierian spring and ask To slake their fervor at his private flask. Arrested by the terror ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... destinies of nations and dynasties determined by its sway—but here in our every-day life we see its influence, direct or indirect, forceful and ubiquitous beyond aught else. Any statesmanlike view, therefore, will recognize that here we have an instinct so fundamental, so imperious, that its influence is a fact which has to be accepted; suppress it you cannot. You may guide it into healthy channels, but an outlet it will have, and if that outlet is inadequate and unduly obstructed irregular ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... eager eyes and helpful hands The women met in solemn crowds, And shred the linen into bands That had been better saved for shrouds, Or want's imperious demands. ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... weather or because she had forgotten to smooth it, and when the pupils of her eyes enlarged under cumulative excitement, she looked young and impetuously willful; but the times were rare, and perhaps her husband had never, since their courting days, noted any such exhilaration. He was a large, imperious-looking man, with a cascade of silvery beard which he affected to tolerate because the expenditure of time in shaving might be turned with profit into the channel of business or of worship; but his wife, noting how he stroked the beard at intervals of meditation, judged that ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... reached, it is regularly employed to explain the causal connexion of things, whether the things to be explained are the ideas and emotions of man himself or the changes in the physical world outside of him. In short, a God is always brought in to play the part of a cause; it is the imperious need of tracing the causes of events which has driven man to discover or invent a deity. Now causes may be arranged in two classes according as they are perceived or unperceived by the senses. For example, when we see the impact of a billiard cue ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... take the pledge of fealty to thee when the time came round, and to stretch him dead at thy feet. Deliver me into the hands of the tribe if thou wilt, but thou art powerless to bring back life to thy favourite!" He stopped and drew himself up defiantly before her. The eyes of the imperious queen shone brightly with the fierce resentment which the Dhah's ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in the presence of "that frank politeness which at once relieved all the embarrassment of the youngest and most timid writer or artist, who found himself for the first time among Ambassadors and Earls."[26] And even the imperious mistress[27] of the house found her match in Sydney Smith, who only made fun of her foibles, and repaid her insolence with raillery. Referring to this period, when he had ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... proud and imperious beauty, who abused the power which she soon found that she possessed over the king, in a manner to make her an object of hatred to every one else. She interfered with every thing, and had a vast influence even over ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... agitated, even not in the time of the hive swarming, her agitation would in like manner be communicated to the workers. The moment a queen was hatched, I confined her to the hive by contracting the entrances. When assailed by the imperious desire of union with the males, I could not doubt that she would make great exertions to escape, and that the impossibility of it would produce a kind of delirium. I had the patience to observe this queen thirty-four days. Every morning about eleven o'clock, ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... the haughty protector, have we Beaufort The imperious churchman, Somerset, Buckingham, And grumbling York; and not the least of these But can do more in England than ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... all; we must think also of going down. The most difficult, if not most wearisome, task remained; and then one quits with regret a summit attained at the price of so much toil. The energy which urges you to ascend, the need, so natural and imperious, of overcoming, now fails you. You go forward listlessly, often ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... consisted of 365 Days and an half, tho' directly repugnant to the new Philosophy of the Age he liv'd in; and that the Sun was situated in the Center of the Earth; And when the Chief Magi told him, with an imperious Air, that he maintain'd erroneous Principles; and that it was an Indignity offered to the Government under which he liv'd, to imagine the Sun should roll round its own Axis, and that the Year consisted of twelve Months, he knew how to sit still and quiet, without shewing the ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge ..."[82] ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... —looking even under than over thirty-three years—but five feet five inches in height, and thin almost to emaciation, weighing only one hundred and fifteen pounds. If I had ever possessed any self-assertion in manner or speech, it certainly vanished in the presence of the imperious Secretary, whose name at the time was the synonym of all that was cold and formal. I never learned what Mr. Stanton's first impressions of me were, and his guarded and rather calculating manner gave at this time no intimation that they were either favorable or unfavorable, but his ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... colour of your heart, and be a Man. You grudge sleep, you grudge eating, and drinking even, their intrusion on those exquisite moments. There will be no more rising before breakfast in casual old clothing, to go dusting and getting ready in a cheerless, shutter-darkened, wrappered-up shop, no more imperious cries of, "Forward, Hoopdriver," no more hasty meals, and weary attendance on fitful old women, for ten blessed days. The first morning is by far the most glorious, for you hold your whole fortune in your hands. Thereafter, every night, comes a pang, a spectre, that will not ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... man's heart! Poor regents of an hour! Faint, helpless, moonbeam—light was all I gave, The sun breaks forth—his queen becomes his slave! Wooed? Yes; as other queens I held my court Won—but to lose my crown, and be the sport Of proud, absorbing and imperious man! ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... the hills the elvers snuggle under stones or beneath the bank and rest till dawn. In the course of time they reach the quiet upper reaches of the river or go up rivulets and drainpipes to the isolated ponds. Their impulse to go on must be very imperious, for they may wriggle up the wet moss by the side of a waterfall or even make a short ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... powerful and imperious, enslaving the civilised world, and, not having the restraining laws of Greece, waxed luxurious and licentious, and chafed, in consequence, at the austere rigidity of the Greek ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... to the innkeeper in a loud imperious voice. "Throw open your apartments, and make ready for our entertainment. Give us wine, tokay, and menes; give us also pheasants, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... Imperious Empire! Thrice-majestic Rome! No later age, as earth's slow centuries glide, Can raze the footprints stamp'd where thou hast come, The ne'er-repeated grandeur of thy stride! —Though now so dense a darkness takes ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... 'servant of Jehovah.' It was not a light thing to be a worshipper of the God of Israel in Ahab's court. The feminine rage of the fierce Sidonian woman, whom Ahab obeyed in most things, burned hot against the enemies of her father's gods, and hotter, perhaps, against any one who thwarted her imperious will. Obadiah did both, in that audacious piece of benevolence when he sheltered the Lord's prophets—one hundred of them—and saved them from her cruel search. The writer of the book very rightly marks this brave antagonism to the outburst of the queen's wrath as a signal proof ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... not see his face, but she knew at once that he was Ruffo. Her inclination was to bend down with the soft cry of "Pescator!" which she had sent to him on the sunny morning of their meeting. She checked it, why she scarcely knew, in obedience to some imperious prompting of her nature. But she kept her eyes on him. And they were full of will. She was willing him not to lie down in the bottom of the boat and sleep. She knew that he and his companions must have come to the pool at that hour to rest. There were three other men ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... feeling, which turns the very joy of existence to sadness, and dims the light of life. Such men may plunge into pleasure, absorb themselves in their books or research, wear and waste themselves in the making of wealth, and for a time they are satisfied. But the imperious craving reasserts itself at length; there is the cry of the soul for some lost inspiration, some transfiguring influence to soften the hard way of life, console a lonely hour, comfort a bereavement, inspire that tenderness and sympathy, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... addressing a word to her, by his personal beauty, his lordly mien, and his magnificence of apparel. Isabelle, who had instantly recognised the audacious gallant of the garden, and who was displeased by the imperious ardour of his gaze, redoubled her reserve of manner, and did not lift her eyes to the mirror in front of her at all; she did not even seem to be aware that one of the handsomest young noblemen in all France was standing there before her, trying to win a glance from her lovely eyes—but then, she ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... negroes—John had never seen any of them before, and it flashed through his mind that they must be the professional executioners paused in their movement toward John, and turned expectantly to the man in the lift, who burst out with an imperious command: ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Crown. It was only by foreign hirelings that revolt was suppressed; it was only by a reckless abuse of the system of packing the Houses that Parliament could be held in check. At last the Government ventured on an open defiance of law; and a statute of the realm was set aside at the imperious bidding of a boy of fifteen. Master of the royal forces, wielding at his will the royal authority, Northumberland used the voice of the dying Edward to set aside rights of succession as sacred as his own. But the attempt proved an utter failure. The very forces on ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... distinguishing between their sallow faces, dark eyes, and crisp, black heads. Conrade was individualized, not only by superior height, but by soldierly bearing, bright pride glancing in his eyes, his quick gestures, bold, decided words, and imperious tone towards all, save his mother—and whatever he was doing, his keen, black eye was always turning in search of her, he was ever ready to spring to her side to wait on her, to maintain her cause in rough championship, or to claim her attention to himself. ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... into her presence. The knight parleys diplomatically with the messenger. Duty keeps him at the helm, but once in port he will suffer no one but himself to escort the exalted lady into the presence of the king. At the last the maid is forced to deliver the command in the imperious words used by her mistress. This touches the pride of Tristan's squire, Kurwenal, who asks permission to frame an answer, and, receiving it, shouts a ballad of his master's method of paying tribute to Ireland with the head of his enemy; for the battle between Tristan and ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... jingled her household keys. Her screeching voice was agony to the drums of all ears. Her rigid glance, conflicting with the soft blue of her eyes, was in visible harmony with the thin lips of a pinched mouth and a high, projecting, and very imperious forehead. Sharp was the glance, sharper still both gesture and speech. "Zelie being obliged to have a will for two, had it for three," said Goupil, who pointed out the successive reigns of three young postilions, of neat appearance, who ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... had succumbed supinely to this imperious domination. The sentiment of deep awe with which I habitually regarded the elevated character, the majestic wisdom, the apparent omnipresence and omnipotence of Wilson, added to a feeling of even terror, with which certain other traits in his nature and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Despite his weight and bulk, there was nothing ungainly or awkward about him. If he had not the grace of an Apollo, he had what was better—the mighty thews and sinews of a twentieth century Hercules. His massive chest and broad shoulders were capped by a leonine head, from which looked the imperious eyes of a born leader of men. Few men cared to encounter those eyes when their owner was angered. He was a good man to have as an ally, but a bad one to ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... explained in the dialogue about to be recorded; another cause for which is analogous to that loving submission with which some ill-conditioned brute acknowledges a master in the hand that has thrashed it. For at Losely's first appearance at the convivial meeting just concluded, being nettled at the imperious airs of superiority which that roysterer assumed, mistaking for effeminacy Jasper's elaborate dandyism, and not recognizing in the bravo's elegant proportions the tiger-like strength of which, in truth, that tiger-like suppleness should ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... absolute power they possessed over the slaves and Hottentots demoralized them, and made them tyrannical and blood-thirsty. At too great a distance from the seat of government for its power to reach them, they defied it and knew no law but their own imperious wills, acknowledging no authority,—guilty of every crime openly, ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... lasted, had nothing of bitterness, but lulled his soul instead, and when it passed, he would be left with thankfulness for his moment of fleeting bliss and ineffable comfort. Or again, he awoke to reality with a longing that fiercely would not be denied. "Oh, I want—Jack'leen!" Often and often the imperious smothered cry all but passed his lips. And then he would shake himself, as out of physical slumber, and he would take up his life again. But he would be a shade deeper in the devil's own mood, of ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... fellow that to know how to be rich is an art difficult to master, and that he had not mastered it; that as an official his first duty in exercising power was to learn that of humility; and that it is the irritating authority of such very lofty and imperious beings as himself, who say, "I am the law," that provokes insurrection. However, I was dumb, and could only return his contemptuous ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... at first, but Abby was imperious. Moreover, the constant friction of the handle of the hammer had raised a blister in the palm of his hand. Abby had an ugly red welt around her thumb, caused by the resistance of the scissors; for it had been very hard work to cut the heavy carpet. But ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... proud imperious kings Bow low before his throne, Crouch to his feet, ye haughty things, Or ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... day after the scene on the bridge the Dictator got an imperious little note from Helena asking him to come to see her at once, as she had something to say to him. He had been thinking of her—he had been occupying himself in an odd sort of way with the conviction, the memory, that if the supposed assassin had only been equal to his work, ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... solitude of the cloister, and in the severe practice of monastic duties, repose and forgetfulness. She congratulated herself, however, upon her resolution, which she considers the accomplishment of an imperious duty; but she suffers continually, for she is not formed for those mystical contemplations, in the midst of which certain people, forgetting all affection, all earthly remembrances, are lost in ascetic delights. No; Fleur-de-Marie believes, prays, submits herself to the rigorous and harsh ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... "Imperious SEIZER, dead, and turned to cla, Mite stop a hole to keep the wind away;" Onless from Wall Street, was blowin' raw. The tempestous breezes, from a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... to his lips and went away. She sat quite still beside the table, her burning face in her hands, her breast a turmoil of blind doubts, and longings, and keen disappointments with, she knew not what, and over all an imperious, sudden-born ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... novelty had entirely ceased to bewilder the understanding of the renegade, preparations were made for the assault; and after a fierce but ineffectual resistance under their gallant leaders Thomas and Herbis, the Damascenes were obliged to submit to their imperious conqueror, on condition of being allowed, within three days, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... overbearing, supercilious, cavalier, overweening, disdainful, imperious, lordly, magisterial, contumelious. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... openly for gold, party opinion, disliking concealment and skulking mystery, began to burn the grass of imperious inquiry about the feet of Senator Hanway. Men could understand a gold-bug or a silver-bug, and either embrace or tolerate him according to the color of their convictions. But that monstrous insect of finance, the ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... hundred and fifty priests of Baal, at Mount Carmel,—a beautiful hill sixteen hundred feet high, near the Mediterranean, usually covered with oaks and flowering shrubs and fragrant herbs. He gives no reasons,—he sternly commands; and the king obeys, being evidently awed by the imperious ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... prefer the shadow to the substance. When they might be speaking intelligibly together, they chatter senseless gibberish by the hour, and are quite happy because they are making believe to speak French. I have said already how even the imperious appetite of hunger suffers itself to be gulled and led by the nose with the fag end of an old song. And it goes deeper than this: when children are together even a meal is felt as an interruption in the business of life; and they must find some imaginative sanction, and tell themselves ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a woman fifty years of age, with massive chin, slightly sunken cheeks, a prominent nose, heavy eyebrows, and a high forehead rather scantily streaked by gray hair. There was no trace of the girlish bloom I had known, of the beauty that once had been hers, but the imperious manner of the woman ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... outward conduct, there seems to have been a deep and genuine love for her in his heart. He can say as coarse a thing about her as has probably ever been recorded, but he balances it with abundance of solicitous and often ineffective attempts to gratify her capricious and imperious little humours. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... single instant—she seemed to revolt from the prosecution of her design, then, with a stern contraction of the brows, and an imperious curl of the lip—as if she said within herself, "Fool that I am to ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... mouth, with its determined but lovely curves, at the cloud of dark hair about the white brow, it suddenly seemed to him as if the picture had never been out of his mind. "The Lass with the Delicate Air" was before him, but changed. The look of girlish immaturity was gone—replaced by an imperious decision of manner. A haughty, almost wayward, expression was on the smiling face—a look of dawning worldliness and caprice. 'Twas as if the thought which had once passed through Calvert's mind had come true—that ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... was much surprised at the appearance of Mrs. P. He had heard that his friend married abroad, but nothing further, and he was not prepared to see the calm, dignified P. with a woman on his arm, still handsome, indeed, but whose coarse and imperious expression showed as low habits of mind as her exaggerated dress and gesture did of education. Nor could there be a greater contrast to my mother, who, though understanding her claims and place with the certainty of a lady, was soft and retiring ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... self-denial. To be real, therefore, culture ought to affect a man's whole character and not merely store his memory with facts. Let us add, too, that it may be got in various ways, through home influences as well as through schools or colleges; through living in a highly organized society, making imperious demands on one's time and faculties, as well as through the restraints of a severe course of study. A good deal of it was obtained from the old Calvinistic theology, against which, in the days of its predominance, the most bumptious youth ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... I am the master who by a touch can liberate elemental forces, which will not destroy, like those of Illowski's, but will elevate the soul and make mankind one great nation, one loving brotherhood. Ah! to open once more those doors of faith closed by the imperious dogmas of science—open them upon a lovely land of mystery. Mankind must have mystery. And beyond each mystery lies another. This will be ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... down the road, was hailed from the Dermots' garden by an imperious small lady with golden curls and big blue bows and ordered to play with her. Her brother and Badshah had to join in the game, too. Frank, chasing the dainty mite round and round the elephant, began to think himself in the ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... solemn smile on her haughtily curved lips, she extended one hand and arm, snow-white and glittering with jewels, and made an imperious gesture to command silence. Instantly a profound hush ensued. Lifting a long, slender, white wand, at the end of which could be plainly seen the gleaming silver head of a Serpent, she described three circles in the air with a perfectly even, majestic motion, and as she ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... no mistaking her, nor overlooking her. She was just as colossally commanding as ever, just as imperious. At sight of her, Decatur understood Jane's position clearly. She was still the dependent niece, the obscure satellite of a star of the first magnitude. Very distinctly had Mrs. Philo Allen once explained to him this dependence of Jane's, ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... tears, pour into his bosom the balm of hope, and present to him an endearing hand which may lead him in the way of holiness. The confessor is an implacable judge, who speaks with gentle smiles or bland insinuations, but who tears out, with an imperious tone and formidable menaces, the secrets of the heart, and not only those which may be connected with crime worthy of deep contrition and sincere repentance, but even others which pertain to an order of things exempt from the sinfulness attaching to human actions. The confessor ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... imperious voice demanded; and turning round, Wulf saw William, the Norman Bishop of London, who, followed by several monks and pages, had pushed his way through the crowd. "Walter Fitz-Urse, what means ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... are the eternal humorist The eternal enemy of the absolute, Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist With your air indifferent and imperious At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—" ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... to old Jake's relief, there came a sudden distraction. Drama knocked at the door with imperious knuckles, and forced Comedy to the wings, and Drama peeped with a smiling but set ...
— Options • O. Henry
... Dudley, aged twenty-two, was a tall and stately brunette, with a wealth of dark sheeny chestnut hair, almost black in the shade, magnificent dark eyes, which flashed scornfully or melted into tenderness according to the mood of that imperious beauty, their owner, and a figure the ideal perfection and grace of which are rarely to be met with out of the sculptor's marble. The rich healthy colour of her cheeks and full ripe lips, and the brilliant sparkle of her glorious eyes showed ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... ye so fierce and cruell? Is it because your eyes have powre to kill? Then know that mercy is the Mighties iewell, And greater glory think to save then spill. But if it be your pleasure and proud will To shew the powre of your imperious eyes, Then not on him that never thought you ill, But bend your force against your enemyes. Let them feel the utmost of your crueltyes, And kill with looks, as cockatrices do: But him that at your footstoole humbled lies, With mercifull regard give mercy ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... Stanley opened his eyes, there was a broken and sorrowful old man, from whose spirit all the imperious pride had gone, kneeling by his bedside and humbly begging his forgiveness. On the other side of the bed his mother stood with a great joy in ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... amalgamation at West Point without it. Some of the rough specimens annually admitted care nothing for regulations. It is fun to them to be punished. Nothing so effectually makes a plebe submissive as hazing. That contemptuous look and imperious bearing lowers a plebe, I sometimes think, in his own estimation. He is in a manner cowed and made to feel that he must obey, and not disobey; to feel that he is a plebe, and must expect a plebe's portion. He is taught by it to stay in his place, and not to "bone popularity" ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... as imperious as ever—because I can only save myself by giving the real murderer up ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Pasquale in an imperious gesture of his arm. "Afterward, captain. You shall ask her a hundred. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... prey, and wrote to the king, protesting against the injustice which was crushing the truest men in his dominions. The letter is too long to insert; the close of it may show how a poor priest could dare to address the imperious ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... evinced as a woman, in spite of her vanity, and jealousy, and imperious temper, her reign was one of the most glorious in the annals of her country. The policy of Burleigh was the policy of Sir Robert Walpole—that of peace, and a desire to increase the resources of the kingdom. Her taxes were never oppressive, and were raised without murmur; the people ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Cleodemus said: My friend Niloxenus, it becomes kings to propound and resolve such questions; but the insolence of that barbarian who would have Amasis drink the sea would have been better fitted by such a smart reprimand as Pittacus gave Alyattes, who sent an imperious letter to the Lesbians. He made him no other answer, but to bid him spend his time in eating his hot ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the day would be intolerable if she could not hear from other lips the promise of a predestined happiness. She was not really in doubt, but she was under the imperious impulse of a passion which must needs find some response, even in the useless confirmation of its reality uttered by an indifferent person—the spirit of a mighty cry seeking its own echo in the echoless, flat waste ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... the condition and position of the United States, when Washington retired from public life; yet over the bright future, discerned by the eye of faith, hung an ominous cloud, growing blacker and blacker every day. France, haughty, imperious, dictatorial, and ungenerous, had severed with ruthless hand the bond of friendship between itself and the United States, and had cut the tether of legal restraint which kept her corsairs from depredating upon American commerce. Her course, unjust and unwise, indicated inevitable war, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... comes up?' asked Mrs. Fordyce, involuntarily rising; but Gladys made answer, with a shade of imperious command,— ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... to the older man and held out his hand. "Shake hands, father," he said. Mr. Louden looked at him out of small implacable eyes, the steady hostility of which only his wife or the imperious Martin Pike, his employer, could quell. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... never troubled himself beforehand about vexations that might come to him. He was not in the habit of brooding over his worries, but on the contrary always tried to forget them. He was tall and strongly made, and his mischievous brown eyes had sometimes a look of imperious audacity which was in perfect keeping with the scar on his sunburnt cheek that bore witness that he had not devoted his whole time and energy to the study of dogmatic theology. "Yes," he said to himself as he sat there waiting for his cousin, "I must ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... that impetuous parting caress of his had roused in her an impulse that would never again sleep, would pace its cage restlessly, eager for the chance to burst forth. And he had roused it when he would not be there to make its imperious clamor personal to himself. ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... persistently—I could not get used to that. In the midst of the adulation, of the blares upon the trumpets of fame that saluted my waking and were wafted to me as I fell asleep at night—in the midst of all the turmoil, I was often in a great and brooding silence, longing for her, now with the imperious energy of passion, and now with the sad ache of love. What was she doing? What was she thinking? Now that Langdon had again played her false for the old price, with what eyes was she ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... rush at the masked man's throat, in which purpose he had certainly not failed had he been alone; but the elder, who seemed to possess not only the habit but the right of command, contented himself by regrasping his coat, and saying, in an imperious, almost harsh tone: "Sit down, Roland!" And the young man had ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... and facilitate their progress toward the most complete enjoyment of civil liberty. On an occasion so interesting and important in our history, and of such anxious concern to the friends of freedom throughout the world, it is our imperious duty to lay aside all selfish and local considerations and be guided by a lofty spirit of devotion to the great principles on which our ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... meet her eye mutinously, but failed. Why he should be afraid of Ann he had never been able to understand, but it was a fact that she was the only person of his acquaintance whom he respected. She had a bright eye and a calm, imperious stare which ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... tropes of rhetoric, that excellent use of a metaphor or translation, wherewith he taxeth Antipater, who was an imperious and tyrannous governor; for when one of Antipater's friends commended him to Alexander for his moderation, that he did not degenerate as his other lieutenants did into the Persian pride, in uses of purple, but kept the ancient habit of ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... subject. Glad indeed should I have been to have declined this painful interference. But no one would hear of a refusal. The Bishop of London, Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Wilberforce, considered my appearance on this occasion as an imperious duty to the cause of the oppressed. It may be perhaps sufficient to say, that I was examined; that Mr. Norris. was present all the time; that I was cross-examined by counsel; and that after this time, Mr. Norris seemed to have no ordinary sense of his own degradation; for he never afterwards ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... sorrows came not: black Despair, And lawless Force, and shrinking Fear, were there. Woes, yet unfelt, were nigh;—fell Slavery shed Her night of sorrows on my hapless head: Doom'd each imperious order to fulfil, And watch a ruthless master's various will. Five years, exposed to unremitted pain, I languish'd ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... action. It is then literally true that our acts do to a certain extent involve the whole universe, and its whole history: the act which we make it accomplish will exist henceforward for ever, and will for ever tinge universal duration with its indelible shade. Does not that imply an imperious, urgent, solemn, and tragic problem of action? Nay, more; memory makes a persistent reality of evil, as of good. Where are we to find the means to abolish and reabsorb the evil? What in the individual is called memory becomes tradition and ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... confusion of the Illyas. Harry observes the Illyas' chief and attendants. Surrounds and capture them. Muro makes a charge. The chief signals surrender. Uraso surrounds the Illyas. Marched to the great square. The conference between John and the chief. The Doric building. The Illyas' chief. His imperious air. Dignity of Uraso ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... narrow, and its result is common. We have no manners or true historical delineation. The figure of the English court is not given; and Elizabeth is depicted more like one of the French Medici, than like our own politic, capricious, coquettish, imperious, yet on the whole true-hearted, 'good Queen Bess.' With abundant proofs of genius, this tragedy produces a comparatively small effect, especially on English readers. We have already wept enough for Mary Stuart, both over prose and verse; and the persons likely to be deeply touched with ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle |
