"Inflexibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his friend had that inflexibility of principle in criticism and literary utterance which they adhered to as though it were a matter of high morals. This feeling contrasts with the easy adaptability of our day, when the critic so often has to shape his views according to interested aims. He indeed will hold in his views, but may ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... Owen's inflexibility frightened her. She had half expected that when he knew her real and vital dislike for Miss Loder he would promise to send her away; but he had done nothing of the kind: and Toni felt again, as she had already felt once or twice of late, that Owen had no intention of giving ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... already a streak of gray, was set on his shoulders at just the right poise for command. The high-bridged nose, inherited from the Umfravilles, was of the kind commonly considered to show "race." The eyes had the sharpness, and the thin-lipped mouth the inflexibility, that go with a capacity for quick decisions. While he was not so imposing in mufti as in his uniform, the trim traveling-suit of russet brown went well with the bronze tint of the complexion. It was so healthy a bronze, as a usual thing, that ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... to be saved. He has all his father's inflexibility, but an intellect as clear as that of the most practical man. He has a will of iron, dauntless resolution, and an implacable temper. At the same time he has the open generosity and the tender heart ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... inflexibility and censoriousness. His account of his father makes one believe in the fatality of heredity. Born of old nonconformist stock, the elder Spencer was a man of absolute punctuality. Always he would step ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... even for that inflexibility of mind," replied Agelastes, "that steady contempt of every thing that approaches thee, save in the light of a duty, that I demand, almost like a beggar, that personal acquaintance, which thou refusest ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... with observations and prayers of all sorts, and resolved not to yield, determined to cut short all useless supplications, which would only make him lose precious time. He said, therefore, with a grave, severe, and almost solemn air, which showed the inflexibility of his determination: "Listen to me, wife—and you also, my son—when, at my age, a man makes up his mind to do anything, he knows the reason why. And when a man has once made up his mind, neither wife nor child can alter it. I have resolved to do my duty; so spare yourselves ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... family, bound together by the force of religious ties, by the inflexibility of its customs, by one solitary emotion, that of avarice, a passion which was now as it were its compass, Elisabeth was forced to commune with herself, instead of imparting her ideas to those around her, for she felt herself without equals in mind who could comprehend her. Though facts ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... of life had been so bright and beautiful and, still in the sunny days of childhood, transformed into an image of decrepitude and decay. The fair blooming cheek and finely chiselled features were now shrunk and stiffened into the wan and rigid inflexibility of old age; while the black bandages which swathed the little pale sad countenance, gave additional gloom and harshness to the profound melancholy which clouded its most intellectual expression. Disease ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... happiness. She had been tossed and agitated by the waves of misfortune. Her childhood, as she often said, had known few of the endearments, which constitute the principal happiness of childhood. The temper of her father had early given to her mind a severe cast of thought, and substituted the inflexibility of resistance for the confidence of affection. The cheerfulness of her entrance upon womanhood, had been darkened, by an attendance upon the death-bed of her mother, and the still more afflicting calamity of her eldest sister. Her exertions to create a joint independence ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... colony with herself; and although his early military services, and her frequent visits to the family of her sister, and subsequent establishment at its head, had prevented their ever meeting, still she was familiar with his domestic virtues, and well knew that the rigid inflexibility for which his public acts were distinguished formed no part of his reputation in private life. He was known in Virginia as a consistent but just and lenient master; and she felt a kind of pride in associating in her mind her countryman with the man ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... of sight, the White Pine is free from some of the defects of the Fir and Spruce, having none of their stiffness of foliage and inflexibility of spray, that cause them to resemble artificial objects. It has the symmetry of the Fir, joined with a certain flowing grace that assimilates it to the deciduous trees. With sufficient amplitude to conceal a look of primness that often arises from symmetry, we observe a certain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... her inflexibility recalled one who long ago had renounced his fealty to the throne; her resistance kindled the flame that had been smoldering in ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the door. There was no remedy for what was called by Lord Lovat's friends, the "rascality" of the judges:—and again this unworthy Highlander was driven from his own country to seek safety in the land wherein his offences had received their pardon. The inflexibility of the justiciary lords, or their known integrity, form a fine incident in history; for the Scottish nation was at this period, ridden by Court faction, and broken down by recent ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... bearing towards the same point. Puritans, whose cloaks were of the most formal cut, and whose hats emulated the steeple of St. Paul's; Levellers, with firm steps, wrinkled and over-hanging brows, and hard unchanging features, all denoting inflexibility of purpose and decision of character; Cavaliers, whose jaunty gait was sobered, and whose fashionable attire was curtailed in consideration that such bravery would be noticed and reproved by the powers that were; women attired in dark hoods and sad-coloured kirtles; some ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... spending that reduce income disparity and the impact of free markets on public health and welfare. The current government has lowered income taxes and introduced measures to boost employment. At the end of 2002 the government was focusing on the problems of the high cost of labor and labor market inflexibility resulting from the 35-hour workweek and restrictions on lay-offs. The government was also pushing for pension reforms and simplification of administrative procedures. The tax burden remains one of the highest in Europe. The current economic slowdown and inflexible budget items have pushed ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... ceremony and etiquette of an European Court. In fact, he appears to possess none of that sternness of character which you would suppose to belong to one a large part of whose life has been spent in political warfare, or, at any rate, amidst scenes requiring a vast deal of nerve and inflexibility. ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... to submit than contend; and so Dinah had ruled supreme. This was the easier, in that she was perfect mistress of that diplomatic art which unites the utmost subservience of manner with the utmost inflexibility ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in certain respects, each recognized the genuine ring of the other, and admired and respected that which was most true and noble. The purity, simplicity and high-minded honor which distinguished the younger, had its effect on the elder, even while he smiled at the inflexibility which would not swerve one hair's breadth from the line of right. The story is often told, how, when this young man's conscience stood bolt upright in the way of what was deemed a desirable arrangement, Stevens one day exclaimed: "It don't do, Pennypacker, to be so ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... set before his literary successors, an example of sagacity and fortitude, truely worthy of imitation, in the victory he obtained over these self-sufficient pre-possessions; length of years was so far from rivetting in him an inflexibility of sentiment, that, joined to a most extended experience, it served only to teach him, that he had been mistaken: his candid retraction of what he thought to have been advanced amiss by himself, cannot be ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... remarks that the queen, Louisa, who left no means untried in order to save as much as possible of Prussia, came somewhat too late, when Napoleon had already entered into an agreement with Russia. Hence Napoleon's inflexibility, which was the more insulting owing to the apparently yielding silence with which, from a feeling of politeness, he sometimes received the personal petitions of the queen, to which he would afterward send a written refusal. The part played in this affair by Alexander was far ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... you do, Viola," replied Jane Carew, with the inflexibility of fate, "but I really think that only very young girls ought ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... upon his sturdy, weather-beaten countenance and forest attire, lending an air of romantic wildness to the aspect of an individual, who, seen by the sober light of day, would have exhibited the peculiarities of a man remarkable for the strangeness of his dress, the iron-like inflexibility of his frame, and the singular compound of quick, vigilant sagacity, and of exquisite simplicity, that by turns usurped the possession of his muscular features. At a little distance in advance stood Uncas, his whole person thrown powerfully into view. The travelers anxiously regarded ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... Louis, after having been changed to Port de la Montagne, Port North-West, and I believe borne one or two other names, was now called Port Napoleon; Port Bourbon and Isle Bourbon underwent similar changes: such was the inflexibility of French republicanism.] ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... forwardness of the scientist, but in any case the result is worse than conservative loyalty to religious tradition. For religion is corrected surely though slowly by the whole order of advancing truth. Its very inflexibility makes it proof against an over-emphasis upon new truth. It has generally turned out in time that the obstinate man of religion was more nearly right than the adaptable intellectual man of fashion. But philosophy, as a critique of ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... of being thought theatrical and affected. The most intrepid veteran of us all dares no more than wipe his face with his cambric sudarium; if by mischance his hand slip from its orthodox gripe of the velvet, he draws it back as from liquid brimstone, and atones for the indecorum by fresh inflexibility and more rigorous sameness. Is it wonder, then, that every semi-delirious sectary who pours forth his animated nonsense with the genuine look and voice of passion, should gesticulate away the congregation of ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... His guest could not help thinking to himself that however pacific might be Mr. Ringgan's temper, no man in those days that tried men could have brought to the issue more stern inflexibility and gallant fortitude of bearing. His frame bore evidence of great personal strength, and his eye, with all its mildness, had an unflinching dignity that could never have quailed before danger or duty. And now, while he was recalling with ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... waited patiently for hours outside the Embassy to catch one glimpse of the strong, stern, thoughtful face of the man who had come with his legions to assist France in the great hour of need. They talked to each other about the inflexibility of his character, about the massive jaw which, they said, would bite off Germany's head. They cheered in the English manner, with a "Heep! heep! hooray!"—when they caught sight for the first time of the khaki uniforms of English officers on the steps of the Ministry ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... broker, and steals his Mississippi bonds (engraving), i. 21; efforts to save his life, inflexibility of the Regent, his execution, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... curious thing—at one glance realised his defeat. All my efforts at dignity and firmness had failed to convince him, but behind Charmion's frail, essentially feminine exterior, those keen eyes had at once detected that strain of inflexibility which I was only slowly beginning ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... with the patience of a devotee, but with the firmness of a man. He owned his fault, but no eloquence could make him recall the promise he had given to repair the injury. Unshaken by the arguments, persuasions, and menaces of Sandford, he gave an additional proof of that inflexibility for which he had been long distinguished—and after a dispute of two hours, they parted, neither of them the better for what either had advanced, but Dorriforth something the worse; his conscience gave testimony ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... than those of death, for how infinitely preferable was a quiet resting-place in the shadow of mourning cedars to the lifelong agony of an unhappy union! She looked up at her quondam guardian, as he stood, grave and silent, regarding his niece with sadly anxious eyes; and, as she noted the stern inflexibility of his sculptured mouth, she thought that he stood there a marble monument, recording the misery of an ill-assorted marriage. But it was schooltime, and she approached to say "good-by," as the bridal pair took their seats in the carriage. Pauline seemed much troubled at bidding ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the power of changing color, but her eyes were as expressive as ever, and now as she stared at her victim they showed a certain inflexibility of purpose. ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... address was as abrupt as his appearance was unpolished. His forehead was large and bald, eye small and brilliant, and his cheeks had dropped down so as to increase the width of his lower jaw. Deep, yet not harsh, lines were imprinted on the whole of his countenance, which indicated inflexibility and self-possession. ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... to perceive or at least fully to appreciate this change and its inevitable consequences. It is agreed by all students of political history, that the weakness of a written constitution lies in its inflexibility; and the error of many of our political managers lies in their failure to appreciate this truth and their assumption that the country is to be governed now just as it was in the days of Washington. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... have been unanimous, the commodore and Capt. Hutchinson came on board to inquire into the cause of the dispute; and this lucky, and well timed visit, saved our credit; and established the Yankee character for inflexibility, beyond all doubt or controversy. These two worthy gentlemen soon discovered that Mr. O. had made representations not altogether correct. They therefore ordered the hatches to be taken off, and proper bread to be served out, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... threw on the garments that agitation had before rendered such encumbrances; and in less time than we have taken to relate it, the marine was completely equipped for his departure. In the mean time, Captain Borroughcliffe raised himself to an extremely erect posture, which he maintained with the inflexibility of a rigid martinet. When he found himself established on his feet, the soldier intimated to his prisoner that he was ready to proceed. The door was instantly opened by Manual, and together ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... man to be thus put off. Every day Lizaveta received from him a letter, sent now in this way, now in that. They were no longer translated from the German. Hermann wrote them under the inspiration of passion, and spoke in his own language, and they bore full testimony to the inflexibility of his desire, and the disordered condition of his uncontrollable imagination. Lizaveta no longer thought of sending them back to him; she became intoxicated with them, and began to reply to them, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to make preparations for their journey. Edmund made his report of Sir Robert's inflexibility to his father, in presence of Sir Philip; who, again, ventured to urge the Baron on his ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... of hostile inflexibility in trampling on rights which no independent nation can relinquish, Congress will feel the duty of putting the United States into an armor and an attitude demanded by the crisis, and corresponding with the national ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... a service. To suppose that I could gravely take upon myself the responsibility of withdrawing you from pursuits you have already undertaken, or urging you on in a most uncertain and hazardous course of life, is really a compliment to my judgment and inflexibility which I cannot recognize and do not deserve (or desire). I hoped that a little reflection would show you how impossible it is that I could be expected to enter upon a task of so much delicacy, but as you have written to me since, and ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... and the idea once expressed, there was no desire to extend the circle of figures or to alter their wretched appearance. The same uncouth forms return with a killing monotony. Centuries do not change them. The uniformity of monastic life by no means tended to relax the inflexibility of invention. Religion, not art, was the sculptor's or the painter's object; his production was a creation of faith, not of beauty. Such is the character of almost all the carvings in wood and stone which have been found in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... separated from them by fiercer antipathies. Their virtues were the virtues of political machines, their vices were the vices of demons, ready to inflict or to endure pain with obdurate and remorseless inflexibility of purpose. But in the Christian religion, "we perceive a softness coming over the heart of a nation, and the iron scales that fence and harden it, melt and drop off." It becomes malleable, capable of pity, of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... business of the mine, leaving his two daughters in the family of a wealthy friend until he should return for them. He opposed their ready suggestion to return to Devil's Ford with a new and unnecessary inflexibility: he even met their compromise to accompany him to Sacramento ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... was of human feelings, he took measures to have De Soto assassinated. Such is the uncontradicted testimony of contemporary historians. But every day revealed to him more clearly the strength of Isabella's attachment for De Soto, and the inflexibility of her will. He became seriously alarmed, not only from the apprehension that if her wishes were thwarted, no earthly power could prevent her from burying herself in a convent, but he even feared that if De ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... he, half to himself; and then, with a quick motion hastening to open the door for her, "Go, madam," he added, almost breathless with conflicting emotions, "go, and be your happiness unalterable as your inflexibility!" ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... window, and farther away slightly in the shadow was another figure, more slender but stronger. Prescott recognized again, with that sudden and involuntary feeling of fear, the power of the man. It was Mr. Sefton, his face hidden in the shadows, and therefore wholly unread. But as usual the inflexibility of purpose, the hardening of resolve followed Prescott's emotion, and his figure stiffened as he stood at attention to receive the commands of the mighty—that is, the Secretary of War of the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... constructed, if I may use the expression, to ignore all the good points, and to feel with hysterical sensitiveness all the bad ones, of the French nation; and more especially of the French nation of the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary era. Alfieri's reality and Alfieri's ideal were austerity, inflexibility, pride and contemptuousness of character, coldness, roughness, decision of manner, curtness, reticence, and absolute truthfulness of speech; above all, no consideration for other folks' likings and dislikings, no mercy ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... grate like metal on metal roughened the deliberate speech with a suggestion of grim inflexibility. Flavia lifted vaguely ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... rose from her chair, and went quickly out of the room, every line in her erect little figure expressing exasperation and inflexibility. Sandy, smiling sleepily, reopened an interrupted novel. But she stared over the open page into space for a few moments, ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... woman?" he presently demanded of the June heavens. "To drag something out of a man with inflexibility, monomania and moral grappling-irons, and then not like it! Oh, very well! I am disgusted by your sex's axiomatic variability. I shall take Harry to his ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... hat and coat, found them and put her into them, handling her with an extreme inflexibility of manner and tenderness of touch, as if she had been ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... that he was doing a noble and generous action: into believing that in the course of a very few days—or weeks, at the most, he would have recalled his erring son and have given Cynthia his blessing. He would, he told himself, have been forced eventually to yield when that paragon of inflexibility, Bob, dictated terms to him at the head of the locomotive works. Better let the generosity be on his (Mr. Worthington's) side. At all events, victory had never been bought more cheaply. Humiliation, in Mr. Worthington's eyes, had an element ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... indignantly. Marigold stiffened himself—the degree of stiffness beyond his ordinary inflexibility of attitude could only have been ascertained by a vernier, but that degree imparted an appreciable ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... canoe-man, neither is he more courageous, and he is certainly less powerful: nevertheless Massan looks up to him and speaks of him as if he were greatly his superior. The secret of his power must lie in that steady, never-wavering inflexibility of purpose, that characterises our good bowman in ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... commandment or warning. (5) Moses' farewell blessing on the several tribes (Ch. 33). Make a list of what shall come to each tribe. (6) The names, location and purpose of the cities of refuge and the lessons for today to be drawn from them and their use. (7) The inflexibility ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... worried, even almost to the grave, yet he will not desert the charge imposed upon him by his friend, Sir Roderick Murchison. To the stern dictates of duty, alone, has he sacrificed his home and ease, the pleasures, refinements, and luxuries of civilized life. His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the enduring resolution of the Anglo-Saxon—never to relinquish his work, though his heart yearns for home; never to surrender his obligations until he can write Finis ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... drinking bouts in the not so very distant past. But—two months before—Jim had startled Links and horrified his priest by marrying Kitty Muckevay of the gold-red hair. Kitty had a rare measure of good sense but was a Protestant of Ulster inflexibility. She had taken Jim in hand to reform him, and for sixty days he had not touched a drop! Moreover he had promised Kitty to keep out of mischief on this day of days. All that morning he had worked among the ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... his hat. So there stood our friend, impatient to display his uniform, and unwilling to lessen the effect of his first appearance by doffing so important a part of his costume: to get through the door, in the rigid inflexibility of head and neck which he had hitherto maintained, was a manifest impossibility: Branling had suggested his staying outside, and he would undertake to bring people to look at him: but Dawson, for some unaccountable reason, was usually suspicious of advice from that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... of the Christian Church in its infancy only. So long as the band of believers was a small and persecuted one, no temptation to violate the rule could exist. But as the Church grew, and acquired influence and position, it discovered that good policy demanded that the sternness and inflexibility of its youthful theories should undergo some modification. It found that it was not the most successful method of enticing stragglers into its fold to stigmatize the gods they ignorantly worshipped as devils, ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... Wolsey.—The inflexibility of your mind had like to have ruined you in some of your measures; and the bigotry which you had derived from your long abode in a cloister, and retained when a Minister, was very near depriving the Crown of Castile of the new-conquered ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... three orders were thenceforward to form, there were two in which the plebeians predominated. Public opinion, moreover, was on their side, while the King, the true constitutional monarch, far from possessing the imperious inflexibility of a despot, did not now possess the initiative of an ordinary person. Thus the preponderance fell to the communes, and they could legally, without any collision, execute multiply, and complete, with the aid of the prince and through him, all useful ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... either God himself, being omnipresent, is the cause of everything—even of every thought and volition of mine—and so in a sense offers prayers to himself through me, or, if my will is independent of God's will, it implies arrogance and a doubt as to the inflexibility as well as the perfection of the divine determination to believe that it can be influenced by human appeals. When not quite seventeen years old I went to Goettingen University. During the next eight years I seldom saw the home of my parents; my father indulgently ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... declamation in silent sorrow and indignation. She made another effort to interest the Abate in favor of Julia, but he preserved his stern inflexibility, and repeating that he would deliberate upon the matter, and acquaint her with the result, he arose with great solemnity, and ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... afternoon, for I cannot write even a commonplace ordinary note to a commonplace ordinary woman!" Here a sly brain-devil whispered that Miss Vancourt might possibly be neither commonplace nor ordinary,—but he put the suggestion aside with a 'Get thee behind me, Satan' inflexibility. "The fact is, I had better not write to her at all. I'll send Bainton with a verbal message; he is sure to give a quaint and pleasant turn to it,—he knew her father, and I didn't;—it will be much better ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... much thinner and older. I saw him very near, and once through my glass; the resemblance to Branwell struck me forcibly—it is marked. He is not ugly, but very peculiar; the lines in his face show an inflexibility, and, I must add, a hardness of character which do not attract. As he stood near me, as he looked at me in his keen way, it was all I could do to stand my ground tranquilly and steadily, and not to recoil as before. It is no use saying anything if I am not candid. I avow then, that on this ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... everybody." His words: "Do you know why some men enter the cloister? It's because they feel that if they are not monks they will be libertines," remained with her. Doubtless Heath knew himself. She thought of those who have pursued their art through wildness—Heath's expression—with an inflexibility quite marvellous, an order in the midst of disorder, which to the onlooker seems no less than a miracle. But they were surely Bohemians born, and full of characteristics that were racial. Such characteristics did not exist in Heath, she thought. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... loss to discover an adequate cause. An oak, for instance, which loses its leaves in a St. Helena winter of 68 degrees, scarcely experiences the difference of temperature, which, reasoning by analogy, could cause that change. It would have continued to maintain inflexibility, in its original climate, its old habits, though exposed to far greater irregularity and severity of climate. But though the law is obeyed by many plants, it does not determine the periodical changes of the whole, nor do they all submit to it with equal readiness and regularity. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... directly contradict that which Captain Longmore offered at the trial in Clonmel. But while Mr. O'Brien viewed the conduct of Captain Longmore as cowardly submission, it would be unjust to conclude that it imparted a single shade of inflexibility to his principles or purpose. On the contrary, they assumed their attributes of most rigid sternness as his fortunes became clouded by a deeper gloom. He was averse to everything which bore the stamp of desperation, or could possibly ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... influencing me," exclaimed Mr. Talboys, who, taking a stand upon his own vanity, traced every event in life from that one center, and resolutely declined to look at it from any other point of view. "For the purpose of influencing me. He knew the inflexibility of my character; to a certain degree he was acquainted with me, and knew that all attempts at softening my decision, or moving me from the fixed purpose of my life, would fail. He therefore tried extraordinary means; he has kept out of the way in order to alarm me, and when after due time ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... de Montgeron had no children, and her most tender affections were concentrated upon her husband and her brother. The scruples which caused the latter to forswear matrimony grieved her deeply, for, knowing the inflexibility of his character, she was sure that no one in the world could ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... efficient discharge of duties. The mistress must not lose her temper. She must be calm, imperturbable, and dignified, always. If she gives an order, she must insist, at whatever personal cost, that it shall be obeyed. Pertinacity and inflexibility on this ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... felt in the army, and his patronage being almost unlimited, it was natural, they say, that he should be received with cheers. From a lieutenant up to a general, all are dependent on his favor for promotion. At all events, his austerity and inflexibility have been relaxed, and he has made popular speeches wherever he has gone. I hope good fruits will ensue. But he returns to find the people here almost in a state of starvation in the midst of plenty, brought on by the knavery ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... possible misfortune to Miranda, which, by this untimely arrest, he was powerless to avert. Knowing nothing of the true contents of the letter which Philip had substituted for the one received from Beverly, he could not imagine an excuse for the marshal's inflexibility. He was quite ill, too, and what with fever and agitation, his brain was in a whirl. He leaned against the chair, faint and dispirited. The painful cough, the harbinger of that fatal malady which had already brought a sister to an early grave, oppressed him, and the hectic ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... are dignified by the name of Hung-mou, or Red-heads, and the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and others, who visit China, have each a name in the language of the country totally distinct from that they bear in Europe. This inflexibility in retaining the words of their own poor language has frequently made me think, that Doctor Johnson had the Chinese in his mind when, in that inimitable piece of fine writing which prefaces his dictionary, he made this remark: "The language ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... of this fine young man touched us all. Every body was whispering about him; every body pitying him; the more, that there appeared no means of saving him. Every one knew well the necessity of punishing this double treason, and the inflexibility of Alexei Petrovitch in matters of this publicity: and, therefore, no one dared to intercede for the unfortunate culprit. The commander-in-chief was unusually thoughtful for the remainder of the evening, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... I suffer most from the unrivalled delicacy of her sentiments, I cannot but admire. Ah, cruel Matilda, and will not one banishment satisfy the inflexibility of thy temper, will not all my past sufferings suffice to glut thy severity? Is it still necessary that the happiness of months must be sacrificed to the inexorable laws of decorum? Must I seek in distant climes a mitigation of my fate? Yes, too amiable tyrant, thou shalt ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... Johns, she lives still,—scarce older to appearance than twenty years before,—prim, wiry, active,—proof against all ailments, it would seem. It is hard to conceive of her as yielding to the great conqueror. If the tongue and an inflexibility of temper were the weapons, she would whip Death from her chamber at the last. It seems like amiability almost to hear such a one as she talk of her approaching, inevitable dissolution,—so kindly in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... that Von Weissman is a martyr to sea-sickness—all day he has been lying down as white as a sheet and subsisting on milk tablets and sips of brandy; yet such is the man's inflexibility of will that he forces himself to make a tour of inspection right round the boat every six hours, night and day. It is this will to conquer which has made Germans unconquerable, though "Come the four corners of the world in arms" against us, ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... you please,' interrupted M. de Veron. 'The affair, as I have told you, is decided. You will marry Mademoiselle de Merode; or if not, he added with iron inflexibility of tone and manner—'Eugene de Veron is likely to benefit very little by his father's wealth, which the said Eugene will do well to remember is of a kind not very difficult of transference beyond the range of the law of inheritance ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... the Pope, moved at last from his usual inflexibility, "Do you hear that, Domenico?" turning excitedly to ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... characteristic that she made the statement with a perfectly quiet gravity which almost concealed the evidently tough inflexibility beneath. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... out of Rome, abolish the republic, and, together with the citizens, return to their duty. After much hesitation, and some attempts to procure a modification of such sweeping terms,—attempts which the inflexibility of the pope entirely frustrated,—those terms were accepted. On their completion, Adrian revoked the interdict, held his triumphant entry into Rome, and celebrated in the church of St. John Lateran, with great ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... Penn appears the greatest, usefullest of God's instruments. Firm and unbending when the exigency requires it—soft and yielding when rigid inflexibility is not a desideratum—fluent and flowing, at need, for eloquent rapidity—slow and retentive in cases of deliberation—never spluttering or by amplification going wide of the mark—never splitting, if it can be helped, with any one, but ready to wear itself out rather in their ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... her a source of regret, and she had on several occasions, although in the most delicate and unobtrusive manner, hinted at the fact; but the man who doated upon her, and to whom, in all other respects, her desire was law, evinced so much inflexibility in all that appertained to military etiquette, that she had never ventured to carry her allusions beyond the light commentary induced by casual reference to ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... a tall, hard-featured lady, but by no means ill-looking. There was an inflexibility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and carriage, amply sufficient to account for the effect she had made upon a gentle creature like my mother; but her features were rather handsome than otherwise, though unbending and austere. I particularly noticed ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... education, and religion, with the relief from those conventions that nearly all soldiers and many civilians experience in time of war; for although war has its too gross and ugly side, it has not dared to learn that inflexibility of custom and conduct that deadens the spirit into a tame submission. This strange rebound and exaltation would seem to be due less to the physical realities of war—which must in many ways cramp and constrain the individual—than ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... is not, I am inclined to believe, a man of excitable temperament. His mind is of a cast too martial to be easily moved; but, notwithstanding his habitual inflexibility, I cannot help thinking, that when he heard his countrymen (for we are his countrymen) designated by a phrase so offensive he ought to have recalled the many fields of fight in which we have been contributors to his renown. Yes, ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... possess. And drink is peculiarly fitted to bring out this perverse quality—drink that blurs all the conventionalities, even those built up into moral ideas by centuries and ages of unbroken custom. The human animal, for all its pretenses of inflexibility, is almost infinitely adaptable—that is why it has risen in several million years of evolution from about the humblest rank in the mammalian family to overlordship of the universe. Still, it is doubtful if, without drink to help her, a girl of Susan's intelligence and temperament would have ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... knew an ordinary, not bad sort of a fellow, captain, but no hero. I have had one or two qualities which have pushed me up—a skill—craft with using words, as you have with tools, for instance, an inflexibility of purpose, a certain tact in influencing large bodies of men. I have never had any affection for them. I have two or three stanch friends. Other men and women are part of the world's furniture to me. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... Marcelle's retreat to welcome him. He came to see our new abode, and add his satisfaction to our happiness. He was a gentle stoic, whose courage had ever served as a bulwark to the weak, and whose inflexibility was but another name for entire self-abnegation; he was indulgent to all, because he never forgave himself, and ever veiled severity in gentleness. His wisdom partook neither of arrogance nor passion; it descended to the level of your comprehension, and while pointing upwards, ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... the Para Indians are applicable, of course, to some extent, to the Mamelucos, who now constitute a great proportion of the population. The inflexibility of character of the Indian, and his total inability to accommodate himself to new arrangements, will infallibly lead to his extinction, as immigrants, endowed with more supple organisations, increase, and civilisation ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... ordinary man to succumb to the fascinations of a woman. She had experienced his obstinacy, and knew the inflexibility of his nature. His determination was a rock against which she had been broken too many times not to know its strength. For a moment she despaired, then courage came to her again, thrusting away the doubts that crowded in upon her and leaving the hope that still lingered in her heart. A faint ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... establish the law of the celibacy of the clergy, and to take the patronage of ecclesiastical dignities out of the hands of the laity. He was eminently qualified for this undertaking by the severity of his manners, and the inflexibility of his resolution ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... chapter, a long time after the Scud had disappeared. The rigidity of his limbs seemed permanent; and none but a man accustomed to put his muscles to the severest proof could have maintained that posture, with its marble-like inflexibility, for so great a length of time. At length he moved away from the spot; the motion of the body being preceded by a sigh that seemed to heave up from the ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... in his belief that the crime had been committed by Bucholz, and being a man of stern inflexibility of mind, and of a determined disposition, he was resolved that justice should be done and the guilty parties brought ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... raging zeal, by which he was, indeed, so much distinguished, that, in a satire mentioned by Wood, he is dignified by the title of archvisiter; an appellation which he seems to have been industrious to deserve by severity and inflexibility; for, not contented with the commission which he and his colleagues had already received, he procured six or seven of the members of parliament to meet privately in Mr. Rouse's lodgings, and assume the style and authority of a committee, and from them obtained a more extensive and tyrannical ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... alleged), but melancholic, dignified, and for that reason, if there had been no other, anti-mercurial. But the main cause of this reserve lay in the infrequency of visits consequent upon the difficulties of local movement. The other frost lay in the Spanish stateliness and the inflexibility of our social ceremonies. Our social meetings of this period, even for purposes of pleasure, were true solemnities. With usage of politeness that laid a weight of silence and delay upon every movement of a social company, rapid motion of thought or fancy became in a ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... to give a character to that meeting. Mr. Stoddard had a frail body, and an almost feminine grace of person, like the popular impression of that disciple who leaned on the bosom of his Lord; but, like that disciple, he had strength of principle and inflexibility of purpose. His consecration to the missionary work was no sudden impulse. It was the result of repeated, and sometimes unexpected, meetings and conferences with Dr. Perkins, whose sagacious eye had marked him for a missionary. But the question once settled, it was settled for life. He went whole-souled ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... remarkable in the history of nations), these analogous circumstances have not effaced the individual features, or the shades of character which distinguish the American tribes. We observe in the men of copper hue, a moral inflexibility, a steadfast perseverance in habits and manners, which, though modified in each tribe, characterise essentially the whole race. These peculiarities are found in every region; from the equator to Hudson's Bay on the one hand, and to the Straits of Magellan on the other. They are ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... duke, received from the same fund 225l. annually, which was sweetened by a prompt payment of 2,500l., being ten years in advance; and that the coachmen and lackeys of the grand duke and generals received money from the same fund, instead of wages from their masters. As the inflexibility and integrity of those gentlemen were proof against all bribes, the generals foresaw the impending storm which threatened to break and overwhelm them. In this critical situation, they conceived one of the most atrocious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... gold and animated bronze. This pupil has depth; it is not underlaid, as in certain eyes, by a species of foil, which sends back the light and makes such eyes resemble those of cats or tigers; it has not that terrible inflexibility which makes a sensitive person shudder; but this depth has in it something of the infinite, just as the external radiance of the eyes suggests the absolute. The glance of an observer may be lost in that soul, which gathers itself up and retires ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... critic of constitutions, writes in the "Nation," October 8, 1885: "The Referendum must be considered, on the whole, a conservative arrangement. It tends at once to hinder rapid change and also to get rid of that inflexibility or immutability which, in the eyes of Englishmen at least, is a defect in the constitution ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts:[152] they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when[153] the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the murdering scene, the obdurate inflexibility of purpose with which she drives on Macbeth to the execution of their project, and her masculine indifference to blood and death, would inspire unmitigated disgust and horror, but for the involuntary consciousness that it is produced rather by the exertion of a strong power over herself, than ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... middle classes. No reforms of importance took place. Even Guizot was as much opposed to electoral extension as the Duke of Wellington. The king in his old age became obstinate and callous, and would not listen to advisers. The Prince de Joinville himself complained to his brother of the inflexibility of his father. "His own will," said he, "must prevail over everything. There are no longer any ministers. Everything ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... wreak your vengeance on the life that remains. Tush! judge and condemner of thousands, do you hesitate,—do you imagine that the man who voluntarily offers himself to death will be daunted into uttering one syllable at your Bar against his will? Have you not had experience enough of the inflexibility of pride and courage? President, I place before you the ink and implements! Write to the jailer a reprieve of one day for the woman whose life can avail you nothing, and I will bear the order to my own prison: I, who can now tell this much as an earnest ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... its obstinate resolutions, both as regards good and evil in the world, which are by no means inferior to the inflexibility of ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... questioned her. After the slovenly methods of Madame, after the loose reasoning and the muddled thinking of all the women she met in the course of her work, there was a positive pleasure in following the exactness and inflexibility of his logic. His reasoning was orderly, neat, elastic, without loose ends or tangled skeins to unravel, and she felt again, while she listened to him, the confidence which had come to her as soon as she entered his office. He was efficiency incarnate, and from her childhood up she had respected ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... like compunction at having deprived him of an opportunity to prove his assertions. Every gentle look and insinuating accent reappeared to my memory, and I more than half repented my inflexibility. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... went up to look at the body. Under the pure white sheet a quilted counter-pane had been placed, for now, more than ever, Aunt Ann had need of warmth; and, the pillows removed, her spine and head rested flat, with the semblance of their life-long inflexibility; the coif banding the top of her brow was drawn on either side to the level of the ears, and between it and the sheet her face, almost as white, was turned with closed eyes to the faces of her brothers and sisters. In its extraordinary peace the face was stronger than ever, nearly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... door and loaded with brushwood, lashed out with its hoofs at a negro, who at once began to batter it passionately with a pole, and a long line of sneering camels confronted them, treading stealthily, and turning their serpentine necks from side to side as they came onwards with a soft and weary inflexibility. In the distance there was a vision of a glaring market-place crowded with moving ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... superior; nay, one might ask, what equal he has? The heart of him is of the true Prophet cast. "He lies there," said the Earl of Morton at his grave, "who never feared the face of man." He resembles, more than any of the moderns, an old Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking adherence to God's truth, stern rebuke in the name of God to all that forsake truth: an old Hebrew prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh minister of the sixteenth century. We are to take him for that; not require ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... with me, young man," said my father, whose inflexibility always possessed the air of the most perfect calmness of self-possession. "Can not may be a more civil phrase than will not, but the expressions are synonymous where there is no moral impossibility. But I am not a friend to doing business ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... to profit from his discoveries, at least I have freely and largely dissented from him, where he appeared to me to wander from the path of truth. For my own part, I am persuaded that it can only be by striking off something of inflexibility from his system, and something of pedantry from the common one, that we can expect to furnish a medium, equally congenial to the elegance of civilization, and the ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... place in the afternoon of the day succeeding his return; perhaps, because the boys acquired strength of mind from the suspense of the morning, or, possibly, because Mr Squeers himself acquired greater sternness and inflexibility from certain warm potations in which he was wont to indulge after his early dinner. Be this as it may, the boys were recalled from house-window, garden, stable, and cow-yard, and the school were assembled in ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... hurt her as at that moment of gentleness, compunction, and inflexibility, and thought, for a moment, was obscured by a rush of bitter pain that could almost have cast her upon his breast, weeping and suppliant for all that his words shut ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... mingled the rather reckless grace of French cleverness with a reserved style and refined pride gained from the English blood of the Maldens. For his part, Felix really loved the girl, and had let his impatience, that very day, carry him into a step that failed to move the elder Montmorot's inflexibility. He refused absolutely to give his daughter to a man without fortune or prospects. Felix was crushed, his hopes all shattered at a blow, by this answer, though he had a thousand reasons to expect it. And at what a moment! A half-unfolded ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... materials as to secure this effect. He was intensely self-critical; and while almost without conceit concerning his own work, he had an accuracy of detached estimation that enabled him to stand by his own opinion with a proper inflexibility when his judgment convinced him that the ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard
... the inflexibility of the Governor, the issue of this business was different at Boston from what it was elsewhere. The whole cargoes of tea were returned from New York and Philadelphia; that which was sent to Charleston was landed and stored, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... has a love for the sciences; he must at the same time be deeply skilled in them; and is obliged to dispute the seat with competitors who are so much the more formidable as they are fired by a principle of glory, by interest, by the difficulty itself; and by that inflexibility of mind which is generally found in those who devote themselves to ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... that she was the better of the two. But even so, the difference entitled her to authority on the subject with Anna-Felicitas, and by dint of doing all her calculations roughly, as she was careful to describe her method, she allowed room for withdrawal and escape where otherwise the inflexibility of figures might have caught her tight and held her down while Anna-Felicitas looked on and was unable to ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... amazed than any other human being. Here his character displayed itself; he was more amazed than overcome. Made a judge, and the judge of an adored woman, he found in his soul the equity of a judge as well as the inflexibility. A lover still, he thought less of his own shattered life than of his wife's life; he listened, not to his own anguish, but to some far-off voice that cried to him, "Clemence cannot lie! Why should ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... loved and never married. Now in the retrospect and with a mind full of bitter enlightenment, I can do Meredith justice, and admit the conflict was not only essential but cardinal in his picture, that the terrible inflexibility of the rich aunts and the still more terrible claim of Mrs. Burman Radnor, the "infernal punctilio," and Dudley Sowerby's limitations, were the central substance of that inalertness the book set itself to ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... tight grip of the rugged, uncultured country gentleman who sits remote and neglected close to him. There are the tightness and firmness of a death-trap in the large, strong mouth, a dangerous gleam in the steady eyes, infinite powers of firmness, inflexibility, and of even cruelty in the whole expression, not in the least softened, but rather heightened and exalted by the pretty constant smile—the smile that indicates the absence alike of the heat of passion or the touch of pity, and that speaks aloud of the unquestioning ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... sturdy cottage, with a grim endurance and inflexibility which even some later and lighter additions had softened rather than changed. On either side of the door, against the bleak whitewashed wall, two tall fuchsias relieved the rigid blankness with a show of color. The windows were prettily draped with curtains caught up with gay ribbons. In a stony ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... together in this spot. He promised their friends that they should meet them again in a better world. He said that a virtuous life secured us this happiness; he said: do good to mankind, that God may heal in your heart the wound of grief. He testified his astonishment at the inflexibility and hard-heartedness of man, the creature of a day, to his fellow man equally with himself the creature of a day, and seized upon that terrible idea of death, which the living have conceived, but which they will never be able to exhaust. In short, he said nothing that was not affecting and true: ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... infinite deal of misery results from man's helplessness and ignorance and nature's inflexibility in this one matter of crossing the ocean! What agonies of prayer there were during all the long hours that this ship was driving straight on to these fatal rocks, all to no purpose! It struck and crushed just the same. ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... severe—the more severe, no doubt, because the Lords knew that it would not be executed, and that they had an excellent opportunity of exhibiting, at small cost, the inflexibility of their justice, and their abhorrence of corruption. Bacon was condemned to pay a fine of forty thousand pounds, and to be imprisoned in the Tower during the King's pleasure. He was declared incapable of holding any office in the State ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the early ages of the gospel? "Within a few years after Christ, the Christian martyrologies are full of the names of female sufferers, who, for Jesus' sake, went to the stake, with all the courage and inflexibility of apostles." ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... Blanchard knew inflexibility when he saw it; and he knew Stewart Morrison when it came to matters of business. He did not attempt argument. "Well, I'll be good and cahootedly ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... reputation of learning and piety which this prelate enjoyed in common with so many of his clerical contemporaries, he added an extraordinary earnestness in the promotion of Christian knowledge, and a courageous inflexibility on points of professional duty, imitated by few and excelled by none. His manly spirit disdained that slavish obsequiousness by which too many of his episcopal brethren paid homage to the narrow prejudices and state-jealousies of an imperious mistress, and it soon became ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... useless. The old man opposite him had a manner as deft and unassuming as his own; it masked a cynical inflexibility of ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... several hundred different tribes in Amazonia, each having a different language; even the scattered members of the same tribe can not understand each other.[181] This segregation of dialects is due in great part to the inflexibility of Indian character, and his isolated and narrow round of thought and life. When and where the Babel existed, whence the many branches of the great Tupi family separated, we know not. We only know that though different ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... the commencement of the Consulate affords an example of Bonaparte's inflexibility when he had once formed a determination. In the spring of 1799, when we were in Egypt, the Directory gave to General Latour-Foissac, a highly distinguished officer, the command of Mantua, the taking of which had so powerfully contributed to the glory ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... decisive, and having once formed an opinion, there was scarcely any possibility in changing it. This, indeed, was the worst and most impracticable point about him; for as it often happened that his opinions were based upon imperfect or erroneous data, it consequently followed that his inflexibility was but another name for obstinacy, and not unfrequently ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... in character. We admire people who stand for something; who are centered in truth and honesty. It is not necessary that they agree with us. We admire them for their strength, the honesty of their opinions, the inflexibility of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Forester's letter, not merely a willingness, but an alacrity and impatience, to return. We procured a second horse. We proceeded on our journey in silence. My mind was occupied again in endeavouring to account for Mr. Forester's letter. I knew the inflexibility and sternness of Mr. Falkland's mind in accomplishing the purposes he had at heart; but I also knew that every virtuous and magnanimous principle was ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... the use of representative themes, an illustration of which was also noted in "The Redemption." The first one, consisting of four notes, presenting a sequence of three major seconds, is intended to express "the terror inspired by the sense of the inflexibility of justice and, in consequence, by that of the anguish of punishment. Its sternness gives expression both to the sentences of divine justice and the sufferings of the condemned, and is found in combination ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... or movement they eyed one another. In his heart each hated the other, but in David the hate had come suddenly, the hysteric growth of a night's anguish. The mountain man's was tempered by a process of slow-firing to a steely inflexibility. He hated David that he had ever been his rival, that he had ever thought to lay claim to the woman who was his, that he had ever aspired to her, touched her, desired her. He hated him when he saw that, all unconsciously, he had ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... now proceeding at the Dardanelles will give him (Mr. Balfour) the opportunity of using that quality of cool, calm courage and inflexibility which fifteen years ago prevented Ladysmith from being left to its fate and surrendered to the enemy. I have two things to say to you ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various |
