"Inflexible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a woman's word, instant, inflexible, desperate. With a deep breath Hare realized where the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... foundered, had with some others got into the long Boat, and was taken up by a Ship at Sea, and carried to the East Indies, where in a little Time he made a large Fortune; and the Pirates who took his Daughter, attempted to rob her of her Chastity; but finding her Inflexible, and determined to die rather than to submit, some of them behaved to her in a very cruel Manner; but others, who had more Honour and Generosity, became her Defenders; upon which a Quarrel arose between them, and the Captain, who was the worst of the Gang, being killed, the rest of the ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... inch thick; and beneath it is a layer of fat, also an inch or more in thickness. The fins of the fore-limbs consist of bones exactly corresponding to those of the human arm, with five fingers at the extremity—every joint distinct, although completely encased in its thick inflexible skin. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... beautiful from the artistic point of view, was "out of place and altogether incongruous in a group of sonnets so entirely spiritual as The House of Life," and Rossetti gave way: but upon the subject of Wordsworth in his relations to Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley, he was quite inflexible to the last. ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... was one of unbroken Whig ascendancy. This was, of course, the period of the development of the cabinet system, and between the rise of that system and the growth of government by party there was an intimate and inevitable connection. By the close of the eighteenth century the rule had become inflexible that the cabinet should be composed of men who were in sympathy with the party at the time dominant in the House of Commons, and that the returning by the nation to the representative chamber of a majority adverse to the ruling ministry should be ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... the infancy of his reason, man spoke to the sun and the moon; he animated with his understanding and his passions the great agents of nature; he thought by vain sounds and useless practices to change their inflexible laws. Fatal error! He desired that the water should ascend, the mountains be removed, the stone mount in the air; and substituting a fantastic to a real world, he constituted for himself beings of opinion, to the terror of his mind and ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... expression of it were unique, and yet made up of the most complex elements;—simple, yet incomprehensible; strong, yet gentle; inflexible, yet conciliating; human, yet most rare; the strangest, and yet for all in all the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... to execute. Without anything like brilliancy of genius, without breadth of learning or literary accomplishments, he had that perfect balance of thoroughly sound faculties which gave him the reputation of an almost infallible judgment. This, combined with great calmness of temper, inflexible firmness of will, supreme moral purpose, and intense patriotism made up just that character which fitted him, as the same qualities fitted Washington, for the salvation of his country in a period of stupendous responsibility ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... bother me with your flatteries." Frau Regine's face was as inflexible as ever, but her voice had a certain unsteadiness which made Hartmut feel he had won the day. He laid his arm upon her shoulder with the freedom of ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... sockets. His whole frame twitched, and his fingers writhed. But he was in the presence of a man infinitely his superior. Two eyes, like those of a snake, burned two holes through him. An overmastering, inflexible presence confronted one weak and passionate. ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... brought her first-born son—aged two days—and established him in my bedroom closet, the plan struck me at the start as inconvenient. I had prepared another nursery for the little Claudius Nero, and I endeavored for a while to convince his mother that my arrangements were best. But Agrippina was inflexible. The closet suited her in every respect; and, with charming and irresistible flattery, she gave me to understand, in the mute language I knew so well, that she wished her baby boy to be under ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... chief holiday was to go to a cricket match, which he did as if he was going to church, and he watched critically, applauded sparingly, and was darkly offended by any unorthodox play. His convictions upon all subjects were taciturnly inflexible. He was an obstinate player of draughts and chess, and an earnest and persistent reader of the British Weekly. His wife was a pink, short, wilfully smiling, managing, ingratiating, talkative woman, who was determined to be pleasant, and take ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... an unusual man, who comprehended conditions in the South and was disposed to improve them in every feasible way by using the resources at his command. He had no inflexible program and was willing to modify his plans to fit changing conditions. The income of the Fund appears small in this day of munificent foundations, but it seemed large then; and its effects were far-reaching. Sears was not an educational reformer in the modern ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... any man except her brother? Valerie does. What girl would be fearless enough to ignore the cast-iron fetters of her caste? Valerie West is a law unto herself—a law as sweet and good and excellent and as inflexible as any law made by men to restrain women's liberty, arouse them to unhappy self-consciousness and infect them with suspicion. Every one of you are the terrified slaves of custom, and you know it. Most ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... whole days Angelique wept and entreated her father, but in vain. She felt that he would be inflexible and that she must end by submitting to ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... some qualities which are requisite to a good gladiolus, but this demand does not draw close or inflexible lines. There are hundreds of varieties in existence which possess the necessary traits in a considerable degree, and more are being produced every year by the growing of seedlings. This breadth of variation gives room for the exercise of individual tastes equally ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford
... Lery, that model of blue-blooded elegance, was not the person to encourage any plebeian in basking in the smiles of aristocratic society. There was an inflexible honour in him, as well as pride, which was desperately shocked by the contrivings of Lecour. He therefore detailed the story, without any heat but without any mercy, to the mess-table ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... reply than that of taking the suspicious Benedick in his arms, and throwing him headlong out of the window. Luckily he fell upon a dunghill! In the year 1789, upon a clergyman's complaining to him of the inflexible determination of a great lord to hunt upon his grounds—"Mettez-lui une messe dans le ventre"—repiled [Transcriber's Note: replied] Rive. The clergyman expressing his ignorance of the nature of the advice given, the facetious ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... it is not; your base insults have ordained it otherwise. That passionate and tender love does not exist any longer; you have cruelly killed it in my heart by a hundred keen wounds. In its place stands an inflexible wrath, a lively resentment, an invincible indignation, the despair of a heart justly incensed, which resolves to hate you for this grievous injury, as much as it was willing to love you; that is to say to hate as ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... he knew it to be best...Best? And it had brought him to this?...The question would not down. Rather than relax an iota from his own purposes he had broken up his family; he had crushed them under the wheels of his inflexible will, and now that same will had driven his son to destruction and ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... the same cheerful, hopeful courage in their uplifted faces with which for twenty years they have sung of the good time almost here, of every reform; there stood William Lloyd Garrison, stern Puritan, inflexible apostle, his work gloriously done in one reform, lending the weight of his unwearied, solid intellect to that which he believes is the last needed; there was Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis, a Roman matron in figure, her noble head covered with clustering ringlets of white, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... he had lost, but what sums we were bound to pay him. Thus he made five-fold profits; his contract gave him the right to do so. We begged and entreated him to be content with smaller gain—for it was only a question of more or less gain, not of loss—but he was inflexible; he required from the sureties the satisfaction of his claims in full. What is the use, say I, of faith and religion, and all Christian and Jewish churches, if it is permitted to make such ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... great orations, was just at the threshold of his brilliant career. Charles Francis Adams, who had served respectably but without great distinction, in each branch of the Legislature, brought to the cause his inflexible courage, his calm judgment, and the inspiration of his historic name. John A. Andrew, then a young lawyer in Boston, afterward to become illustrious as the greatest war Governor in the Union, devoted ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... "Madam," declared the inflexible secretary with a derisive appreciation which bowed her once proud head upon her shamed breast, "you are all I thought you when I took you from Crabbe's back-pantry in Boone to make you the honor and glory of a life which I knew then, as well as I do now, ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... the Scottish chief, as well by his majestic port as by the intrepid activity of his behavior, called out to him, and desired a short conference. He here represented to Wallace the fruitless and ruinous enterprise in which he was engaged; and endeavored to bend his inflexible spirit to submission under superior power and superior fortune: he insisted on the unequal contest between a weak state, deprived of its head and agitated by intestine discord, and a mighty nation, conducted by the ablest and most martial monarch of the age, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... years, have become much rarer; and perhaps about the end of the third or fourth year, they altogether cease; and pass merely into the formal character. In which state they continued fixed, liable to no uncertainty; and were transacted, to the end of Friedrich's life, with inflexible regularity as the annual reviews were. This is a curious section of his life; which there will be other opportunities of noticing. But there is yet no thought of it anywhere, nor for years to come; though fables to the contrary were once current ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the errand, David laid a hand on Kaid's arm, and whispered to him earnestly. Kaid's savage frown cleared away, and his rage calmed down; but an inflexible look came into his face, a look which petrified the ruined Achmet as he salaamed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... trifling like this. And let me warn you of the danger you incur of turning against you the spirit of such a man. I have studied his character closely, and I see in it an element of firmness that, if it once sets itself, will be as inflexible as iron. If you repeat acts of this kind, the day must come when forbearance will cease; and then, in turning from you, it will be never to turn back again. Harden him against you once, and it will be for ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... stepmother's gentle influence to soften the outraged father's feelings. But Lady Palliser said all that was kindly about Ida's youth and inexperience, her impulsive nature; and a man who has just dropped into L7,000 a year is hardly disposed to be inflexible. Sir Reginald was too generous even to question Brian closely as to his capability of supporting a wife. The man was a gentleman—young, good-looking, with winning manners, and a member of a family in which his daughter had found warm and ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... of the people and of secular authorities, and the further separation of the Church from the ties and sympathies of common life that bound it to humanity. To accuse Hildebrand of personal ambition would be but shallow criticism, though it is clear that his inflexible and puissant nature found a savage selfish pleasure in trampling upon power and humbling pride at warfare with his own. Yet his was in no sense an egotistic purpose like that which moved the Popes of the Renaissance to dismember Italy for their ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... ma'am,' resumed the inflexible beadle, 'by coach. I and two paupers, Mrs. Mann! A legal action is a coming on, about a settlement; and the board has appointed me—me, Mrs. Mann—to dispose to the matter ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... which is taken in the case of the ordinary drive, that is to say, it comes less round the body and keeps on the straight line longer. When it is half-way up it should be about two or three inches outside the course taken for the full straight drive. The object of this is plain. The inflexible rule that as the club goes up so will it come down, is in operation again. The club takes the same line on the return, and after it has struck the ball it naturally, pursuing its own direction, comes inside the line taken in the case of the ordinary drive. The ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... point can escape the doom by shutting himself up? Not he. Fate will take him out hunting, and there will be his steel: Adrastus will hurl his spear at the boar, miss the brute, and get Croesus's son; Fate's inflexible law directs his aim. The full absurdity of the thing is seen ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... subjected should be applied to every character in sacred and secular history, there would be little left among the world's great heroes to admire. So we ask permission to retain the old ideal, and remember the discoverer of our hemisphere as a man of human weaknesses but of stern purpose, inflexible will, undaunted courage, patience, and professional theories most of which modern science has demonstrated ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... bad specimen, but the nature of customary law as we everywhere find it in its earliest stages is that of coarse casual comprehensive usage, beginning, we cannot tell how, deciding, we cannot tell why, but ruling everyone in almost every action with an inflexible grasp. ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... teaching boys dead languages and dead sciences and dead arts; sending them out to life with no more conception of the modern world than a monk of the Middle Ages; sending them out with minds made hard and inflexible, ignorant of science, indifferent to progress, contemptuous of ideas. And then suddenly, almost overnight, this terrified people finds itself at war with a nation ruled and disciplined' by modern experts, scientists and technicians. The awful muddle that was in ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... literature of all other nations being translated into it, they will gradually drop all other tongues. Brother Stiles thinks it will be the Hebrew. I am not clear on that point. The Hebrew seems to me too inflexible, and not sufficiently copious. I do not think," he added, after some consideration, "that it will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... great Washington, the chief motive power in his life was the spirit of duty. It was the regal and commanding element in his character which gave it unity, compactness, and vigour. When he clearly saw his duty before him, he did it at all hazards, and with inflexible integrity. He did not do it for effect; nor did he think of glory, or of fame and its rewards; but of the right thing to be done, and the best way ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... for his voice had once more half escaped from his control. The boy stood before him, cold and inflexible as doom. To the father's eye he had never looked so manly and handsome as he did at this moment, and what with fatherly pride and self pity and a sense of the magnanimity of his own purposes, the emotions of ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... wearying, lingering smart; Yet, ah! I cannot bid her form depart; Though wrong'd, I love her—yet in anger love, For she was most unworthy. Then I prove Vindictive joy: and on my stern front gleams, Throned in dark clouds, inflexible.... The native pride of my ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... so did the White Swan, but her performances were peculiar. She danced with a slowness of manner and a rigidity of person that are utterly indescribable. She looked as if all her joints had become inflexible, except those of her knees, and her arms hung straight down at her sides, while she pendulated about the floor and gazed at the rafters in ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... the sun and on the brine, and a mouth and chin which bespoke decision and self-respect in every line and wrinkle, wherever he moved he produced an impression of one who had survived from a preceding age. Moreover, he was a man of heroic ideals, of Spartan simplicity, and of inflexible discipline. ...
— The Sheriffs Bluff - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... 3-4. Only two varieties are rated exclusively 10, the Garden Royal, a Massachusetts summer-fall apple, little known to planters, and the familiar Esopus Spitzenberg. Of course judgments differ widely in these matters, as there are no inflexible criteria for the scoring of quality; yet this extensive list is probably our ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... didn't come home earlier, Ralph," she said. "I am quite ashamed of my inconsistency. It's nice to think oneself inflexible, isn't it? And then it's humiliating to resolve on a certain course and ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... they reach in daily life, and the impulsiveness with which many of them are made and supported, it becomes evident that precautions against prejudice and intolerance are not at all out of place in their education. The need is emphasized, too, when we realize that many persons adopt inflexible views on so great a number of disputed questions, that they show signs of becoming old fogies quite early in life. "Old fogyism begins at an earlier age than we think," says Professor James. "I am almost afraid to say so, but I believe that in the majority of human beings it begins at about twenty-five." ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... comes upon this evening scene. The interview of the two old men is like a Greek play; their wisdom and experience are uttered in stately, sententious language, and many a proverb falls from their lips. Ramoun has inflexible ideas as to parental authority: "A father is a father, his will must be done. The herd that leads the herdsman, sooner or later, is crunched in the jaws of the wolf. If a son resisted his father in our day, the father would have slain him perhaps! Therefore ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... our age, is not well fitted to the production of striking effects in this particular branch of the arts. Fine carving is displayed, as in the works of Gibbons, by a rich and natural variety, altogether opposed to that faultless and inflexible regularity of operation which is the perfection of a machine. Hence the lathe, with all the miraculous capabilities it has been made to evolve, can never here come into successful competition with the chisel, in so far as the quality and spirit ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... requiring genius, pens, ink, and paper, rather than ready cash. Whenever Tiffles's resources ran short, as they did occasionally, he always borrowed, and paid on the next interest day. In this policy he was inflexible; and he flattered himself on ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... art, she believed in infallible fencers, in marksmen who never missed their aim, and she had also ideas profoundly, absolutely inexact on the relations of one man with another in the matter of an insult. But how can women admit that inflexible rigor in certain cases, which forms the foundation of manly relations, when they themselves allow of a similar rigor neither in their arguments with men, nor in their discussions among themselves? Accustomed always ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... disturbingly quiet. An owl of late habits would have been almost companionable. Upon one point Sally considered herself inflexible. She would not enter the chateau; she might call softly from the outside if it were necessary. If no one replied she would return to the farm and nevermore would the chateau be honored ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... the great Law often enough;—have you ever thought enough of them to know the difference between these two appointed means of Distress? The first, the Thorn, is the type of distress caused by crime, changing the soft and breathing leaf into inflexible and wounding stubbornness. The second is the distress appointed to be the means and herald of good,—Thou shalt see the stubborn thistle bursting, into glossy purple, which outredden, all voluptuous ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... were first in fault. The charge imposed was disproportioned. I have not yet heard of any Polynesian capable of such a burden; honest and upright Hawaiians—one in particular, who was admired even by the whites as an inflexible magistrate—have stumbled in the narrow path of the trustee. And Taniera, when the pinch came, scorned to denounce accomplices; others had shared the spoil, he bore the penalty alone. He was condemned in five years. The period, when I had the pleasure of his friendship, was not yet expired; he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the door is discreetly opened, and the Housekeeper, mild, benign, but inflexible, ENTERS, carrying a cup and toast-rack upon ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... a world of inflexible compensations. Nothing is ever given away, but everything is bought and paid for. If, by exclusive and absolute surrender of ourselves to material pursuits, we materialize the mind, we lose that class of satisfactions of which the mind is the region and the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... watch-tower, and with pretty much the same object; his skin was of that peculiar colour and texture, to which, not all "the water in great Neptune's ocean" could impart a look of cleanliness, while his very voice, hard, harsh, and inflexible, was unprepossessing and unpleasant. And yet, strange as it may seem, he, too, was a correct type of his order; the only difference being, that Father Malachi was an older coinage, with the impress of Donay or St. Omers, whereas Mister Donovan was the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... honour to inform you. A vizard is a contrivance for concealment, whether in silk and pasteboard or in an inflexible visage—whether in a woman who wants to disguise her features, or in a man who wants to hide his heart—whether in a masquerader or an assassin. For example, when I hear a hypocrite talk of his honesty, an intriguer of his conscience, a renegade of his candour, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... sunrise always, and at work with his eyes and his heart if not with his hands. A beautiful object too is such a one to contemplate, a pure virgin soul, a creature gentle, pious, and full of love, endowed with sweet gifts, humble and timid; but for truth's and justice's sake inflexible, thankful to God and man, fond, patient, and faithful. Clive was still his hero as ever, his patron, his splendid young prince and chieftain. Who was so brave, who was so handsome, generous, witty as Clive? To hear Clive sing, as the lad would whilst they were seated at their work, or driving ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... saving, it was possible that a reduction of fifty pounds a year might have been accomplished. But as soon as Mr. Smithson touched on larger economies, such as either affected the welfare of others, or the honour and standing of the great House of Hanbury, she was inflexible. Her establishment consisted of somewhere about forty servants, of whom nearly as many as twenty were unable to perform their work properly, and yet would have been hurt if they had been dismissed; ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... we bend the mind of the person to whom we pray, so that he may do what is asked of him. But God's mind is unchangeable and inflexible, according to 1 Kings 15:29, "But the Triumpher in Israel will not spare, and will not be moved to repentance." Therefore it is not fitting that ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Miss Howe's next letter may blow thee up. In policy thou shouldest be now at least honest. Thou canst not live without her. Thou wouldest rather marry her than lose her absolutely. Thou mayest undoubtedly prevail upon her, inflexible as she seems to be, for marriage. But if now she finds thee a villain, thou mayest never more engage her attention, and she perhaps ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... incapable of taking the slightest interest whatever in architecture, or in anything else; and not infrequently they seem to be even more immovable objects than the buildings themselves, so fixed and inflexible are they. Such figures as these only detract from the interest of the drawing, instead of adding to it, and the draughtsman who has no special aptitude is wise in either omitting them altogether, or in using very few, and is perhaps still ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... had even a prejudicial influence on versification in Tragedy. The older dramatists could elevate or lower the tone of their Iambics at pleasure; from the exclusion of this verse from familiar dialogue, it has become more pompous and inflexible. Shakspeare's comic scenes, it is true, are also written, for the most part, in prose; but in the Mixed Comedy, which has a serious, wonderful, or pathetic side, the prose, mixed with the elevated language of verse, serves to mark the contrast between ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... long applied the name truth pre-eminently to fiction. When the conviction first dawned upon pragmatists that there was no absolute or eternal truth, what they evidently were thinking of was that it is folly, in this changing world, to pledge oneself to any final and inflexible creed. The pursuit of truth, since nothing better was possible, was to be accepted instead of the possession of it. But it is characteristic of Protestantism that, when it gives up anything, it transfers to what remains the unction, and often the name, proper to what it has abandoned. So, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... that, Mirliflor," said the inflexible old Fairy. "And what you fear will not happen again. To begin with, that serpent ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... this law is not a matter of persuasion. It is the inflexible condition with which religious and ethical institutions are confronted. Churches should therefore estimate their policies by the responses of the marginal people of the community. Religious standards of value should be measured by final utility, not initial utility. ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... contempt he always mentions Lafayette—a man of limited views, it is true; and whose views at the time were wide enough? or to whom would the widest views have afforded a practical guidance?—but a man of honour and of patriotic intentions! It is "Lafayette—thin, constitutional pedant; clear, thin, inflexible, as water turned to thin ice." And how are the whole party of the Gironde treated with slight and derision, because, at a period of what proved to be irremediable confusion—when nothing but the whirlwind was to be reaped—they were incessantly striving to realize for their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... dealer is followed by two passes and an overbid by the right-hand adversary, the dealer is frequently placed in a doubtful position as to whether he should advance his own bid. Some authorities contend that with less than six tricks he should wait for his partner, and while no inflexible rule can be made to cover all such cases, the follower of this proposition has probably adopted ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... muskets. Of Barebone, also, and his crochetty, impracticable fellows, Cromwell had soon enough; and, in despair of all aid but from his own brain and hand, he then took the title of Lord Protector, and became the most inflexible and wisest monarch we have ever had, or indeed ever hope to have. Barebone is first heard of in local history as preaching in 1641, together with Mr. Greene, a felt-maker, at a conventicle in Fetter Lane, a place always renowned for its heterodoxy. The thoughtless Cavaliers, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... which criticism has really nothing to do with. Its business is, as I have said, simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas. Its business is to do this with inflexible honesty, with due ability; but its business is to do no more, and to leave alone all questions of practical consequences and applications, questions which will never fail to have due prominence given to them. Else criticism, besides being really false to its own nature, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... proud and inflexible in this breath!" said Estella, opening her hands. "And in his last breath reproached me for stooping to ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... clangor of arms again burst upon the ear of Europe. France was the arena of woe upon which the Catholics and the Protestants of England and of the Continent hurled themselves against each other. Catharine, breathing vengeance, headed the Catholic armies. Jeanne, calm yet inflexible, was recognized as at the head of the Protestant leaders, and was alike the idol of the common soldiers and of their generals. The two contending armies, after various marchings and countermarchings, met at Rochelle. ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Deity, in their nightly meetings. In form, he was certainly an Episcopalian, though not a sectary of that denomination. On the other hand, Richard was as rigid in the observance of the canons of his church as he was inflexible in his opinions. Indeed, he had once or twice essayed to introduce the Episcopal form of service, on the Sundays that the pulpit was vacant; but Richard was a good deal addicted to carrying things to an excess, and then there was some thing so papal in his air that the greater part of his hearers ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... while the cardinal principles of justice are immutable, the methods by which justice is administered are subject to constant fluctuation, and that the Constitution of the United States, which is necessarily and to a large extent inflexible and exceedingly difficult of amendment, should not be so construed as to deprive the states of the power to amend their laws so as to make them conform to the wishes of the citizens as they may deem best for the public welfare without bringing them into conflict with the supreme law of the land. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... embroil France, "it was my duty, as her commissioner, to see that the measure was effectively performed." But the appearance of leaving the army, on the very eve of important service, was not to be argued, or even commanded, away. The duke was equally inflexible, though his sentences were perhaps shorter than mine; and I finally left his presence, declaring, that if the request were persisted in, I should throw up my commission at once, volunteer as a common trooper into the first squadron which would admit me, and then, his highness, might, of course, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... the utmost kindness, but also with inflexible determination. The Frenchman still looked dubious, but quite obviously he did not feel equal to a battle of wills with his resolute host. He uttered a sigh and said ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... the states of His Holiness the Pope, there is none of that absolute and inflexible adherence to certain rigid forms and rules which gives to many of the proceedings of our courts that character of an inevitable destiny-like march which is so dramatic in its operations—that sense of the presence ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... inflexible et jaloux, Votre Fils est mort pour nous! Aussi, je reste envers Vous Si bien sans rancune, Que je voudrais, sans facon, Faire, au seuil de ma prison, Quelque petite oraison ... Je n'en ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... ... constrained bodily into submission ... apparent submission at least ... by that worst and most dishonouring of necessities, the necessity of living, everyone of them all, except myself, being dependent in money-matters on the inflexible will ... do you see? But what you do not see, what you cannot see, is the deep tender affection behind and below all those patriarchal ideas of governing grown up children 'in the way they must ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... your importunity to lend you money without a bond, or the proud man to yield you the better place, or the ambitious man to surrender some office to you when he might take it himself. For truly it would seem monstrous that, while such remain firm and inflexible and unmoveable in their vicious propensities, we who wish to be, and profess to be, men of honour and justice should be so little masters of ourselves as to abandon and betray virtue. For indeed, if those who ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... governing body is diseased. The honest men who may find themselves involved in any inferior part of the administration will either fall into discouraged acquiescence, or break their hearts and ruin their fortunes in hopeless revolt. Nothing but long years of untiring effort and inflexible will on the part of the ruler, with power to change his agents at his discretion, can ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... only praise for Burbank; his enemies, and those who had doubted his independence and had suspected him of willingness to do anything to further his personal ambitions, admitted that he had shown "fearless courage, inflexible honesty, and the highest ideals of private sacrifice to public duty." And they eagerly exaggerated him, to make his white contrast more vividly with the black of the "satanic spawn" in the legislature. His fame spread, carried far and wide by the sentimentality in that supposed ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... enthusiastic for the same object, yet so coldly contemptuous to the enthusiasm of the other. The one guided only by his poetical and erratic tastes, the other solely by dreams, seeming to the world no less baseless, yet, to his own mind, bearing the name of stern judgment and inflexible truth. Both men of active and adventurous spirits, to whom forms were fetters and ceremonies odious; yet, deriving from that mutual similarity only pity for mutual perversion, they were memorable instances of the great differences congeniality itself ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the writer remarks, "that their place of honor and privilege rests upon the degradation of others as its basis, they will never rest till they have either abandoned it or sought for it some other pedestal. If our inflexible marriage system has for its essential condition the existence side by side with it of prostitution, then one of two things follows: either prostitution must be shown to be compatible with the well-being, moral and physical, of the women who ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... was one of the most despotic and, at the same time, one of the ablest monarchs that ever ruled the destinies of Sweden. History represents him as brave and enlightened, but of a harsh and inflexible disposition; regulating his opinions by positive facts, and wholly ungifted with imagination. At the period of which we are about to speak, death had bereaved him of his Queen, Ulrica Eleonora. Notwithstanding the harshness which ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... keeping of the executioner. It was not until Escovedo acquired his perilous knowledge of the debaucheries of Perez and the Princess of Eboli, and had avowed his still more perilous resolution of publishing their frailty in a quarter where detection was ruin, that Perez plied with inflexible diligence artifice and violence, poison and dagger—to satisfy, coincidently, himself and his sovereign. By a similar infusion of emotions, roused by later occurrences, the feelings of Philip towards Perez underwent, after the murder, a radical change. He at first unhesitatingly joined, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... represented to Mara the Northern element and leaven in the city, and she soon made it clear that there was an invisible line beyond which they could not pass. Their orders were either declined or scrupulously filled, if her time permitted, but with a quiet tact which was inflexible she warded off every approach ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... April the 6th and June the 27th were duly received, and with the welcome which every thing brings from you. The treaty which has so happily sealed the friendship of our two countries, has been received here with general acclamation. Some inflexible federalists have still ventured to brave the public opinion. It will fix their character with the world and with posterity, who, not descending to the other points of difference between us, will judge them by this fact, so palpable as to speak for itself, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... market flexibility; however, the population has remained opposed to labor reforms, hampering the government's ability to revitalize the economy. The tax burden remains one of the highest in Europe (nearly 50% of GDP in 2005). The lingering economic slowdown and inflexible budget items probably pushed the budget deficit above the eurozone's 3%-of-GDP limit in ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... ungrateful in them, in consequence of the gentleman-like usage which the British imprisoned officers met with in America; and thus we wearied ourselves petitioning and remonstrating, but o no purpose at all; for General Massey, who commanded at Halifax, was as inflexible as the d—-l himself. * * * Among the prisoners were five who had a legal claim to a parole, James Lovel, Esq; Captain Francis Proctor; a Mr. Rowland, Master of a Continental armed vessel; a Mr. Taylor, ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... he warred, and which in vanquishing him has made him a martyr and conqueror. I swear you by the memory of this martyr to hate slavery with an unabatable hatred, and to pursue it. We will admire the firmness of this man in justice, his inflexible conscience for the right, his gentleness and moderation of spirit, which not all the hate of party could turn to bitterness. And I swear you to follow his justice, his moderation, his mercy. How can I speak to that twilight million to whom his name was as the name of an angel of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the real question worth asking is, What was it amid the increasing civilisation and prosperous peace of Rome under the first Emperors which made these Christians relinquish the idea of a country? From whence did Christianity draw its power to set its followers in inflexible opposition to the intensest worship of the State that the world ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... blasphemous enough to saddle on the universal dissolvent and the new-fangled diet. I stated my symptoms to my master, in the hope that he would relax the rigor of his regimen and qualify my meals with a little wine; but his hostility to that liquor was inflexible. "If you have not philosophy enough," said he, "for pure water, there are innocent infusions to strengthen the stomach against the nausea of aqueous quaffings. Sage, for example, has a very pretty flavor; and if you wish to heighten it into a debauch, it is only mixing ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... have past for good, Though fond and reasonless to some perhaps: And Love hath oft, well meaning, wrought much wo, Yet always pity or pardon hath obtain'd. Be not unlike all others, not austere As thou art strong, inflexible as steel. If thou in strength all mortals dost exceed, In uncompassionate anger do ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... compact, solid, dense, compressed; fixed, resolute, constant, unwavering, unshaken, steadfast, stanch, determined, invincible, inflexible, incompliant. Antonyms: flaccid, soft, vacillating, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... so much distinction, talent, and grandeur of soul could have sprung from all the vices, from the cruelty and corruption which one would fain attribute now to the Southern people? The laws of inflexible logic refute these false imputations. And—strange coincidence—while Southern men presided over the destinies of the Union, its gigantic prosperity was the astonishment of the world. In the hands of Northern men, that edifice, raised with so much care and labor by their predecessors, comes crashing ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... point on the raised palate at the attack, the basis, the body, which must be maintained even in the softest pianissimo. Control of the breath should never cease. The tone should never be made too strong to be kept under control, nor too weak to be kept under control. This should be an inflexible rule for ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... to the council to quit the enterprise and retire from Troy. But by the advice of Nestor, he is persuaded to regain Achilles, by returning Chryseis, and sending him considerable presents. Hereupon, Ulysses and Ajax are sent to that hero, who continues inflexible in his anger. Ulysses, at his return, joins himself with Diomedes, and goes in the night to gain intelligence of the enemy: they enter into their very camp, where, finding the sentinels asleep, they made a great slaughter. Rhesus, who was just then arrived with recruits from Thrace for the ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... never failed to wring a sympathetic tear from Jimmy. Though he was a man of hard common sense, possessed of an inflexible determination to make money, there was a soft spot inside of him which was reached only by the distress of one of the opposite sex. The suffering—particularly the financial suffering—of men left him unmoved. He could foreclose a mortgage or press a debt (as long as the debtor's wife or ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... to some extent account for the excess of cruelty which blind frenzy inflicted on the inflexible martyr to his faith, it is certainly more difficult to explain the severity exercised upon the more pliable, whom the arguments of ghostly advisers, or the terrors of the Place de Greve, had induced to recant. Generally the judge did nothing ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Elizabeth remained inflexible, and, as Alexis yet persisted in his prayers, she earnestly and proudly said: "Alexis Razumovsky, I command you to remain here. You will obey the first ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... light housekeeping; looked disgusted when they pointed out from the window the little cafe where they sometimes dined; and offered to consent to their social retirement if they would give up the teaching and come home. The twins were troubled and apologetic, but inflexible. They had found the life they were meant for; they could not give it up. If she ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... because he was a Moor and we were Christians, and he was unwilling to have any trade or intercourse with us. After this the general remained three or four days, to see if the king would change his mind; but he continued inflexible, and strengthened himself with armed men, as jealous ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... not fear thee, Death! I have a bantering thought!—though I am told Thou art inflexible, and stern, and bold; And that thy upas breath Rides on the vital air; Monarch and Prince of universal clime, Executor of the decrees of ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... the revolt thus arising, he was sentenced to transportation, a penalty afterwards commuted to fine and imprisonment. He was a man of few words, remarkably few, but of deep thought and prompt action, and, in moments of crisis and emergency, a man of unshaken and inflexible nerve. To the casual observer, he seemed only a silent man, or a sullen one, astute or stolid; in times of peril he was a man of iron, but a man of action and passion, too, moving with resistless might. To rouse his powers, mental or physical, demanded, indeed, circumstances ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... frown neither; fancy that you are the district judge, giving sentence on a knotty piece of law; show neither sentiment, pride, nor anger. Be quite cold, inflexible and determined; and, above all things, do not move from your seat; and I think you will find your lover will take his answer: but if he do not—repeat it all over again, with a little more emphasis, and rather slower than before. If it be necessary, you may repeat ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... breaking down of the thin partition between the sexes; a consuming emotion not quite of this world nor of the next. The barren rebellion which stirred Botticelli's bosom never quite assumed the concrete. His religious subjects are Hellenised, not after Mantegna's sterner and more inflexible method, but like those of a philosophic Athenian who has read and comprehended Dante. Yet the illustrations show us a different Dante, one who would not have altogether pleased the gloomy exile. William Blake's transpositions ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... inch or more thick. On examining the fins, or fore-limbs, as they should properly be called, we found bones exactly corresponding to those of the human arm, with five fingers at the extremity, every joint distinct, although completely encased in a stiff inflexible skin. The manatee feeds on the grass growing at the borders of the lakes and rivers. It swims at a rapid rate, moved on by the tail and paddles. The female produces generally only one at a birth, and clasps it, so Naro told us, in her paddles ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... way. I will plant certain inflexible prohibitions which will forever destroy your self-will in regard to certain courses of action—they will be ones which you might at some time feel to be wise, but which I know to be ultimately destructive. In return, I can give you a measure of sanity ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... inert place is only the most striking outcome of that inflexible constitution the wrangling delegates of 1787-8 did at last produce out of a conflict of State jealousies. They did their best to render centralisation or any coalescence of States impossible and private property impregnable, and so far their work has proved extraordinarily ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... market inflexibility resulting from the 35-hour workweek and restrictions on lay-offs. The tax burden remains one of the highest in Europe (43.8% of GDP in 2003). The lingering economic slowdown and inflexible budget items have pushed the budget deficit above the eurozone's 3%-of-GDP limit. Finance Minister Herve GAYMARD has promised that the 2005 ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... when he beheld wild faces of demons and murdered Huguenots rejoicing in his torments, and heard strange voices consigning his name to infamy and his body to those never-ending physical torments in which both Catholics and Protestants equally believed. His mother however remained cold, inflexible, and unmoved,—for when a woman falls under the grip of the Devil, then no man can equal her in shamelessness ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... conditions were inflexible. He would "see the thing through" for his daughter's sake; but he stipulated that in the meantime there should be no meetings or farther communications of any kind. He agreed to be ready when Garnett called for him, at the appointed ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... her while he smoked many cigarettes, became filled with a vague uneasiness What was she thinking? What did she mean to do? He began to have faint doubts of her coming down to him. He began to be aware of something in her nature that was unlike those other women; something more inflexible, more silent, something that troubled him even while he told himself that she was like all the rest and he would ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... wife of the king," he shouted. "It was the woman called Becfola. It was that woman," he roared, and he extended a lean, inflexible, unending first ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... ruthless and ingenious conspiracy of associates on the Council, had gone bankrupt. Next came the gigantic building strike, in which conflicting volitions fought each other for many months to the devastation of an entire group of trades. Finally was the inflexible resolution of Mr. Soulter that the town hall should not be opened and used until it was finished in every part and every detail ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... great many attempts, and twisted and turned in every direction to get the shoe; but when he found the farmer inflexible, he agreed to what John desired, and swore to the performance of it. Cunning John believed him, and gave him up the glass shoe, for he knew right well with whom he had to do. So, the business being ended, away went the merchant ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... obvious to him, and the final aim of which he did not perceive. Until a correct touch has been acquired, it is of no use to talk about a fine singing tone. How can we expect to arouse an interest by mere toneless tinkling, while stiff, inflexible fingers are struggling with the notes; while the pupil sees only his inability to do any thing right, and receives nothing but blame from the teacher; while, at the same time, so much is to be kept in mind, and ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... the debt owed by England and the empire to Lord Milner for the inflexible determination with which he penetrated, unmasked, and finally baffled the tortuous diplomacy of the Boer commissioners may be estimated from the fact that within three months of the signing of the Surrender Agreement at Pretoria, three ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... circulated to soothe; but it failed abjectly in its purpose. We were not to be fooled "the whole of the time," by cant about flying Columns—whose wings, like those of Icarus, were only too likely to get detached in the heat of the Karoo. Such was the temper, the inflexible pessimism of the people; the much-talked of change that was to come over the scene was voted a delusion ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... you yield a point or draw back, if you so much as stir an eyelid, if she thinks that she can regain her ascendancy over you, she will slip out of your clutches like a fish, and you will never catch her again. Be as inflexible as law. Show no more charity than the headsman. Hit hard, and then hit again. Strike and keep on striking as if you were giving her the knout. Duchesses are made of hard stuff, my dear Armand; there is a sort of feminine nature ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... legs were what puzzled me. I have been attempting to manipulate myself as they must be forced to, and I cannot see how delicate or accurate manual manipulation would be possible with those rigid, inflexible arms. In some ways I feel they must have had clever minds to overcome so great a handicap to constructive work. But I suppose single joints in the arms become as natural to them as ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... may see the day of return. Herein we may behold in general, the honored place of the mother as the center of the Family, its heart, as it were, full of the tender feelings of compassion and mercy. In the father and king, on the other hand, is the man of the State with its inflexible justice, often putting aside sympathy and commiseration with misfortune. The woman's heart may indeed be called the heart of the world, recognized here by the old poet and ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... her, he started up impetuously, as if he meant to rush after her and call her back. But after the first step he stood still and pressed his clenched left hand upon his violently beating heart. His face, as if turned to stone, wore an expression of inflexible resolution, and the corners of his mouth were marked by two deep, sharp lines, as if within this single hour ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... further, presently. Meantime, in sacrificing himself—NOT for the glory of God, PRIMARILY, as HE imagined, but FIRST to content that exacting and inflexible master within him—DID HE ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had learned from Laud, what measures would be agreeable to Charles I., who, to all his father's despotic ideas of royal prerogative, and love of Prelacy, and to at least equal dissimulation, added the formidable elements of a temper dark and relentless, and a proud and inflexible will. The consequences soon appeared. Charles resolved, that the Church of Scotland should not only be episcopalian in its form of government, but also in all its discipline, and in its form of worship. In order to accomplish ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... arrow comes up in a straight line with your mark, otherwise the bow will be twisted in the grasp and deflect the shot. Then fully drawn, set the grasp of the left hand without disturbing the position of the bow, make the left arm as rigid as an oak limb; fix the muscles of the chest; make yourself inflexible from head to toe. Keep your right elbow up and rivet your gaze upon your mark; release in a direct line backward. Everything must be under the greatest tension, ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... perpendicular 100,000,000 miles, so that it may be in advance of the nucleus and again rest on its orbit. This orbit is an impassable line, and therefore instantly arrests the prodigious lateral velocity of the tail. That impassable orbital line is to it as solid and inflexible as a wall of adamant. The motion so instantly arrested would be disastrous to any tail, whether composed of gas, meteorites, or electricity, whatever ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... in a still more agitated voice. Still there was no answer. Once more he cudgeled the sides of the inflexible Gunpowder, and shutting his eyes, broke forth with involuntary fervor into a psalm tune. Just then the shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion, and with a 30 scramble and a bound, stood at once in the ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... than any other idolatry and upon the attitude of mind of the hero-worshipper as essentially immoral; who think it is better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains; who look upon the observance of inflexible justice as between man and man as of far greater importance than even the preservation of social order, will believe that Mr. Eyre has committed one of the greatest crimes of which a person in authority can be guilty, and will strain every nerve to obtain a declaration that their belief ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... Mirabell! Prithee don't look with that violent and inflexible wise face, like Solomon at the dividing of the child in ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... defence for which it was calculated. I was highly delighted with the old Major, at this first introduction and interview, and this exhibition added very much to the gratification which I felt in being known to a man of whom I had so often heard and read, as the steady and inflexible friend of reform, and public freedom. I returned home to my inn exceedingly gratified, the old Major having created a very favourable opinion in my breast of his patriotism ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... confidence in his wisdom and patriotism; and the latter left office with the happy consciousness that he carried with him into retirement the friendship of one, of whom he said in after years, "His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the word, a wise, and good, and ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... "to get out of slavery at the right time, to be speedily brought in contact with that circle of highly cultivated men and women, banded together for the overthrow of slavery, of which William Lloyd Garrison was the acknowledged leader. To these friends, earnest, courageous, inflexible, ready to own me as a man and a brother, against all the scorn, contempt, and derision of a slavery-polluted atmosphere, I owe my ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... animosities. The natural severity of his temper appeared in a rigorous administration of justice; and having found the happy effects of this plan of government, without which the laws in those ages became totally impotent, he regarded it as a fixed maxim, that an inflexible conduct was the first duty of a sovereign. [FN [w] W. Malm. p. 95. Gul. Gemet. lib. 7. cap. 1. [x] W. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... married life, for he was truly the interpreter, who stood between God and her; she would have considered herself wicked if she had ever dared even to think him austere, though as certainly as he was an upright man, so surely was he hard, stern, and inflexible. But for three years the moan and the murmur had never been out of her heart; she had rebelled against her husband as against a tyrant, with a hidden, sullen rebellion, which tore up the old landmarks of wifely ...
— Lizzie Leigh • Elizabeth Gaskell
... treasures he had acquired were hoarded at the fort of Kelat, which, with all the fears of a despot, he continually labored to render inaccessible, he not only paid his armies, but added to his golden heaps, from the arrears of remitted revenue, which he extorted with the most inflexible rigor. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... necessity, convenience, and defense; if a spirit of equity and humanity towards the aboriginal nations of America, and a disposition to ameliorate their condition by inclining them to be more friendly to us, and our citizens to be more friendly to them; if an inflexible determination to maintain peace and inviolable faith with all nations, and the system of neutrality and impartiality among the belligerent powers of Europe which has been adopted by the government, and so solemnly sanctioned by both ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... "We must obey God rather than men." (Acts v. 29.) This same authority the holy Fathers of the Church have been careful to maintain by weighty reasonings as occasions have arisen; and the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased to defend it with inflexible constancy. Nay, more, princes and civil governors themselves have approved it in theory and in fact; for in the making of compacts, in the transaction of business, in sending and receiving embassies, and in the interchange of other offices, it has been their custom to ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... indifferent a mould as my cousin Ellieslaw, who speaks treason as if it were a child's nursery rhymes, and loses and recovers that sweet girl, his daughter, with a good deal less emotion on both occasions, than would have affected me had I lost and recovered a greyhound puppy. My temper is not quite so inflexible, nor my hate against government so inveterate, as to blind me to the full ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... clasped his fingers tightly about her slender arm, advancing his face until he could look squarely into hers. She read in the lines of that determined countenance an inflexible resolve which ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... personality had rejected all hereditary principle, felt this with a sudden exquisite pain. But his horse, perhaps recognizing a relaxing grip, took that opportunity to "buck." Curving his back like a cat, and throwing himself into the air with an unexpected bound, he came down with four stiff, inflexible legs, and a shock that might have burst the saddle-girths, had not the wily old man as quickly brought the long rowels of his spurs together and fairly locked his heels under Buckeye's collapsing barrel. It was the mustang's last rebellions struggle. The discomfited ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... steam-engine, the lever and counter-balance weight are fixed upon the wiper-shaft, to form an equipoise to the valves. There is one on each side of the cylinder. (See SPANNER.)—Also, an inflexible bar of iron or wood to raise weights, which takes rank as the first and most simple of the mechanical powers.—To lever. An old word for ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... and so her sister carries and recarries the piteous tale of weeping. But by no weeping is he stirred, inflexible to all the words he hears. Fate withstands, and lays divine bars on unmoved mortal ears. Even as when the eddying blasts of northern Alpine winds are emulous to uproot the secular strength of a mighty oak, it wails on, and the trunk quivers and the high foliage ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... safely accomplished. His dark-green uniform well becomes his stately figure and clearly chiselled, symmetrical head. He is Nicholas recast in a softer mould, wherein tenacity of purpose is substituted for rigid, inflexible will, and the development of the nation at home supplants the ambition for predominant political influence abroad. This difference is expressed, despite the strong personal resemblance to his father, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... making sly faces behind his back—was received by all the Lieutenants in a body, their hats in their hands, and making a prodigious scraping and bowing, as if they had just graduated at a French dancing-school. Meanwhile, preserving an erect, inflexible, and ram-rod carriage, and slightly touching his chapeau, the Captain made his ceremonious way to the cabin, disappearing behind the scenes, like the pasteboard ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... our wishes; but anything else which you may think mysterious about me I cannot unravel until you are indissolubly mine." It was a point of no slight difficulty; Emily entrusted its decision entirely to her mother. Her mother saw that the stranger was inflexible in his purpose, and she saw also that her child's happiness was inextricably linked with him. What could she do? It had been better perhaps they had never known him; but knowing him, and thinking of him as they did, there was but one alternative—the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... agreeable a life for her, that she shall never again be tempted to leave me. I have laid in a stock of tenderness and patience during her week's absence. There is only one point on which I remain inflexible: I will not again receive that horrible Tata Bobosse, that blue stocking of 1820, who gave me her niece only in the hopes that my modest fame would serve to heighten hers. Remember, my dear Marestang, that ever since my marriage this wicked little old woman ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... is. Put the robber Cartouche in an Italian court of the fifteenth century; he would be a great statesman. Transport this nobleman, stingy and narrow-minded, into a shop; he will be an exemplary tradesman. This public man, of inflexible probity, is in his drawing-room an intolerable coxcomb. This father of a family, so humane, is an idiotic politician. Change a virtue in its circumstances, and it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... respecting the Warrington brank. "Hanging up in our museum," says Mr. Beamont, "may be seen a representation of a withered female face wearing the brank or scold's bridle; one of which instruments, as inflexible as iron and ingenuity can make it, for keeping an unruly tongue quiet by mechanical means, hangs up beside it; and almost within the time of living memory, Cicily Pewsill, an inmate of the workhouse, and a notorious scold, ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... niece of Richelieu throw herself upon her knees, weeping bitterly, and entreating the pardon of her royal mistress, without even inquiring into the nature of her offence; Marie de Medicis remained inflexible, and sternly ordered her to withdraw. The command was obeyed; and as she left the apartment Madame de Comballet was followed by the Cardinal, who, bewildered by this sudden and astonishing change of attitude, did not even attempt to expostulate. After this first exhibition ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... is not inconsistent with that reputation for inflexible honour which, in successive eras of his life, procured for the Duke of Wellington the confidence of the Indian government, of the British army, and ultimately of the whole English nation. It is taken from the excellent ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... words which I took to be complimentary until one of my friends explained that he had called us something that might be freely translated as a certain kind of female lobster. Circumscribed by our own inflexible and unyielding language we in America must content ourselves with calling a man a plain lobster; but the limber-tongued Gaul goes further than that—he calls you a female lobster, which seems somehow or other to ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... her soul the chord of religious poetry that all women possess. His unyielding austerity, his disgust for ordinary human interests, his love of God, his youthful and untutored inexperience, his harsh words, and his inflexible will, gave Jeanne an idea of the stuff martyrs were made of; and she let herself be carried away, all disillusioned as she was, by the fanaticism of this child, the ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... than, at a first glance, met the eye; it quickly resolved itself, in fact, into a struggle between the priesthood and the laity; and it needed but a single glance at the fanatical high priest's stern, inflexible expression to assure oneself that he was not at all the sort of person to yield without a struggle. To add to the difficulty, Earle had no means of knowing what sort of a backing the priests would be likely to have, should the struggle for supremacy become an open one, which was by no means improbable. ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... of Rome was practical, patriotic, and faithful to obligation; he loved to be governed by inflexible law; and it was a fundamental principle with him that the individual should be subordinate to the state. His kings were either organizers, like Numa and Ancus Marcius, or warriors, like Romulus and Tullus Hostilius; they either made laws, like Servius, or they ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... weak, yet he prudently moderated the austerities of his brethren; and that many things which he rigidly refused himself, he allowed to the others, from discretion and from charity. This, indeed, is characteristic in the saints; severe and inflexible to themselves, they spared their neighbors, and were indulgent in their regard; while hypocrites, such as the Pharisees, and certain heretics who resemble them, put heavy burdens on the shoulders of ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... insufficiency of rank and powers, and crave delay until the arrival of his superior officer. The ensign repaired to the French camp to offer this excuse in person, and was accompanied by the half-king. They were courteously received, but Contrecoeur was inflexible. There must be instant surrender, or he would take forcible possession. All that the ensign could obtain was permission to depart with his men, taking with them their working tools. The capitulation ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... stones, plants, animals, which the primitive Semitic faith considered equally divine. The stars always retained this character, even at Rome. They were not, as to us, infinitely distant bodies moving in space according to the inflexible laws of mechanics, and whose chemical composition may be determined. To the Latins as to the Orientals, they were propitious or baleful deities, whose ever-changing relations determined the events of ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... this inflexible and courageous man was Cameron of Lochiel united. During the first years of their marriage, even before the death of Sir Ewan Dhu, they lived peacefully in the home of their ancestors; and whilst Anne reigned, that happy tranquillity ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... prefers to all men; and her request to see her safe back again, though but as the fool she came over!—You may blame me, madam—but you must pity me, even were you to have a heart the sister heart of your inflexible brother. ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... them, from a sense of duty, and he would invariably yield, unless in cases that involved moral principles. On all such points, and they were not of unfrequent occurrence in a family of so many blacks, he was as inflexible as the laws of the Medes and Persians; but, as respected the wheat, the potatoes, the orchards, the mill, or the sloop, he usually submitted to the experience of those more familiar with the business, after having discussed the matters in council. This rendered him exceedingly popular at Clawbonny, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... poetry itself, if it would move and agitate us, must never be stoical. His language is so barren of imagery, that his characters seem altogether devoid of fancy; it is broken and harsh: he wished to steel it anew, and in the process it not only lost its splendour, but became brittle and inflexible. Not only is he not musical, but positively anti- musical; he tortures our feelings by the harshest dissonances, without any softening or solution. Tragedy is intended by its elevating sentiments in some degree to emancipate our minds from ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... and is evinced by her unhesitating devotion of largely increased military and naval forces to the task, there is much reason to believe that the insurgents have gained in point of numbers and character and resources and are none the less inflexible in their resolve not to succumb without practically securing the great objects for which they took up arms. If Spain has not yet reestablished her authority, neither have the insurgents yet made good their title, to be ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland |
