"Insistent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... actresses, breaking down, sobbed in the wings and refused to be comforted, I had dimly recognised the fact that when I met Margaret I should have to be honest with her. Plans for evasion had been half-matured by my inventive faculties, only to be discarded, unpolished, on account of the insistent claims of the endless rehearsals. To have concocted a story with which to persuade Margaret that I stood to lose money if the play succeeded would have been a clear day's work. And I had no ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... stricken with fear, and then in the howling uproar of that dreadful place there came to him like a searchlight wheeling inwards the thought of the girl. The water receded from him, leaving him drenched, almost dazed, but a voice within—an urgent, insistent voice—clamoured that his safety was at stake, his life a matter of mere moments if he lingered. This was the Death Current of which Rufus had warned him only that afternoon. Had not the bell-buoy been tolling ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... think it was because he heard that I was planning to go away that he decided to declare himself at once, before he lost his opportunity. I told him that I had never thought of anything of the sort; but he was very insistent, and at last I consented, provided the engagement should be a long one, and that, if after I had seen more of the world and knew myself better, I should decide to change my mind, I must be allowed to do so. He fought ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... loved his adventuresomeness, the wholesome sensationalism of his stories with something doing on every page, while amateurs of art responded to his felicity of phrase, his finished technique, the exhibition of craftsmanship conquering difficulty and danger. Artist, lover of life, insistent truth-teller, Calvinist, Bohemian, believer in joy, all these cohabit in his hooks. In early masterpieces like "Treasure Island" and "The Wrecker" it is the lover of life who conducts us, telling the story for ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... wind arose in the south, gentle puffs in the beginning, then blowing steady and strong. The fog was torn away first at the top, where it was thinnest, floating off in shreds and patches, and then the whole wall of it yielded before the insistent breeze, driven toward the north like a mist, and leaving the woods and thickets free. Willet made a careful circle about the camp, at a range of several hundred yards, and found no sign of hostile presence. Then he resumed his silent vigil, and, an hour later, the sun rose in a shower of gold. ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a ringing in Tunis Latham's ears. As you make Paulmouth Harbor coming from seaward, on a thick day you hear the insistent tolling of the bell buoy over Bitter Reef. That was the distant, but incessant sound that the captain of the Seamew seemed to hear as he sat on that bench on Boston Common beside ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... in the load of civilization; without that quality, whether we elect to classify it as self-conceit or self-esteem, man would be without ambition and our civilization barren of achievement. The instinct for the upward climb—the desire to reach the heights—is too insistent to be disregarded. If all men are born equal, as the framers of our Constitution so solemnly declared, that is because the brains of all infants, of whatsoever degree, are at birth incapable of thought. The democracy ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... that he was going, had not decided to go till the morning after he had seen Crowder and the two Chinamen. When they had gone he had sat pondering, and that question which he had not liked to ask Fong and which he had only tentatively put to his friend, rose, insistent, demanding a more informed answer. Was this man—more than objectionable, probably criminal—paying court to Lorry? It was a horrible idea, that haunted him throughout the night. He recalled Mayer's manner to her the evening ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... Presbyterian medical missionary who had sympathetically treated a fellow priest during a long and dangerous illness several years before. He promptly invited us to go with him, declaring that Dr. Van Schoick had saved the life of his dearest friend. He was so cordially insistent that we accepted his invitation. Our shendzas, carts and pack-mule were we knew not where, and we were hungry after our long day. Warned by my experience in Korea that the traveller should never trust to the punctuality of natives and pack-animals, ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... thrown their gauntlet down to the sea—this rock is theirs, they cry to the waves and the might of oceans. And the sea laughs—as strong men laugh when boys are angry or insistent. She has let them build and toil, and pray and fight; it is all one to her what is done on the rock—whether men carve its stones into lace, or rot and die in its dungeons; it is all the same to her whether each spring the daffodils creep up within the crevices ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... was a bad example for Laurel, too, who copied him, and only that morning said "My God" to Miss Gomes. Her mind swung back to the consideration of the Manchu: The latter was the fact upon which Camilla was so insistent, that in this case a Manchu was a noble, almost a princess. Camilla suffered dreadfully from the endless questions put to her outside their house about Uncle Gerrit's wife. She had more than once wept at the public blot laid on them. ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... early in the morning Edna was awake. She was not used to farmyard sounds and could not tell if it were a lusty rooster, an insistent guinea-fowl or a gobbling turkey whose voice first reached her. But whichever it was, she was quite broad awake while it was yet dark. She lay still for a few minutes, with an uncertain feeling of something not very pleasant overshadowing her, then she remembered ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... across and closed them. The bells were suddenly removed, but seemed to be the more insistent in their urgency because they ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... interruption was of a different nature. The sharp, insistent summons of an electric bell from outside rang through the room. In a moment or two the man-servant appeared from the inner apartment, crossed the floor and presently reappeared, ushering in ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... did not resent her questioning, he would take no notice of it. And it made her a little sad, for of all the men she knew, next to Billy, her husband, she admired Carew, and she regretted deeply his insistent determination to stand aloof from mankind generally behind the barriers he ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... symbolical. In the Happy Valley a man might be as good, but he could not be as great and wise, as in the larger world. The soul will meet fewer temptations there, but those it does encounter will be more insistent and harder to escape. He who would respond to a call to service must needs have about him those whom he may serve. Large views are for those who are able to rise to the heights. He who lives in a cave may be true to his little light, and surely is responsible for ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... circle of mountains shimmering in opalescent light. Far down from the valley below came the long clear note of a bugle, probably of some coaching party. An impudent woodpecker seated on a limb above her commenced an insistent, aggravating tapping. ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... To his insistent "Have I made you understand?" she returned a wan wraith of a smile, pitiful with entreaty, while one of her hands found the ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... about it, Steele," he cried with an immediate tone of comradeship. "We wouldn't have ventured into your camp if it hadn't been for Isobel. She was positively insistent, sir. Wanted to see who was here and what it looked like. Eh, Isobel, my ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... letter characteristic of his nobleness as a friend, or is it too insistent upon bringing Bassanio to him, since to send such a letter ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... on all fours and hurried back to camp, where he demolished everything of Pedro's meagre outfit, not forgetting to tear his coat to shreds. This done to his evident satisfaction, he obeyed the call from the deep woods, that had been so insistent in his ear all that spring and summer, and shuffled away ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... no thought above such —away with it!—Bah!" And, in my mind—that is to say, mentally —I set my thumb to my nose, and spread my fingers, and wagged them—even as the Postilion had done. And yet, despite this, the words of the old song recurred again and again, pathetically insistent, voicing themselves in my footsteps so that, to banish ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... is strong common sense. His aphorisms, both those collected under the heading of Thoughts on Various Subjects, and countless others scattered up and down his pages, are a treasury of sound, if a little sardonic, practical wisdom. His most insistent prejudices foreshadow in their essential sanity and justness those of that great master of life, Dr. Johnson. He could not endure over-politeness, a vice which must have been very oppressive in society of his day. He savagely resented and condemned a display of affection—particularly marital affection—in ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... the boys to stay, he was busy with the carcass of the dead snake and soon had the skin deftly removed. His entreaties for the boys to visit his home were insistent. The boys felt that they owed him such a large debt that they could not decline, although they preferred to proceed in the opposite direction. At length they yielded to the urgent invitation. Lopez started away at a good gait through the forest, closely followed by his ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... [Removes his mask and mounts steps of Loggia.] Citizens! [Prolonged yells and groans from the crowd.] Yes, I am he, I am that same Lorenzo Whom you have nicknamed the Magnificent. [Further terrific yells, shakings of fists, brandishings of bill- hooks, insistent cries of 'Death to Lorenzo!' 'Down with the Magnificent!' Cobblers on fringe of crowd, down c., exhibit especially all the symptoms of epilepsy, whooping-cough, and other ailments.] You love not me. [The crowd makes an ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... little wooden-handled pail, which was half-full of warm milk. This she held up to Pen, and signed to him to drink; but he shook his head and pointed to Punch. This produced a quick, decisive nod of the head, as the girl wrinkled up her forehead and signed in an insistent way that Pen should ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... broke the talk, rolling strongly, vibrantly through the leaves, a lawless, insistent voice, and Dermott McDermott, with the reins loosened on his horse's neck, and his ardent eyes looking upward to heaven's blue, rode by the other side ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... the best of the British regulars. Stuart and Cabell, coming from the south, which was now more remote from the scene of war, were delighted at the thought that they would be in the heart of the conflict. They, too, were insistent that Robert come with them, but again he refused. When he and Tayoga left them and walked back to the house of Mr. ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... delayed starting the car, divided in feelings between a wish to respect Steele Weir's insistent command and a growing fear for his safety. She could see nothing of him. Into the shadow of a rock he had disappeared and thither she gazed with straining eyes, hoping to see again his straight ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... insistent. "You must listen to me. He has not had fair play. Such a gallant fight as he was making! I believe he would have won, I really believe he would have won, had it not ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... the doors between the sitting-rooms and the kitchen. Inside the flat nothing was to be heard but the clock ticking on the drawing-room mantelpiece. Outside, there were intermittent noises and rattles from the traffic in the square, and beyond that again the muffled insistent murmur which seemed to Nelly this afternoon—in her utter loneliness—the most desolate sound she had ever heard. The day had turned to rain and darkness, and the rapid closing of the October afternoon prophesied ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bad place. For an intellectual and social career London certainly had advantages over Philadelphia. Mr. Strahan, the well-known publisher of those days, whom Franklin used affectionately to call Straney, became his close friend, and was very insistent with him that he should leave the provinces and take up a permanent residence in England. He baited his hook with an offer of his son in marriage with Franklin's daughter Sarah. He had never seen Sarah, but he seems to have taken it for granted that any child of her father must be matrimonially ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... plumage and song, and awaits the coming of the female birds, that travel northward more leisurely in flocks. He is decidedly in evidence. No foliage is dense enough to hide his brilliancy; his temper, quite as fiery as his feathers, leads him into noisy quarrels, and his insistent song with its martial, interrogative notes becomes almost tiresome until he is happily mated and family cares check ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... to Bertram Chester with a sudden bound. By the fourth day, he was so much alive, so insistent for company, that it became a medical necessity to break the conventional regulations for invalids, and let him see people. As it happened, his father was the first visitor. Judge Tiffany, who thought of everything, had telegraphed on the night ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... heavenly voices that spoke to Jeanne grew more and more insistent, telling her that she must go forth to the wars and lead the Dauphin Charles to the Cathedral at Rheims to be crowned and anointed. And at last she could no longer disobey, but prepared to fulfil the strange destiny that they ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... as I rose. "Bide a while, Martin!" And, opening a locker beneath his bunk, he took thence a shirt of fine chain-work like that he himself wore. Shaking my head I would have put it by but he caught my arm in his powerful grip and shook me insistent. "Take it, Martin," says he, "take it, man, 'tis easy and pleasant as any glove, yet mighty efficacious 'gainst point or edge, and you go where knives are sudden! Stay then, take it for my sake, shipmate, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... before I could "sit down under His Shadow Whom I desired,"[10] I had to pass through many trials. And yet the Divine Call was becoming so insistent that, had it been necessary for me to go through fire, I would have thrown myself into it to follow my ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... because I wouldn't take your advice? Don't you know that a reddish-haired person of Irish forebears, with a dash of Scotch, can't be driven, but must be gently led? Had you been less obnoxiously insistent, I should have listened sweetly, and been saved. As it is, I frankly confess that I have spent the last five days in repenting our quarrel. You were right, and I was wrong, and, as you see, I handsomely acknowledge it. If I ever emerge from this present predicament, I shall in the future ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... experience on the fighting front. But the traditions of the American regular army, formulated in the Indian and frontier fights, rather than the siege methods of the trenches, formed the basic principles of the instruction; General Pershing was insistent that an offensive spirit must be instilled into the new troops, a policy which received the enthusiastic endorsement of the President. The development of "a self-reliant infantry by thorough drill in the use of a rifle and in the tactics of open warfare" was always uppermost in the mind of the ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... there was a place to turn around, he looked ahead and then up; his eyes passed from the gash of roadway on the mountainside to the deep blue beyond. And within the man some driving, insistent, mental force etched strongly before his eyes that picture and its problem unanswered. There was the ship—he saw it in memory—and it went up and still up; and he knew as surely as if he had guided the craft that the meteor-like ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... loud, insistent voice from the smoking-room below, and had momentarily left his friend to see ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... the Germans again sought a decision on the Western front by an offensive of sledgehammer blows against frontal positions; and, perhaps, the third came when on the Ridge the British and the French kept up their grim, insistent, piecemeal attacks, holding the enemy week in and week out on the defensive, aiming at mastery as the scales trembled in the new turn of the balance and initiative passed from one side to the other in the beginning of that ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... insidiously insistent about the morning post when one is away from all the other corrupting effects ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... him in a specially endearing light. Not only was he fresh from his night's rest, full, often, of matter interesting or amusing in his letters which he had just read, but the tete-a-tete brought out his finest social nature. In large companies, as we saw him at Dockett, he was occasionally insistent, iterative, expressing himself, to use a term of his own, with a "fierceness" corresponding to the strength of his convictions. With me at our breakfasts he was gentle, tolerant, what Sydney Smith called "amoebean," talking and listening alternately. I was told that before his death ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... social structure of the state or the composition of the government. The others held that the state needed fundamental changes, and that superficial loans from Europe were not enough. The failure in the war with Japan made the general desire for reform more and more insistent not only in the country but in Peking. Until now Japan had been despised as a barbarian state; now Japan had won! The Europeans had been despised; now they were all cutting bits out of China for themselves, extracting from the government one privilege after another, ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... precedents for such a step, but they were rare. The abdicating noble had to be adopted into a plebeian family, and the consent was required of the consuls and of the Pontifical College. With the growth of political equality the aristocracy had become more insistent upon the privilege of birth, which could not be taken from them; and for a Claudius to descend among the canaille was as if a Howard were to seek adoption from a shopkeeper ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... away some of the heavy fear. His fingers found a cigarette and lighted it automatically. The first familiar breath of smoke in his lungs helped. He drew in deeply again, while the tiny sounds in the room became meaningful. There was the insistent ticking of a clock and the soft shushing sound of a tape recorder. He stared at the machine, running on fast rewind, and reversed it to play. But the tape seemed to ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... under the cargo. I went down after it. At random I chose a record and set the machine going. It was a Chopin Nocturne played on a 'cello—a vocal yearning, a wailing of frustrate aspirations, a brushing of sick wings across the gates of heavens never to be entered; and then the finale—an insistent, feverish repetition of the human ache, ceasing ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... resources. Since that time seven-figure fortunes such as the younger Allison had inherited, had become too general to be any longer spectacular. But Dexter Allison's garments had always retained their insistent note. Hunter himself had sold Allison the ground upon which the stucco house stood; he had heartily agreed that it was an ideal spot for a loafing place—and the fishing was good, too! Now whenever Caleb thought of those first conferences which had ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... kiddies have the stuff in them to repay what you are pleased to term "such an outlay of effort." My emphatic "yes" should have been so insistent as to have reached you by telepathy when the doubt first presented itself. The Home has been established now long enough to have some of its "graduates" go out into life; and the splendid manhood and womanhood of these young people are at once a sufficient reward to us and a silencing ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... Uruapan and jefe politico of the district is the son-in-law of Governor Mercado, and to him we bore a special letter from his father-in-law. The old gentleman had been insistent that we should return by Capacuaro and Cheran, indian towns. He said that at the former we should find a mogote (mound or heap of stones and dirt) which every traveler should see, while at the latter Lumholtz had secured some skulls of exceptional interest, and that ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... presently awake to find himself on the cot in his tent, with the cold, clear dawn peering in past the unfolded flap, and another day's arduous work before him. But he finally concluded that the fire upon which his eyes rested was too real, and, more especially, that his pain was too acute and insistent for him to be dreaming. Then he fell to wondering afresh how in the name of fortune he had found his unconscious way into that cave and upon the pallet ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... War Council. Lord Kitchener left for the Aegean at this time; but both before going and after his return he always, as far as I know, deprecated locking up fighting resources in Macedonia. Our Allies across the Channel were, however, somewhat insistent. Two conferences took place: one, a military one at Chantilly at the very end of October, and a more authoritative one a few days later in Paris, both of which I attended. More will be said about these reunions in Chapter XII. General Joffre, with some of his staff, also paid a visit ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... prompted by real knowledge and love of the "lower creation." The Japanese have a keen appreciation of the "song" of an amazing variety of "musical" insects—there are 20,000 kinds of insects. It is an appreciation not vouchsafed to the foreigner whose nerves are racked by the insistent bizz of the semi or cicada—there are 38 kinds of cicada. Everyone will recall Hearn's chapter on the trade in ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... awake and very hungry. I am inclined to believe we must have spent the greater portion of a day before that awakening. My hunger was at a stride so insistent that it moved me to action. I told the curate I was going to seek food, and felt my way towards the pantry. He made me no answer, but so soon as I began eating the faint noise I made stirred him up and I heard him ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... sound answers to these insistent queries. One is the policeman, usually a protective and adjusting force, but armed and trained to hurt and kill in defense of society against criminals and lunatics. Another is the mother who blazes into violence, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... only we had more models. It is strange how, just as soon as an article becomes successful, somebody starts to think that it would be more successful if only it were different. There is a tendency to keep monkeying with styles and to spoil a good thing by changing it. The salesmen were insistent on increasing the line. They listened to the 5 per cent., the special customers who could say what they wanted, and forgot all about the 95 per cent. who just bought without making any fuss. No business can improve unless it pays the ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... encircled her—for about the house in the Corraterie the uproar rose loudest—his heart melted. But he had not long to dwell on her peril; not long to dwell on anything. Before the great bell had hurled its warning abroad three times he had to go. Marcadel's voice, urgent, insistent, summoned him to ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... Consistent, persistent, insistent word-study is of inestimable value to a speaker. And since all people speak, it follows that it would ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... the close of the lecture, Mrs. B. Isabelle Smart became the center of a polite yet insistent crush of satins, velvets and broadcloths, permeated by an aroma of violets and a gentle hum of delicate flattery, she was aware of a timid hand upon her arm, and turned to look into the small, eager face under the ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... she looked at him, at the stranger who was not a gentleman yet who insisted on coming into her life, and the pain of a new birth in herself strung all her veins to a new form. She would have to begin again, to find a new being, a new form, to respond to that blind, insistent figure standing over ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... patio palely illumined by the moonlight, the murmur of the fountain in its center, the perfume of flowers, the melodious voices of the dark-skinned Indian attendants, bearing flaming torches, and chanting the time-honored welcome to their new mistress, and her insistent demands to be introduced to their host; and then the delightful denouement, the surprise she must experience when the truth finally dawned upon her. Truly poet never dreamed a fairer dream. It had taken him a whole week to conceive the idea ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... very insistent; yet I know of no good reason why I should not answer. Without at all knowing the nature of those claims to which you refer, I have no hesitancy in saying that I possess such complete confidence in Bob Hampton as to reply unreservedly ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... and meaning of life in general was what so troubled him; but poor Bunyan's troubles were over the condition of his own personal self. He was a typical case of the psychopathic temperament, sensitive of conscience to a diseased degree, beset by doubts, fears and insistent ideas, and a victim of verbal automatisms, both motor and sensory. These were usually texts of Scripture which, sometimes damnatory and sometimes favorable, would come in a half- hallucinatory form as if they were voices, and fasten on his mind and ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... she was given a small part, which she played with such keen perception of the points where a "hit" could be made, that at last the audience broke into a storm of laughter and applause. Mr. Setchell had another speech, but the applause was so insistent that he knew it would be an anti-climax and signaled the prompter to ring down the curtain. But Clara Morris knew that he ought to speak, and was much frightened by the effect of her business, which had so captured the fancy of the audience, for she knew that the applause belonged to the star as ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the Queen said, with the faintest trace of impatience, "I do not feel the least bit tired, and this is such an exciting day that I just don't want to miss any of it. Besides, I've already told you I don't want a nap. It isn't polite to be insistent to your Queen—no matter how strongly you feel about a matter. I'm sure you'll learn to ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... intrenched camp at Carnifex Ferry, with outposts at Peters Mountain and toward Summersville. The publication of the Confederate Archives has partly solved the mystery. Floyd called on Wise to reinforce him; but the latter demurred, insistent that the duty assigned him of attacking my position in front needed all the men he had. Both appealed to Lee, and Lee decided that Floyd was the senior and entitled to command the joint forces. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. v. pp. 155-165, 800, 802-813.] The letters of Wise show ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... helplessness, as a man's nose wrinkles and twitches and—in spite of the most desperate attempts at repression—the betraying sound forces its way out! How many men have lost their lives because of that insistent soft nasal explosion which can be smothered, but not ...
— The Radiant Shell • Paul Ernst
... out of Epernay, and asked how things were going in Paris. He was, says Barnet, a round-faced man, dressed very neatly in black—so neatly that it was amazing to discover he was living close at hand in a tent made of carpets—and he had 'an urbane but insistent manner,' a carefully trimmed moustache and beard, expressive eyebrows, and hair very ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... expectation, but nothing happened. Overhead little birds, tomtits and creepers, played about the bark of the fir-trees; a robin came and looked at her consideringly, with a bright sensible eye; from two hundred feet below, the murmur of the burn rose constant and insistent; but no other sound broke the stillness, nor was there any sign of human life upon the top ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... was in his heart? Something he feared to have noted, for suddenly he rose with a start, and, for the first time since my eyes had sought that window, pulled down the shades and thus shut himself out from my view altogether. Was it a rebuke to my insistent watchfulness? or the confession of a reticent nature fearing to be surprised in its moment of weakness? I ought to know—I would know. To-morrow I would ask him if there was any sorrow in his life which a confiding ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... was instantaneously apparent. As if her insistent finger had touched a button and released an electric current, Mr. McFettridge's sagging form shot convulsively into rigidity, and impinging violently upon the peacefully slumbering Mr. Boggs on the extreme end of the bench, toppled ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... shorten on the sunny slopes of noon, And the roads of earth are humming with toil's deep, insistent tune, Fragrant as a sea wind, blowing from an island blue, Through moiling hours of toiling comes my memory ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... allusion is—and of the lady's smile and look—a little frightened, but a look that, with the ever coward heart of a true lover, he could not yet construe. They were asking his name and bestowing upon him wellbred thanks for his heroic deed, and the Scotch cap was especially babbling and insistent. But the eloquent appeal was in the eyes ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... remained with him, clear and insistent after yesterday's impersonal vision of her at rehearsal, what was she now, when every tremulous lilt of the zither-string voice, and every little gesture of the impulsive hands, and every eager change of the ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... at once. His look scarcely altered, his hold upon her remained perfectly steady and temperate. Yet in the pause the beating of her heart rose between them—a hard, insistent throbbing like the fleeing feet of ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... nothing appropriated room but the partition walls and a narrow stairway. The interior looked as though it were fashioned by artisans who were zealous disciples of a carpenter's square and who carried it about for insistent and perpetual use. She pointed out where many new windows must be cut or old ones enlarged and considerably modified ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... like a flame, burned ever in his breast, and to youth he turned, to the round little limbs, so reckless, that wanted care, to the small round faces so unreasonably solemn or bright, to the treble tongues, and the shrill, chuckling laughter, to the insistent tugging hands, and the feel of small bodies against his legs, to all that was young and young, and once more young. And his eyes grew soft, his voice, and thin-veined hands soft, and soft his heart within him. And to those small creatures he became at ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that she fancied that there came from her father's room above the thud of some sudden fall or collapse. She listened. The bell swallowed all other noise. She thought that she had been mistaken, but the tapping at the window began again, now insistent; the church bell suddenly stopped and in the silence that followed one could hear the slight creak of some bough driven by the sea-wind ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... were well over on enemy territory, and for the first time in the game a cry began to arise for a touchdown, that only students hungry for a touchdown can emit. Louder and more insistent it grew in volume as the players began to settle back again for a renewal of the desperate tussle. Even many Marshall fellows took part in the demand, for, as they loudly proclaimed, it would make the game much more interesting if their team had a handicap in the start to fight ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... of the other day, seeming to seek in them some savour that still escaped her good-will. She answered him alertly, swiftly, and often at random, as though by her intelligence and competence to cover his ineptitude. Her smile was brightly mechanical; her voice at once insistent and monotonous. She had an air, which Gregory felt more and more to be almost ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... young girl's voice made the little diva more good-humouredly insistent than before, and Goneril was too well-bred to make a fuss. She stood by the piano wondering which to choose, the Handels that she always drawled or the Pinsuti that she always galloped. Suddenly ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... in a position to sit down and generalize about the wind. It is a tiresome thing to have it as the recurring insistent theme of our story, but to have had it as the continual obstacle to our activity, the opposing barrier to the simplest task, was ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... of the sea now as something gone, like the old world. There once a voyager was sundered from insistent trifles. He was with simple, elemental things that have been since time began, and he had to meet them with what skill he had, the wind for his friend and adversary, the sun his clock, the stars for counsel, and the varying wilderness his hope and his doubt. But the cruel misery ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... is the Presence from which there is no escaping. And the fact of evil, physical and moral, is precisely the chief and most fruitful source of religious scepticism; it is not the abstract question whether there is a God, but the practical and insistent problem whether the Divine goodness can be reconciled with the facts of life and experience, that is agitating men's minds, and sways their decision for or ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... now come. The active, intense interest of the country was aroused, and everywhere the division among the people was sharply defined and keen, though the numerical preponderance, it cannot be denied, was largely against the President and insistent ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... side glance at John. Did John find something that made him so insistent to remain? They repressed their curiosity, however, for the time. To their minds they thought the natives were the incentive, notwithstanding the terrible fight they had just engaged in, although they were willing to take ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... reports, sharp, insistent, rang out in quick succession; then two or three, all mingling together; the echoes followed from wood and cliff. Rapidly as the flashes pierced the gloom, the sounds ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... she stood straight before him, insistent, resolute. "Indeed I think I know myself better than for months past. I shall say nothing wrong to Captain Le Gaire, and if he is a gentleman he will honor me more for my frankness. Either you will send him here to me, or else I shall go ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... destined to have a greater testimony than this, for a whisper of what was passing within the great hall had now filtered forth into the streets, and all in a moment we were aware of a mighty tumult and hubbub without, a clamour of voices louder and more insistent than those which had hailed the King a short time before, and the words which seemed to form themselves out of the clamour and gradually grow into the burden of the people's cry was the repeated and vehement shout, "THE MAID OF ORLEANS! THE MAID OF ORLEANS! ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... first, but toward noon surging through aisles and round bins, upstairs and downstairs—in, round and out. Voices straining to be heard; feet shuffling in an agglomeration of discords—the indescribable roar of humanity, which is like an army that approaches but never arrives. And above it all, insistent as a bugle note, reaching the basement's breadth, from hardware to candy, from human hair to white goods, the tinny voice of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... be the king of French orators; all his life he preached with a serious, imposing, vast, copious, and sonorous eloquence, fed from recollections of Holy Writ and of the Fathers, being insistent, convincing, and persuasive. His few funeral orations (on Henrietta of France, Henrietta of England, the Prince de Conde) are prose poems of glory, grief, and piety. He wrote against all those he regarded as enemies of true religion (History of Variations, Quarrels ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... first this quality of hers somehow irritated Amory. He considered his own uniqueness sufficient, and it rather embarrassed him when she tried to read new interests into him for the benefit of what other adorers were present. He felt as if a polite but insistent stage-manager were attempting to make him give a new interpretation of a part he ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and windings of the Till grow more insistent, and the little stream adds miles to its length by reason of its frequent doubling on its tracks; this, however, but gives an added charm to the landscape, as the silvery gleams of the winding river come unexpectedly into view again and again. It flows on through ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... hot cakes!" Thus, in a plaintive voice, sang the old woman peddler who regularly, upon winter evenings, during the first ten or twelve years of my life, passed under our window.—When I think of those bygone days I hear again her insistent refrain. ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... losing patience, had either enlisted in Canada or were already in France on some errand of mercy. Their cry had reached Washington at first only as a whisper, very faint and distant. Little by little that cry had swelled, till it became the nation's voice, angry, insistent, not to be disregarded. The most convinced humanitarian, together with the sincerest admirer of the old-fashioned kindly Hans, had to join in that cry or brand himself a traitor ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... they do not tell much either for or against success in life; they are small oscillations which leave the type unchanged. As circumstances change, the stability of the species may gradually dwindle through the insufficiency of some definite quality, on which in earlier times no such insistent demands were made. The individual animals will then tend to fail in the struggle for life, the numbers will dwindle and extinction may ensue. But it may be that some new variation, at first of insignificant importance, may just serve to ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... attended Him all through His life, and was most insistent at its close. The shadow of the cross stretched along His path from its beginning. But it is to be remembered that he had not the same need of self-control which we have, in that His Will was not reluctant, and that no rebellious desires had escaped from ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... but God disposes. Cappy had smoked his post- prandial cigar next day and was in the midst of his mid-afternoon siesta, when the buzzer on his desk waked him with its insistent buzzing. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... series of debates are too familiar to all students of our Nation's political history to be considered at length in these pages. Mr. Lincoln analyzed and answered the various arguments advanced by Mr. Douglas the evening before; and the closing paragraphs of his reply to the insistent reminders "that this Government was made ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... brought him no happiness—save when he sent Admiral Sturdee to sea to avenge the death of Admiral Cradock. He was perhaps too insistent on victory, a crushing and overwhelming victory, for a Fleet on which hung the whole safety of the Allies, and a Fleet which had experienced the deadly power of the submarine. He was certainly not too old for work. To the last, looking as if he was bowed down ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... arose, the girl and The Oskaloosa Kid being most insistent. What was the use? What good could he accomplish? It might be nothing; yet on the other hand what had brought death so horribly to the cold clay on the floor below? At last their pleas prevailed and Bridge replaced the ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... have been better spent in ministering to the personal griefs and perplexities of such as sat before him for their need's sake. It may be well for us each to make inquiry concerning ourselves in these matters. As a result we will realise again, no doubt, how numerous and insistent are the demands made upon us to turn aside in our ministry to treat of a hundred things which once upon a time we did not think of as pulpit questions. Be this as it may, here lies work for the preacher which he ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... rises on the Mount of Saturn the subject will be rather selfish in all questions of affection (4, Plate XVI.). These people are not self-sacrificing, like the previous type. They are inclined to be cynical, reserved, undemonstrative but very insistent in trying to gain the person they want. They will let nothing stand in their way, but once they have obtained their object they show little ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... cursed the voice, and himself for listening to it, and fell again to vehement prayers and self-reproaches, trying to drown the clamor of his heart with his insistent petitions. If he could only pray as he had been wont to pray, he was saved. There lay a respite from thought and a refuge from passion. Why could he not abandon his whole soul to communion with God, as once ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... to pretend to introduce the Author of this little book to the reading public, to whom he is so well and so favourably known by a stately array of preceding volumes. Nevertheless Bishop Vaughan has been so insistent on my contributing at least a few introductory lines, that, for old friendship's sake, ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... established opinion about Shakespeare is not the result of an accidental frame of mind, nor of a light-minded attitude toward the matter, but is the outcome of many years' repeated and insistent endeavors to harmonize my own views of Shakespeare with those established amongst all civilized ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... radical change in this regard is demanded so as to bring the treatment in harmony with the capabilities of the lower race. Several authorities will be cited which, I think, will be more than sufficient to offset Mr. Hoffman's insistent opinion. ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... forms. Currents of thought are always, as it were, running past the great formulae since thought is free and formulae are rigid, and then returning upon them. From time to time this movement gathers great force. The old has been rigid so long, the new is so insistent that the conflict between them fills an age with its clamour, stresses souls to its travail, breaks down ancient forms without immediately building up their equivalent, and contributes uncertainties and ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... French. To the man on the spot English settlers meant "the four hundred and fifty contemptible sutlers and traders" who had come in the wake of the army from New England and New York, with no proper respect for their betters, and vulgarly and annoyingly insistent upon what they claimed to be their rights. The French might be alien in speech and creed, but at least the seigneurs and the higher clergy were gentlemen, with a due respect for authority, the King's and their own, and the habitants were docile, ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... lad drowsed, and she stopped for a bit of a rest, until his insistent, "Sing more!" roused her ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... adobe cabin squatting in the moonlight came the shrill, insistent jingling of a bell. The man looked that way thoughtfully, climbed down and went to the cabin, keeping ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... demanding and claiming and insistent. Friendship is all kindness—it makes the world glorious with kindness. What color you see when you walk with a friend! You see that the gray sky is brilliant and shimmering; you see that the smoke has warm browns and is marvelously ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... hollow filled with black fir-trees, and beyond the fir-trees a blue lake as blue as an Indian moonstone, and then one by one, with the unexpectedness of a flight of glow-worms, sparkled the serried ranks of the hotels. Out they flashed, breaking up the mystery, defying the mountains, as insistent and strident as life. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... investigation began, the Utah State journal (of which I became editor) was founded as a Democratic daily newspaper, to attempt a restoration of political freedom in Utah and to remonstrate against the new polygamy, of which rumors were already insistent. I was at once warned by Judge Henry H. Rolapp (a prominent Democrat on the District bench, and secretary of the Amalgamated Sugar Company) that we need not look for aid from the political or business interests of the community, ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... appreciation of her insistent sincerity. "Well, when you're married won't you be with me all the time? So that's fixed! And as for meeting somebody by accident on the street-cars—why, you foolish darling, you're not marrying a Turk, or ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield |
