"Pertinacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shortly from the cross begin to minister as a Priest, then as Prophet foretold the approaching fate of that fair city, asking significantly, since the Romans dealt thus with Himself an innocent sufferer, what would they not do when exasperated by the pertinacious resistance of the Jewish ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... And the railroad, pertinacious, intrusive, aggressive, is, after all, the dependent follower, the abject copyist of the river. Toss and scorn as it may, the river is its leader and engineer. Fortunes and ages almost would have been necessary to tunnel those ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... the "celebrated poet" of Ibn Khallikan (i. 188); Nabighat (the full- grown) al-Zubyani who flourished at the Court of Al-Nu'man in AD. 580-602, and whose poem is compared with the "Suspendeds,''[FN446] and Al-Mutalammis the "pertinacious" satirist, friend and intimate with Tarafah of the "Prize Poem." About Mohammed's day we find Imr al-Kays "with whom poetry began," to end with Zu al-Rummah; Amru bin Madi Karab al-Zubaydi, Labid; Ka'b ibn Zuhayr, the father one of the Mu'al-lakah-poets, and the son author of the Burdah or Mantle-poem ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... that the man who had sought him in New York should track him to Florence. He might have an interest in this affair of Lady Chetwynde deep enough to inspire so pertinacious a search, so that the difficulty did not consist in this. The true difficulty lay in the fact that this man who had come to him first as the inquirer after Lady Chetwynde should now turn out to be the betrayer of ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... situation. Though this paper was able to impose on such great antiquaries as Spellman (see Gloss. in verbo DRENGES) and Dugdale, (see Baron. vol. i. p. 118,) it is proved by Dr. Brady (see Answ. to Petyt, p. 11, 12) to have been a forgery; and is allowed as such by Tyrrel, though a pertinacious defender of his party notions (see his Hist. vol. ii. introd. p. 51, 73). Ingulf, p. 70, tells us, that very early, Hereward, though absent during the time of the Conquest, was turned out of all his estate, and could not obtain redress. William ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... cheque, accompanied by a scathing rebuke of her extravagance. Some cutting little sarcasms of Molly Gaverick's had likewise annoyed her, and she fretted under the miserable sense of her inadequacy to the demands of a world she despised and yet hankered after. Then Sir Luke had been tiresomely pertinacious over some small dereliction on Bridget's part from the canons of Government House etiquette, which he had requested should not be repeated. Rosamond Tallant had been tiresome also and had made her feel that even here she was no more than a dependent ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... have sometimes thought that she took more pride in her leechcraft than becomes a Christian woman; she is even a little vain-glorious. For, to say nothing of her skill in compounding simples, she has occasionally brought down upon her head the sober remonstrances of her husband, by her pertinacious faith in the efficacy of certain spells in cases of intermittent. But there is no reasoning against her experience. She can enumerate the cases—"and men may say what they choose about its being contrary ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... existence, and to deduce with solid arguments His principal attributes. Yet, even that quantum which human reason believes to have succeeded in establishing on this exalted subject, has always had to encounter in the fields of proud philosophy tenacious, or rather pertinacious, adversaries. Whereas revelation, extricating man from the labyrinth of transcendental abstrusities, presents him at once with a well constructed system of theological science, which he has only to receive within his bosom, ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... about her own loneliness and lack of opportunity, in contrast with Aurelia, who was seeing the world. That elegant beau, Sir Amyas, had just given a sample to tantalise their rusticity, and then had vanished; and here was that oddity, Mr. Arden, more wearisome and pertinacious than ever. So tiresome! ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sometimes to the pleasant surprise and half welcome of the members, more often to the bewilderment and prostration of numerous victims; and in a few signal instances, to the gnashing of angry men's teeth. I know of no two more pertinacious incendiaries in the whole country! Nor will they themselves deny the charge. In fact this noise-making twain are the two sticks of a drum for keeping up what Daniel Webster called "the rub-a-dub ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and my eyes are better than the bewitched brass thing that pulls out to a great length," said the pertinacious helmsman. "There was a boat, just clear of the easternmost island. There was a boat, and they in her could see the ship on the light of the west—unless they are blind men lost on the sea. I have seen her. Have you seen her, too, ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... the turnpike in the vigor of desperation, felt no single pang of penance. His mood was primitive and pertinacious. He went forward with bee-like undeviation until he found an inn where he bathed and shaved and ate. He slept until midnight and ate again. He slept through the night and the morning and ate again, still with the mental monotony ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... Warren, evidently the "very head and front of the offending:" he was talking to the little man of the famous will case, who appeared to be on the verge of a violent nervous fever. The latter wished to escape, but the lawyer was too resolute and pertinacious to be conquered by his weak irritability, and he was obliged to ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... Mind seems most pertinacious in concealing the method of its operations. "No admittance" is inscribed upon the door of the laboratories of the brain. Approaching a psychological inquiry is like entering a manufactory: curious to observe ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... useless arguing with so pertinacious a disputant we were compelled humbly to submit. The horse had one stall—we took possession of the other. To make ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would allow, we collected all the hay and straw and reeds, so as to form a thick layer of dry ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... out of it as I did. It was an awful climb. When we got out of the gulch, C. was so confused that he took the wrong direction, and after an hour of vague wandering was only recalled to the right one by my pertinacious assertions acting on his weak brain. I was inclined to be angry with the incompetent braggart, who had boasted that he could take us to Estes Park "blindfold"; but I was sorry for him too, so said nothing, even though I had to walk during these ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... as Willoughby, electrified by the mention of the verses, took a sharp stride or two, "you have in him an advocate who will not be rebuffed by one refusal, and I can affirm that he is tenacious, pertinacious as are few. Justly so. Not to believe in a lady's No is the approved method of carrying that fortress built to yield. Although unquestionably to have a young man pleading in our interests with a lady, counts its objections. Yet Willoughby being notoriously engaged, may ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... invincibly obstinate in his conceits and courses. Briefly, from this proceeding men become unwilling to mark, unfit to apprehend, indisposed to embrace any good instruction or advice; it maketh them indocile and intractable, averse from better instruction, pertinacious in their opinions, and refractory in ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... worst aims of these tyrants and their horrid avarice and oppression, they were not satisfied with being evil tyrants to the natives, but also to their own proper sons, brothers and relations, in defiance of their own laws and statutes, they were the worst and most pertinacious tyrants with an unheard-of inhumanity. For it was enacted among themselves and by their customs and laws that the eldest legitimate son should succeed, yet almost always they broke the law, as appears by the Incas who are here ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... is pertinacious on the subject of the bear being changed into a whale, which I said Darwin contemplated as not impossible. I did not take the trouble in any former letter to answer him on that point, as his language was so intemperate. He has modified his tone in his ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... sir, that the utmost abilities of a nation can never be so well employed as in the unwearied, pertinacious defence of their religion and freedom. When these are lost, there remains nothing that is worth the concern of a good or wise man. Nor do I think it consistent with the prudence of government not to ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... colleagues appear to entertain a higher opinion of him than he deserves, and you hear of one or another saying, 'Oh, you don't know the Duke of Richmond.' He has, in fact, that weight which a man can derive from being positive, obstinate, pertinacious, and busy, but his understanding lies in a nutshell, and his information in a pin's head. He is, however, good-humoured, a good fellow, and personally liked, particularly by Stanley and Graham, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... breakfast at his club, when he found himself almost forced to accompany Mr. Hart into a little private room at the left hand of the hall of the hotel. He wanted his breakfast badly, and was altogether out of humour. He had usually found Mr. Hart to be an enduring man, not irascible, though very pertinacious, and sometimes almost good-natured. For a moment he thought he would bully Mr. Hart, but when he looked into Mr. Hart's face, ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... judgment and fiery indignation." The ecclesiastics, who surrounded his death-bed, assured him that such sins as he had been guilty of could only be expiated by the most liberal benefactions to the church. He had never forgiven Isabella for her pertinacious adherence to De Soto. In the grave he could not prohibit their nuptials. By bequeathing his wealth to the church, he could accomplish a double object. He could gratify his revenge by leaving his daughter ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... on bread, the English on meat. Both are passionate; but it is the blood which rouses the passion of a Frenchman, and the bile which exasperates an Englishman. The anger of a Frenchman is more violent, that of an Englishman more pertinacious. A Frenchman spends his money on his clothes, an Englishman on his belly. A Frenchman follows the stream, an Englishman delights in struggling against it. The friendships of the French are quickly formed, and as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... end he wrote again to Sir James Graham, and also for the first time to the Earl of Aberdeen, on the 30th of December. "The pertinacious resistance made at Sebastopol, and the possibility of events that may still further disappoint expectation," he said to Sir James, "have induced me to address Lord Aberdeen, saying that 'if it is the opinion of the Cabinet, or of those whom they consult on military affairs, that, failing the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... If he did not intend now to fulfil his promise, I begged he would take back his spears, for I would only accept them as a farewell present. The Kamraviona finding me rather warm, with the usual pertinacious duplicity of a negro, then said, "Well, let that subject drop, and consider the present Kamrasi promised you when you gave him the Uganga" (meaning the watch); "Kamrasi's horn is not ready yet." This second prevarication completely set my dander up. If I did not believe in his dangers of the ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... the British ships had suffered severely, their rigging was torn by the hostile shot, and the crews had lost many of their best men. By the first light of morning, however, Phipps renewed the action with pertinacious courage, but with no better success. About noon the contest became evidently hopeless to the stubborn assailants; they weighed anchor, and, with the receding tide, floated their crippled vessels down the stream, beyond the reach of the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... divers taverns in the city where the dinners were either vastly good or vastly ill. I told him that as I never dined at a tavern the subject was altogether beyond the scope of my intelligence, at which Sandwich and Fareham laughed, and my pertinacious gentleman blushed as red as the heels of his shoes. I am told the creature has a pretty taste in music, and is the son of a tailor, but professes a genteel ancestry, and occasionally pushes ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... guardian care, gathered their dear relatives around them; wives and mothers looked for support to the manly form beside them, and then with tender anxiety bent their eyes on the infant troop around. They were sad, but not hopeless. Each thought that someone would be saved; each, with that pertinacious optimism, which to the last characterized our human nature, trusted that their beloved family would be the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... would have rubbed him up the wrong way. He is devoted to his daughter, and he might look on my harmless but unavoidable guile with a prejudiced eye. In any event, I should be compelled to go slow in analyzing Mrs. Devar's motives, and this pertinacious Marigny seems to have been fairly intimate with him in Paris. Yes, on the whole, it is just as well that I missed him. Cynthia can put matters before him in a better light than is possible to one who is an utter stranger. I must tell her, in my best American, that it ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... article, but vastly entertaining, and has been meat and drink to me for many a long evening. His manner is dry, brisk and pertinacious, and the choice of words not much. The point about him is his extraordinary readiness and spirit. You can propound nothing but he has either a theory about it ready-made, or will have one instantly on the stocks, and proceed to lay its timbers and launch ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... breaking her laws, cheating her officers, seducing her patriots? Of course; but what astounds me is that a man of your standing should believe the French are coming here now to Ireland. No, no, Boyne; I'm not taking your word for any of these things. You're a gossip; you're a damned, pertinacious, preposterous gossip, and I'll say it as often ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... faith," [460:3] and of the martyr, by his sufferings, "washing away his own iniquities." [460:4] We are told that by baptism "we are cleansed from all our sins," and "regain that Spirit of God which Adam received at his creation and lost by his transgression." [460:5] "The pertinacious wickedness of the Devil," says Cyprian, "has power up to the saving water, but in baptism he loses all the poison of his wickedness." [460:6] The same writer insists upon the necessity of penance, a species of discipline unknown to ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... about eighty of them, who always went along, too, and set in a circle around him when he played. I told him they'd soon tire of tagging after him, which he said he was mighty glad to hear; but if it was flies, they couldn't have been more pertinacious. I spoke to the king about it, and Old Dibs he complained to Iosefo, but it only seemed to whoop it up and add to the procession. The king said if he'd just flute in one place, he would put a taboo around it which neither children nor grown-ups would cross; ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... at Biarritz, the old woman with her little black bag at once appears upon the scene. Some Frenchless friends in Paris, on one occasion, guilelessly seated in the gardens of the Palais Royal, took the collector simply for a pertinacious beggar-woman, and waved her airily off. She returned to the charge, of course, in indignant French, and grew angrier every moment as she found herself still loftily ignored. A warm fracas was in prospect, when a passing American fortunately ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... claiming his entire time, exasperating him with fickleness, but still requiring that supreme devotion of which his nature was capable. It is possible that Miss Carmen saw this too, and so set about with feminine tact, if not to supplement, at least to make her rival less pertinacious and absorbing. Apart from this object, she zealously labored in her profession, yet with small pecuniary result, I fear. Local art was at a discount in California. The scenery of the country had not yet become famous; rather it was reserved for a certain Eastern artist, already famous, ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... sky." The mind of the average Englishman, however, had been, for some time, much disturbed by the arguments, the pleadings, and the agitation of a small number of enlightened Reformers, at first much in advance of their time, who were making a pertinacious crusade against the whole system of colonial slavery. Some of these men have won names which will always be honored in our history. Zachary Macaulay was one of these. He was the father of the Macaulay whom we have ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... celebrated author of The Rambler, who is of all others the oddest and most peculiar fellow I ever saw. He is six feet high, has a violent convulsion in his head, and his eyes are distorted. He speaks roughly and loud, listens to no man's opinions, thoroughly pertinacious of his own. Good sense flows from him in all he utters, and he seems possessed of a prodigious fund of knowledge, which he is not at all reserved in communicating; but in a manner so obstinate, ungenteel, and boorish, as renders it disagreeable ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... had been conceded to them in England. His observations on that particular point are curious. In Ireland, he remarks, the sentiments of the lawyers have considerable weight in the discussion of political subjects, which, "whether it arises from the confident and pertinacious loquacity of gentlemen of that profession, or from the deference which is shown and felt for those in whose hands are entrusted the most interesting concerns of every family in the kingdom, and from their frequent intercourse ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... during the interval, Loyal addresses, suitable to the occasion, were voted nem. con.; and next day ministers obtained a pledge that the desired measure for the wants of government should be adopted. When the requisite votes of money were proposed, however, Mr. Hume, that pertinacious interrogator, took occasion to ask a very embarrassing question. In the necessary alteration of the form of prayer for the royal family, by his majesty's command, the name of the queen was omitted. Mr. Hume desired to know whether ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... mulish, resolute, decided, heady, obdurate, resolved, determined, immovable, opinionated, stubborn, dogged, indomitable, persistent, unconquerable, firm, inflexible, pertinacious, unflinching, fixed, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Sanguine and pertinacious, the King refused to believe in, the downfall of his long-cherished scheme; and even when the light was at last dawning upon him, he was like a child, crying for a fresh toy, when the one which had long amused him had been broken. If the Armada were really very much damaged, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... answer whatever to this round intimation, but continued to ride on, turning, in his own mind, whether it would not be wisest to come to a distinct understanding with his pertinacious attendant, and to explain, in so many words, that it was his pleasure to travel alone. But, besides that the sort of acquaintance which they had formed during dinner, rendered him unwilling to be directly uncivil towards a person of gentleman-like manners, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... have spoken paradoxically of the world war as primarily a struggle between the Latin and the Germanic ideal, ignoring the significance of Russia and of England. In spite of the heroic resistance of the French and the pertinacious thrust of the Italians against the steel wall in which Austria has bound them, the Latin forces engaged are obviously less than half of the Allied Powers. On the sea England is virtually alone. Nevertheless, I see the struggle as a Latin-German one, the great ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... money on the roan or chestnut, although appearances were in their favor, but to go in heavy on the black mare; and notwithstanding I assured him it was not my intention to risk any portion of my capital on this race, he was pertinacious in giving me his advice, and could not be convinced that I know nothing about the horses, and never bet on races of any kind. "Sare," said he, "you are a stranger. These Russians are great rascals. They will cheat you out of your eyes. I ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... impossible. Nevertheless, that one of the Northern generals to whom nothing ever seemed impossible, having cast the eye of desire upon this especial spot, now advanced upon it, and began operations in his silent, enduring, pertinacious way, which no men and no intrenchments could permanently withstand. His lieutenant, Sherman, made one desperate assault,—not, as it seemed, because there was a possibility of taking the place, but rather to demonstrate that it could not be taken. Then slower and more ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... of the occasion, Maurice ordered wine, and they remained sitting, after they had finished supper, listening to the rustling and swishing of the trees. The only drawback to the young man's happiness was the pertinacious curiosity of the girl who waited on them. She lingered after she had served them, and stared so hard that Maurice turned at length and asked her what the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... into air. The features of the face, however, were by no means finished with the same delicacy; they were rather coarse, slightly inclining to coppery in complexion, and indicative, in expression, of a very pertinacious and intractable disposition in their small proprietor. When the dwarf had finished his self-examination, he turned his small sharp eyes full on Gluck, and stared at him deliberately for a minute or two. "No, it wouldn't, Gluck, my ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... that there is no small share of hardihood in my attempt: Bigotry, superstitious adherence to existing institutions, exclusive partiality to a sect, and pertinacious resistance to the increase of liberal information, are well-sounding epithets easily applied, and too grateful to the million to want popularity. Those who write with no higher motive than to please the prevailing taste, must beware of touching upon topics which are likely to rouse the hostile ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... more relentlessly critical than the occasion needs, and more pertinacious than any father can comfortably bear. He proceeds to break the butterfly on the wheel in the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the hand receives it, not the conscience. Conscience! while you are about it, inscribe it on your lists of exiles. It is an obstinate opponent, pertinacious, persistent, inflexible, making a disturbance everywhere. Drive it out of France. You will be at ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... later—probably in about a fortnight—cure the obsession, or at least get the upper hand of it. The treatment demands perseverance, but it emphatically does not demand an impossibly powerful effort. It is an affair of trifling pertinacious touches. ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... and a hat Extremely well worth looking at; The weather was distinctly fine. My horse, too, wanted exercise, And time, when one is riding, flies; Besides, it really seemed, you see, The only way of ridding me Of pertinacious Mr. B.; So my head ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... these gruesome details, but Mr. Cazalette showed the keenest interest in them, and would not be kept from the doctor's elbows. He was pertinacious in ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... children. Ladies of wealth, including at least one countrywoman of our own, vainly entreated him to accept their purses, for women are quick to recognise the temperament of the priest, and recognising they adore. A rich widow of Nantes besought him with pertinacious tenderness to accept not only her purse but her hand. Mirabeau's sister hailed him as an eagle floating through ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... Silence, peace, and security seemed to abide in the ancient house and make it an ideal refuge for aching hearts. Mrs. Hudson had a stunted, brown-faced Maddalena, who wore a crimson handkerchief passed over her coarse, black locks and tied under her sharp, pertinacious chin, and a smile which was as brilliant as a prolonged flash of lightning. She smiled at everything in life, especially the things she did n't like and which kept her talent for mendacity in healthy exercise. A glance, a word, a motion was sufficient to ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... and to hide it under lock and key in a recess of the wall, as if it were a secret of murder; to walk, too, on his hill-top, where at sunset always came the pale, crazy maiden, who still seemed to watch the little hillock with a pertinacious care that was strange to Septimius. By and by came the winter and the deep snows; and even then, unwilling to give up his habitual place of exercise, the monotonousness of which promoted his wish to keep before his mind one subject of thought, Septimius wore ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the number of hoards discovered, which the unfortunate employes had saved up against the rainy day arrived. The routing-out of this conglomeration was only equalled in trouble by the removal of the birdlime with which the various benches were covered, and which adhered with most pertinacious obstinacy, in spite of every effort to get rid of it. From one of the wicker baskets used for the purpose of receiving the torn-up letters and documents, the following papers were extracted. We contrived to match the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... outward assaults of perturbing circumstances, disasters, changes, difficult duties, and the like, can ever be received with tranquillity is, that they should be received in quiet faith. And, in like manner, the only way by which men can be made steadfast and immovable in brave, pertinacious adherence to the simple law of right, whatsoever temptations may try to draw them aside, and whatsoever frowns may gather upon the face of affairs so as to frighten them from the path of rectitude—the only way by which they can conquer ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... were transmitted secretly to the culprits by a friend from without. By these means they sawed a bar out of one of the prison-windows, and might have made their escape, but for the obstinacy of Wilson, who, as he was daringly resolute, was doggedly pertinacious of his opinion. His comrade, Robertson, a young and slender man, proposed to make the experiment of passing the foremost through the gap they had made, and enlarging it from the outside, if necessary, to allow Wilson free passage. Wilson, however, insisted on making the first experiment, and ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... discipline with his obstreperous son. For Demi inherited a trifle of his sire's firmness of character, we won't call it obstinacy, and when he made up his little mind to have or to do anything, all the king's horses and all the king's men could not change that pertinacious little mind. Mamma thought the dear too young to be taught to conquer his prejudices, but Papa believed that it never was too soon to learn obedience. So Master Demi early discovered that when he undertook to 'wrastle' ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... way cleared and the man moved smartly on again, with every indication of one spurred on by an urgent errand—but went no more alone. Now a pertinacious shadow dogged him to the farther sidewalk, into the yawning vestibule of the railway station, on (at a trot) through its stupendous lobbies, even to the platform gates that were rudely slammed in his face by implacable destiny in the guise and ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... action imperatively demanded amidst doubts and difficulties in which reason is not satisfied, and faith is required. To argue therefore, that God cannot have left man to such uncertainty, is to argue, as the pertinacious lawyer did, who, on seeing a man in the stocks, asked him what he was there for; and on being told, said, 'They cannot put you there for that.' 'But I am ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... of which they were speaking. Ogden informed him that Colonel Arnold, with a detachment of ten or twelve hundred men, was about to proceed through the wilderness for the purpose of attacking Quebec. Burr instantly raised himself up in the bed, and declared that he would accompany them; and, so pertinacious was he on this point, that he immediately, although much enfeebled, commenced dressing himself. Ogden expostulated, and spoke of his debilitated state—referred to the hardships and privations that he must necessarily endure on ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... see much to-day," he opined, "low visibility—plafond only about a thousand!" Which cryptic sentence, by dint of pertinacious questioning, I found to mean that the clouds were about a thousand feet from earth and that it was misty. "Plafond", by the way, is aeronautic for cloud strata. Thus I stood with my gaze lifted heavenward until ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... sporting terrier the Bedlington holds a position in the first rank. He is very fast and enduring, and exceedingly pertinacious, and is equally at home on land and in water. He will work an otter, draw a badger, or bolt a fox, and he has no superior at killing rats and all kinds of vermin. He has an exceptionally fine nose, and makes a very useful dog for ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... way down to St Kilda his reflections were of the same unpleasant nature, and he cast about in his own mind how he could get rid of this pertinacious friend. He could not turn him off openly, as Pierre might take offence, and as he knew more of M. Vandeloup's private life than that young gentleman cared about, it would not do to run ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... ordinary courts of justice. That law, itself certainly intricate and involved, had to deal with facts of almost unprecedented complication and difficulty; but after a long and desperate struggle, the law triumphed over every obstacle that could be opposed to it by tortuous and pertinacious ingenuity: the case was correctly charged before the jury; most clearly established in evidence, so as to satisfy not them only, but all mankind; the jury returned a just verdict of guilty against all the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... they laughed at the child's pertinacious fancy for a night-ramble. But it happened that a light cloud passed over the daughter's spirit; she looked gravely into the fire and drew a breath that was almost a sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a little struggle to repress it. Then, ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... into his bosom, he cannot easily expel it,—even though personal interest should be on the side of such expulsion. It had become a settled belief with the Boltons that John Caldigate was a bigamist, which belief had certainly been strengthened by the pertinacious hostility of Hester's mother. Dick had heard something of all this, and thought that he would be ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... sat down in the porch and wept as for a blood relation, desiring Mr. Kenneth to get another servant to introduce him to the master. I could not hinder myself from pondering on the question—'Had he had fair play?' Whatever I did, that idea would bother me: it was so tiresomely pertinacious that I resolved on requesting leave to go to Wuthering Heights, and assist in the last duties to the dead. Mr. Linton was extremely reluctant to consent, but I pleaded eloquently for the friendless condition in which he lay; and I said my old master and foster-brother had a claim on my ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... Briton, and in which the diligence of Lord Bute in distributing places among his kinsmen and countrymen furnished the staple of almost every number; while in many the Princess of Wales herself was not spared, as the cause, for motives not obscurely hinted at, of his sudden elevation. So pertinacious and virulent were the attacks thus launched at him, coinciding as they did, at least in one point, with the prejudices of the multitude, that they were commonly believed to have had some share in driving Lord Bute from office, which, in the spring of 1763, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... the principal chief, and although the English treated with him as such, the Caffres would not acknowledge his authority. This is a very frequent error committed in our intercourse with savage nations, who are as pertinacious of their rights as the monarchs of Europe. The error on our part was soon discovered, but the government was too proud ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... fluently; he occupied himself not only in translating Goethe's poem "Faust," but tried his hand even in composing German verses. Enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare, Byron, Goethe, he used to spice his conversation abundantly with quotations from these his favorite authors. A pertinacious arguer, so much so that sometimes he watched my awakening in order to continue a discussion on some topic of science, poetry, or practical life, cut short by the chime of the small hours, he never lost his mild and amiable temper. Our faithful companion was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was nothing out of common for Bess to do this; she and Dorothy had been bosom friends since days when the two wore their hair in pigtails and their frocks to their knees. Bess came not only that evening, but every Storri evening; and whether or no she were a welcome, at least she was a pertinacious visitor, for she stayed unrelentingly until Storri, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... of them separately, swinging his long-lashed whip the while, and then damned the six in mass. He would have made a dutiful overseer. The soldiers had shown quite as little consideration for the residences along the way. I came to one dwelling where some pertinacious Vandal had even pried out the window-frames, and imperilled his neck to tear out the roof-beams; a dead vulture was pinned over the door by ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... months of October, November, and December, Mr Maguire was certainly not idle. He had, by means of pertinacious inquiry, learned a good deal about Miss Mackenzie; indeed, he had learned most of the facts which the reader knows, though not quite all of them. He had seen Jonathan Ball's will, and he had seen ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... Blunderstone House, for I passed a night there, and none occurred"? Why should a noisy ghost (if there is such a thing) or a hallucinatory sound (if there is such a thing), be expected to be more punctual and pertinacious than a seismic disturbance? Again, the gentleman who opened the correspondence with a long statement on the negative side, cried out, like others, for scientific publicity, for names of people and places. But neither he nor his allies gave their own names. He did not precisely establish his claim ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... at what inconvenience to themselves. And so it went on, one thing after another—a constant scene of bustle, hurry, and commotion. As de Sigognac and the tyrant strolled slowly along they were beset by beggars, more or less impudent and pertinacious, and by all sorts of odd characters, plying various extraordinary vocations for the amusement of the passers-by, for which they seemed to be liberally enough remunerated. Here was an improvisatore, singing, not unmelodiously, his rather clever verses; there a blind man, led by a stout, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... good Christians I hope will join with me in it, to the God of infinite mercy that He would have mercy upon his soul, upon which he hath contracted so great a guilt by the impudence of his behaviour and pertinacious obstinacy in those falsehoods which he hath made use of ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... the pertinacious ambition of a Portuguese king to rule Spain through an alliance with a Spanish princess—an ambition as pertinaciously foiled by the irony of history. No, they were not without excuse, those ancestors of his who ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... at this cruel sentence, and Tutchin prayed rather to be hanged at once. This privilege was refused, but as the poor prisoner, a mere youth, was taken ill with smallpox, his sentence was remitted. Tutchin became one of the most pertinacious and vehement enemies of the ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... 'painful anxiety and difficult labor:' Hamilton, Jefferson, and other of his eminent countrymen recognized warmly his services and his success: he did not altogether agree with Franklin, and was pertinacious in claiming all respect due to the Government he represented, assuring the British envoy that he would take no part in the business unless the United States 'were treated as an independent nation:' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the worshippers in either mode. Well, Drake, his hero, was a convinced Protestant; the bravest man he had ever met or dreamed of—fiery, pertinacious, gloriously insolent. He thought of his sailors, on whom a portion of Drake's spirit fell, their gallantry, their fearlessness of death and of all that comes after; of Mr. Bodder, who was now growing middle-aged in the Vicarage—yes, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... cases of immoral conduct, or flagrant disregard of the regulations of the society, this discipline is resorted to. If expostulations are not successful, offenders are for a time restrained from participating in the holy communion, or called before the committee. For pertinacious bad conduct, or flagrant excesses, the culpable individual is dismissed from the society. The ecclesiastical church officers, generally speaking, are the bishops,—through whom the regular succession of ordination, transmitted ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... I thrust the jewels, which I was surprised to find had been respected, into the bosom of my dress; and, seeing a silver bell hard by upon a table, rang it loudly. The steward instantly appeared; I asked for food; and he proceeded to lay the table, regarding me the while with a disquieting and pertinacious scrutiny. To relieve myself of my embarrassment, I asked him, with as fair a show of ease as I could muster, if it were usual for yachts to carry ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... developed at all. It recurs only when Elsa's pertinacious inquisitiveness threatens to rupture their somewhat hastily arranged alliance. Then it sounds out sinister, menacing, and the effect, both dramatic and musical, is overwhelming. Another example is the phrase representing Lohengrin ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... her, pressed upon him and rent his soul with fiercer throes than before. Muttering some hurried apology, he rose, staggered toward the door, and, to the amazement of the stoical footman, who was greatly scandalized thereby, the pertinacious stranger fairly reeled past ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... without giving me any warning of her intention. I was thunderstruck when I heard it, and deeply hurt, and as soon as I had traced her to Paris, I followed and demanded an explanation of her conduct. But she refused to see me, and when she found me pertinacious, left the city as suddenly as she had done that of London. Since which time she has answered no letters of mine, nor did we ever meet until, most unexpectedly, I met her in your house. My pride, after her first refusals to ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... ambition for high, life. In the "Conscript" his heroine displays the nobler virtues of uncorrupted humble life; and, with few characters, taken from the lowest walks, he shows the triumph of honest, straightforward earnestness and pertinacious courage, even when they are brought in conflict with authority. "The Poor Gentleman" closes the series; and, selecting a heroine from the educated classes of his country-people M. Conscience has demonstrated how superior a genuine woman becomes to all the mishaps of fortune, and how successfully ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... to say too much; she simply dealt out nothing—and less. They might come and go; they might follow and gaze and sigh—she did not even deign to seem to know they did so, unless by chance one became too pertinacious, and then she merely transfixed him with a soft, cruelly smiling eye. "She will not marry any of them," said Jose to Jovita ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Town as a phaenomenon, evincing the pertinacious adherence of man to the spot where he has once established himself. Once a year, for many successive springs, the Ohio, in its annual overflowings, has carried away the fences from the cleared lands of the inhabitants, till ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... at the end of George Street, where the cheap eating-houses (sixpence a meal) were kept by Chinamen (Sun-kum-on's was not bad), is heard at regular intervals. I have listened for hours to this most pertinacious pedlar (I wonder whether he is dead or has made a fortune), while sitting on the rail of the old Duke of S- (she's dead, poor thing! a violent death on the coast of New Zealand), fascinated by the monotony, the regularity, the abruptness of the recurring cry, and ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... they say in high journalistic society) were Second Lieutenant Little, Second Lieutenant Waddell, Second Lieutenant Cockerell, and Lieutenant Struthers, surnamed "Highbrow." Bobby we know. Waddell was a slow-moving but pertinacious student of the science of war from the kingdom of Fife. Cockerell came straight from a crack public-school corps, where he had been a cadet officer; so nothing in the heaven above or the earth beneath ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... Crowdey,' replied the pertinacious Jog, with another heavy snort. 'Ah, now you're coming your fine poor-law guardian knowledge,' rejoined his wife. Jog was chairman ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Carew was more pertinacious in his efforts to recover Sherborne. That was supposed to have been forfeited by the flight of Digby, now Lord Bristol, to France on the establishment of the Commonwealth. Carew petitioned the House ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... 1844 had been rejected a second time. But the majority against its ratification had been cut down by at least one half. Angry with disappointment the editor of the Iowa Capital Reporter declared that its defeat was due to "the pertinacious and wilful misrepresentation of the Whig press relative to ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... country"; to which he added, gaining more ease for an eye at Lord Theign: "though we do have our little rubs and disputes, like Pappendick and me now. The thing, you see, is the ripping interest of it all; since," he developed and explained, for his elder friend's benefit, with pertinacious cheer and an assurance superficially at least recovered, "when we're really 'hit' over a case we'll ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... body bent forward, his hands folded together. In the flat beneath, someone was jingling operetta on a piano not quite in tune; the pertinacious vivacity of the airs interfered with Harvey's desire to view things seriously. He had begun to wonder how large a capital Mrs. Frothingham had at her command. Was it not probable that she could as easily bestow fifteen hundred pounds as the half of ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... and must thus content herself with a second, third, or nth choice. The only women who get their first choices are those who run in almost miraculous luck and those too stupid to formulate an ideal—two very small classes, it must be obvious. A few women, true enough, are so pertinacious that they prefer defeat to compromise. That is to say, they prefer to put off marriage indefinitely rather than to marry beneath the highest leap of their fancy. But such women may be quickly dismissed as abnormal, and perhaps as ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... either; in cases of extreme distress—more than once or twice—McClintock had both written off the obligation and added to it something for the day's need, in a grim but not unkindly fashion; always under seal of secrecy. No extortioner, this; a dry, passionless, pertinacious man. ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... soon, it never would be secured, returned with great force. A doubt whether it was worth securing would have been very strong ere this, had not others besides herself been concerned in her fortunes. She looked up from her letter, and beheld the pertinacious yacht; it led her up to a conviction that therein lay a means ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... narrow spirit. Rockefeller's old Cleveland associates remember him as the greatest bargainer they had ever known, as a man who had an eye for infinite details and an unquenchable patience and resource in making economies. Yet Rockefeller was clearly more than a pertinacious haggler over trifles. Certainly such a diagnosis does not explain a man who has built up one of the world's greatest organizations and accumulated the largest fortune which has ever been placed at the ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... Gifford," he wrote to Bedford, in reply to his letter, "suppose me a troublesome man to deal with, pertinacious about trifles, or standing upon punctilios of authorship. No, Grosvenor, I am a quiet, patient, easy-going hack of the mule breed; regular as clockwork in my pace, sure-footed, bearing the burden which is laid ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... learned by heart extracts from the writings of these immortals in his school primer. That they conveyed little to him but a sense of paralysing boredom is neither here nor there. And Ben Flint, most worthy and pertinacious of Britons, for the fourteen impressionable years during which he was the arbiter of young Andrew's destiny, never for an hour allowed him to forget that he was an Englishman. That Andrew should talk French, his stepmother tongue, to all the outside ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... compelled to make friends with the bevies of young squaws, who ogle newcomers to the Indian camps. Presently, I gained the run of all the lodges. Indeed, I needed not a little diplomacy to keep from being adopted as son-in-law by one pertinacious old fellow—a kind of embarrassment not wholly confined to trappers in the wilds. But not a trace of Diable and ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... working-men should be forced down further and further in every branch in which the Irish compete with him. And these branches are many. All such as demand little or no skill are open to the Irish. For work which requires long training or regular, pertinacious application, the dissolute, unsteady, drunken Irishman is on too low a plane. To become a mechanic, a mill-hand, he would have to adopt the English civilisation, the English customs, become, in the main, an Englishman. ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... away again, when she reflected that since he was so pertinacious it would be better to see the operation finished once for all. Then she and her mother would get up and go away, as they had finished. But he wished to ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... the Paris Opera House. The old chteau of Boursault, which still exists contiguous to the stately edifice raised by Mme. Clicquot on the summit of the hill, was risked and lost on a single game at cards by this pertinacious gamester, whose pressing pecuniary difficulties compelled him to sell the remaining chteaux one by one. That of Ay was purchased by M. Froc de la Boulaye, and by him bequeathed to his cousin the Count de Mareuil, whose granddaughter ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... Frenchman could not, and the intelligent, loquacious American driver, who discourses on politics, religion, national institutions, and social gossip was unknown on that side of the Atlantic. What the curious American traveler could find out himself from observation and pertinacious seeking he was welcome to, but the Briton would waste no breath to enlighten Yankees as to the points of interest or ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... them—'in that case you are my prisoner in the king's name!' At the same time he stretched his hand towards Bertram's collar, while two of the men who had come up seized upon his arms; he shook himself, however, free of their grasp by a violent effort, in which he pitched the most pertinacious down the bank, and, drawing his cutlass, stood on the defensive, while those who had felt his strength recoiled from his presence and gazed at a safe distance. 'Observe,' he called out at the same time, 'that I have no purpose to resist legal authority; satisfy me that you have a magistrate's ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... was conscious, as he said this, that he was not precisely voicing his own sentiments. He himself was mystified. He was still wondering why Pratt had been so pertinacious in asking the old woodman when, precisely, he had told Mrs. Mallathorpe about the unsafe condition of the bridge—still wondering about a certain expression which had come into Pratt's face when the old man told them what he did—still wondering at the queer look which Pratt had given ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... up the roads, that neither Ezekiel Cheever nor his son Thomas, who had charge of his mother's rights, could get to Salem; and the court granted administration to the widow. The Cheevers demanded a rehearing: it was granted; and quite an interesting and pertinacious law-suit arose, which was finally carried up to the General Court, who decided it in 1681. The widow does not appear to have been actuated by merely selfish motives, but sought to divert a portion of the landed estate from the only legal heir, Ellen, the wife of Ezekiel Cheever, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... administrations, he was such a dispenser, as, if he had been trusted with it to such uses, and if there had been the least of vice in his expense, he might have been thought too prodigal. He was constant and pertinacious in whatsoever he resolved to do, and not to be wearied by any pains that were necessary to that end. And, therefore, having once resolved not to see London, which he loved above all places, till he had perfectly learned the Greek tongue, he went ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... blowing in his impotent rage; but as the ambatch float was exceedingly large, and this naturally accompanied his movements, he tried to escape from his imaginary persecutor, and dived constantly, only to find his pertinacious attendant close to him upon regaining the surface. This was not to last long; the howartis were in earnest, and they at once called their party, who, with two of the aggageers, Abou Do and Suleiman, were near at hand; these men arrived with the long ropes that form a portion ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... for your San Jago!—Well done again, Henry Sedley! but I must show you a better passado.—Have at thee, Don Inches!—Ah, Captain Baldry, Giles Arden, good Humphrey, give you welcome! Here's room for Englishmen.—Well, die, then, pertinacious senor!—Now, now, Henry Sedley, there are lions yet in your path, but not so many. Have at their golden banner an you prize the toy! No, Arden, no—let him take it single-handed. Our first battle is far behind us.... Now who leads here, since I think that he who ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... she had long been the wife of Mr. Job Legg. That pertinacious man achieved his end at last, and what his few enemies declared was guile, and his many friends held to be tact, won Nelly to him a year after her adventure with Mr. Gurd. None congratulated them more heartily than ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Commons, Monday, January 10th.—In spite of sharp rebuke administered by SPEAKER last week the PERTINACIOUS PRINGLE to the fore again—to be precise, to the Forward. This the name of weekly paper that is published in Clyde district, and has of late emerged from obscurity by "deliberately inciting workers," as LLOYD GEORGE said, "not to carry out Act of Parliament passed in order ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... altogether, as the enormous expense of supplying us by sea precluded the idea of any profit being ever realised; while it was quite evident the Company's benevolent views toward the Esquimaux could not be carried into effect. The extreme poverty and barrenness of their country, and their pertinacious adherence to their seal-skin dresses, which no argument of ours could induce them to exchange for the less comfortable articles of European clothing, were insurmountable obstacles. The Honourable Company, while they wished to supply the wants of the Esquimaux, still ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... will write and tell you all—all! I have an engagement now with a friend just around the corner!" he rushed from the room, and would have flown, but the pertinacious Celeste had followed, and just as he reached the outside hall, regardless of the publicity, flung herself around his neck, this time without bringing ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... civilized grub if I must eat," returned the pertinacious seaman. "Venison is well enough for your inland sailors, but we of the ocean like a little of that which ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... upper house young, a scholar and idealist, with the hope of the Presidency as the reward of generous service. Where the race is to the slow you lay aside your winged gifts one by one and your ambition centers finally not on the Presidency but on some committee chairmanship clung to by a pertinacious octogenarian. ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... the writer form as important an ingredient in the analysis of his history, as the facts he records. Probability is a powerful and troublesome test; and it is by this troublesome standard that a large portion of historical evidence is sifted. Consistency is no less pertinacious and exacting in its demands. In brief, to write a history, we must know more than mere facts. Human nature, viewed under an induction of extended experience, is the best help to the criticism of human history. Historical characters can only be estimated by the standard which human experience, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... over the pampas on a hot still day, with a pertinacious cloud of gnats or sandflies hovering just above my head and keeping me company for miles, I have always devoutly wished for a stray dragon-fly to show himself. Frequently the wish has been fulfilled, the dragon-fly, apparently "sagacious of his quarry ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... rocked, and tipped, and curtseyed, and tilted, as I knelt first on one side and then on the other fitting her, till I was almost in despair; however, I got a sort of pattern at last, and by dint of some pertinacious efforts—which, in their incompleteness, did not escape some sarcastic remarks from Mr. —— on the capabilities of 'women of genius' applied to common-place objects—the matter was accomplished, and the little Dolphin rejoiced in very ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... their beauty and heightening their complexion to which the searching eye of day was very inimical. Human malice, of course, took care that the Queen's motive should be communicated to all the higher circles of Paris; and as vanity is not only a more pugnacious passion, but a much more pertinacious adversary than any other, the words of Anne of Austria rendered many opponents irreconcilable, who might otherwise have been gained to her cause: the family of the Prince de Conde naturally being among ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... became indispensible to the former Southern ruler who wished to hold his own politically. So a new battle cry was made, viz:—"Negro Domination," "Social Equality." But so lukewarm had the poor white become, that his song had to be sung with pertinacious fervor to make him do more than ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... understand his humor, and avail themselves of it. He was one day disturbed by a pertinacious rattling and shaking at one of the doors, and bawled out in an angry tone to know the cause of the disturbance. "Sir," said the footman, testily, "it's this confounded French lock!" "Ah!" said the old gentleman, pacified by this hit at the nation, "I thought there was something French at ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... she let it alone ? and she confess herself mistaken. These and twenty such like questions were proposed and answered, with as much beggarly logick and earnestness as was ever heard to proceed from the mouth of the pertinacious schismatick; and sometimes all the beggars, whose number was neither more nor less than the poets' nine muses, talked all together about this ripping and unripping; and so loud, that not one heard ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... marrying Lucy with any degree of comfort, and meanwhile she would be exposed to the persecutions of the Professor. Perhaps persecutions is too harsh a word, as Braddock was kind enough to the girl. Nevertheless, he was pertinacious in gaining his aims where his pet hobby was concerned, and undoubtedly, could he see any chance of obtaining the money from Random by selling his step-daughter, he would do so. Assuredly it was dishonorable to act in this way, but the Professor ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... competitors who are so much the more formidable as they are fired by a principle of glory, by interest, by the difficulty itself; and by that inflexibility of mind which is generally found in those who devote themselves to that pertinacious study, the mathematics. ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... A pertinacious adversary, pushed to extremities, may say, that husbands indeed are willing to be reasonable, and to make fair concessions to their partners without being compelled to it, but that wives are not: that if allowed any rights of their own, they will acknowledge no rights at all in ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... of rain, when they seemed to burst into life in myriads spontaneously, kept up an increasing annoyance. At night this was ten-fold, for notwithstanding the gauze awnings, or bars, as they are called, which completely enveloped the bedstead, to the floor of the room, they found admittance with pertinacious audacity, and kept up a buzzing and humming about my ears that almost entirely deprived me of rest. This unceasing nuisance in the hot season, makes it difficult to keep one's equanimity of temper, and has, probably, much to do with that extreme irascibility shown by the southern ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... them, held out his cap for alms. Mr. George, who thought it was not best to give to beggars in the streets, was going on without regarding him; but the man hobbled on by the side of the strangers, and seemed about to be as pertinacious as the commissioner. They went on so for a little distance, when at length, just as the man was about giving up in despair, Rollo put his hand in his pocket, and feeling among the money there, happened to bring up a small copper coin, ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... Parliament, and so always come off both with honour and profit; yet must we ascribe some part of the commendation to the wisdom of the times, and the choice of Parliament-men; for I said {27} not that they were at any time given to any violent or pertinacious dispute, the elections being made of grave and discreet persons, not factious and ambitious of fame; such as came not to the House with a malevolent spirit of contention, but with a preparation to consult ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... a long peal of laughter from the distance. As it died away Batouch's peculiar guttural chuckle, which had something negroid in it, was audible, prolonging itself in a loneliness that spoke his pertinacious ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... had already ceased, and that the place at Court which he proposed to assign to her would be the best guarantee against its renewal. But all these attempts were in vain. The Queen refused any compromise; and on his side the King, whose superficial good humour was not incompatible with profound and pertinacious selfishness, did not scruple to expose her to every insult at Court. He threw himself with his usual cynicism into all the degraded pleasures of the libertine crew of his choice companions; openly pursued his intimacy ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Myrtle to hear about your school-fellows, my dear?' said Miss Mildmay, surprised and a little annoyed by Frances's rather pertinacious manner. 'These girls are very nice, I have no doubt; indeed I recollect Miss Scarlett speaking very highly of them; but no one doubts it. I think all your school-fellows must be nice girls—not only the Harpers. And the name may be a mere coincidence. I have never heard certainly that they ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... is curious, after writing the above, to find in a letter written by Foss Westcott, Bishop of Durham, to that pertinacious correspondent, the late Lady Victoria Welby, almost exactly the same sentiments I have here expressed. "If I could fill the Crucifix with life as you do," he says, "I would gladly look on it, but the fallen Head and the closed Eye exclude from my thought the idea ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... that, as the ultimate and real end of his life, the pursuit, in a way unattempted before, of all possible human knowledge, and of the methods to improve it and make it sure and fruitful. And so his life was carried out. On the one hand it was a continual and pertinacious seeking after government employment, which could give credit to his name and put money in his pocket—attempts by general behaviour, by professional services when the occasion offered, by putting his original and fertile pen at the service of the government, to win confidence, and to overcome ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... tonsuring was taking place; she moved it in spite of herself, now to one side, now to another, to flee from the clipping scissors, of which the rude cuts and the creaking axis wounded her ears. Her posture and movements, however, were of no avail to the poor shorn maiden, and the pertinacious shearer, with the anxiety and covetousness of a pregnant woman satisfying a caprice, seized the hair well, or ill, by handfuls, and went on bravely clipping, and the locks fell on to the white wrapper, slipping down thence till they ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... whether they were attracted by the lantern, or by the unaccustomed smell of a white man for which they had been waiting for the last thousand years or so, I know not; but certainly we were presently attacked by tens of thousands of the most blood-thirsty, pertinacious, and huge mosquitoes that I ever saw or read of. In clouds they came, and pinged and buzzed and bit till we were nearly mad. Tobacco smoke only seemed to stir them into a merrier and more active life, till at length we were driven to covering ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... antiquity.——Tyranny in every form, shape and appearance, was their disdain and abhorrence; no fear of punishment, nor even of death itself, in exquisite tortures, had been sufficient to conquer that steady, manly, pertinacious spirit, with which they had opposed the tyrants of those days, in church and state. They were very far from being enemies to monarchy; and they knew as well as any men, the just regard and honour that is due to the character of a dispenser of the mysteries of the gospel of grace: But they saw ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... temper of this meek, this matchless man. And doubtless, if Almighty God had blest the Dissenters from the ceremonies and discipline of this Church, with a like measure of wisdom and humility, instead of their pertinacious zeal, then obedience and truth had kissed each other; then peace and piety had flourished in our nation, and this Church and State had been blessed like Jerusalem, that is at unity with itself: but this can never be expected, till God shall ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... persistent, steadfast, untiring, indefatigable, pertinacious, unremitting, indomitable. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Antonio Agapida, "was the diabolical hatred and stiff-necked opposition of this infidel to our holy cause. But he was justly served by our most Catholic and high-minded sovereign for his pertinacious defence of the city, for Ferdinand ordered that he should be loaded with chains and thrown into a dungeon." He was subsequently retained in rigorous confinement ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... fitted either for cultivated land or mountain pasture, with the wool of one breed good for one purpose, and that of another breed for another purpose; when we compare the many breeds of dogs, each good for man in different ways; when we compare the game-cock, so pertinacious in battle, with other breeds so little quarrelsome, with "everlasting layers" which never desire to sit, and with the bantam so small and elegant; when we compare the host of agricultural, culinary, orchard, and flower-garden races of plants, most useful to man ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... pride in his reputation, and in his work. Moreover, he can turn his hand to anything, he does not grudge his time, and he is not corrupted by the contiguity of the public-house. The man who did my masonry work for me was a grey-haired, silent, pertinacious fellow, of great practical intelligence and efficiency. He did not work rapidly, but all that he did was thoroughly done. The carpenter was a man of the same type. He took a genuine delight in fitting my oak to its new uses, and had ideas of his ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... of the oldest inhabitant, he had slowly gravitated on into his present position, on the old Ring principle, "weight must tell." I believe he had been bullied continuously for many years, and now, with a dull, pertinacious malignity, was biding his time, intending, on his accession to power, to inflict full reprisals on those below him; or, in his own expressive language, "to take it out of 'em, like smoke." He was keeping his hand in by the ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... fountain. With a gesture that impressed Kenyon as at once suppliant and imperious, she seemed to intimate to a figure which had attended her thus far, that it was now her desire to be left alone. The pertinacious model, however, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... escapes the rigours of our winter. Eternal summer must be a delight, but the cuckoo has to work hard for the privilege, and it must at times be harried to the verge of desperation by the small birds that continually mob it in broad daylight. This behaviour on the part of its pertinacious little neighbours has been the occasion of much futile speculation; but the one certain result of such persecution is to make the cuckoo, along with its fellow-sufferer, the owls, preferably active ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... swineherd painting with nature's own tints," said Master Swift, with a pertinacious adherence to his own view of things, which had always been characteristic of him, "I reckon you'd have thought he beat the shepherd boy. Not that I could pretend to be a judge of the painting myself, sir; what took ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the little fish along-side, were sorely tormented and thinned out by the incursions of a pertinacious Chevalier, bent upon making a hearty breakfast out of them, I determined to interfere in their ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the outward show of zeal, and did his best to ingratiate himself with the royal family. But his servility was requited with cold contempt. No creature is so revengeful as a proud man who has humbled himself in vain. Atterbury became the most factious and pertinacious of all the opponents of the government. In the House of Lords his oratory, lucid, pointed, lively, and set off with every grace of pronunciation and of gesture, extorted the attention and admiration even of a hostile majority. Some of the most remarkable protests which appear in the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... captain and sailors not scrupling to promise him an introduction to King George. When the Santa Anna reached England, the crew had grown tired of him, used him roughly and harshly, and tried to put him off his pertinacious recollection of the promise of seeing the king, by telling him that King George's house could not be found; while he was worked beyond his strength, and scarcely ever suffered to go on shore. When, in fifteen days, the cargo was all discharged, the captain put him on board the Ann, to be ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge |
