"Stiff-necked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be that sometimes God indeed does so, and to such a possible complaint has this reply in Himself: "I gave thee what thou wouldst, because not otherwise could I teach the stiff-necked his folly. Hadst thou been patient, I would have made the thing a joy ere I gave it thee; I would have changed the scorpion into a golden beetle, set with rubies and sapphires. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... are all goody-goodies, who allow those teachers to lead you around by the nose. I had intended to ask Aunt Margaret to take me out of this ridiculous school, for some of the people in it make me tired, but I have changed my mind. I shall stay for pure spite and show that stiff-necked principal of yours that I am a law unto myself, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... pony is easy to guide, if you happen to be going the way he likes, and that is, ever from the park to the stable, from the stable to the park; otherwise, like the Israelites of old, he is a stiff-necked beast, whom I would rather eschew than commune with. And the wolf-hound, my lady, behaves so rudely to little Crisp, holding him by the throat in an unseemly fashion, and occasionally despoiling him of a fragment of his ears, toes, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Cedric; "my hospitality must not be bounded by your dislikes. If Heaven bore with the whole nation of stiff-necked unbelievers for more years than a layman can number, we may endure the presence of one Jew for a few hours. But I constrain no man to converse or to feed with him.—Let him have a board and a morsel apart,—unless," he said smiling, "these ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... above fanatics: as he may not be satisfied with Timperley's meagre allusion, allow me to refer him to the Memoirs of the Lord Viscount Dundee: London, 1714. The author of this, "An Officer of the Army," speaking of the stiff-necked Presbyterians, says: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... tranquillised her, and made things seem more normal, but there was no prospect of one. "I'll wait till this rat-hunt is over," she thought, letting Joker stroll across the park towards a little lake, shining amidst bracken and bushes, a jewel dropped from heaven. A couple of stiff-necked swans floated in motionless trance upon it; black water-hens flapped in flashing, splashing flight to safety as Christian came near; a string of patchwork coloured mandarin-ducks propelled themselves in jerks towards her, confident ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... and say, more'n half of 'em wore the same kind of a look. It was only the women that seemed right to home. There wasn't one in sight that didn't have her chin up and her shoulders back, and carrying all the dog the law allows. They treated them stiff-necked food-slingers like they was a lot of wooden Indians. You'd see 'em pilin' their wraps on one of them lordly gents just as if he was a chair. Then they'd plant themselves, spread out their dry-goods, peel off their elbow gloves, and ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... golden calf. He who had hitherto led them—Jehovah the Angel of Jehovah—says, in Exod. xxxii. 34, that He would no more lead them Himself, but send before them His Angel, [Hebrew: mlaki]: "For I (myself) will not go up in the midst of thee, for thou art a stiff-necked people, lest I consume thee in the way;" xxxiii. 3, compared with xxiii. 21. The people are quite inconsolable on account of this sad intelligence, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... only thing to do now is to see that the Academy is no longer allowed to sail under false colours. This article may awaken in the Academy a sense that it is not well to persist in open and flagrant defiance of public opinion, or it may serve to render the Academicians even more stiff-necked than before. In either case it will have accomplished ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... swollen, puffed up, flushed, blown; vainglorious; purse-proud, fine; proud as a peacock, proud as Lucifer; bloated with pride. supercilious, disdainful, bumptious, magisterial, imperious, high and mighty, overweening, consequential; arrogant &c 885; unblushing &c 880. stiff, stiff-necked; starch; perked stuck-up; in buckram, strait- laced; prim &c (affected) 855. on one's dignity, on one's high horses, on one's tight ropes, on one's high ropes; on stilts; en grand seigneur [Fr.]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... slight knitting of the brows, "the Doctor mout hev writ more particklers, but parsons ain't allus business men. I reckon these here extrys were to push Jack along in the term, as the Doctor knew I wanted him back here in the spring, now that his brother has got to be too stiff-necked and self-opinionated to do his father's work." It seemed from this that there had been a quarrel between Hays and his eldest son, who conducted his branch business at Sacramento, and who had in a passion threatened to set up a rival establishment to his father's. And it ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... rejoined his lordship, "the whim is wearing off! One pellet drives out another. Behind the love in the popgun came the conviction that it would be simple ruin! But we Graemes are stiff-necked both to God and man, and ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... so too. All her later actions point to that fact. The only mistake, and this was shared by all who participated in the Treaty of Berlin alike, was the assumption that Bulgaria herself would allow this to be done. It only developed later what a stiff-necked people the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... personified. A chief, speaking for the Onondagas, will say, "I (that is, my nation) am angry; thou (the Delaware people) hast done wrong." This style of bold personification is common in the scriptures. Moses warns the Israelites: "Thou art a stiff-necked people." "Oh my people!" exclaims Isaiah; "they which lead ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... see my younger brother, Courtenay, is turned out of office in India, for refusing the surety of the East India Company! Truly the Smiths are a stiff-necked generation, and yet they have all got rich but I. Courtenay, they say, has L150,000, and he keeps only a cat! In the last letter I had from him, which was in 1802, he confessed that his money was ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... yonder wreath—was it not so? Nay, it was but a jest. Didst thou know how heavy is the task of monarchs and how wearisome are their hours, thou wouldst not be wroth because I lit my dulness with a jest. Oh, they weary me, those princes and those nobles, and those stiff-necked pompous Romans. To my face they vow themselves my slaves, and behind my back they mock me and proclaim me the servant of their Triumvirate, or their Empire, or their Republic, as the wheel of Fortune turns, and each rises ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... helped him to brave what the morning brought. Insensibly also, as Time hardened his sufferings, Evan asked himself what the shame of his position consisted in. He grew stiff-necked. His Pagan virtues stood up one by one to support him. Andrew, courageously evading the interdict that forbade him to visit Evan, would meet him by appointment at City taverns, and flatly offered him a place in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... slept through my playing. Imbeciles! I awoke them and soon packed them off to their canvas home in the woods hard by. They'll get no more dinners or wisdom from me. I tell this tale to show the hopelessness of arguing with this stiff-necked generation of pianists. But I mean to keep on arguing until I die of apoplectic ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Jeremiah, that the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." The martyr Stephen acknowledges the teachings of the spirit, both in his own time and in that of his ancestors. [20] "Ye stiff-necked, and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the holy spirit. As your fathers did, so do ye." The Quakers also conceive it to be a doctrine of the gospel. Jesus himself said, [21] "No man can come to me except the Father, which sent me, draw him—It is written ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... be a lesson to you to curb your damned tongue," said "Grandfather," his anger evaporating, his pride in the stiff-necked, defiant young ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... death-bed, and to get her to make a will in his favour of her separate possessions; but there she was too tough for him. He used to swear at her behind her back, after kneeling to her to her face, and call her in the presence of his gentleman his stiff-necked Israelite, though before he married her, that same gentleman told me he used to call her (how he could bring it out, I don't know) "my pretty Jessica!" To be sure it must have been hard for her to guess what sort of a husband he reckoned to make her. When she was lying, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... with us so much as we did expect; for the payers of tithes were a stiff-necked generation, as were the Jews of old, and withheld their offerings from the priest at the very time when Providence sent a plentiful supply of mouths to which the offerings would have been of use. Charles was our only son, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... had been studying his Cruden, and bolstering himself up, too, with the very Scriptural texts that Prue had written out for her stiff-necked father. He had met other texts that she had not known how to find. The idea came to the preacher that, in a sense, since God made everything He must have made the dance, breathed its impulse into ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... too long," vociferated the advocate. "One half the period that heaven was vexed with a stiff-necked generation have I endured you, Babet. Housekeeper! eh? Keeper of the King's conscience next, a she Lord Chancellor,—but continue: call yourself Keeper of the Seals, and mistress—or master either—of the Rolls, so you unroll your secret. Tell all you may; empty ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... exclaimed Mr. Boythorn, suddenly firing another volley, "that fellow is, and his father was, and his grandfather was, the most stiff-necked, arrogant imbecile, pig-headed numskull, ever, by some inexplicable mistake of Nature, born in any station of life but a walking-stick's! The whole of that family are the most solemnly conceited and consummate ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... of all his wealth without loving him, she owed him the more on that account. But she knew,—she could not but know,—that her intellect was brighter than his; and might it not be possible for her to lead him? Then she made efforts to lead her husband, and found that he was as stiff-necked as an ox. Mr. Kennedy was not, perhaps, a clever man; but he was a man who knew his own way, and who ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... added that, it is possible that Alwin would have obeyed; but to yield in the face of a threat, that was too low for his stiff-necked pride to stoop. The earl-born answered haughtily, "Have your will,—and I ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... and still persisted that he found it THERE, you will understand, Sister Medliker, the incorrigibility of his conduct, and how he has added the sin of 'false witness' to his breaking the Eighth Commandment. But I leave him to your Christian discipline! Let us hope that if, through his stiff-necked obduracy, he has haply escaped the vengeance of man's law, he will not escape the rod of the ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... "Oh, stiff-necked man! It is so hard to be kind with you! And all I have ever done—every time I have followed you in this way, each time I have humiliated myself thus—it always was only in ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... his hands on her two shoulders and shook her gently. "You must not," he said in Danish, "be stiff-necked on your birthday. My mother bought what I have given you in London, and the jewellery was sent to Copenhagen for us to select from. It is ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... met the fate of so many other wise teachers, and was rejected and scornfully entreated by those whom he was striving to instruct. Swift retribution sometimes fell upon such stiff-necked listeners. Thus he once entered the town of Yamquesupa, the principal place in the province of the South, and began teaching the inhabitants; but they heeded him not, and seized him, and with insult and blows drove him from the town, so that he had to sleep in the open fields. Thereupon he cursed ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... king is brave and wise, His love of peace our bondes prize; By friendly word and ready hand He holds good peace through every land. He is for all a lucky star; England he frightens from a war; The stiff-necked Danes he drives to peace; Troubles by his ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... obstinate, obdurate, mulish, refractory, indocile, headstrong, inflexible, intractable, perverse, contumacious, impersuadable, recalcitrant, stiff-necked, rugged, persistent, incompliant. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... admit (1577) with sorrow that papists "did increase in numbers and in obstinacy." They recommended the infliction of fines, and furnished the authorities with a list of recusants and the value of their property. In York the archbishop reported that "a more stiff-necked or wilful people I never knew or heard of, doubtless they are reconciled with Rome and sworn to the Pope," and what was worse they preferred to be imprisoned than to listen to the archbishop's harangues. From Hereford it was announced that "rebellion is rampant, attendance at church ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... returned to Michigan, closed out his business interests there, and returned to Sequoia on the alert for an investment in redwood timber. From a chair-warmer on the porch of the Hotel Sequoia, the Colonel had heard the tale of how stiff-necked old John Cardigan had called the bluff of equally stiff-necked old Bill Henderson; so for the next few weeks the Colonel, under pretense of going hunting or fishing on Squaw Creek, managed to make a fairly accurate cursory cruise of ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... of slipper-heels upon the hardwood; and he turned from staring, puzzled, after the stiff-necked Manuel, and gave the girl a smile such as a man reserves for the woman who has entered ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... this conclusion, to which some persons feel a great repugnance, is to fancy that the Israelites were much worse than other nations, which accordingly has been maintained. It has often been said, that they were stiff-necked and hard-hearted beyond the rest of the world. Now, even supposing, for argument's sake, I should grant that they were so, this would not sufficiently account for the strange circumstance under consideration; for this people was ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... seditious and mutinous enrolment of the Nationalist Volunteers; in one month the devoted Commons read a third time the Home Rule Bill, the Welsh Church Disestablishment Bill and the Plural Voting Bill, and in the very same month the stiff-necked and abominable Lords for the third time threw out the Home Rule Bill, the Welsh Church Disestablishment Bill and the Plural Voting Bill. It was terrific. The newspapers could scarcely print it—or anything—terrifically ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... once more for a season stood behind the cherub with the flaming sword, Ericson was teaching two stiff-necked youths in a dreary house in the midst of one of the moors of Caithness. One day he had a slight attack of blood-spitting, and welcomed it as a sign from what heaven there might be ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... they will not follow my advice. I do not say this as if I fancied myself to be a man of importance, for I will gladly be the meanest of these before the eyes of Jesus. When I think on my former resistance and stiff-necked behaviour in the work of conversion, I could strike myself. It causes deep sorrow and repentance within me, when I consider that I have been most faithfully instructed by my teachers for so many years, and yet have been ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... not like this plan, for he thought it shame to steal away in his sister's garments; but they prayed him not to be stiff-necked, and at length he suffered the cloak to be ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... is I," he says to Cato.[96] He tells Cato that they two are alike in all things. They two only have succeeded in carrying the true ancient philosophy into the practice of the Forum. Never surely were two men more unlike than the stiff-necked ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... about the breast and collar, which is generally lined with blue, and allowed to fall over the shoulders. It is totally contrary to Jack's habits to have anything tight about his throat; and one of the chief causes of his invincible estrangement from the royal marine corps is their stiff-necked custom of wearing polished leather stocks. I hardly suppose there could be found any motive strong enough to induce a genuine sailor to buckle a permanent collar round his neck with any tolerable grace; the alternative of the yard-arm would almost be preferable! His delight is to place a black ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... Edenmore," said Val. "Now," he proceeded, "this is a stiff-necked scoundrel, who refuses to vote for us; but it will go hard, or I shall work him to some purpose. Well, Maguire," he proceeded, after the man had entered, "I'm glad to see ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... drift along the deep channels of the river, and allow us to steal upon the flocks of birds feeding at the edges. Often in memory I enjoy those days again—the planning, the modelling, the fitting, the setting-up, and at last, the visit of inspection of our parents. Alas, stiff-necked in our generation, we had insisted on straight lines and a square stern. Never shall I forget the indignation aroused in me by a cousin's remark, "It looks awful like a coffin." The resemblance had not previously struck either of us, and father had felt that the joke was too dangerous ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... their only road to 't 170 By lettin' 'em believe thet they can git Mor'n wut they lost, out of our little wit: I tell ye wut, I'm 'fraid we'll drif' to leeward 'thout we can put more stiffenin' into Seward; He seems to think Columby'd better ect Like a scared widder with a boy stiff-necked Thet stomps an' swears he wun't come in to supper; She mus' set up for him, ez weak ez Tupper, Keepin' the Constitootion on to warm, Tell he'll eccept her 'pologies in form: 180 The neighbors tell her he's a cross-grained cuss Thet needs a hidin' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Merrington, stiff-necked in his officialism, had been unable to see this changed aspect of the case, and, strong in his presumption of the girl's guilt, had acted with impulsive indiscretion in going to see Nepcote before attempting to trace the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... though righteousness never came from such observance. Yet even they saw in the spiritual the alone true sense, which the Jews had denied, and were of opinion that the burden of ceremonies was a paedagogic necessity with reference to a people stiff-necked and prone to idolatry, i.e., a defence of monotheism, and gave an interpretation to the sign of circumcision which made it no longer a blessing, but rather the mark for the execution of judgment ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... a lean, long-backed, stiff-necked, middle-sized man, with no great quantity of hair, and what he had, growing on the back and sides of his head. His face was stern, and much flushed. If he were really not in the habit of drinking ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... can do so in no other manner, and that I may rid you either of heresy or of life. Notwithstanding, if you prefer to return to the Catholic faith and to the light of primitive days, send unto me your ambassadors and I will tell them what ye must do. If on the other hand ye will be stiff-necked and kick against the pricks, then remember all the crimes and offences ye have perpetrated and look for to see me coming unto you with all strength divine and human to render unto you again all the evil ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... ambushment, the bicycle strikes a sand-hole, and I am favored with the worst header I have experienced for many a day. I am-or rather was, a minute ago-bowling along quite briskly; the header treats me to a fearful shaking up; I arn sore all over the next morning, and present a sort of a stiff-necked, woe-begone appearance for the next four days. A bent handle-bar and a slightly twisted rear wheel fork likewise forcibly remind me that, while I am beyond the reach of repair shops, it will be Solomon-like wisdom on my part to henceforth ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... a person of extraordinary obduracy," he said, "for one of your years. I should like to know how much the Stanbury influence has had to do with strengthening your unwise, unamiable, and stiff-necked resolution! If I were Claude Bainrothe, I should lay heavy damages against you in the courts of law, for your unjustifiable evasion of a formal contract—one your father sanctioned, one of which all your friends are and were cognizant and proud, and which has subjected ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Stiff-necked setting oneself against God's merciful fighting with evil lasts for a little while, but verse 10 tells how soon and easily it is annihilated. God's 'desire' brushes away all defences, and the obstinate sinners are like children, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... my face, and tell me this?" he roared, infuriated by their cold resistance. He flung out an arm in a gesture of terrible dismissal. "Out of my sight, you proud and evil men! Back to your cells, to await my pleasure. Since in your arrogant, stiff-necked pride you refuse to do my will, you shall receive the bishop ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... when the ghostly wind Swept o'er the plains with melancholy moan. That night the shadowy shape of one long dead Stood face-to-face with Saul, in lonely cave, The Witch of Endor's haunt. Ah, me—the fall! To degradation deep that man hath slid Who 'gainst the Lord in stiff-necked folly strives Choosing the path of cabalistic wiles— The dark and turbid garniture of toads, And philters rank of necromantic knaves— Who spurns the hand which, by the light of Heaven, Points clear and straight along the spacious road Which angel feet have trod. Ah, me—the fall! ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... divinely appointed to rule them after his own will. No idea that he had ever been pigheaded and wrong had ever been driven into his dull brain. His view of his prerogative was that whatever he thought to be best was best, and they were ungrateful and stiff-necked people who took a different view, and that it was his bounden duty to punish such in ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... republics or railways, but fixed their affections on forced labour and getting rid of the necessity of paying taxes—and so between them the Republic came to grief. But it must be borne in mind that President Burgers was throughout actuated by good motives; he did his best by a stubborn and stiff-necked people; and if he failed, as fail he did, it was more their fault than his. As regards the pension he received from the English Government, which has so often been brought up against him, it was after all no more than his due after five years of arduous work. If the Republic had continued to ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... besotted lover is bound to respect. You made love to her that summer at Croydon; you needn't deny it. And at the end of things you walk off to make your fortune without committing yourself; without knowing, or apparently caring, what your stiff-necked poverty-pride may cost her in years of uncertainty. You ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... very nice in you to say so, Mr. Hartman, and very polite, and very loyal; but I know Robert. Clarice does him a little good: she would do very much more, if he were not so stiff-necked. He thinks he is a man, and ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... was celebrated quietly at the Clapham parish church. A humiliating day for the stiff-necked old Squire of Stagholme; for he was introduced to many new relatives, who, if they could have bought up Stagholme and its master, were but poorly equipped with the letter "h." The bourgeois ostentation and would-be ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... to be bothered; besides, there was always something very attractive about Sterling. I don't mind telling you that if he had fallen in love with me instead of the stiff-necked woman he married, I'd have tumbled ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... need to. I'll play it for him. Between you and me, Luke, he doesn't even know yet that he's going to run for the legislature. I'm keeping him up in the woods so that he won't know. He's one of those stiff-necked young colts that wants to do only what he wants to do in a good many things." He added the last with a growl of disgust. "And he won't allow that any old man can tell him a few things that he ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... prayer for himself, with the over-abundant answer of God. In the former chapter, we had the very sublimity of intercession, in which the stern avenger of idolatry poured out his self-sacrificing love for the stiff-necked nation whom he had had to smite, and offered himself a victim for them. Here his first prayer is mainly for himself, but it is not therefore a selfish prayer. Rather he prays for gifts to himself, to fit him for his service to them. We may note separately the prayer, and the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... this here four-flusher von Brockdorff-Rantzau behaved the day they handed him the Peace Treaty, Mawruss," Abe said, "it looked like the Germans had made up their minds to be just so stiff-necked as they always was, Mawruss, and I begun to think that they were going to treat it as a case of so mechullah, so mechullah, y'understand, but the way them Germans is now crying like children, Mawruss, there ain't going to be enough sackcloth and ashes in Germany to go around, and them German professors ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... stiff-necked, reviling town Beholds your fancies on her walls, And paints them out or tears them down, Or bars them ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... Noah's preaching was a failure, Isaiah thought his so too. Poor Jeremiah is sitting weeping tears over his people, everybody cursing the honest man, and he ill-pleased with his mother for having borne him among such a set. And Ezekiel's stiff-necked, rebellious crew were no better. Paul said, 'All seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ,' and he knew that after his departure grievous wolves would enter in, not sparing the flock. Yet the cause of God is still carried ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... not. You see the difficulty is this. He's so stiff-necked,—will do nothing himself. Well, that will do for one proof of temporary insanity. The real truth is, Mr Robarts, he is as mad as ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... Get the spirit. Learn the grammar, certainly. But read Latin—till you can speak Latin, think Latin. It is more difficult to think Greek. Our stiff-necked, stubborn Lowland nature, produce of half-a-score of conquering nations, has not the right suppleness. But if there is any poetry in you, it will find you out when ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... have the light, lest the darkness come upon you.' That is the summing up of the whole history of that stiff-necked and marvellous people. For what has all the history of Israel been since that day but groping in the wilderness without any pillar of fire? But there is more than that in it. Christ gives us this one solemn warning of what falls on us if we turn away from Him. Rejected ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... streets, bordered with Moorish architecture, contain the native industry of Bona. It is about equally divided between the Jews and the M'zabites, who, like the Kabyles, are a remnant of the stiff-necked old Berber tribe. The M'zabites preserve the pure Arab dress—the haik, or small bornouse without hood, the broad breeches coming to the knee, the bare legs, and the turban rolled up into a coil of ropes. Thus accoutred, and squatting in the ledges of their small booths, the jewelers, blacksmiths ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... respects the cause of ruin to Denmark in 1863-64 bears a remarkable resemblance to that which produced war in South Africa in 1899, viz. high-handed action of a minority towards men whom they treated as Outlanders, the stiff-necked obstinacy of the smaller State, and reliance on the vehement but (probably) unofficial offers of help or ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... very disloyal, rebellious, and stiff-necked ones among them," added Max, "who ought to be dealt with as traitors forthwith—that sturdy feathered rebel for instance, who, not regarding the inviolability of the royal person, no longer ago than this morning laid one of our royal majesties ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... and sorely against the wish of the Irish patriots. Furthermore, the determination of Pitt to commend the act to Ireland by removing the political disabilities which barred Catholics from membership in Parliament was thwarted by the stiff-necked George III., who had got it into his head that such a concession would do violence to the Protestantism of his coronation oath. Pitt resigned in disgust, and Catholic emancipation had to await until England had finished Napoleon's European business and ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... gipsies, proud and stiff-necked and perverse, Saying: "We tell the fortunes of the nations, And revel in the deep palm of the world. The head-line is the road we choose for trade. The love-line is the lane wherein we camp. The life-line is the road we wander ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... England, in the XVth and XVIth centuries. As to the cap, which the Cauchoise wears when she appears en grand costume, its very prototype is to be found in Strutt's Ancient Dresses. Decorated with silver before, and with lace streaming behind, it towers on the head of the stiff-necked complacent wearer, whose locks appear beneath, arrayed with statuary precision. Nor is its antiquity solely confined to its form and fashion; for, descending from the great grandmother to the great grand-daughter, it remains as an heir-loom in the family from generation unto generation. ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... business. The object of the association being to establish a harmonious society of persons of different religious sentiments, all intractable people shall be excluded from it, such as those in communion with the Roman See usurious Jews, English stiff-necked Quakers, Puritans, fool-hardy believers in the Millenium and obstinate modern pretenders ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... time she expressed her opinion that Brotherton would get well and would come back; and she would then tell Mary how she ought to urge her husband to behave well to his elder brother, always asserting that George had been stiff-necked and perverse. But in the midst of all this she would refer every minute to Mary's coming baby as the coming Popenjoy—not a possible Popenjoy at some future time, but the immediate Popenjoy of the hour,—to be born a Popenjoy! Poor Mary, in answer to all this, would agree with everything. She ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... 'A contuma-acious and stiff-necked generation,' said the old man, walking off and shaking his head. 'And yet he's a fine laddie; a gra-and laddie wad he be with good guidance. It's the Lord's doing, nae doot, and we daurna fault it; ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... have said above, may be due to the naughtiness of the stiff-necked things that we have eaten, or to the poverty of our own arguments; but it may also arise from an attempt on the part of the stomach to be too damned clever, and to depart from precedent inconsiderately. The healthy stomach is nothing if not conservative. ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... seemliness demand, let him know that this shall in no wise happen if he have not before sought pardon of me for an uncondoned offence. Let him therefore cast himself upon my clemency!" As Kurwenal by a gesture signifies his stiff-necked resistance to her command, she repeats it, more regally peremptory than before: "Take careful heed of what I say and carefully report it. I refuse to make ready to accompany him to land, I refuse to walk beside him and stand before King Mark, unless he have before, as is fit and becoming, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... He looked sadly at the four short fingers resting on the table. "And fifth—fifth—now what is that fifth? Ach, it is that! That thumb!" He scowled at it. "That crawling, snivelling, stiff-necked one!" He brought it down with a thump on the table. "To make me all my days ashamed!" He held up the ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... youth and inexperience. The golden dream was soon to end—end even with the yellow dross that gave it birth. Fallacious hopes of coming "posts," averted for a time my coming wretchedness—three weeks, and not a line! The landlord suffered from an intermitting affection, characteristic of the "stiff-necked generation;"—he bowed to others—galvanism could not have procured the tithe of a salaam for me. His till was afflicted with a sort of sinking-fundishness. I was the contractor of "the small bill," whose exact amount would enable him to meet a "heavy payment;" my very garments were "tabooed" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... him to explain, but he just turned his back on me and walked away! And now, ma'am," wept Matilda, "I know he'll never explain, he's such a proud, obstinate, stiff-necked man! And I love him so, Mrs. De Peyster,—I love him so! Oh, my ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... lad, I am no friend to the Company, a set of stiff-necked, ignorant, grasping, paunchy peddlers who fatten at home on the toil of better men. No, I am an adventurer, I own it; I am an interloper; and we interlopers, despite the Company's monopoly, yet contrive to keep body ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... preceding; born Chevrel; cousin of Mme. Roguin; a stiff-necked, middle-class woman, who was scandalized by the marriage of her second daughter, Augustine, with Theodore de Sommervieux. [At the Sign ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... consequences, took an AEtna or a Sinai from the load on her own shoulders, and clapped it on those of her children, who sat down under it plump, and sturdily refused to budge until they should be allowed to put it there themselves. Whereupon, this stiff-necked, wrong-headed old Britannia (for such was her Christian name) was exceeding wroth, made an outlandish noise among the nations, and even went so far (you will be shocked to hear) as to swear a little. Seeing there ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... stiff-necked twins, both of whom Joe was beginning to find a bit too stereotyped West-world adherents, said, "Sir, I must protest. The West ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... because of her folly in resolving to go. He had just commenced a lecture on the sin of pride, in which he was prepared to show that all the evils which she could receive from the red-nosed veteran at Portsmouth would be due to her own stiff-necked obstinacy, when he was stopped suddenly by the sound of a knock at the front door. It was not only the knock at the door, but the entrance into the hall of some man, for the hall-door had been open into the garden, and the servant-girl had been close at hand. The library was at the ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... were ignored: "You're a poor man, Jim," declared Tenison, "and you can't pay any bills now for Abe. He thought more of you than he did of any man in the world. But most of his money he left here with me, upstairs and down. Abe was stiff-necked as hell, whether it was cards or cattle, you know that. And it's only some of his money—not mine—I'm turning back to him. That Dutchman," he added, referring with a contemptuous oath to the unpopular undertaker of Sleepy Cat, "is ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... revelation, might be laid upon him. And it appeared that God had laid his command upon many to go among the unregenerate bearing testimony, and with sharp-tongued reproach and reviling to prick as with thorns the seared conscience of a perverse and stiff-necked generation. Persecution they welcomed as the martyr's portion, the sure evidence of well-doing. "Where they are most of all suffered to declare themselves, there they least of all desire to come." And so, impelled by the force of the divine spirit, ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... trouble arose, they were to let me know, and I would myself come to their assistance. The tribes were, Lundu, Sarambo, Bombak, Paninjow, and Sow. The only other tribe on the right-hand river were the Singe, a powerful and stiff-necked people, with good reason to be shy; but when once they are treated justly, their strength will be advantageous, and give ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... the wilderness beyond the mountains and built their rude log churches, in which stern preachers, like Samuel Doak, of Tennessee, or Jonathan Going, of Ohio, warned men against the wrath to come and the fiery furnace below, whose surging flames were ever ready to swallow up and consume stiff-necked, yet never-dying sinners. The simple and superstitious minds of the neglected West flocked to these little churches or to great camps where revivalists, like James McCreary, of Kentucky, or the later Bishop Soule, of Ohio, preached for weeks in succession and ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... godly wrath upon the wicked. The instrument in the hand of the State is not a garland of roses or a flower of love, but a naked sword. As I declared at the time, he says, so declare I yet: Let every one who can, as he may be able, cut, stab, choke, and strike the stiff-necked, obdurate, blind, infatuated peasants; that mercy may be shown towards those who are destroyed, driven away, and misled by the peasants; that peace and security may be had. It is better to mercilessly cut off one member rather than ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... tell of the way men meet in this forest service—superintendent meeting ranger on a common ground. And why? Because they're doing something constructive. Because the work's the thing that counts. You'll see what it's done for Fred. The boy has a real dignity; not the stiff-necked kind he'd acquire around an army post, but the dignity that comes with the consciousness of being, not in ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... them stiff-necked fools," he asserted. "Bah! Do you think I do not know? Do you think anything is hidden from her? I know—and she knows—that you think you have a surprise in store for her! You think you will go to ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... infernal foolishness, and I wish the Mayo breed didn't have so much of that cursed stiff-necked conscience! Our family wouldn't be where it is to-day." He spoke with so much heat that she ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... and compels conscience to come to his aid; while, in reality, it is a matter with which conscience has nothing to do, for the point might have been yielded without doing violence to that ever-wakeful monitor, whose office is thus perverted, and made to subserve the purposes of stiff-necked obstinacy. A disposition to yield to the judgment and will of others, so far as can be done conscientiously, is a prominent characteristic of that charity which seeketh not her own; while an obstinate adherence to our own plans and purposes, where no higher principle than ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... himself, so also Eve. She, like her husband, did not confess her transgression and pray for pardon, which would have been granted to her.[81] Gracious as God is, He did not pronounce the doom upon Adam and Eve until they showed themselves stiff-necked. Not so with the serpent. God inflicted the curse upon the serpent without hearing his defense; for the serpent is a villain, and the wicked are good debaters. If God had questioned him, the serpent would have answered: "Thou didst give them a command, and I did contradict it. ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... pious Fray 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 ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... into light from a dark corner a very unjust account of it, and neglects, though lying upon the highroad, a very pleasing one. Both are from English pens. Grafton, a chronicler, but little read, being a stiff-necked John Bull, thought fit to say that no wonder Joanna should be a virgin, since her "foule face" was a satisfactory solution of that particular merit. Holinshead, on the other hand, a chronicler somewhat later, every way more important, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... church-builder, and the patriot in all those generations, and the kingdom of God is not with us yet, seems, indeed, to be as far off as ever. When the world has been at peace for a while and the millennium seems imminent, all of a sudden a perverse, stiff-necked, wall-eyed generation supervenes, and ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... all pleasure is in greatness found. Kings, like heaven's eye, should spread their beams around, Pleased to be seen, while glory's race they run: Rest is not for the chariot of the sun. Subjects are stiff-necked animals; they soon Feel slackened reins, and pitch ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... advance, had separated Partab Singh from the dignity of a full-blown independent prince, when the nerveless hands of the Ranjitgarh ruler were suddenly reinforced by the strong grasp of a British Resident upon the reins. For a short time it was doubtful whether the stiff-necked old Rajah would not put his fate to the touch, and come to death-grips with British power acting in the name of the Durbar, but wiser counsels prevailed. Partab Singh paid his tribute, with no more ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... idle vengeance on so poor an enemy? Can you take hold of Marie Antoinette by the shoulders, shove her into the bottom of a cart and pile sacks of potatoes on the top of her? I did that to the Comtesse de Tournai and her daughter, as stiff-necked a pair of French aristocrats as ever deserved the guillotine for their insane prejudices. But can you do it to Marie Antoinette? She'd rebuke you publicly, and betray herself and you in a flash, sooner than submit ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... patches alighting from their chaises; servants, black of skin and radiant of garment; officers in scarlet and white uniforms (Colonel "Ol" de Lancey lost his patrimony a bit later because he clung to his!)—a soft, fluttering, mincing crowd—most representative of the Colonies, and loathed by the stiff-necked Dutch. ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... off to Tamsel," her fine house; I to this wretched tavern; where, a couple of hours after that conversation, I began writing it all down, and have nothing else to do for the night. Your Excellency's most moral, stiff-necked, pipe-clayed and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the Jews, but his hatred of Christianity was so great that he preferred to help the stiff-necked race in Palestine, in order to rouse them against Christ. For that purpose he had given orders that the Temple in Jerusalem should be rebuilt, and this was the matter which he wished to discuss with his philosophers and Eleazar. "What is your opinion, then?" ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... friends, when the aeroplane line was well established, they returned to the East, as Aunt Sally firmly refused to remain any longer in the far West, which she always scripturally refers to as a land of "the wicked and stiff-necked." ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... would make the first sign. Her pride was equal to, if not greater, than Jean's. She, who abhorred prying and inquisitiveness, had been accused by Jean of meddling in her affairs. Evelyn vowed inwardly never to forgive Jean. So these two young girls, each stiff-necked and implacable, dressed, studied and slept in the same room in stony silence, passing in and out like two offended shadows. Gradually this strained attitude became so intolerable to Jean that she longed for some pretext on which to make peace. As she sat at the window ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... the chief waiter with my eyes, I could not help thinking that the garden in which he had gradually blown to be the flower he was, was an arduous place to rise in. It had such a prescriptive, stiff-necked, long-established, solemn, elderly air. I glanced about the room, which had had its sanded floor sanded, no doubt, in exactly the same manner when the chief waiter was a boy—if he ever was a boy, which appeared improbable; and at the shining tables, where I saw myself ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the money to keep Against the time you'd claim it, committin' your dad to the deep; For you are the son o' my body, and Mac was my oldest friend, I've never asked 'im to dinner, but he'll see it out to the end. Stiff-necked Glasgow beggar, I've heard he's prayed for my soul, But he couldn't lie if you paid him, and he'd starve before he stole! He'll take the Mary in ballast — you'll find her a lively ship; And you'll take Sir Anthony Gloster, that goes on 'is wedding-trip, Lashed in our old deck-cabin ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... Gonzales," said Dugald, bowing in his stiff-necked fashion, "I am very happy to meet you. But as you represent His Excellency the President of the Republic of Santa Marina I suppose you come ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... into prison, where he presently died. It is not a little curious that one, who, as a doughty knight, at three coronations threw down his gauntlet and challenged the world on his Sovereign’s behalf, should have succumbed to a stiff-necked prelate. The account of this is given in Lodge’s “Scrivelsby, the Home of the Champions,” ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... survival of the more prominent traits of the old stiff-necked ones, albeit their necks were stiffened by their resistance of the adversary—can necessarily be known only to the initiated. The sojourner from cities for the summer months cannot often penetrate in the least, though he may not be aware of it, the reserve and ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... like: on them and theirs it was not probable that anything said by Sir Roger would have much effect. Those men would either abstain from voting, or vote for the railway hero, with the view of keeping out the de Courcy candidate. Then came the shopkeepers, who might also be regarded as a stiff-necked generation, impervious to electioneering eloquence. They would, generally, support Mr Moffat. But there was an inferior class of voters, ten-pound freeholders, and such like, who, at this period, were somewhat ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... alone, with their little gilt edges, can adequately fill. Ruth was gazing in absent wonder at the volume which supplied all her aunt's spiritual needs when she heard the wire of the front door-bell squeak faintly. It was a stiff-necked and obdurate bell, which for several years Mr. Alwynn had determined ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... the rustler leader had not had a look at Wade, whose movements had been swift and who now stood directly behind him. Also it was obvious that Smith was sitting very stiff-necked and straight. Not improbably he had encountered ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... hundredth year was full The thread was cut and finished the school. Death snapped the old worn-out tool, Snapped him short while he stood and stirred (Though stiff he stood as a stiff-necked mule) ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... encountered from her candid, gentle eyes checked him. Besides, his gesture had spoken for him; it told his hatred for the nation, his conviction that he was in France to mete out justice, delegated by the God of Armies, to chastise a perverse and stiff-necked generation. Paris was burning off there on the horizon in expiation of its centuries of dissolute life, of its heaped-up measure of crime and lust. Once again the German race were to be the saviors of the world, were to purge Europe of the remnant ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... brotherhood with Pusey-and- Newman's Shovelhattery, and other the like deplorable phenomena, than it is in the least aware of! I beg you take warning: I am more serious in this than you suppose. But no, you will not; you whistle lightly over my prophecies, and go your own stiff-necked road. Unfortunate man!— ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... name which is ever the same, and changeth not. 'The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.' This was his name among a stiff-necked people, an idolatrous, ungrateful people; this is his name to me alike in character. O how he has magnified this name to me, a backslider in heart and life; multiplying pardons while I have multiplied transgressions: still he has been last with me, healing my backsliding; restoring my ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... However, the converts decreasing when Edward I., after hanging 280 Jews for clipping coin, banished the rest from the realm, half the property of the Jews who were hung stern Edward gave to the preachers who tried to convert the obstinate and stiff-necked generation, and half to the Domus Conversorum, in Chancellor's Lane. In 1278 we find the converts calling themselves, in a letter sent to the king by John the Convert, "Pauperes Coelicolae Christi." In the reign of Richard II. a certain converted Jew received ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... designation to two very different classes; and besides, if we look into the thing closely, we shall find that the term Philistine conveys a sense which [99] makes it more peculiarly appropriate to our middle class than to our aristocratic. For Philistine gives the notion of something particularly stiff-necked and perverse in the resistance to light and its children, and therein it specially suits our middle-class, who not only do not pursue sweetness and light, but who prefer to them that sort of machinery of business, chapels, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... The stiff-necked old gentleman would in all human probability have expressed himself in this manner, and Rex knew Greif well enough to know the son would have fulfilled the father's injunctions and carried out his orders to the letter, no matter ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... not your sister, and embarrassment always accompanies an unnatural relation. The common-sense thing to do is to recognize the relation that does exist. As I intimated at first, I see no reason why we should not be the best of friends, and then, imitating the stiff-necked Hebrews, do what seemeth ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... prudence and dexterity of management than I; he was also thinking of his periodical the Horen, about this time, and of course rather wished to attract than repel me. Accordingly he answered me like an accomplished Kantite; and as my stiff-necked Realism gave occasion to many contradictions, much battling took place between us, and at last a truce, in which neither party would consent to yield the victory, but each held himself invincible. Positions like the following grieved me to the very soul: How can there ever be an experiment, that ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the eye of the stiff-necked dame with the straight nose and the gun-metal hair. No, both eyes, it was; and a cold, suspicious, stabby look is what they shoots my way. No wonder I chokes off the feeble-minded remarks and turns sort of panicky ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land.—Understand, therefore, that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness; for thou art a stiff-necked people' (Deut 9:4-6). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... same direction. Gib of course was absent: by skreigh of day he had been gone to Crossmichael and his fellow-heretics; but the rest of the family would be seen marching in open order: Hob and Dand, stiff-necked, straight-backed six-footers, with severe dark faces, and their plaids about their shoulders; the convoy of children scattering (in a state of high polish) on the wayside, and every now and again collected by the shrill summons of the mother; and the mother herself, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tea on Sundays, and he and Aaron got to talking on religion; and though they disagreed pretty much, and would not give an inch either one or the other, nevertheless the minister told the widow, and Hetta too probably, that the lad had good stuff in him, though he was so stiff-necked. ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... over;—boy said he wouldn't lie there to be made game of; and he'd tell his mother if they didn't begin." To hear Dickens say this in the short, sharp utterances of Jack Hopkins, to see his manner in recounting it, stiff-necked, and with a glance under the drooping eyelids in the direction of Mr. Pickwick's listening face, was only the next best thing to hearing him and seeing him, still in the person of Jack Hopkins, relate the memorable anecdote about the child swallowing ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... law, now siding with him against them, one cannot but feel how grave are the difficulties, and how much is to be said on either side. How is one to choose? The king is overbearing, haughty, and untrue to his word. The Parliament is stiff-necked and bent upon acquiring power beyond what is fair and right. There are, indeed, grievous faults on both sides. But it seems to me that should the king now have his way and conquer the Commons, he and his descendants ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... flies and eat abominable tinned stuffs. It is a barren, comfortless land at present, with a possibility of being useful some day. They want money, energy, brains to develop it thoroughly; and they won't accept them when they are offered, because a few stiff-necked Englishmen happen to be in power. It is absurd to go there at present. You will only get typhoid and malaria, and be ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... Blessed Francis of the thorns besetting his path in life, of the difficulties of his holy calling, of the anxieties inseparable from it, but chiefly of the intractableness of stiff-necked Christians, who refuse to submit to the easy yoke of Jesus Christ, and to do what their duty requires. The Bishop replied that their obstinacy was not so much to be wondered at as the weakness of their Pastors who were so easily discouraged and impatient, ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... departed. When he reached the corner he stopped suddenly and regarded his shadow on the snow. "Matt McCarthy, yer a damned fool! Who iver heard iv a Welse not knowin' their own mind? As though ye'd niver had dalin's with the stiff-necked breed, ye ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... manure, provided that it be not rank or offensive. This strongly flavoured plant likes good but sweet living, and it is sheer folly to load the ground for it with coarse and stimulating manures. Yet it is often done, and the result is a stiff-necked generation of bulbs that refuse to ripen, or there may be complete failure of the crop through disease or plethora. But any fertiliser that is at hand, whether from the pigstye, or the sweepings of poultry yards or pigeon lofts, ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... Perhaps Christmas was even the more heartily celebrated among these true Papist and Church of England settlers from the disgust which they felt at the stern contempt in which the Natal Day was held by 'stiff-necked Puritans' of New England. At least, while in New England the pilgrims were wont to work with exceptional might on Christmas Day, to show their detestation of it, traditions are still extant of the jovial Southern merrymaking of the festival. Christmas, with many of the Old England customs imported ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... will neither betray me to your son and daughter, nor consider me as having in anywise committed myself—it was Paul of Tarsus's notion of the history and destinies of our stiff-necked nation. See what your daughter has persuaded me into reading!' And he held up a manuscript of the Epistle ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... life. The worst of it is that they last such a short time; for nurse them as you will, by lying perfectly passive in mind and body, you can't make more than five minutes or so of them. After which time the stupid, obtrusive, wakeful entity which we call "I", as impatient as he is stiff-necked, spite of our teeth will force himself back again, and take possession of us ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... if taken in any other way. Nobody can estimate the power of a fixed idea upon the body. All the same, it is a confounded nuisance carrying around the aqua. I will confess, although I see the necessity of yielding, that I have less patience with men's stiff-necked stupidity than I have ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... the king hearkened with condescending and approving nod to the report of the Prince as to his mad adventure in Hellas. Xerxes even reproved his brother-in-law mildly for hazarding his own life and that of his wife among those stiff-necked tribesmen who were so soon to taste the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... a stiff-necked young man, ain't ye?" growled the big bear. "Let's understand the ground rules before we begin. How about a wild throw into ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... man rather by signs than by words, with the staff of Jesus made the sign of the cross on a stone there placed, and immediately the surface of the stone appeared divided into four parts, and showed the form of the cross thereon portrayed. Yet did this man, stiff-necked, and of heart more hard than stone, refuse to be melted unto penitence; but his wife, who was then in travail, entreated pardon of the saint, and fell at his feet. And the saint, beholding him thus hardened in perverseness, spake unto him with prophetic ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... decided at this interview. Lord Fawn became more than ever convinced that the member for Bobsborough was his determined enemy, and Frank was more convinced than ever that Lord Fawn was an empty, stiff-necked, self-sufficient prig. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... nor, as a matter of fact, did the Assyrian pride himself on the gentleness of his manners: he did not overflow with love for his fellow-man, as the Egyptian made a pretence of doing; on the contrary, he was stiff-necked and proud, without pity for others or for himself, hot-tempered and quarrelsome like his cousins of Chaldaea, but less turbulent and more capable of strict discipline. It mattered not whether he had come into the world in one of the wretched cabins of a fellah village, or in the palace ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... escaped from the battle, excepting the cavalry, who had left it at the very onset, and even these were broken into different parties and scattered all over the country. So far as our tale is concerned, we have only to relate the fate of Balmawhapple, who, mounted on a horse as headstrong and stiff-necked as his rider, pursued the flight of the dragoons above four miles from the field of battle, when some dozen of the fugitives took heart of grace, turned round, and, cleaving his skull with their broadswords, satisfied the world that the unfortunate ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... if here ain't that there dad-blame' Turkey-fighter again! What almighty cur'is things the good Lord do let loose on a stiff-necked and rebellious gineration!" Then to me, most pointedly: "Say, Cap'n; the big woods ain't no fitting place for such as you, ez I allow. Ye mought be getting them purty boots o' your'n all tore up ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Dick!" she said. "No, no! Don't say another word! Call us proud and stiff-necked, if you like—we're not, really—but neither Dick nor I could take anything from any one while we have enough of our own. If we could—if ever we 'run short,' and are in danger of starvation, then——But that won't happen. You don't know how clever Dick is, and how much they think of him at the ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... of the people, and only reads conservative newspapers, and on election days he votes against all his parish. The farmer maintains and pays him, but his conviction is that he is better than any farmer. What, therefore, can be more stiff-necked of him than to refuse to serve his country with his own, reverend person? Off with his black coat and clap on a red, and let the corporal teach him. He is a learned fellow, but, doubtless, stupid ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... so; at least my father and my three unmarried sisters. Old bachelors and old maids are plentiful in the Harper family. We are all stiff-necked animals; ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... quite right," said Mrs. Leslie. "But she is one of those stiff-necked creatures who are set up with pride though they have nothing to be proud of. I suppose she had a lot of money. Lopez would never have taken ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... determined never again to be troubled by stiff-necked, rebellious Judah. To that end he thoroughly ransacked the treasuries of the Temple and of the royal palace. He took away all the gold vessels that belonged to the worship of the Temple and, ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... scratches or so, perhaps. They had wanted to have her strong. And so she was. Strong enough to ram Polar ice with. And as she began so she went on. From the day she was launched she never let a year pass without murdering somebody. I think the owners got very worried about it. But they were a stiff-necked generation all these Apses; they wouldn't admit there could be anything wrong with the Apse Family. They wouldn't even change her name. 'Stuff and nonsense,' as Mrs. Colchester used to say. They ought at least to have shut her up for life in some dry dock or other, away up the river, and never ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... their fathers. There are also three Roman Catholic clergymen, including a bishop;—good, exemplary men, whose "constant care" is not "to increase their store," but to guide and direct their flocks in the paths of piety and virtue. But, alas! they have a stiff-necked people to deal with;—the French half-breed, who follows the hunter's life, possesses all the worst vices of his European and Indian progenitors, and is indifferent alike to the laws of God and man. There are, in all, seven places of worship, three Roman Catholic, and four Protestant, ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... my dear pretty Miss Rachel, possessing a host of graces and attractions, had one defect, which strict impartiality compels me to acknowledge. She was unlike most other girls of her age, in this—that she had ideas of her own, and was stiff-necked enough to set the fashions themselves at defiance, if the fashions didn't suit her views. In trifles, this independence of hers was all well enough; but in matters of importance, it carried her (as my lady thought, and as I thought) too far. She judged for herself, as few women of twice her age ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... "I'm a stiff-necked person," said Theydon, trying to smile unconcernedly. "I've made up my mind to see you safely to your destination, and I refuse to leave you on any account. I am sure the doctor will let ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... willing to send a subaltern and a score of troopers to convoy the entire party—sheriff and deputies, posse and prisoners—to the territorial capital, but, like the old war-horse he was, he balked, stiff-necked and stiff-legged, at the sheriff's demand that the escort should report to him—should be, in point ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... introductions to the Comte de Cambray from a mutual friend in England who seems to be a personage of vast importance in his own country and greatly esteemed by the Comte—else you may be sure that that stiff-necked aristocrat would never have received a tradesman as a guest in his house. But it was in Dumoulin's house that I first met Bobby Clyffurde. We took a liking to one another, and since then have ridden a great deal together. He is a splendid horseman, and I was very glad to be ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy |
