"Insolence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... emerging from her chamber, keeping the shutters closed and candles burning, day and night. She quarrelled violently, with Countess Egmont for precedence, so that the ludicrous contentions of the two ladies in antechambers and doorways were the theme and the amusement of society. Her insolence, not only in private but in public, towards her husband became intolerable: "I could not do otherwise than bear it with sadness and patience," said the Prince, with great magnanimity, "hoping that with age would come improvement." Nevertheless, upon one occasion, at a supper party, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... astrologers after predicting with great pretensions the deaths of others; and how many philosophers after endless discourses on death or immortality; how many heroes after killing thousands; and how many tyrants who have used their power over men's lives with terrible insolence, as if they were immortal; and how many cities are entirely dead, so to speak, Helice[A] and Pompeii and Herculaneum, and others innumerable. Add to the reckoning all whom thou hast known, one after another. One man after burying another has been laid out ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... back from his survey of the eastern skies before the American found out whether or not he should resent his insolence. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... was only restrained with exceeding difficulty; and there was a scornful smile on the young prisoner's cheek, that caused the page to exclaim angrily, "What means that insolence, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... crooked course through Southwark, and by-and-by struck into the high road beyond. The King was irritated, now, and said he would stop here—it was Hendon's place to come to him, not his to go to Hendon. He would not endure such insolence; he would stop where ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to keep it from them, father," replied John; "their insolence is actually more than flesh and blood can bear. But had we not better make some inquiries ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... in the mildly classical system of the Saybrook Platform. The filial love of the Puritan colonists toward the mother church of England was by no means extinct in the third generation. Alongside of the inevitable repugnance felt and manifested toward the arrogance, insolence, and violence with which the claims of the Episcopal Church were commended by royal governors and their attaches and by some of the imported missionaries, there is ample evidence of kindly and fraternal ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... with his own children, which were a perpetual source of discomfort or disgrace to him, and all of which might have been avoided by a more consistent course of firmness and temper on his part. His sons generally behaved to him with great insolence and ingratitude, except Adolphus. Of the ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... King's favour unless he could clear up the matter, and by the event justify his indiscretion, he became for those two days the wonder, and almost the terror, of the Court. Ignorant of what he wanted, the courtiers found only insolence in his mysterious questions, and something prodigious in an activity which carried him in one day to Paris and back, and on the following to every place in the vicinity where news of the fleeting beauty might by any possibility ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... kindling from word to word. What Parisians then heard was, in truth, the first fervid expression of all those contending apprehensions, out of which his written works would afterwards be compacted, with much loss of heat in the process. Satiric or hybrid growths, things due to hybris, insolence, insult, all that those fabled satyrs embodied—the volcanic South is kindly prolific of this, and Bruno abounded in mockeries: it was by way of protest. So much of a Platonist, for Plato's genial humour he had nevertheless substituted the harsh laughter ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... to the house disappointed. No opportunity had presented itself of making an example of insolence or insubordination—such as had occurred on every other day since the sickness smote Berande. The fact that none had offended was in itself suspicious. They were growing crafty. He regretted that he had not waited the night before until the prowlers had entered. Then he might ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... of boundless wealth for the morrow made them heedless and extravagant for to-day. A luxury, till then unheard-of, was introduced, bringing in its train a corresponding laxity of morals. The over-bearing insolence of ignorant men, who had arisen to sudden wealth by successful gambling, made men of true gentility of mind and manners blush that gold should have power to raise the unworthy in the scale of society. The haughtiness of some of these "cyphering cits," as they were termed by Sir Richard Steele, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... they get money, they bury it, and beg, beg, beg!" This perhaps, is overstated, still it is curious to witness this first lesson of "we want to eat," repeated by children of very tender age, with a tone of command and insolence. Khanouhen does not send for his present, and I hear, he will not receive presents. I shall have the more to give away ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... I'll do," said George. "I'll go to Vavasor and put up with the old squire's insolence, if you'll make this application for me to Alice." I wonder whether it occurred to him that his sister desired his presence at the Hall solely on his own behalf. The same idea certainly did not occur to Kate. She hesitated, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... addressing them to Julia. On he sang, while Noble, staring glassily at the demure lady, made a picture of himself leaping unexpectedly through the window, striding to the noisy barytone, striking him down, and after stamping on him several times, explaining: "There! That's for your insolence to our hostess!" But he did not actually permit himself these solaces; he only clenched and unclenched his fingers several times, ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... Giffard duly appeared, supported by two junior counsel, Mr. Poland and Mr. F. Lewis. The judges, as on the previous Saturday, were Baron Huddleston and Mr. Justice North. The former displayed the intensest bigotry and prejudice, and the latter all that flippant insolence which he subsequently displayed at my trial, and which appears to be an inseparable part of his character. When, for instance, I ventured to correct Sir Hardinge Giffard on a mere matter of fact, as is quite customary in such cases; when I sought ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... Dame, whence growes this insolence? Bianca stand aside, poore gyrle she weepes: Go ply thy Needle, meddle not with her. For shame thou Hilding of a diuellish spirit, Why dost thou wrong her, that did nere wrong thee? When did she crosse ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Latin to get at the intolerable recurrence. Rather than have a similar ending to three words Tacitus will depart from his rule of composition which is to balance phrases,—"dissipation, industry"; "insolence, courtesy";—"bad, good";—but to avoid a jingle he writes "luxuria, industria"; comitate, arrogantia"; "malis bonisque artibus mixtus" (Hist. I. 10), his usual style of composition requiring "luxuria, industria; arrogantia, comitate." He prefers ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... logical results of his status upon his character by refusing to take the word of a slave against a freeman. The slave had no social standing and no respect for himself or his fellow slaves and hence exercised unbounded insolence and tyranny towards his fellows. This gave to the social intercourse between slaves a flavor of vulgarity and insincerity utterly incompatible with the development of the finer instincts ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... him only visible, and of the rest no man beheld her. Then Achilles marvelled, and turned him about, and straightway knew Pallas Athene; and terribly shone her eyes. He spake to her winged words, and said: "Why now art thou come hither, thou daughter of aegis-bearing Zeus? Is it to behold the insolence of Agamemnon, son of Atreus. Yea, I will tell thee that I deem shall even be brought to pass: by his own haughtinesses shall he ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... me? Say that if it so please them, these old ruins are my property, and are not to be jobbed out to the insolence of ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Progne takes my lawful prey. As through the air she cuts her way, My flies she catches from my door,— Yes, mine—I emphasize the word,— And, but for this accursed bird, My net would hold an ample store: For I have woven it of stuff To hold the strongest strong enough." 'Twas thus, in terms of insolence, Complain'd the fretful spider, once Of palace-tapestry a weaver, But then a spinster and deceiver, That hoped within her toils to bring Of insects all that ply the wing. The sister swift of Philomel, Intent on business, prosper'd well; In spite of the complaining pest, The insects carried ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... than those of the former. The contemplation of distresses of this sort softens the mind of man, and makes the heart better. It extinguishes the seeds of envy and ill-will towards mankind, corrects the pride of prosperity, and beats down all that fierceness and insolence which are apt to get into the minds of ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... a counterclaim, which would have been unmannerly, and in his embarrassment did something that he instantly realised was even worse, approaching downright insolence in that it demanded confirmation of her word: he bent forward and glanced at ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... the highest genius and the profoundest sense for the significant. The moment this sense is at all lacking, the artist will not succeed in conveying power, but such obvious manifestations of it as mere strength, or, worse still, the insolence not infrequently accompanying high spirits. Now Castagno, who succeeds well enough in one or two such single figures as his Cumaean Sibyl or his Farinata degli Uberti, which have great, if not the greatest, power, dignity, and even beauty, elsewhere condescends to ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... He wouldn't, couldn't in fact It wouldn't be the thing at all. The fact is, Frank, that Torrington's coming here tomorrow, wired from Dublin to say so. He and Lady Torrington. I can't imagine what he wants here. I'd call it damned insolence in any one else, knowing what I must think of his rascally politics, what every decent man thinks of them. But of course he's a kind of cousin. I suppose he recollected that. And he's a pretty big pot. ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... an infamous gang impanelled. Rancour and rage and vindictiveness, and every passion awakened in the breasts of the strong by local insolence and legal injustice, is supplied by Bunyan with epithets of immense retaliative force. He is the greatest name-maker among authors. He was a spiritual Comanche. He prayed like a savage. He said himself, when describing the art of the religious rhetorician—an ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... in, to let them smoulder in their own ashes. Yes, my inward conviction, and my knowledge of the circumstances, justify my conduct in my own eyes; but in what light will it appear to my brother! For, can it be denied that the insolence of these foreign teachers waxes daily more audacious? They have desecrated our sanctuaries, unsettled the dull minds of the people, and conjured up amongst them a spirit of delusion. Impure spirits have mingled among the insurgents, horrible deeds ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... effect. There had been Letters and Remonstrances from the Scottish Committee of Estates to the reconstituted English Parliament, severely criticising the general state of affairs in England, and complaining especially of the monstrous insolence of the Army in possessing themselves of the King, and the expulsion at their instance of the eleven Presbyterian leaders from the Commons. Were not these acts, though done in England, outrages on Scotland as well, and against the obligations ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Reed, sorely tempted to lay hands on the fellow, and thrust him from the house. "No insolence, sir!" ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... felt such a distrust of the man that he would never leave him alone in the studio for a moment. When Lichtenstein insisted upon having Lady Ellen Treffinger's address James rose to the point of insolence. "It ayn't no use to give it, noway. Lydy Treffinger never has nothink to do with dealers." MacMaster quietly repented his rash confidences, fearing that he might indirectly cause Lady Ellen annoyance from this merciless speculator, ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... stood thunderstruck at what appeared, to him, to be an act of audacious insolence. However, after a moment's ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... the insolence of those who praise themselves and repeat their own exploits, unless the company desires it and they are forced to a relation; therefore it tickles them to be asked about their embassies and administrations of the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... himself as his father must see him. He had come to college for the purpose of fitting himself to succeed in some particular way in the stern battle of life which must follow his graduation; for, though his father had ample means to support him in insolence, Jimmy had never even ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... boast their wickedness. But of evil tongues for Milton to complain, required impudence at least equal to his other powers; Milton, whose warmest advocates must allow, that he never spared any asperity of reproach, or brutality of insolence[150].' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... due to Napoleon's policy of attaching everybody to himself by personal ties, and in giving he had the lavish hand of a parvenu. The recipients were never content, hoarding their fees, and becoming opulent, pursuing all the time each his personal ambitions, and ofttimes returning insolence for favors. To meet these enormous expenditures there had been inaugurated throughout Europe a system of what may be termed private confiscations, the vast dimensions of which can never be justly estimated. German princes and Spanish grandees, English merchants and the Italian ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... The fall of Bit-Imbi filled the two competitors with fear: they abandoned their homes and fled, the one to the mountains, the other to the lowlands on the shores of the Nar-Marratum. Tammaritu entered Susa in triumph and was enthroned afresh; but the insolence and rapacity of his auxiliaries was so ruthlessly manifested, that at the end of some days he resolved to rid himself of them by the sword. A traitor having revealed the design, Tammaritu was seized, stripped of his royal ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... alludes to in his Philothea. Blessed Elzear, Comte d'Arian, in Provence, was so exceedingly gentle in his treatment of his servants that they looked upon him as a person positively deficient in understanding, and behaved in his presence with the greatest incivility and insolence, knowing well his persevering tolerance of injuries and his boundless patience. His wife, the saintly Delphina, feeling more acutely than he the disrespectful conduct of their servants, complained of it to him, saying that the menials absolutely laughed in his face. "And ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... often is in women of the modern world. Miss Carew dimly suspected that any society of human beings expects some self-discipline, and some sacrifice to ordinary rules. As it was she wondered how long Molly's neglect of small duties and her frequent insolence would be condoned. ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... in her sex, all the wit and insinuation that even surpasses youth and beauty; yet to render her character impartially, she had also abundance of disagreeing qualities mixed with her perfections. She was imperious and proud even to insolence; vain and conceited even to folly; she knew her virtues and her graces too well, and her vices too little; she was very opinionated and obstinate, hard to be convinced of the falsest argument, but very positive in her fancied judgement: abounding in her own ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... ignorance spent in that chamber full of harmonies now forever passed away. She felt a horrible repugnance against dropping into the gulf of pettiness in which the women among whom she lived were floundering. This repugnance, stamped on her forehead, on her lips, and ill-disguised, was taken for the insolence of a parvenue. Madame Graslin began to observe on all faces a certain coldness; she felt in all remarks an acrimony, the causes of which were unknown to her, for she had no intimate friend to enlighten or advise her. Injustice, ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... who have occupied the roofs of the houses, behaved with great civility; their officers, on many occasions, sending to the family with a request that they would complain of any insolence that might be shown by their men. But no civility could ensure the safety of the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Perhaps, after all, Archie thought—if Deschamps' headache would only cause the removal of Bill o' Burnt Bay to the dilapidated cell on the ground floor—the Heavenly Home might yet be sailed in triumph to Ruddy Cove. He strutted the deck, when necessary, with as much of the insolence of a civic official as he could command, and no man came near to question his right. When the watchman's friends came from the Voyageur he drove them away in excellent French. They went meekly and with apologies for ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... a very pleasant fortnight at Melvich. Mistress Macpherson was so motherly that "takkin' cauld" was reduced to a permanent impossibility. The other men at the inn proved to be very companionable fellows, quite different from the monsters of insolence that my anger had imagined in the moment of disappointment. The shooting party kept the table abundantly supplied with grouse and hares and highland venison; and there was a piper to march up and down before the window and play while we ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... me Against the Titans' insolence? Who rescued me from certain death, From slavery? Didst thou not do all this thyself, My sacred glowing heart? And glowedst, young and good, Deceived with grateful thanks To yonder ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... rising to his feet with a look of majesty which, in an instant, awed the insolence of the offender. Never had he been faced by such defiance, so ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... said Ashby, in a stern voice, laying his hand heavily on the other's shoulder, "none of this insolence, my good man, or I shall have to teach you better manners. You know perfectly well that Katie is engaged to me, and that I mean ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... attempted to conciliate favour by the most abject flattery. He began with protesting that, for his part, he thought the apartments were perfumed with Arabian spices; and, exclaiming against the rudeness of the Bear, admired the beauty of his Majesty's paws, so happily formed, he said, to correct the insolence ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... me, I do solemnly assure you," said the Marquis de Bruyeres earnestly, "and we will have satisfaction yet from this proud young nobleman, whose excessive insolence and outrageously imperious ways are more than a little offensive to me, as well as to many others. He is no better than the rest of us, whose blood is as ancient and noble as his own, nor does his ducal coronet entitle him to the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... since my last snatch I have been much chivied about over the President business; his answer has come, and is an evasion accompanied with schoolboy insolence, and we are going to try to answer it. I drew my answer and took it down yesterday; but one of the signatories wants another paragraph added, which I have not yet been able to draw, and as to the wisdom of which I am not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the white women and children—at least, not openly. They might not like it in England, though personally I don't care if you massacre every damned Britisher in the country. From what I've seen of 'em it's only what they deserve. The insolence I've met with from those whipper-snapper officers! And the civil officials would be as bad, if they dared. Then their women—I wouldn't like to say what ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... mention to my mother the wickedness which I saw and heard. With the delicacy of an innocent boy, I almost imputed the very witnessing of it as a sin to myself; and soon I began to be ashamed of more than the mere sitting by and hearing. I found myself gradually learning slang-insolence, laughing at coarse jokes, taking part in angry conversations; my moral tone was gradually becoming lower; but yet the habit of prayer remained, and every night at my bedside, when I prayed to "be converted and made a child of ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... you have never remembered its existence. If you had a healthy democracy, even of pagans, they would have hung this street with garlands and given it the name of a god. Then it would have gone quietly. But at last the street has grown tired of your tireless insolence; and it is bucking and rearing its head to heaven. Have you never ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... and engaged in the debate, being provoked by some thrust of Butler's. There was a lively passage at arms, in which Blaine said he was obliged to leave the chair, as his predecessor Mr. Colfax had been compelled to do, "to chastise the insolence of the gentleman from Massachusetts." Butler replied by some charge against Blaine, to which Blaine, as he was walking back to take the gavel again, shouted out: "It's a calumny." My sympathies ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... carrying with it too much pride, when a man does not readily yield to the determination of approved authors, which is wont to be received with respect and submission by others: and it is looked upon as insolence, for a man to set up and adhere to his own opinion against the current stream of antiquity; or to put it in the balance against that of some learned doctor, or otherwise approved writer. Whoever backs his tenets with such authorities, thinks he ought thereby to carry the cause, and ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... in the Scriptures Honor. "Honor thy father and thy mother" is one of the Ten Commandments, and can never cease to be included among moral and religious obligations. It is opposed to everything like unseemly familiarity, discourtesy of treatment, insolence in reply, or deliberate defiance. It implies respect for age and experience, and a sense of the great sacrifices a parent has made for his children's welfare. It is said that in our time the bonds of parental authority ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... moment Nick glared at Patches as though doubting his own ears. Then rage at the tenderfoot's insolence mastered him. With a vile epithet, he caught the loaded quirt in his hand by its small end, and strode toward ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... love. I should think this lady might very fairly ask to be delivered from love of such a nature. For if I, a stranger, had been one-tenth part so gross and so discourteous, you would most righteously have broke my head. It would have been in your part, as lover, to protect her from such insolence. Protect her first, ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the colonists, which, because of the exigencies of war, failed to reach America. In fact, the attitude of Spain towards England at that time was the greatest obstacle which militated against the success of his colonies. His ships and his valor were necessary to suppress and check the insolence and ambition of Spain, who designed to conquer England and become mistress of the world. By his valor, loyalty, and wisdom Raleigh was largely instrumental in bringing about the failure of those plans and in defeating the Spanish fleet, which had been boastingly named The Invincible ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... proceeded to Deena, a large town, and, like Jarra, built of stone and clay. The Moors are here in greater proportion to the Negroes than at Jarra. They assembled round the hut of the Negro where I lodged, and treated me with the greatest insolence: they hissed, shouted, and abused me; they even spit in my face with a view to irritate me, and afford them a pretext for seizing my baggage. But, finding such insults had not the desired effect, they had recourse to the final and decisive argument, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... Maria! Is this the woman who, anon, braved the jeers and brutal wrath of swindling hackney-coachmen; who repelled the insolence of haggling porters, with a scorn that brought down their demands at least eighteenpence? Is this the woman at whose voice servants tremble; at the sound of whose steps the nursery, ay, and mayhap the parlor, is in order? Look at her now, prostrate, prostrate—no strength ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... then Econome of the Lycee at Vendome, was in the thick of the strife, and his post was not unattended with danger—though the Lycee had become an International Ambulance. It was sometimes hard for him to restrain his indignation before the insolence and partiality of the victors: once, for instance, he appealed to the general in command to obtain for the French wounded an equal portion of the bread given to the Prussians; but he was pushed by the shoulder to an open window, from which the French army could be seen, and the general exclaimed—pointing ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... to be a duchess?' I cried, excited by a sort of madness that her insolence roused in me. 'You are wild for honors and titles? Well, only let me love you; bid my pen write and my voice speak for you alone; be the inmost soul of my life, my guiding star! Then, only accept me for your husband as a minister, a peer of France, a duke. I will ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... wretched pauper. By a retrospective law, Roose was sentenced to be boiled to death, which was done accordingly. In Smithfield, the arch-rebel, Wat Tyler, met with, in 1381, the reward of his treason and insolence." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... people. There could be no mistake about that. I did not see a clouded countenance; nor did I hear an accent of discomfort, or of pain. I wondered at their joyousness, which I found it as impossible to share as the sick find it impossible to share what has been called "the insolence of health." It did, indeed, appear to me as something almost impertinent, as possession always appears to denial. But I had never been denied before. I perceived, also, that the inhabitants of this country were a busy people. ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... his parents to attend school, in order to learn the elegant accomplishments of reading and writing, in which he was sadly deficient. He was in the habit of talking and laughing pretty loud in school-hours, of throwing wads of paper reduced to a pulp by a natural and easy process, of occasional insolence and general negligence. One of the soft, but unpleasant missiles just alluded to flew by the master's head one morning, and flattened itself against the wall, where it adhered in the form of a convex mass in alto rilievo. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... invested the Capitol for so long that the Romans offered him a thousand pounds' weight of gold to retire; as the gold was being weighed out he threw his sword and helmet into the opposite scale, adding Vae victis, "Woe to the conquered," an insolence which so roused Camillus, that he turned his back and offered battle to him and to his army, and totally ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... several such examples, I had the ability and opportunity of drawing the value and strange worth of a poet, and withal of applying some of the lineaments to the following pieces, I should then do myself a real service, and atone in a great measure for the present insolence. But best of all will it serve my defence and interest, to appeal to your Lordship's own conceptions and image of genuine verse; with which so just, so regular original, if these copies shall hold proportion and resemblance, then am I advanced very far in your Lordship's pardon: the rest will entirely ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... want you to go,' said Fergus, 'and it is not for hatred of you; but I do not like combat between you and Cuchulainn. Your pride and insolence, and the fierceness and hatred, pride and madness of the other, Cuchulainn: there will be no ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... offer a little testily, for the insolence behind the offer was less than half concealed. Jaimihr ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... in a low voice. Her cheeks burned with hatred of the insolence of kin which could force you into the ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... offer any positive proof of it; but he found out the prince's gentleman, and talked so saucily to him of it that the gentleman treated him, as the French call it, a coup de baton—that is to say, caned him very severely, as he deserved; and that not satisfying him, or curing his insolence, he was met one night late upon the Pont Neuf, in Paris, by two men, who, muffling him up in a great cloak, carried him into a more private place and cut off both his ears, telling him it was for talking impudently of his superiors; adding that ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... my cane and was laying on for his insolence when Benbow roars out ('twas under the window of his inn) 'What be you a-doin' of?' That's how he speaks. 'What be you ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... make the trial had never been pleased with the insolence of the wooers, and had great foresight and was called their seer. His hands were soft and delicate. He could not bend the bow, but he predicted that it would be the instrument to bring ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... installed herself among the fresh water fish. And from that time the old mother, although she pretended to have retired from business altogether, would flit from one stall to the other, still interfering in the selling of the fish, and causing her daughters continual annoyance by the foul insolence with which she would at times speak ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... other Mortals, and with lofty mien He treads the earth as tho' he were a God. Nay, I believe that his ambitious soul, Had it but pow'r to its licentious wishes, Would dare dispute with Jove the rule of heav'n; Like a Titanian son with giant insolence, Match with the Gods, and wage immortal war, 'Til their red wrath should hurl him headlong down, E'en to ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... This insolence absolutely struck Diana dumb, and Daumon had disappeared round a turning of the road before she could find words to crush him for his vile attempt at extortion. She felt that he was capable of keeping his word, even if by so doing he seriously ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... us conveyed some momentous item of intelligence to him. At such times, as if he were gifted with second sight, he would go through a variety of pantomimic illustrations, showing me the precise manner in which the redoubtable Typees were at that very moment chastising the insolence of the enemy. 'Mehevi hanna pippee nuee Happar,' he exclaimed every five minutes, giving me to understand that under that distinguished captain the warriors of his nation ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... answered Pat Stiver, with a look of the most patronising insolence. "You're right, Joe, quite right—as you always are. Smacksmen has got no souls, no ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... greatest fear, which are both parts of reverence. Courage and fearlessness are trained amid dangers; but we have still to consider how fear is to be trained. We desire to attain fearlessness and confidence without the insolence and boldness which commonly attend them. For do not love, ignorance, avarice, wealth, beauty, strength, while they stimulate courage, also madden and intoxicate the soul? What better and more innocent test of character is there than festive intercourse? Would you make a bargain ...
— Laws • Plato
... I'm your schoolmaster, and if I say the sun comes after the day, why after the day it comes. Now, there!" he continued, as they entered the store. "Turn your face to the wall and do penance. Such insolence!" ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... instance, to the eager desire to get rich in a short time, and to the ignorance of the people, who consent to everything. A royal decree does not correct abuses when there is no zealous authority to watch over its execution, while freedom of speech against the insolence of petty tyrants is not conceded. Plans will remain plans, abuses will still be abuses, and the satisfied ministry will sleep in peace in spite of everything. Moreover, if perchance there does come into ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... said so, too. Then that thing asked for cold water, and when we didn't get it quick enough for her, she ran and fetched it herself—just as if she were at home! She wet a cloth and put it on Walter's head. I was amazed at her insolence. When the child came to she gave him a kiss! Think of it—and all ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... had been exchanged for a captured British general, and came to Valley Forge in May. From papers found after his death we know that while a prisoner he advised Howe as to the best means of conquering the states. For his conduct in the battle and insolence to Washington after it, Lee was suspended from the army for one year, but when he wrote an insolent letter to Congress, he was dismissed ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... in the words of Laudonniere, "angry and pricked deepely to the quicke for being so mocked," and, joined by all their comrades, fiercely demanded to be led against Outina, to seize him, punish his insolence, and extort from his fears the supplies which could not be looked for from his gratitude. The commandant was forced to comply. Those who could bear the weight of their armor put it on, embarked, to the number of fifty, in two ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... English, are fast teaching the people the usual arts of imposition. Oh, you hard-shelled, unplastic, insulated Englishmen! You introduce towels and fresh water, and tea, and beefsteak, wherever you go, it is true; but you teach high prices, and swindling, and insolence likewise! ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... hastened off to the safe deposit. The jewel-bag was delivered when I presented my printed slip; I picked it up and marched back, savagely biting my mustache and striving to control my increasing exasperation. Never before had I endured insolence from a superior officer. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... woman contributed no suggestions to his brilliant plans. She clung to him, but she tried to divert his affection. When she spoke it was of small domestic abuses: the exorbitant prices she had had to pay for food; the way in which the soldiery had stolen her pots and pans; the insolence she had experienced when she had lodged complaints against the men before their officers. And the boy—he wanted to be a poilu. He kept inventing revenges he would take in battle, if the war lasted long ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... appear before the Committee during the second week in February. He obeyed the summons, so far as presenting an appearance was concerned, but he refused to reply to certain questions put to him, and conducted himself with great insolence and want of discretion. Being again summoned before the Committee, to answer for his conduct, he read a written defence which had been prepared for him, and which rather aggravated his offence than otherwise. Accordingly, on motion of Dr. Baldwin, seconded by George ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... laughed. "I know just how you feel, but that's the insolence of the painter—he puts on canvas what he sees, not what his patron sees. The more money you pay for a portrait the more ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... of impostor, and even Lilian, though showing a face of distress at what she heard, seemed to hesitate in her replies and to entertain troublesome doubts. But the objection she ventured to make to a flagrant inconsistency in the tale called forth such loud indignation, such a noisy mixture of insolence and grovelling entreaty, that her moral courage gave way and Mrs. Wilson whined for another quarter of an hour in complete security from cross-examination. In the end Lilian brought out her purse ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... me! What are you going to say to him about me? You remember I told you that I intended to protect myself," she declared, with some insolence. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... and almost ran across the street, quickly passing in front of a carriage. She was ashamed of her previous desire to be the lady in the carriage she had seen coming from the Prater. It seemed as though the man's insolence had been her punishment. No, no, she was a respectable woman; in the depth of her soul she had an aversion to everything that savoured of the insolent.... No, she could no longer stay in Vienna, where women were exposed to such things! A longing for the peace of her home came over her, and ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... the less men to be feared, men in whom dwelt wonderful capabilities of leadership. Such, however, was not the case with those by whom they were succeeded; and the great and civilised nations of the world tolerated for centuries in their midst a race of savage barbarians whose abominable insolence and fiendish cruelty were only equalled by their material weakness and military impotence. Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli became recognised States, and the Great Powers degraded themselves by actually accrediting diplomatic agents to the "Courts" of ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... stirred; the king had outraged the most sacred feelings of the people. They held meetings, prayed to God, and petitioned the king. The king replied to their petition, like Rehoboam, with blustering insolence. The Covenanters were not intimidated, their determined resistance was contagious and stirred vast communities, national sympathy was aroused; the Holy Spirit wrought mightily upon multitudes. Three days after the king's haughty ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... pass out under the side of the parent's arm, and the other infant endeavored in vain to prevent his design. They entered the dark world by compulsion, and their mother expired in a few minutes. One of them possessed a gentle disposition, and was named Enigorio, the Good Mind. The other possessed an insolence of character, and was called Enigonhahetgea; that is, the Bad Mind. The Good Mind was not content to remain in a dark situation, and was desirous to create a great light in the dark world; but the ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... comfort, without acknowledging the source from which it emanated. For one year she had been treated with unvarying tenderness, consideration, and regard, in spite of coldness, haughtiness, and occasional insolence, till she began to despise one who could lavish so much ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... passed as usual from the extreme of insolence to the extreme of helpless imbecility, and called on Col. Sumner to come forward and put a stop to this riot of confusion, blood-shedding and violence. The Governor really wanted Col. S. to disarm only the Free State ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... them to a rendezvous, attended by their warlike followers, at Brixton, on the borders of Selwood forest [z]. The English, who had hoped to put an end to their calamities by servile submission, now found the insolence and rapine of the conqueror more intolerable than all past fatigues and dangers; and, at the appointed day, they joyfully resorted to their prince. On his appearance, they received him with shouts of applause [a]; and could ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... directed against a breach of morality, against an act which no man justifies. The man who appropriated this censure to himself, is evidently and notoriously guilty. His consciousness of his own wickedness incited him to attack his faithful reprover with open insolence and printed accusations. Such an attack made defence necessary; and we hope it will be at last decided that the means of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... charters were repealed by authority of parliament. The commons next deliberated, and presented their petitions. They attributed the insurrection to the grievances suffered by the people from: 1. The purveyors, who were said to have exceeded all their predecessors in insolence and extortion; 2. From the rapacity of the royal officers in the chancery and exchequer, and the courts of king's bench and common pleas; 3. From the banditti, called maintainers, who, in different counties, supported themselves by plunder, and, arming ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... feasts there was constant rivalry between them, although the wife of the high priest considered it nothing short of insolence that the wife of one inferior to her husband's rank should venture to compete with her; while upon the other hand, the little airs of calm superiority her rival assumed when visiting her excited the deepest indignation and bitterness in the heart of the wife of Ptylus. She, too, ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... impulse of my heart, to plead for the Queen. In order to secure the only suitable site for the statues to be erected to Cleopatra's honour and fame, I enter into judgment with her foes, expose myself to the insult with which boastful insolence is permitted to vent its wrath upon me. But I am not dismayed, though, in pursuing this course, I am acting against the law of Nature; for the infamous man against whom I raise my voice was my teacher, too, and ere he turned from the path of right and virtue—under influences ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... brief, snarling laugh, and advanced abruptly to the hearth. He towered above the slim American, but the latter did not appear to shirk comparison with him. With his hands in his pockets he nonchalantly opposed his insolence to ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Dancer, or Singer, maintained by us in all the luxury of extravagance; and in the back ground a maimed soldier and sailor, who were asking alms, and thrown down by the insolence of the opera singer's chairman; yet the sailor lost his arm with the gallant Captain Pierson, and the soldier left his leg on the plains of Minden. Instead of paying a guinea to see a man stand on one leg—would it not be better employed ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... And by mine honor for my sake I swear I say but truth; for no man's sake save mine, Lest I die shamed. Madam, I pray you say I am no liar; you know me what I am, A sinful man and shortly to be slain, That in a simple insolence of love Have stained with a fool's eyes your holy hours And with a fool's words put your pity out; Nathless you know if I be liar or no, Wherefore for God's sake give me grace to swear (Yea, for mine too) how past all praise you are And stainless of all shame; and how all men Lie, saying you are ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... link in a great chain of events, which were connected together by an invisible agency, and held in the divine hands. A superficial observer might see nothing in all that transpired but a curious concurrence of ordinary events. The insolence of Ishmael irritated the temper of Sarah; she procured his expulsion, and that of his mother from her household; retiring in disgrace, she narrowly escaped destruction in the wilderness, and afterward took up a casual residence in the vicinity. But if we pay a proper attention ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... saved the country from dismemberment while Mr. Orr and his friends were notoriously engaged in "trampling the Constitution under foot," and that the man who denounces it owes his forfeited life to its clemency, the astounding insolence of the impeachment touches the sublime. Here is confessed treason inveighing against tried loyalty, in the name of the Constitution it has violated and the law it has broken! But why does Mr. Orr think the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... said, to any new purpose had he to offer; but complainings; and those in a manner, and with an air, as I thought, that bordered upon insolence. He could not live, he told me, unless he had more of my company, and of my indulgence too, that I had yet ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... no more of his insolence. I owed him a debt. It is paid. If fools will be in the way of danger, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... The scheme was forgotten; the birds and fishes were remembered.... Griffenberg asked rather insolently if Mr Mann proposed to publish the scheme as it stood, and Charles, who did not detect the insolence, said that he certainly intended to publish the scheme and had indeed already sent a ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... to the full the insolence of this cross-examination, attempted to come to the rescue; but Lady Martin stood waiting so obviously for an answer that Toni felt ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... been eclipsed, and he would have unmistakably fallen in his own esteem had the broad scarlet ribbon been taken from his hat. The pose and turn of his well-shaped head on his shoulders provocatively challenged admiration, and would have had a dash of insolence in them if the expression had not been corrected by a pleasant smile, which showed a range of bright white teeth beneath a jet-black moustache, and the good-humor of the glance that tempered the frank roving boldness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... great caress, who frown on me.' 'Has heaven reserv'd in pity to the poor, No pathless waste, or undiscover'd shore? No secret island in the boundless main? No peaceful desert yet unclaim'd by Spain? Quick let us rise, the happy seats explore, And bear Oppression's insolence no more[373].' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... by a beggar, and born under a hedge. From his birth he is trained to suffering and hardihood. He is nursed, if he can be said to be nursed at all, on a coarse, scanty and precarious pittance; holds life only as a tenant at will; combats from the first dawnings of intellect with insolence, cold and nakedness; is originally taught to beg and to steal; is driven from the doors of men by the porter or the house dog; and is regarded as an alien from the family of Adam. Like his kindred worms, he creeps through life in the dust; dies under the hedge, where he is born; and ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... rose. She hated Leslie's patronizing insolence more than she hated her open vituperation. She would have liked to say that she was amazed to learn that Leslie ever told the plain truth about anything. Prudence warned her to let ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... aristrocrat—placet Hispana nobilitas—he confessed, admitting also that de populo nil mihi curae, yet he sided with the comuneros against the Crown. While deploring their excesses, he sympathised with the cause they defended, and he lashed the insolence and the rapacity of the Flemish favourites with all the resources of invective and sarcasm of which he was master. In one of his letters (Ep. 709), he describes the disorders everywhere prevalent throughout the country. "The safest roads ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... colonel for insubordination'—that's the word, sir, 'insubordination.' I've picked up a deal since I've been in the army; and, as we used to learn at school—and precious little it was!—'positive insolence; comparytive, ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... some strokes of genuine generous affection had gone home to his little heart; and, though unqualified submission had increased the natural impetuosity of his temper, and though visions of his future grandeur had touched his infant thought, yet, fortunately, before he acquired any fixed habits of insolence or tyranny, he was carried far away from all that were bound or willing to submit to his commands, far away from all signs of hereditary grandeur—plunged into one of our great public schools—into a new world. Forced to struggle, mind and body, with his equals, his rivals, the little ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... All the causes of anger are reduced to slight. For slight is of three kinds, as stated in Rhet. ii, 2, viz. "contempt," "despiteful treatment," i.e. hindering one from doing one's will, and "insolence": and all motives of anger are reduced to these three. Two reasons may be assigned for this. First, because anger seeks another's hurt as being a means of just vengeance: wherefore it seeks vengeance in so far as it seems just. Now just vengeance is taken only for that which ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... past left no room for debate. Thus Marius being sent for by Cinna, and their forces being divided into three parts, under Cinna, Marius, and Sertorius, the war was brought to a successful conclusion; but those about Cinna and Marius committing all manner of insolence and cruelty, made the Romans think the evils of war a golden time in comparison. On the contrary, it is reported of Sertorius, that he never slew any man in his anger, to satisfy his own private ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... power, from envy, jealousy, and perversity of disposition; and not gaining themselves, would hate and oppose all who did: not loving the person of the prince, and conceiving they owed him little gratitude, from the mere spirit of insolence and contradiction, they would oppose and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... after every encounter our troops had with the Dutch. It was the young men—some mere boys of fifteen—who displayed, with pardonable ignorance, bragging insolence. The men of maturer years, with very few exceptions, behaved like men, and in the hour of victory in many instances restrained the braggarts from committing cowardly acts. In this fight at the Nek, Private Venables of the 58th, who was one of the prisoners taken by the Boers, owed his life to Commandant ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... way disconcerted, Satyros leaves the throng with flouts at their asinine attachment to their conventional morality as opposed to the free life inculcated by nature. Goethe's later comment on this remarkable production is that it was "a document of the godlike insolence of our youth," and certainly no document could bring more vividly before us the world in which Goethe's genius came ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... happily planted. The worst spectacle of our times was on that day when Mr O'Connell, solemnly reprimanded by the Speaker of the House of Commons, was suffered—was tolerated—in rising to reply; in retorting with insolence; in lecturing and reprimanding the Senate through their representative officer; in repelling just scorn by false scorn; in riveting his past offences; in adding contumely to wrong. Never more must this be repeated. Neither must ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... to note the change which two or three short months of the stern but salutary and wise rule of the Tribune had effected in the streets of Rome. You no longer beheld the gaunt and mail-clad forms of foreign mercenaries stalking through the vistas, or grouped in lazy insolence before the embattled porches of some gloomy palace. The shops, that in many quarters had been closed for years, were again open, glittering with wares and bustling with trade. The thoroughfares, formerly either silent as death, or crossed ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the gates gazed at the hundred thousand within, and the more they gazed the louder and more bitter became their comment, the dimmer and the more tawdry did the glitter of it all appear to them, and the weaker and more half-hearted became the attitude of the one hundred thousand as they attempted by insolence and superciliousness to maintain the pose ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... moralize. I've mark'd with what a silent awe he'd spoken, With head uncover'd, his respectful manner, And all the honours which he paid the grave, And thought on cities, where e'en cemeteries, Bestrew'd with all the emblems of mortality, Are not protected from the drunken insolence Of wassailers profane, and wanton havoc. Grant, Heaven, that here my pilgrimage may close! Yet, if this be denied, where'er my bones May lie—or in the city's crowded bounds, Or scatter'd wide o'er the huge sweep of waters, Or left a prey on some ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White |
