"Pugnacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... military cousin of his, striding along, with his heavy armor clattering against the glass as he walks. A pugnacious fellow is that same soldier; and if he meet an opponent, you may see the tug of war. Should he chance to prefer the other's shield to his own, he will seize him in his burly arms, and shake him from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... in the air which made the Rockabie boys more pugnacious and their threats more dire. Possibly they may have felt more deeply stung by the contempt of Aleck, who strode carelessly along the rough stone pier, whistling softly, with his hands in his pockets, till he reached the slope and began to ascend towards where the fishermen leaned ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... differ as little, sometimes not at all; while the face of the woman approximates the human more closely than that of the man; while the child, representing race more than sex, is naturally more akin to her than to him. The male reserves more primitive qualities, the hairiness, the more pugnacious jaw; the female is nearer to ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... off the mask, and hoisted his true colors. And yet, if one came to think of it, there was no cause for surprise, for was he not a member of the strange, the mysterious, the great Order of Insectivora, which includes among its members probably the most pugnacious, the most implacable, the most furiously passionate fighters in all the wild? He fairly flung himself, unrolled, and running with an absurdly clock work-toy-like gait, whose speed checked the laugh that it caused, was after that viper in considerably ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... grizzled. But his long upper lip was shaved. He had a weather-beaten face—ruddy and deepening to purple about the cheek bones—with eyebrows, rough as bent grass, over deep-set, sulky eyes of reddish brown. His mouth was underhung, giving him a pugnacious and bad-tempered appearance. Nor did his looks appear to libel the old sailor. To Brendon, at any rate, he showed at ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... the pugnacious woodchuck. He bore a special grudge against this clover-eater, beyond the usual hostility that boys feel for any wild animal. One day on his way to school a woodchuck crossed the road before him, and John gave chase. The woodchuck scrambled into an orchard and climbed a small ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... astonishingly spiral locks surely constituted better authority for a name than any possible application of baptismal water—was, by right of reputed might, dictator of the Vine Street Primary. Curly was alleged to be of pugnacious disposition, and had not been bred to appreciation of the Golden Rule. He had the outward bearing of one who has reason for confidence in his personal prowess. He was popularly believed to have fought many ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... known in any other kind of ant. The apparition of these strange creatures from the cavernous depths of the mine reminded me, when I first observed them, of the Cyclopes of Homeric fable. They were not very pugnacious, as I feared they would be, and I had no difficulty in securing a few with my fingers. I never saw them under any other circumstances than those here related, and what their special functions ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... frosty weather; Charlie and I used to die of laughing at him. I think cold made him pugnacious; he seemed always ready for a row, and was constantly in one. The January frost came in our Christmas holidays, so Jem had lots of time on his hands; he spent almost all of it out of doors, and he devoted a good deal ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... common resident in all the Islands, and I cannot find that its numbers are increased at any time of year by migration. But on the other hand I should think a good many of the young must be driven off to seek quarters elsewhere by their most pugnacious parents, for of all birds the Robin is by far the most pugnacious with which I am acquainted, and deserves the name of "pugnax" much more than the Ruff, and in a limited space like Jethou and Herm battles between the old and the young ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... curled up in bed, with his rosy cheek resting on one of his scratched and grimy little hands, forming altogether a perfect picture of peace and innocence, it seems hard to realize what a busy, restive, pugnacious, badly ingenious little wretch he is! There is something so comical in those funny little shoes and stockings sprawling on the floor,—they look as if they could jump up and run off, if they wanted to,—there is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... scholar, and mathematician, s. of a linen-draper in London, was ed. at Charterhouse, Felsted, Peterhouse, and Trinity Coll., Cambridge, where his uncle and namesake, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, was a Fellow. As a boy he was turbulent and pugnacious, but soon took to hard study, distinguishing himself in classics and mathematics. Intending originally to enter the Church, he was led to think of the medical profession, and engaged in scientific ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... hunting, etc. as an intrusion, to be resisted and punished by force of arms. In short, this is the frequent cause of Aboriginal, as it is of European wars; man, in his natural state, being very much alike in all conditions—jealous of his rights, and exceedingly pugnacious. It is true, the European intruders pay no respect to these Aboriginal divisions of the territory, the black native being often hunted off his own ground, or destroyed by European violence, dissipation, or disease, just as his kangaroos are driven off that ground by the European's black cattle; ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Companies concerned; but this will provoke gloom rather than gaiety amongst those who have invested in Caledonians and North British. If you talk about the riots in connection with the movement, you might say that the pugnacious rioters remind you of safety matches, "for they not only strike, but ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... very complimentary to us, eh, Francesca?" laughed my host. "This young fire-eating English sailor-officer would rather be where his brains would be ever in jeopardy than enjoying the dolce far niente up here among the hills. What very pugnacious animals you Englishmen are, ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... funnily fastidious about their shells, feeling one well inside and out before they decide to try it, and hesitating sometimes between two, like a lady between a couple of becoming bonnets. They have been said to be pugnacious; but I fancy that the old name of soldier-crabs was given to them under the impression that they killed the former proprietors ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... for future conquerors, and on along Unter den Linden, with its broad pavements gleaming in a characteristic misty winter night, through the Brandenburg Gate of his Brandenburg dynasty, or to the statue of the blood-and-iron Bismarck, with his strong jaw and pugnacious nose—the statesman militant in uniform with a helmet over his bushy brow—who had made the German Empire, that young empire which had not yet known defeat because of the system which makes ready and chooses the ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... when forced upon them. "Militarism" is not a preponderant spirit in either Great Britain or the United States; their commercial tendencies and their isolation concur to exempt them from its predominance. Pugnacious, and even warlike, when aroused, the idea of war in the abstract is abhorrent to them, because it interferes with their leading occupations, and its demands are alien to their habits of thought. To say that either lacks sensitiveness to the point of honor would be to wrong them; ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... tricks and charlatanries of diction. He is not so popular as he would be if he made more noise about his words and thoughts, and called the attention of the public to every felicity of his style or reflection by a pugnacious manner, and a strained expression. Though possessing a singularly rich and suggestive fancy, and a wide variety of information, his use of ornament and allusion is characterized by a taste, an appropriateness, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... formidable powers. His pathos was often admirable—his humor flowed without effort or art. What jokes he uttered!—what sarcasms! How well he worked his case, never throwing away a chance, never relaxing his untiring energies. How he disposed of a pugnacious attorney may be gathered ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... emphatically by the pugnacious Bumpus that his companions laughed, and Corrie cheered ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... but in their exodus they are met by a fierce destroyer, in the shape of an east wind—a Caffre that suddenly throws the ranks of General Carbon into disorder, and drives them back upon the brilliant and pugnacious array of General Nerve: a battle-royal is the result. General Nerve immediately places lance in rest, and advances to the charge with the unsparing war-cry of: "Mr Ferguson, you don't lodge here!" and if Caffre ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... undermaster, and paid particular attention to Keats. The latter did not show any remarkable talent at school, but learned easily, and was 'a very orderly scholar,' acquiring a fair amount of Latin but no Greek. He was active, pugnacious, and popular among his school-fellows. The father died of a fall from his horse in April, 1804: the mother, after re-marrying, succumbed to consumption in February, 1810. Before the close of the same year John left school, and he was then apprenticed, ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... was another man in the saloon, standing a little on one side and looking intently at me. The chief mate. His long, red moustache determined the character of his physiognomy, which struck me as pugnacious in (strange to say) a ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... groups that had taken a hand in choosing him for the Vice-Presidency were thoroughly sick of their bargain. The machine politicians and the great corporations found that their cunning plan to stifle with the wet blanket of that depressing office the fires of his moral earnestness and pugnacious honesty had overreached itself. Fate had freed him and, once freed, he was neither to hold nor to bind. It was less than two years before Wall Street was convinced that he was "unsafe," and sadly shook its head over his "impetuosity." When Wall Street stamps a man "unsafe," ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... a slight suspicion of preserved ginger,—nothing else, upon honor,—and the most simple mixture for the cure, the radical cure, of blue devils and debt I know of; eh, Doctor? You advise it yourself, to be taken before bed-time; nothing inflammatory in it, nothing pugnacious; a mere circulation of the better juices and more genial spirits of the marly clay, without arousing any of the baser passions; whiskey ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... forlorn hope, the preservation of their offensive and defensive alliance with England. They were well aware that many of the leading counsellors of Elizabeth, especially Burghley and Buckhurst, were determined upon peace. They knew that the queen was also heartily weary of the war and of the pugnacious little commonwealth which had caused her so much expense. But they knew, too, that Henry, having now secured the repose of his own kingdom, was anything but desirous that his deserted allies should enjoy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of Loftus's Lenten Hymn, and poor Father Roach's penance, rubbed his hands, and slapped his thigh, and crowed and shouted with ecstasy. O'Flaherty, who called for punch, and was unfortunately prone to grow melancholy and pugnacious over his liquor, was now in a saturnine vein of sentiment, discoursing of the charms of his peerless mistress, the Lady Magnolia Macnamara—for he was not one of those maudlin shepherds, who pipe their loves in lonely glens and other sequestered places, but rather loved ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... threw down the poker, and casting a glance first at his hopeful son, and then at his hoping wife, replied that Jake was an ignorant, pugnacious, good-for-nothing scamp, and never would come to anything, unless to ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... dress dangled from a hook against the wall. I crept forward, my heart pounding madly, until I could gain sight of his face. He was a big fellow, not more than thirty, with sandy hair and beard, and a pugnacious jaw, his coarse hickory shirt slashed into ribbons, a bullet wound in the center of his forehead, and one arm broken by a vicious blow. His calloused hands yet gripped the haft of an axe, just as ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... slammed the old muddy gates, to stop the threatening mob; but the City Marshal, red in the face at this breach of City privilege, re-opened them, and the mob roared approval from a thousand distorted mouths. The more pugnacious reformers now broke the scaffolding at the Law Institute into dangerous cudgels, and some 300 of the unwashed patriots dashed through the Bar towards Somerset House, full of vague notions of riot, and perhaps (delicious thought!) plunder. But at St. Mary's, Commissioner Mayne and his men in the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... him a singularly youthful appearance. His mouth was even-lipped and rather pleasure-loving, which, without the balance of a strong nose, would have appealed to you as effeminate. Warrington's was what the wise phrenologists call the fighting nose; not pugnacious, but the nose of a man who will fight for what he believes to be right, fight bitterly and fearlessly. To-day he was famous, but only yesterday he had been fighting, retreating, throwing up this redoubt, digging this trench; fighting, fighting. Poverty, ignorance and contempt he fought; fought dishonesty, ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... respective traits of old Persimmon Sneed and Silas Boyd were displayed in all their pristine value; for although their interests were identical, both being opposed to the opening of the road, the dictatorial arrogations of the elder man and the pugnacious persistence of the younger served to antagonize them on many a minor point in question, subsidiary to the main issue, as definitely as if they were each arrayed against the other, instead of both being in arms under the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Yemen" with an idea of extreme danger. The Anglo-Saxon spirit suffers, it has been observed, from confinement within any but wooden walls, and the European degenerates rapidly, as do his bull-dogs, his game-cocks, and other pugnacious animals, in the hot, enervating, and unhealthy climates of the East. The writer and his comrades were represented to be men deliberately going to their death, and the Somal at Aden were not slow in imitating the example ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... battle with the whites, and boasting that formerly they had driven them back from the Darling, was a blow that they could not get over, and the result was that the whites were not again molested. It turned out that this pugnacious tribe was the same that threatened Sturt at the Darling junction, when the energetic interference of one man was so effectual. This remarkable savage, it seems, was dead ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... The guinea fowl got their Greek name, meleagrides, because the story was that the sisters of Meleager were turned into guinea hens. Pliny (H.N. X, 38) says that they fight every year on Meleager's tomb. It is a fact that they are a pugnacious fowl. Buffon says that guinea fowl disappeared from Europe in the Dark Ages and were not known again until the route to the Indies via the Cape of Good Hope was opened when they were imported anew from the ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... down," as we used to say. Upon reference to this infantile experience, the beginning of the dream seems to represent the factor of sexual excitement. In the same house and in the adjacent residence the dreamer used to play pugnacious games with the neighboring children, in which he satisfied himself just as ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... in Barsetshire. If there was on Dr Thorne's cranium one bump more developed than another, it was that of combativeness. Not that the doctor was a bully, or even pugnacious, in the usual sense of the word; he had no disposition to provoke a fight, no propense love of quarrelling; but there was that in him which would allow him to yield to no attack. Neither in argument ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... departure could not quite atone for the lack of a word and a glance of friendly good-bye from Phebe. One's liking is not altogether a matter of free will. In spite of himself, Gifford Barrett liked the blunt, outspoken, pugnacious Phebe far better than the girls whose honeyed words and ways he had found ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... were assembling at Taos. This intelligence created quite a sensation in camp, and it was believed, and earnestly hoped, that the entrance of the troops into Santa Fe would be desperately opposed; such is the pugnacious character of the average American the moment he dons the uniform ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... played out not many hundred yards away. Elaine and Comus were indulging themselves in two pennyworths of Park chair, drawn aside just a little from the serried rows of sitters who were set out like bedded plants over an acre or so of turf. Comus was, for the moment, in a mood of pugnacious gaiety, disbursing a fund of pointed criticism and unsparing anecdote concerning those of the promenaders or loungers whom he knew personally or by sight. Elaine was rather quieter than usual, and the ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... teeth, looked absolutely sharkish when he laughed. In a word, no one, after getting a fair look at him, would ever think of improving the shape of his nose, wanting in symmetry as it was. Notwithstanding his pugnacious looks, however, Jermin had a heart as big as a bullock's; that you ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... the Nuestra?" he roared. His moustaches puffed out at each word, and his jaw lifted to a pugnacious angle as he threw back his head. He screwed up his eyes into a sort of malevolent grin which did not extend below the ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... of a piece with the power of creation. We speak of God's fiat "Fiat lux, Let light be." Man has his fiat. The achievements of history have been the choices, the determinations, the creations, of the human will. It was the will, quiet or pugnacious, gentle or grim, of men like Wilberforce and Garrison, Goodyear and Cyrus Field, Bismarck and Grant, that made them indomitable. They simply would do what they planned. Such men can no more be stopped than the sun can be, or the tide. Most men fail, not through ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... had declared war on France, and was sending an army through Syria for the recovery of Egypt, while another expedition was assembling at Rhodes. Like all great captains, Bonaparte was never content with the defensive: his convictions and his pugnacious instincts alike urged him to give rather than to receive the blow; and he argued that he could attack and destroy the Syrian force before the cessation of the winter's gales would allow the other Turkish expedition to attempt a disembarkation at Aboukir. If he waited in Egypt, he might ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... wanting in the low latitudes. On one side of this fine square is the government house and barracks, opposite to which is an open-air theatre, and in front is the cathedral with any number of discordant bells. The little English sparrow seems to be ubiquitous, and as pugnacious here as on Boston Common, or the Central Park of New York. Boyish games are very similar the world over: young Cuba was playing marbles after the orthodox fashion, knuckle-down. It was very pitiful to ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... Didums duce, then!" said Fred. "I propose Monty for leader. Those against the motion take their shirts off, and see if they can lick me! Nobody pugnacious? The ayes have it! Talk ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... the scrub first lined up against the 'Varsity, the alarum of battle that rode on Stover's pugnacious front was equaled by the intensity of his ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... I am greeted with the pensive, almost pathetic note of the wood pewee. The pewees are the true flycatchers, and are easily identified. They are very characteristic birds, have strong family traits and pugnacious dispositions. They are the least attractive or elegant birds of our fields or forests. Sharp-shouldered, big-headed, short-legged, of no particular color, of little elegance in flight or movement, with a disagreeable flirt of the tail, always quarreling ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... sympathy with his surroundings. Already dowered with the "hate of hate, the scorn of scorn," he appears to have made foes both among those who envied him and those whom, in the pride of intellectuality, he treated with pugnacious contempt. Beneath the haughty exterior, however, was a warm and passionate heart, which only needed circumstance to call forth an almost fanatical intensity of affection. A well-authenticated instance of this is thus related ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... but agreeable to the victims. For the robin does not eat the whole worm, only the outer skin, and, to get rid of the inner part, Mr. Robin takes the worm in his bill and dashes it about on a stone with great skill until he has effected his purpose. He is also a very pugnacious bird; that is he is very fond of fighting, I am sorry to tell you, but such is really the case. He will not allow other robins to build in the same bush with him. He never joins himself in friendly company with his fellows, and on occasion he can fight very heartily: so heartily ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... this disaster this pugnacious whale was captured by the Rebecca Simms of this port. Two of the Ann Alexander's harpoons were found in him and his head had sustained serious injuries, pieces of the ship's timbers being imbedded in it. The whale yielded 70 to 80 barrels ...
— Bark Kathleen Sunk By A Whale • Thomas H. Jenkins
... make a point of. Adj. contending &c v.; together by the ears, at loggerheads. at war. at issue. competitive, rival; belligerent; contentious, combative, bellicose, unpeaceful^; warlike &c 722; quarrelsome &c 901; pugnacious; pugilistic, gladiatorial; palestric^, palestrical^. Phr. a verbis ad verbera [Lat.]; a word and a blow; a very pretty quarrel as it stands [Sheridan]; commune periculum concordiam parit [Lat.]; lis litem ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... squirrels—the fat gray ones, of which there were not many, and the venomous little red ones, of which there seemed an overproduction. They were cute little wretches, but we did not care for them. They were pugnacious pirates; they robbed their unmilitant gray relative and chased him from the premises. Earlier in the season they had thrown down quantities of green nuts to be wasted, and we were told they robbed birds' nests, not only of their eggs, but of their young. Those ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... else had ceased to wear shawls; and above the shawl a hat, of the large mushroom type and indecipherable age. And in the midst of this antique and generally untidy gear, the youngest and liveliest face imaginable, under snow-white hair: black eyes full of Irish fun, a pugnacious and humorous mouth, and the general look of one so steeped in the rich, earthy stuff of life that she might have stepped out of a novel of Fielding's or ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... who was still smarting under the disgrace to which he had been subjected at the hands of Oolalik, managed to rekindle and blow up the war-spirit, so that, two days later, a strong party of the more pugnacious among the young men of the tribe set off in their kayaks for the Whale River, taking with them a few of the women in one of their open boats or oomiaks—chiefly for the purpose of keeping ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... not very healthy-looking person of about fifty years of age, ill-dressed in seedy black clothes and a flaming red tie, with a fat, pale face, a pugnacious mouth, and a bald head, on the top of which isolated hairs stood up stiffly. I knew him by sight, for once he had argued with me at a lecture I gave on sanitary matters, when I was told that he was a draper by trade, and, although his shop was by no means ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... ceremoniously, in accordance to certain rules laid down for them by certain authorities, and for the delectation of highly critical audiences. But, if this custom prevailed, it would not seem to me stranger than the custom of training and paying pugnacious people to hit one another on the face and breast, with the greatest possible skill and violence, for the delectation of highly critical audiences. I do not say that a glove-fight is in itself a visually disgusting exhibition. I saw no blood spilt, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... done better," he replied. "Everything is fixed, and there is no danger of a slip. It took two or three days' work to bring Glendale to terms. He was pugnacious at first, and used some pretty rough language—talked about the police, and all that sort of thing. I told him to go ahead, and he saw that I couldn't be bluffed or scared off. After I convinced ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... industry, and no idea of time or its divisions into hours and months; they are, like our North American Indians, constitutionally lazy, are intensely selfish, and seem to care nothing for their dead; they have a quick sense of insult, but cannot as a rule be called pugnacious; they excite themselves to fight by indulging in strange war-dances and by singing songs full of braggadocio; and, after having been thus wrought up to a state of frenzy, they are perfectly reckless as to personal hazard. The Maori is not, however, a treacherous enemy; ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... for Breda; and the breach was complete, and William the Silent was calendared as a traitor. In May, Alva set out from Spain with an army to subdue the rebellious Flemings; and Philip, sinister, pugnacious, relentless, was seen a life-size figure. Philip was now himself. In September, Prince Maurice was born and christened with Lutheran rites, the Prince of Orange thus beginning his hegira from the Church of Rome. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... entomologists; and it was only by a close inspection of their structural differences that the utter distinctness of the mimickers and the mimicked was satisfactorily settled. Scarcely less curious is the case of Mr. Wallace's Malayan orioles, two species of which exactly copy two pugnacious honey-suckers in every detail of plumage and coloration. As the honey-suckers are avoided by birds of prey, owing to their surprising strength and pugnacity, the orioles gain immunity from attack by their close resemblance to the protected species. When Dr. Sclater, the distinguished ornithologist, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... least they are defended—at least they are armed for conflict and victory. There seems to be a good deal of doubt as to how far this is true of the nation which has hitherto been known as the pre-eminently pugnacious one. Where France and Germany and Russia count by hundreds, England counts by tens; and it is only, strictly speaking, on the good old principle that one Englishman can buffet a dozen foreigners that a very hopeful view of an Anglo-continental collision ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... still saying agreeable things; Lady Mary was smiling in gentle amusement. As I moved out to catch Lady Mary's eye, I did not at all lose sight of the fact that if the pugnacious mother of my innamorata took one glimpse of me there might result a scene which could end in nothing but my ignominious flight. I edged toward the group, advancing on the Countess's port quarter ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... time for his own reputation; for the report that he kept a mysterious and pugnacious statue on the premises would not increase his custom. He must silence it, if possible. "I'm afraid it is, sir—in ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... his position secure. Indeed, for the next ten years he had everything his own way. Then suddenly an ex-keeper of a drygoods store in Maine crossed his path. This was William Deering, a character quite as energetic, forceful, and pugnacious as was McCormick himself. Though McCormick had made and sold thousands of his selfbinders, farmers were already showing signs of discontent. The wire proved a continual annoyance. It mingled with the straw and killed the cattle—at least so the farmers complained; it cut ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... bad as he used to be, Clinton," Easton laughed; "just the same aggressive, pugnacious beggar ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... Ryan an optimist. The blood of Ireland had made him pugnacious. And Mack Nolan had a way with him. Wherefore, Casey Ryan once more came larruping down the grade to Camp Cajon and turned in there with a dogged purpose in his eyes and with his jaw set stubbornly. History has ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... sunshine from morning until night. There are numbers of them. Their manners are very marked. They have quite the air of conquerors. All the other birds yield them precedence, and they positively domineer over the pugnacious little English sparrow, who is content to keep in the background and watch ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... have place In any soul? Plato affirms ideas; But Aristotle, with his pugnacious race, As idle figments ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Whatever may have been the effect on the characters of those concerned, I know not. I am persuaded the proceeding was a means of averting much mischief. Boys are noble creatures when placed on their right footing; but they are pugnacious animals and require prudent management. News was brought me one evening, while they waited for admission, that two of them had stripped off their jackets to fight, the dispute being which loved their teacher most. "Exclude them both to- night," said a friend, ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... frame of letter-boxes, which formed a sort of little private room for him, and talked with him at such hours of the forenoon and the late evening as the student was off duty. He found comfort in the student's fretful strength, which expressed itself in the pugnacious frown of his hot-looking young face, where a bright sorrel mustache was beginning to blaze on a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... experienced boxers and in men of business when openly or implicitly challenged. It is just as if he had said: "Wait a bit! I shall get even with that lot—and let no one imagine the contrary!" From the personality of the man there emanates all the time a pugnacious and fierce doggedness. After he has formally welcomed you into the meshes of his intimidating organisation, and made a few general observations, he says, in a new tone: "Well———," and you depart. And as you pass out of the building the thought in ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... able cops were half carrying, half hustling Riley and McQuirk up its rear steps. The eyes and faces of each bore the bruises and cuts of sanguinary and assiduous conflict. Yet they whooped with strange joy, and directed upon the police the feeble remnants of their pugnacious madness. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... of the ship had before him the conflicting orders, one from the President, one from the Secretary of the Navy. He was about to sail under the President's orders for Pensacola; but wishing to make sure of his authority, he had telegraphed to Washington. Gideon Welles was a pugnacious man. His dislike for Seward was deepseated. Imagine his state of mind when it was accidently revealed to him that Seward had gone behind his back and had issued to naval officers orders which were contradictory to his own! The ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... man, more pugnacious than the majority, attempts to fight the Trusts, his stand is made futile by the Trust immediately establishing a rival store in his neighborhood, where goods are sold at an actual loss until ruin comes ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... humiliating. In most of the vocations of men, women would be as ridiculous, morally, as they are physically in men's clothes. If a woman is nothing but a smaller man, the savage contempt for the sex is logical. Place two races together, of which the one is weaker, less energetic, less pugnacious than the other; and the result will inevitably be that the strong and the fierce will make the mild and the feeble do all their hard work. The barbarous ages would return again. We should sit by, like the Indian, smoking the pipe of laziness, while you were furnishing us with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... guesswork and hearsay, interwoven with conclusions and ejaculation. Woe be unto him if he has not sense enough to waive her off the stand! He might as well try to harness a Valkyrie as to restrain a pugnacious old Irishwoman who is intent on getting the whole business before the ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... quietly and ignominiously in the bed of the Arno, while his temple and town were appropriated to other purposes. The river was dragged. The statue was found and set upon a column near the edge of the river, on a spot which is now the head of the Ponte Vecchio. True to its pugnacious character, it brought nothing but turbulence and bloodshed upon the town. The long and memorable feuds between the Guelphs and Ghibellines began by the slaying of Buondelmonte in his wedding dress, at the base ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... founded on the conviction that goodwill among men is a prime necessity of reasonable living—survives with a certain vigour, though even it has not escaped the general scepticism of the age. This element unites in agreement all the pugnacious sectaries who join battle over the other elements of the former faith. This element has no enemies. None will deny its lasting virtue. Obviously, therefore, the right course is to concentrate on the cultivation ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... king of autocracy and absolutism. Never has there been a time in history when the higher civilization was not in a savage struggle for existence. It is almost the first time in three centuries that the highest civilizations were in alliance with the lowest; not since the pugnacious Western powers of Europe sued for favor at the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... The calm apathy of a Cypriote is not easily disturbed; he is generally tolerably sober, or if drunk, he is seldom the "WORSE for liquor," but rather the better, as his usual affectionate disposition may be slightly exaggerated, instead of becoming pugnacious and abusive like the inebriated Briton. There are no people more affectionate in their immediate domestic circle, or more generally courteous and gentle, than the Cypriotes, but like a good many English people, they have an aversion to increased ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... been attached to the see of Canterbury. He was a man of very violent temper, and his readiness to enter a quarrel and to draw his sword must have made him a very singular exponent of the gospel of peace. Olaf saw very soon that he would require further help than this pugnacious priest could give; so he sent Thangbrand over to England, bidding him fare to Canterbury and bring back with him as many holy men as might be willing to serve ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... the robin's beak, then, is a very prettily representative one of general bird power. As a weapon, it is very formidable indeed; he can kill an adversary of his own kind with one blow of it in the throat; and is so pugnacious, "valde pugnax," says Linnaeus, "ut non una arbor duos capiat erithacos,"—"no single tree can hold two cock-robins;" and for precision of seizure, the little flat hook at the end of the upper mandible is one of the most delicately formed points of forceps which you can find among the grain ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... regaining the ground he loaded the buggy with his spoils, despite the driver's assertion that "dat all trash." Unfortunately with his epiphytes he brought down whole colonies of ants, and the Jamaican ant is a most pugnacious insect with abnormal biting powers. After I had been forced to disrobe behind some convenient greenery in order to rid myself of these aggressive little creatures, I was compelled to put a stern veto ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... scenes from some monstrous nightmare, and, try as he would, he could not dispel them. He would fix his mind and eyes on Miss Wilson's face, who was now sitting at her desk, and even as he looked at her the face of Brick Simpson, impudent and pugnacious, would arise before him. It was of no use. He felt sick and sore and tired and worthless. There was nothing to be done but flunk. And when, after an age of waiting, the papers were collected, his went in a blank, save for his name, the name of the examination, ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... are 293 steps to the top of it, which I climbed up to view the surrounding country, but it was not clear enough to see the sea and Elba. Here is the finest aqueduct I have seen, which continues to pour water into the town. Part of the old wall[10] with its towers is still standing. These pugnacious republics, who were always squabbling with each other and wasting their strength in civil broils, erected very massive defences. The Pisans are proud of their ancient exploits. The San Stefano or Chiesa dei Cavalieri is full of standards taken from the Turks, and the man who ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... all are hurrying and jostling, and tumbling over one another like the passengers of a steamboat when the bell rings for dinner. By the side of yonder bush there is a perfect duel transpiring between two pugnacious pigeons dashing out their wings fiercely at each other with angry tones, their beautiful purple necks all swollen, and their red eyes casting devouring looks, whilst two others are very quietly, yet swiftly, as ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... the help they offered to their chief, so greatly were the boldest awed by the colossal figure and well-known strength and courage of the old officer. Gautherot the butcher, constitutionally brave and pugnacious, was the only one who went to his friend's assistance. He rushed upon M. de Vaudrey, when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... as the case may be; for at such times a Cassowary man will say to himself, "My leg is long and thin, I can run and not feel tired; my legs will go quickly and the grass will not entangle them." Members of the Cassowary clan are reputed to be pugnacious, because the cassowary is a bird of very uncertain temper and can kick with extreme violence. (A.C. Haddon, "The Ethnography of the Western Tribe of Torres Straits", "Journal of the Anthropological Institute", ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... the will of God; or is religion a terrible and dynamic force that compels right for right's sake independent of compromise? How does the Canadian live in his home? Is he beer-drinking, lethargic, dreamy and flabby in will power; or is he whisky-drinking, fiery, practical and pugnacious? Why hasn't he a distinctive literature, a distinctive art? Nature never was more lavish to any people in beautiful landscape from the quiet rural scenery of the maritime provinces, Quebec and Ontario, to the ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... other's society than the rough, uncouth, animal Doctor, whose faith was in his own right arm, so full of the old Adam as he was, so sturdily a hater, so hotly impulsive, so deep, subtle, and crooked, so obstructed by his animal nature, so given to his pipe and black bottle, so wrathful and pugnacious and wicked,—and this mild spiritual creature, so milky, with so unforceful a grasp; and it was singular to see how they stood apart and eyed each other, each tacitly acknowledging a certain merit and kind of power, though not well able to appreciate its value. The grim Doctor's ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Antwerp. Old Jean Michel had left the country as a result of a boyish freak, a violent quarrel, such as he had often had, for he was devilish pugnacious, and it had had an unfortunate ending. He settled down, almost fifty years ago, in the little town of the principality, with its red-pointed roofs and shady gardens, lying on the slope of a gentle hill, mirrored in the ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... that General Howard misunderstood General Shafter, because such strategy as that indicated would suggest the tactics of the pugnacious John Phoenix, who, in a fight in the editorial room, put his nose into the mouth of his adversary in order to hold ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... when, as luck would have it, it hit the wrong mark, and fell just in front of him, smashing to atoms the porcelain inkslab and water bottle, and smudging his whole book with ink, Chia Chn was, of course, much incensed, and hastily gave way to abuse. "You consummate pugnacious criminal rowdies! why, doesn't this amount to all of you taking a share in the fight!" And as he uttered this abuse, he too forthwith seized an inkslab, which he ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... A large, pugnacious-looking man on the left put in the first comment. "Would it not be a saving of time to provoke violence, in one way or another, and thus form a pretext for disposing of ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... they fell on the bare foreheads of the Arabs; but the objects of the American's wrath merely skulked away; and the others, convinced by the only arguments which they understood, followed in pursuit of victims who might be less pugnacious. ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... she said, as she rose reluctantly from the foot of the bed. "I doubt if I can sleep for thinking what a pity it is that such an egotistic, bumptious, pugnacious, prejudiced, insular, bigoted person should be so handsome! And who wants to marry him any way, that he should be so distressed about international alliances? One would think that all female America was sighing to lead him to ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... than these he would regard with the amiable tolerance of a philosopher regarding a child with toys. So strongly acquisitive a nature must win the particular little battles which it is fitted to wage. When a conscienceless mind is buttressed by a pugnacious temperament then houses and land, and cattle and maidservants, and such-like, the small change of ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... conclusions of the observers. A somewhat famous but unscientific practitioner of phrenology gave a good illustration of this by mistaking a rugged development of the lambdoid suture for an enormous organ of combativeness, and ascribing to the gentleman a terrific, pugnacious energy which was the very opposite of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... for Pete's sake as for anything else. The old man knew that slightly older boys were apt to make fun of Pete for packing such a disproportionately large gun—or, in fact, for packing any gun at all. And Montoya also feared that Pete might get into trouble. Pete was pugnacious, independent, and while always possessing enough humor to hold his own in a wordy argument, he had much pride, considering himself the equal of any man and quite above the run of youths of the towns. And he disliked Mexicans—Montoya being the one exception. This morning he did not pack ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... resources were still much in excess of their population? The war had seemed to me to show that mankind was too combative an animal ever to recognize that the good of all was the good of one. The coarse-fibred, pugnacious, and self-seeking would, I had become sure, always carry too many guns for ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... the great flat, ruddy crabs with ponderous pincers and pugnacious mien, which frequent fish shop windows, can form but a very unflattering opinion of the fancy varieties which people every mile of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... hours, and then, after lunch, went out together into the town. Each felt that he was now more closely bound to the other than ever. The Dean was thoroughly pleased that it should be so. He intended his son-in-law to be the Marquis, and being sanguine as well as pugnacious looked forward to seeing that time himself. Such a man as the Marquis would probably die early, whereas he himself was full of health. There was nothing he would not do to make Lord George's life pleasant, if only Lord George would be pleasant to him, ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Nevarro snatched his hat, and hurried down the street. He had not proceeded far, when a hand was laid upon his arm, and turning, with somewhat pugnacious intentions, encountered ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... and escutcheons, and close against the wall lay the mutilated statue of a Crusader, with his legs crossed, in the style which one has so often read about. The old fellow seemed to have been represented in chain armor; but he had been more battered and bruised since death than even during his pugnacious life, and his nose was almost knocked away. This figure had been dug up many years ago, and nobody knows whom it was ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... two thinned Manchester! Your policy of absorption is good enough when you're dealing with fragments. It's a devilish unlucky thing to attempt with a concrete mass. You might as well ask your head to absorb a wall by running at it like a pugnacious nigger. I don't want you to go into Parliament ever. You're a fitter man out of it; but if ever you're bitten—and it's the curse of our country to have politics as well as the other diseases—don't follow a flag, be independent, keep a free vote; remember how ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... needn't tell me that," he observed presently, in a pugnacious tone, as if poor Gritty had been urging that lawyer's capabilities; "but, you see, he isn't up to the law as Wakem is. And water's a very particular thing; you can't pick it up with a pitchfork. That's why it's ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... things that are said and shown and put out and published, something—light in your darkness—a writer for you, something for you. Nobody can have a greater contempt for artists and writers and poets and philosophers than I, oh! a squalid crew they are, mean, jealous, pugnacious, disgraceful in love, disgraceful—but out of it all comes the greatest serenest thing, the mind of the world, Literature. Nasty little midges, yes,—but fireflies—carrying light for ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... this fellow, notwithstanding his pugnacious manner. He had an honest face, and bright blue eyes, in whose depths lurked a merry twinkle. He took it for granted that this was Jake Jukes who wanted ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... not be misunderstood, blackened as he is with the smoke of a lifelong conflict in the field of political practice? how is Mr. Carlyle to say it and not be misunderstood, after his furious raid into this field with his Latter-day Pamphlets?[43] how is Mr. Ruskin,[44] after his pugnacious political economy? I say, the critic must keep out of the region of immediate practice in the political, social, humanitarian sphere, if he wants to make a beginning for that more free speculative treatment of things, which may perhaps one day make its benefits felt even in this sphere, but ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... of boar in India, the black and the grey. Their dispositions are very different, the grey being fiercer and more pugnacious. He is a vicious and implacable foe when roused, and always shews better fight than the black variety. The great difference, however, is in the shape of the skull; that of the black fellow being high over the frontal bone, and not very ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... expanded, and stretching out their arms as if to welcome and embrace their former master; the starfish, zoophytes, sea-pens, and other innumerable marine insects, looking fresh and beautiful; and the crabs, as Peterkin said, looking as wide awake, impertinent, rampant, and pugnacious as ever. It was indeed so lovely and so interesting that I would scarcely allow myself to ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Webster's speech as "unanswerable", and in April came to an understanding with him as to Foote's committee and their common desire for prompt consideration of California. The importance of Foote's influence in turning the tide in Mississippi, through his pugnacious election campaign, and the significance of his judgment of the influence of Webster and his speech have been somewhat overlooked, partly perhaps because of ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster
... now be accepted by even the most "advanced" thinkers. The contest between skepticism and revelation has long since shifted to other grounds. Both the philosophy and the temper of the Age of Reason belong to the eighteenth century. But Paine's downright pugnacious method of attack was effective with shrewd, half-educated doubters; and in America well-thumbed copies of his book passed from hand to hand in many a rural tavern or store, where the village atheist wrestled in debate with the deacon ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... lessons; but he has distinguished himself in numberless hand-to-hand engagements with his fellow-scholars, and has gained the reputation of being, for a youngster of his inches, tremendously heavy about the fist. On this particular evening the school has been dismissed barely five minutes before the pugnacious little rascal contrives to get into an altercation with a lad several years his senior. As to the precise nature, of the casus belli, history and tradition are alike silent. The pair adjourn to a secluded part of the playground ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... consistent drab. Round his neck he always wore a voluminous cravat of unstarched muslin fastened in front with an old-fashioned pearl brooch, above which protruded the two spiked points of a very stiff and pugnacious-looking collar. A strong alpaca umbrella, unfashionably corpulent, was his constant companion. Mr. Madgin's whiskers were shaved off in an exact line with the end of his nose. His eyebrows were very white and bushy, and could serve on occasion as a screen to ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... strange tribe of Abyssinian Jews, or rather their mixed descendants, by whom it is, or was, inhabited. I say every one advisedly, for although the public which studies such works is usually select, that which will take an interest in them, if the character of a learned and pugnacious personage is concerned, is very wide indeed. Not to mince matters, I may as well explain what I ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... the statement is utterly at variance with the facts. Mr. P. is quite sure that the "Jacquard Automatic Reading and Punching Syndicate" will at once retract the injurious statement, or the youthful, vigorous and pugnacious Punches will be inquiring of Mr. P., as Sam Weller did of Mr. Pickwick when that gentleman's great name was apparently taken in vain, "Ain't nobody to be whopped for takin' this here liberty?" that is, adapting the question to the present occasion, "Ain't nobody's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... and strong advocate of the anti-slavery cause. This eminent jurist who built his life upon the plan of his words, "Duties are ours and consequences are God's" (as did also Cooper), was graphically addressed and described by Cooper as "Thou most pugnacious man of peace." ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... and putting on one now seemed to be out of the question. This hair of hers was of a dark-brown hue, threaded with silver, and it grew in a tousled abundance of unruly wisps that seemed to be symbolic of her harum-scarum character. She was as pugnacious as she was charitable, and as quick to make up a quarrel as to pick one. Her husband, Michael Minsker, was a "worldly" man, with only a smattering of Talmud, and their younger children were being educated at the Russian schools. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... what you will, boys, a man's letter reveals his character. If a man has mean blood in his veins he will spread some of it on the paper when he writes to you. I've seen the pugnacious wrinkles of a bull pup's face many a time wiggling between the lines of a letter. And if there's sunshine in a man's heart that also will brighten up the sheet ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... numerous nations of the East dice, and that pugnacious little bird the cock, have been and are the chief instruments employed to produce a sensation—to agitate their minds and to ruin their fortunes. The Chinese have in all times, we suppose, had cards—hence ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... had no strong parliamentary leader of my party on the floor to aid me, and I had had but little experience as a presiding officer. Of the opposite party were Mr. Randall, who had been Speaker of the three preceding Congresses; Mr. Cox of New York, the pugnacious, who had acted as Speaker for a time in the Forty-third; Mr. Carlisle (my successor as Speaker), and Mr. Knott of Kentucky, and others who laid just claim to much parliamentary learning. The House was hardly Republican; and in my own party were disappointed aspirants who often thought they saw ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... pugnacious on his juniors' account, I assure you! I can't imagine his agreeing to the use I'm making of you. I've no time to listen to his protests. Write, ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... where possible, preferred to house in a cave or big hollow log, one invariably remaining as a sentinel close to the mouth, looking out. If this sentinel were shot, another would almost certainly take his place. They were subject to freaks of stupidity, and were pugnacious to a degree. Not only would they fight if molested, but they would often ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... own character for courage had long been established; and his temper was under strict government. The fury of Glengarry, not being inflamed by any fresh provocation, rapidly abated. Indeed there were some who suspected that he had never been quite so pugnacious as he had affected to be, and that his bluster was meant only to keep up his own dignity in the eyes of his retainers. However this might be, the quarrel was composed; and the two chiefs met, with the outward show of civility, at ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was Fritz Schneider, and he had yellow hair, watery blue eyes, an enormous stomach and a pugnacious temperament. ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... amorous entanglement with Mr. Clemm and tried to say something. She could think of nothing which befitted the occasion; all her glib eloquence was temporarily asphyxiated. Mr. Clemm stammered and looked about for some hole in which to conceal himself. He, too, seemed far different from the pugnacious, self-confident dictator who reigned supreme on ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... they argued, but Nehemiah still went about repeating his rival prophecies. The more zealous of the Sabbatians, angry at the pertinacious and pugnacious casuist, would have done him a mischief, but the Prophet of Lemberg thought it prudent to escape to Adrianople. Here in revenge he sought ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... one of his admiring followers in the House—a tribute to his "stable character;" others have said that it became his attribute from the time that he described himself as "playing the part of judicious Bottle-Holder to the pugnacious Powers of Europe;" and Mark Lemon declared that it was simply used as a sort of trade-mark whereby he might be known again, just as Mr. Harry Furniss invented Mr. Gladstone's collars, Lord Randolph Churchill's diminutiveness, and exaggerated those complacent ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... that the ants never seem to resent interruptions or to be vexed by them. If they happen to get on the hands or fingers, they submit to be restored to the gate; but go to the formicary on the mango-tree half a dozen yards away and offer a friendly finger, and you will find dozens of pugnacious individuals ready to defend their home. Do they recognise that they are but pilgrims of the fence, enjoying certain rights on sufferance, that it is a path of peace on which belligerents must not intrude, a neutral tract under the custody ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... near the Mexican border. Word had come up to them that Martin had secured the conviction of the smugglers and was in line for immediate advancement. No one on the range had the heart to meet Johnny Nelson, for Johnny carried with him a piece of the ghost, and became pugnacious if his once-jeering friends and acquaintances refused to nibble on it. Cowan still sold his remarkable drink, but he had yielded to Johnny's persuasive methods and now ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... men I drove to near the State Agency Office. We entered and were met by Donohue, who was alone (it was early Sunday A.M.) and was pugnacious when he was made aware of his dilemma. I arranged with him, that for friendly appearances, we would walk out arm in arm to our carriage. Then we were whisked away to my office. I left Mr. Kraft, one of my men, in the office to run it and tell callers that Donohue ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... the priest, whereupon the priest became noisy. Afterward he reported the affair to his consul at Bangkok, with the embellishing statement that not only himself, but his religion, had been grossly insulted. The consul, one Monsieur Aubaret, a peppery and pugnacious Frenchman, immediately made a demand upon his Majesty for the removal of Phya ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... practical joke. And Mr. Downing and his house realised this. The house's way of signifying its comprehension of the fact was to be cold and distant as far as the seniors were concerned, and abusive and pugnacious as regards the juniors. Young blood had been shed overnight, and more flowed during the eleven o'clock interval that ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... reached his sweetheart, and showed himself a brown, straight youngster, with curly hair, pugnacious nose, good shoulders, and a figure so well put together that his height was not apparent until he stood alongside another man. Will's eyes were grey as Phoebe's, but of a different expression; soft and unsettled, cloudy as the recent weather, full ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... just struck ten when Dr. Mortimer was shown up, followed by the young baronet. The latter was a small, alert, dark-eyed man about thirty years of age, very sturdily built, with thick black eyebrows and a strong, pugnacious face. He wore a ruddy-tinted tweed suit and had the weather-beaten appearance of one who has spent most of his time in the open air, and yet there was something in his steady eye and the quiet assurance of his bearing ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... brought new experiences, and most of them were pleasant ones. It was pleasant to be patriotic and pugnacious, to look out appropriate prayers to be read in the churches, to have news of glorious victories, and to know oneself, more proudly than ever, the representative of England. With that spontaneity of feeling ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... undoubtedly we were all more or less experiencing the cumulative effects of the constant mild doses we had inhaled. Laughing-gas acts in a different manner upon persons of different temperaments: some will keep laughing, moderately or immoderately; others will become irritable, angry, or even pugnacious; whilst others ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... and other herbs, and are fixed to the side of a branch or the moss-grown side of a tree so artificially, that they appear, when viewed from below, mere mossy knots, or accidental protuberances. They are bold and pugnacious, two males seldom meeting on the same bush or flower without a battle; and the intrepidity of the female, when defending her young, is not less remarkable. They attack the eyes of the larger birds, when their needle-like bill is truly a formidable weapon; and it is affirmed, ...
— Charley's Museum - A Story for Young People • Unknown
... the guidebook toward her and made good use of it. "Let us do the literary pilgrimage, certainly, before we leave Ireland, but suppose we begin with something less intellectual. This is the most pugnacious map I ever gazed upon. All the names seem to begin or end with kill, bally, whack, shock, or knock; no wonder the Irish make good soldiers! Suppose we start with a sanguinary trip to the Kill places, so that I can tell any timid Americans I meet ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... his coffee and smokes his cigar. If the ladies of the household are inclined that way they look at it too. But there really is not much to look at as a rule. These paragraphs about the wicked British that seem so pugnacious when they are printed on solid English paper in plain English words, are often in a corner with other political paragraphs about other wicked nations. At times of crisis, when the leading papers are attacking us at great length, the ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... a great deal younger than either Tommy or Tuppence had pictured him. The girl put him down as thirty-five. He was of middle height, and squarely built to match his jaw. His face was pugnacious but pleasant. No one could have mistaken him for anything but an American, though he spoke ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... The books came duly to hand. My wife has occupied the translation ever since, nor have I yet been able to dislodge her. As for the primer, I have read it with a very strange result: that I find no fault. If you knew how, dogmatic and pugnacious, I stand warden on the literary art, you would the more appreciate your success and my - well, I will own it - disappointment. For I love to put people right (or wrong) about the arts. But what you say of Tragedy and of Sophocles very amply satisfies ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... England who could have driven her against her will. She had a fortune of her own. Enoch Lovatt treated her with the respect due to an equal who had more than once proved herself capable of insisting on independence and equal rights in the most pugnacious manner. ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett |
