"Exacting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exercised such imperious power over savage peoples, yet on trivial occasions she was abjectly timid and afraid, A sufferer from chronic malarial affection, and a martyr to pains her days were filled in with unremitting toil. Overflowing with love and tender feeling, she could be stern and exacting. Shrewd, practical, and matter of fact, she believed that sentiment was a gift of God, and frankly indulged in it. Living always in the midst of dense spiritual darkness, and often depressed and worried, she maintained unimpaired a sense ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... Mexican railways. The speculation had proved an excellent one, and then, with a few airy and casual references to Hudson Bay, Grand Trunks, and shares in steamboats, it was thought the creation of Olive's fortune could be satisfactorily explained to a not too exacting society. ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... he asked, "who does the Cock at the Lyceum just now? It is a small but very exacting part—'Act I. scene ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... that she would at once go to the palace; that she would do so, if possible, before Mrs Proudie could have had an interview with Mr Slope; and that she would be either submissive, piteous and pathetic, or indignant violent and exacting, according to the manner in which she ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... exacting mien of 1812 was very different from the half-jocular, half-sarcastic curl of the lip and sparkle of the eye which had inspired his followers in former days quite as much as his stirring, incisive harangues. Yet careful ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... rights, her lot seemed indeed a happy one. Shielded from the severe struggles of life, freed from the cares of business, released in a great measure from uncongenial work and from the dangers attending exacting labor, with the disagreeable things in life kept from her as much as possible, always seeing the best of every man's character and manners, and, more than all, being supreme in her natural domain, the home, ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... ecclesiastical and political disturbance. The Sovereign Pontiff, and the Catholic princes with whom he was engaged in deadly feuds, were equally faithless, restless, and implacable. Freedom of thought was proscribed, and the human mind was placed under the most exacting and intolerable tyranny by which it was ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... some of the limits of friendship are not essential to the relation, but are due to a defect in the relation, perhaps an idiosyncrasy of character or a peculiarity of temper. Some of the limits are self-imposed, and arise from mistake of folly. A friend may be too exacting, and may make excessive demands, which strain the bond to the breaking point. There is often a good deal of selfishness in the affection, which asks for absorption, and is jealous of other interests. Jealousy is usually ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... with a sneer her old-fashioned luxury. The handsome things she had admired from her youth up she suddenly suspected of age and absurdity. In short, she felt that fear which takes possession of nearly all authors when they read over a work they have hitherto thought proof against every exacting or blase critic: new situations seem timeworn; the best-turned and most highly polished phrases limp and squint; metaphors and images grin or contradict each other; whatsoever is false strikes the eye. In like manner this poor woman trembled lest she should see ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... favor of Riccabocca than the most elaborate certificate of his qualities and antecedents) pervaded the whole, and would have sufficed in itself to remove all scruples from a mind much more suspicious and exacting than that of the Squire of Hazeldean. But, lo and behold! an obstacle now occurred to the Parson, of which he ought to have thought long before—viz., the Papistical religion of the Italian. Dr. Riccabocca was professedly a Roman Catholic. He so little obtruded that fact—and, indeed, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... something. You can talk. They have got Decima into her room, and I must be up and down with her. I don't like leaving Lucy alone the first day she is in the house; she will take a prejudice against it. One blessed thing, she seams quite simple—not exacting." ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... witness up to the very last days the confidence between them. He was obeyed eagerly by all under him; and my mother and all her household lived in a constant emulation to please him, and quite a terror lest in any way they should offend him. He was the humblest man, with all this; the least exacting, the most easily contented; and Mr. Benson, our minister at Castlewood, who attended him at the last, ever said—"I know not what Colonel Esmond's doctrine was, but his life and death were those of a devout Christian."—R. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... when he should hear of it,—to light the fire at Sainte Marie,—to open the gate,—to launch the ferry boat in which the Huron visitors crossed the river,—and to give back the paddle to the boy who had charge of the boat. The Fathers, it seems, had the right of exacting two more presents, to rebuild their house and church,—supposed to have been shaken to the earth by the late calamity; but they forbore to urge the claim. Last of all were three gifts to confirm all the rest, and to entreat the Jesuits to cherish an ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... moreover, to impart peculiar tenderness to his pastoral intercourse, especially with members of his flock tried and tempted like as he was. He had learned how to counsel and comfort them by the things which he also had suffered. He may have been too exacting and harsh in dealing with himself; but in dealing with other souls nothing could exceed the gentleness, wisdom, and soothing ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... fifty years before he was thus relieved of material cares, a Spanish galleon carrying vast wealth had been wrecked in the West Indies. Phips now planned to raise the ship and get the money. For this enterprise he obtained support in England and set out on his exacting adventure. On the voyage his crew mutinied. Armed with cutlasses, they told Phips that he must turn pirate or perish; but he attacked the leader with his fists and triumphed by sheer strength of body and will. A second ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... in the Derby hills was so filled with the hard, exacting duties of his education that he had little time to think of the strange loneliness of his existence; nor is it probable that he missed that companionship of others of his own age of which, never having had experience in it, he could scarce ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wholly occupied in studying it, in reproducing it, holding ourselves always a little remote from it, as one steps back from a picture the better to see it, I say that marriage can only be the exception. To that nervous, exacting, impressionable being, that child-man that we call an artist, a special type of woman, almost impossible to find, is needful, and the safest thing to do is not to look for her. Ah! how well our great Delacroix, whom you admire so ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... of our first and best known families have sunk the assemblies of the St. Cecilia in the more important question of what order of government will best suit-in the event of our getting happily out of the Union!—our refined and very exacting state of society;—whether an Empire or a Monarchy, and whether we ought to set up a Quattlebum or Commander dynasty?-whether the Bungle family or the Jungle family (both fighting families) will have ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... while Maria Theresa besought each one to pardon the trouble she had given in her joyous days, for the sake of the misery she now endured. And as she entreated them to forget that she had been imperious and exacting, they knelt weeping at her feet, and earnestly implored ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... might gain access to Mme. de Beauseant, and truly it was no very easy matter. She was believed to be extremely clever. But if men and women of parts may be captivated by something subtle or eccentric, they are also exacting, and can read all that lies below the surface; and after the first step has been taken, the chances of failure and success in the difficult task of pleasing them are about even. In this particular case, moreover, the Vicomtesse, besides the pride of her position, had all the dignity of ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... month of June ministers are often puzzled to know what to do with boxes at the theatre; ministerialist deputies and their constituents are busy in their vineyards or harvest fields, and their more exacting acquaintances are in the country or traveling about; so it comes to pass that the best seats are filled at this season with heterogeneous theatre-goers, never seen at any other time of year, and the house is apt to look as if it were tapestried with very shabby material. Chatelet had thought ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... we feed the whole fleet at times, and have some excuse for being a little exacting—harkee, Galleygo—get a horse-cart, and push off at once, four or five miles further into the country; you might as well expect to find real pearls in fishes' eyes, as hope to pick up any thing nice among so many gun-room and cock-pit boys. I dine ashore to-day, but Captain Greenly is ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of it," said Captain Cranston, when later that evening his wife was laughingly telling of Davies's betrayal and confusion. "I always feel distressed to find a young fellow, just entering service, has already enlisted in one much more exacting. I was in love when ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Cheyenne and Arapahoe reservation into an association for mutual protection. By cooeperation we could present a united front to our enemies, the usurpers, and defy them in their nefarious schemes of exacting tribute. Other ranges besides ours had suffered by fire and fence-cutters during the winter just passed, and I returned to find my fellow cowmen a unit for organization. A meeting was called at the agency, every owner of cattle on the reservation responded, and an association ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... here, and we must make the best of it. Perhaps we can train her to be a little less exacting. And then, too, you can arrange to have the servants wait on her. You needn't ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... fabrics of the trade coming back; and by that I mean the dribbling streams of the wounded and, in the fields and woods through which you pass, the dead, lying in windrows where they fell. At the front you see only, for the main part, men engaged in the most tedious, the most exacting, and seemingly the most futile form of day labor—toiling in filth and foulness and a desperate driven haste, on a job that many of them will never live to see finished—if it is ever finished; working under taskmasters who spare them not—neither ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... returned to the bridge in triumph so far as the possession of a very wet cap was concerned, but rather low in his mind at having had to pay the exacting bargee a shilling out of his somewhat scanty store of pocket-money, he found John Seton ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... more consoling words, and then left her, after once more exacting a promise that she would receive no more visits, but go to bed directly. She was to send all intruders to him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... exclusive property of which appears to have been established in the first digger or occupant, even in places where the ground and herbage remained yet in common. Thus, we find Abraham, who was but a sojourner, asserting his right to a well in the country of Abimelech, and exacting an oath for his security "because he had digged that well." And Isaac, about ninety years afterwards, reclaimed this his father's property; and, after much contention with the Philistines, was suffered to enjoy ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... little bengalows—one-story houses for the shelter of travellers. It is true, one must not demand comfort in this kind of hotel; but this is a matter in which the traveller, broken down by fatigue, is not exacting, and he is at the summit of happiness when he finds at his disposal a ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... triumphant, diffident, passionate, impatient by turns, now exacting, now selfless, possessed him entirely. He remembered once, with astonishment, that he was making a magnificent match. He had never thought of it, as Rachel knew, as ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... demanding a man's full time and thought. It is the rare man who can devote himself to business and be fresh for the service of others afterward. No man can, with efficiency, serve two masters so exacting as are these. Besides, if his business has seemed important enough to demand his entire attention, are not the great uplift questions equally worth his exclusive thought? Are they easier of solution than the ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... for the everyday commuter. Of course, there may be an adequate service or it may be practical to drive to and from business. The latter is not at all uncommon with the country areas near the smaller industrial centers. Here the fortunate commuter is free from exacting train schedules; a five or ten minutes' drive sees him outside the city limits, and another twenty or thirty may find him rolling into his own driveway. Smooth sailing between office and home depend only on a reliable ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... and the most despotic power was granted to enforce discipline and supplies. Beauregard was replaced by Bragg, a man of more ability—of greater powers of organization, of action, and discipline—but naturally exacting and severe, and not possessing the qualities to attract the love of his officers and men. He had a hard task to bring into order and discipline that mass of men to whose command he succeeded at Tupelo, with which he afterward ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of military knowledge and the scientific attainments of civil and military engineering. At present the cadet is bound, with consent of his parents or guardians, to remain in service five years from the period of his enlistment, unless sooner discharged, thus exacting only one year's service in the Army after his education is completed. This does not appear to me sufficient. Government ought to command for a longer period the services of those who are educated at the public expense, and I recommend that the time of enlistment be extended to seven years, and the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that he might hope to gain. It was part of his nature—the result of an optimistic faith or courage that appealed to her, and sheer love of effort. She also guessed that his was not a spasmodic, impulsive activity. She could imagine him holding on as steadfastly with everything against him, exacting all that men and teams and machines could do. It struck her as curious that she should feel so sure of this; but she admitted that it ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... had come for Truth to determine whether, indeed, the children might be reunited with their parents—for there yet remained the need of exacting a pledge from ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... things about you, Worry, I'm sorry to tell. You're a rotten coach. In fact, you ought to be a coach at an undertaker's. Homans gets the credit for the work of the team. They claim you are too hard on the boys, too exacting, too brutal, in fact. Andrews recited a record of your taking sandwiches from us and aiding and abetting Murray in our slow starvation. The directors will favor your dismissal and urge the appointment of Professor Rhodes, who as coach will at ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... outside Holland and Zeeland, but if we take into account the fact that, all over the country, the Catholics were far more numerous than their rivals, this last clause of the Pacification of Ghent shows that the Calvinists were bent on exacting all the advantages of the situation they had so heroically conquered and that the moderates of the Southern provinces still found themselves placed between the hammer of Spanish domination and the anvil of ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... itself. He knew why the other had taken him into his confidence, and understood the silent appeal as plainly as though words had uttered it. Perhaps he duly weighed the perils of a flight without permission from the court of the exacting and capricious monarch, and considered the hazards of the trip itself through a wild and brigand-infested country. Possibly, the thought of the princess moved him, for despite his irony, it was his mocking fate to entertain in his breast, against his will, a ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... that you have a thousand dollars in bank when you hold in your hands the statement of your overdraft. Face your account with Nature like a man. For Nature is a generous, though remorseless, financier, delivering you your just due and exacting the uttermost of your debt. Also Nature renders you a ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... onward, with the wind about two points free, making splendid progress; although I am bound to admit that, with the height of sea and the strength of wind that still prevailed, there were moments when the task of sailing the boat became exciting enough to satisfy the cravings of even the most exacting individual. Lindsay and I relieved each other at the tiller, watch and watch, with one hand forward to keep a lookout ahead and to leeward, the rest of the poor fellows being so thoroughly worn out by their long spell at the pumps that rest and sleep ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... that slaveholders have in the most public and emphatic manner declared themselves guilty of barbarous inhumanity toward their slaves in exacting from them such long continued daily labor. The Legislatures of Maryland, Virginia and Georgia, have passed laws providing that convicts in their state prisons and penitentiaries, "shall be employed in work each day in the year except Sundays, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... all the interesting complications into which men and women might get. Often Bessie stayed for luncheon, a dainty affair served on a little table which the maid brought out and set between them. Sometimes Bessie had with her the baby girl, but oftener not, for she became exacting and ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... 25 effectual means for bridling their vagrant propensities by a ring-fence of forts or military posts; to say nothing of the still readier plan for securing their fidelity (a plan already talked of in all quarters) by exacting a large body of hostages selected from the families of the most influential 30 nobles. On these cogent considerations, it was solemnly determined that this terrific experiment should be made in the next year ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... see my brother and nephews, make myself known to them, claim and inquire after what was my due, be received with respect, and at the same time have justice done me with cheerfulness and good will; whereas, if I did it now, I could expect nothing but with trouble, such as exacting it by force, receiving it with curses and reluctance, and with all kinds of affronts, which he would not perhaps bear to see; that in case of being obliged to legal proofs of being really her daughter, I might be at loss, be obliged to have recourse to England, and it may be to fail at last, ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... young women employed in "The Outcry" offices disliked Miss Devine. They were all competent girls, trained in the exacting methods of modern business, and they had to make good every day in the week, had to get through with a great deal of work or lose their position. O'Mally's private secretary was a mystery to them. Her exemptions and privileges, her patronizing remarks, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... not wish to revive painful memories, but it cannot be denied that there was, here and there, some slight bickering between us on that occasion. The fault,' said Psmith magnanimously, 'was possibly mine. I may have been too exacting, too capricious. Perhaps so. However, the fact remains that you conceived the happy notion of getting me into this bank, under the impression that, once I was in, you would be able to—if I may use the expression—give me beans. You said as much to me, if I remember. I hate ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... instance for another purpose, in another way. You are thinking of the Bill, of course? But all we do is to say to some of these victims, 'Your sacrifice, as it stands, is too costly; the State in its own interest cannot go on exacting or allowing it. We will help you to serve the community in ways that shall exhaust and ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... very large, had been shattered by early dissipation. Naturally of a proud and somewhat exacting temper, he actively felt the mortifying consequences of his poverty. The want of what he felt ought to have been his position and influence in the county in which he resided, fretted and galled him; and he cherished a resentful and bitter sense of every slight, imaginary or real, ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... program, merely drew her wrap closer about her shoulders and sat more erect. At the end of the concerto the applause was generous enough to satisfy the most exacting virtuoso. Diotti unquestionably had scored the greatest triumph of his career. But the lady in the box had ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... and smooth-tongued patriarch said that if God would guarantee him a safe journey, feed him, clothe him, find him pocket money, and bring him safe back again—well, then the Lord should be his God. Stanley was not so exacting, but his attitude was similar. He asked God to give him back his people (a few short, killed or starved, did not matter), and promised in return to "confess his aid before men." Give me the solid pudding, he says, and I will give you the empty praise. And now he is safe ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... a New York newspaper reporter called at my army tent. I invited him in, and expressed my desire to forget all the recent sad events, and to occupy my mind with the exacting present and ...
— Lincoln's Last Hours • Charles A. Leale
... to undress, and was in the act of taking off his collar as he spoke. His mind ran over a list of struggling literary men. Something seemed the matter with most of them. There was Hamlin, but he would be too exacting, and would want to suggest alterations in the story itself, which would never do. There was Insley, whose last three books had been flat failures, and for whom Cutt & Slashem had positively refused to print anything more; but Insley had gone ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... Maria M. C. Hall, during her entire stay. Her presence at this hospital brought perpetual sunshine. Arduous as were her labors, for there were very many desperately wounded, and quite as many dangerously sick, she never manifested weariness or impatience, and even the sick and wounded men, usually exacting, because forgetful of the great amount of labor which their condition imposes upon the nurses, wondered that she never manifested fatigue, and that she was able to accomplish so much as she did. Often did they express their anxiety lest she should be compelled from weariness ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... understand the enormity of such an offense in a court the etiquette of which is so exacting that none of her own subjects ever dared appear in her presence until they had been properly instructed in court etiquette in the 'Board of Rites,' a course of instruction which may extend over a period of from ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... or very slow, it is not to be wondered at that men find it hard to realize their ideals among their equals in position. It is not merely that so many marriageable young ladies are ignorant. They are this, but they are more. They are exacting and pretentious, and uneducated in the worst sense, for they are ignorant how ignorant they are, or even that they ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... very much against the grain, one could see, but after some efforts the old fellow had his head on the grass and his heels in the air; the whacking and the 'Hurrah' were rather feeble, but Jesper was not very exacting, and the hare was handed over. Of course, it wasn't long in coming back ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... what you are thinking of, Jane," he said kindly. "But indeed, my dear, such a wife as mine, and such sorrows as she has helped me to bear, would have been wasted indeed, if by God's grace they had not made me less exacting and impatient than I used to be.— Barbara," he added after a pause, "I beg your pardon if I have spoken hastily, or done you injustice. All you have done has been conscientious; and if I spoke in displeasure—you know how one's ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... so-called loyalists, who, after triumphing by England's aid, then, relying upon that aid for the future, thwarted Pitt's remedial policy. Prudence should have enjoined the adoption of some such precaution in the case of men whose behaviour was exacting towards England and exasperating towards the majority of Irishmen. In neglecting to take it, Pitt evinced a strange lack of foresight. At this point George III showed himself the shrewder tactician; for he urged that ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... personal God does not mean a great Figure Head of the Universe,—Heine's fancy of a venerable old man, before he became "a knight" of the Holy Ghost,—it means a Supreme Power, Love, or Justice having relations to the individual man: in this sense Carlyle believed in Him, though more as Justice, exacting "the terriblest penalties," than as Love, preaching from the Mount of Olives. He never entered into controversies about the efficacy of prayer; but, far from deriding, he recommended it as "a turning of one's soul to the Highest." ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... eye for beauty, and an intense admiration for it. At the same time he was too intellectual to be satisfied with the mere sensuous type. And yet, when he decided that a woman was not pretty, she ceased to interest him. His exacting taste required no small degree of outward perfection crowned by ready wit and society polish. With those so endowed he had frequently amused himself in New York and Paris by a passing flirtation since the politic Miss Bently ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... chests, and the slender frames of most of our clerical men, to see how mind, patience, attention, needful leisure and more needful sleep, are cruelly overdrawn upon, by the service expected of them. But for his share of suffering by this exacting system, Mr. Dwight might have been, for years to come, the ornament and pride to his country which his unequalled combination of fine gifts qualified him to be; and we should not mourn, as we now do, over his life embittered while it lasted, and sent to the grave in what might have been its meridian ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... interior of the older and greater Socrates. Of course Diderot was far enough from being faultless. His wife is described by Rousseau as a shrew and a scold. It is too plain that she was so; sullen to her husband, impatient with her children, and exacting and unreasonable with her servants.[196] We cannot pretend accurately to divide the blame. The companionship was very dreary, and the picture grievous and most afflicting to our thoughts. Diderot returns in the evening from Holbach's, throws his carpet-bag in at the door, flies off ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... not been for Betty. Many an hour she spent in the dim room, when the summer was calling to her on every breeze to come out in its sunshine and be glad in its cheer. Many a game of checkers she played with the exacting invalids, when she longed to be riding over the country on Lad. And she read aloud by the single ray of light admitted through the shutters, and told stories until ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... destroying every inaccurate MS. the moment an error is spotted in it. Dave and Dolly were not the Jews, but they were as intolerant of variation in the text of this almost sacred legend of the Sweep. "S'ow me how you punched him, wiv Dave's head," Dolly would say; and she would be most exacting over the dramatic rendering of this ancient fight. "Percisely this way like I'm showing you—only harder," was Uncle Moses' voucher for his own accuracy. "Muss harder?" inquired Dolly. "Well—a tidy bit harder!" ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... horses in red wax, etc. He also prepared a miniature landscape, strewn with white powder resembling snow, with models of heavy wheels running through it, that he might study the furrow made in that terrible march home from burning Moscow. All this work—hard, patient, exacting work." ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... with rapid fingers. She was picking up shining little beads one by one on the point of her needle, and transferring them to the canvas stretched upon an embroidery frame before her. It was a kind of work exacting extreme care and precision, and the girl's hand never faltered, though a tempest of passionate feeling agitated ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... I think, in August, 1786—I was much surprised to meet in the salons of this lady, so exacting in the matter of gentility, two new faces which struck me as belonging to men of inferior social position. She came to me presently in the embrasure of a window ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... astonishment at the situations of his heroes. He hardly ever affects us; and is seldom capable of agitating our minds. And here I may indeed observe, that such is his partiality for exciting our wonder and admiration, that, not contented with exacting it for the heroism of virtue, he claims it also for the heroism of vice, by the boldness, strength of soul, presence of mind, and elevation above all human weakness, with which he endows his criminals of both sexes. Nay, often his characters express themselves in the language ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... former period came the need of the contractor, entrusted with the direction and laden with the full responsibility of works which no government "boards" or similar machinery would have been competent to carry through under the conditions imposed by the novel circumstances of the movement and the exacting spirit by which it was impelled. To attain the foremost place in the new career thus created demanded, obviously, no ordinary powers—special knowledge of various kinds, equal facility in mastering details and grasping a general plan, tact in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... came. He had been detained. Very sorry to disoblige Mrs. Ritson, but fact was old Mr. de Broadthwaite had an attack of lumbago, complicated by a bout of toothache, and everybody knew he was most exacting. Young person's baby ill? Feverish, restless, starts in its sleep, and cough?—Ah, croupy cough—yes, croup, true croup, not spasmodic. Let him see; how old? A year and a half? Ah, bad, very. Most frequent in second year of infancy. Dangerous, highly ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... courage, my dear love I am exacting from you the greatest sacrifice that a lover can hope for from a mother. Heaven, you can no longer doubt it, protects us. Everything depends now upon our skill and our prudence, so that ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... identify himself with the practicalities of existence. He had always viewed with distaste the apparently necessary compromises of successful living; the struggle for money, commercial supremacy, seemed unendurably ugly; the jargon and subterfuges of financial competition beneath his exacting standard of personal dignity. That had been his expression at the time—permeated by an impatient sense of superiority; but now he felt that there was something essential lacking in himself. An absence of proper balance. Solely concerned with the appearance, the insignificant surface, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... restriction is over, and that there is every encouragement for a return towards a laxer, more spacious form of novel-writing. The movement is partly of English origin, a revolt against those more exacting and cramping conceptions of artistic perfection to which I will recur in a moment, and a return to the lax freedom of form, the rambling discursiveness, the right to roam, of the earlier English novel, of "Tristram Shandy" and of "Tom Jones"; and partly it comes from abroad, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... accompanied by some of his officers and also those of the regiment, passed slowly between the long files of straight-backed soldiers. His searching glance seemed to take in everything at once, but so thoroughly had every one prepared that even his exacting eye could find nothing to take exception to. It was a time of suspense for all the soldiers, as they knew that the least detail of dress or equipment lacking or misplaced meant a visit to the guardhouse. But the inspection passed off perfectly, as far as the men were concerned, ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... the Christian Religion be very often represented as teaching Doctrines clearly contrary to Reason; or as exacting belief of what we can neither perceive the Truth of, nor do find to be reveal'd by Christ, or his Apostles: And, (what is still more) that this pretended Divine Religion does even consist in such a Belief as This; so that a Man cannot ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... Le Gardeur; but there was no depth in the soil where a devoted passion could take firm root. Still she was a woman keenly alive to admiration, jealous and exacting of her suitors, never willingly letting one loose from her bonds, and with warm passions and a cold heart was eager for the semblance of love, although never feeling ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Journalism, though an exacting pursuit, leaves its skillful followers a little leisure in which to cultivate literature. It the heyday of those ephemeral trifles, Annuals, and Mr. Bryant found time to edit one, with the assistance of his friend Mr. Verplanck, and his acquaintance Mr. Robert C. Sands (who, by the way, was ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... maintain a watch. Arthur, Morton, and I had agreed to divide the time between us as accurately as possible, and to relieve one another in turn. The first watch fell to Arthur, the last to me, and, after exacting a promise from Morton, that he would not fail to awaken me when it was fairly my turn, I laid down upon the ceiling planks, close against the side of the boat between which, and Browne, who was next me, there was barely room ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... had occurred in Chatham's vigorous days he might have been able to preserve the integrity of the empire. But now he was crippled by the gout and debarred from active life; and in the interesting "Dialogue between Franklin and the Gout" the philosopher might have retorted upon that exacting lady the mischief she had done his people by laming Pitt. Again Franklin had to stand the bitter denunciation of the Tories, while Lord Sandwich held him up as "one of the bitterest and most mischievous ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... "Mr." is a solecism, but in American clubs I have watched quite old friends and associates whose greetings have been marked almost by pomposity and certainly by ritual. Yet Americans, I should say, are heartier than we; more happy to be with each other; less critical and exacting. They certainly spend less time in discussing each other's foibles. That may be because the dollar is so much more an absorbing theme, but more likely it is because America is a democracy, and the theory of democracy, as I understand it, is to assume that every man is a good fellow until ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... of rare qualities—open, frank, generous, and brave. He commanded the respect and esteem of all. Just verging into mature manhood as the toscin of war sounded, he had no opportunity to display his great qualities as a civilian, but as a soldier he was all that the most exacting could desire. He was beloved by his men, and they appreciated his worth. He was kind and affectionate to all, and showed favoritism or privileges to none. It was through that ungovernable impulse that permeates the body and flows through the hot Southern blood ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... no less exacting. When once one has got into this habit of "flinging" or "tossing" money, to give it in any ordinary way, to slide it gently into the palm, is unbearable. Which of us who has, in an heroic moment, flung half a crown to a cabman can ever be content afterwards to hold out a handful of three-penny bits ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... those who heard it, could any thing have given addition to what they knew before.—Prince Menzikoff was sensible of what they felt, and to alleviate their grief, assured them that he would take upon him to give them all their liberty, without even exacting a promise from them never more to draw their swords against the czar, in case the king of Sweden should ever be able ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... a man is young so long as he is strong, and I was strong as in the days of my youth. My cheeks were fresh, my eyes were bright, and my hair was red as when I was twenty, and without a thread of gray. Stills my temperament was more exacting and serious, and the thought of becoming settled for life, or rather for old age and death, was growing in favor with me. With that thought came always a suggestion of slim, freckled Dorothy and ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... him to see me, Helen," she said; "I think I should like your friend very much. From what you tell me of him I doubt if you will find many such men waiting for you in this country. Our men marry for reasons of property, or they love blindly, and are exacting and selfish before and after they are married. I know, because so many women came to me when my husband was alive to ask how it was that I continued so ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... when the waltz was over they returned to their individual gloom. Towards supper-time, in the middle of a square dance, Sam suddenly noticing Hannah's solitude, brought her a tall bronzed gentlemanly young man in a frock coat, mumbled an introduction and rushed back to the arms of the exacting Leah. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... was addressed illustrate the veneration in which he was held. His most common name in prayers was Titlacauan, We are his Slaves. As believed to be eternally young, he was Telpochtli, the Youth; as potent and unpersuadable, he was Moyocoyatzin, the Determined Doer;[1] as exacting in worship, Monenegui, He who Demands Prayers; as the master of the race, Teyocoyani, Creator of Men, and Teimatini, Disposer of Men. As he was jealous and terrible, the god who visited on men plagues, and famines, and loathsome diseases, the dreadful deity who incited wars and fomented ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... that," responded Mabel. "He'll be as selfish and exacting as ever he can be. He'll keep mother in a state of fret, and you in a state of excitement, and he'll insist on smoking a cigarette close to the new cretonne curtains in the drawing-room, and he'll make me go out in the hot ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... outlaws, deprived of all honest means of livelihood, became robbers, and entered upon a life of plunder, exacting contributions from all subjects of the empire who fell into their hands. They soon found a friend in Adalbert of Falkenstein, who gave them the use of his castle as a stronghold and centre of operations, and joined them with his followers ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... him that they had been engaged all in the last week, and that they knew nothing of the baron whatever, or where he came from, or what he was, excepting that he paid them most liberal wages, and was not very exacting in the service ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Baldwin their over-lord—a suzerainty technically claimed by his Lordship's predecessors—but the iron Archbishop had changed the nominal into the actual, and it had taken some hard knocks to do it. His present journey was well earned, for he was betaking himself from his more formal and exacting Court at Treves to his summer palace at Cochem, there to rest from the fatigues of a campaign in which he had used not only his brain, but his good ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... and the plaid kerchief, tied in a hard knot under her chin, seemed foolishly ineffectual against the cold. Her hands ached, holding the pail, and she rebelled inwardly against the inclemency of the time. It never occurred to her that she could have put off this exacting job. She would sooner have expected Heaven to put off the weather. Just as she reached the top of the cistern, and lifted her pail of refuse over the edge, a man appeared from the other side of the house, and stood confronting her. He was tall and gaunt, and his deeply graven face was framed ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... But you understand, Ainley, I've no option. If you were my own brother it would be the same. The oath of service is a very exacting one—'without fear or favour or affection of or toward any person. So help me God!' ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... to be the most exacting of all the Arts, the cultivation of which presents the greatest difficulties, for a consummate interpretation of a musical work so as to permit an appreciation of its real value, a clear view of its physiognomy, or discernment of its real meaning and true character, is only achieved in relatively ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... have said, Van Sweller carried off the park scene to my decided satisfaction. Even to me he was a hero when he foreswore, for the sake of his friend, the romantic promise of his adventure. It was later in the day, amongst the more exacting conventions that encompass the society hero, when we had our liveliest disagreement. At noon he went to O'Roon's room and found him far enough recovered to return to his post, which he at ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... to-morrow," answered Sobrenski in the accents of finality. He had never cared about the girl's inclusion in their plots, and took his revenge in exacting from her considerably more than his ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... "The General," as he was always called, was rather stern and exacting; but when once he was convinced that his man was to be trusted, he practically let him take his own course; never interfered in matters of detail, accepted suggestions with the greatest courtesy and good humour, and was always ready with a kindly and ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... more—he was hers no longer. But worse than this, was the pain and grief of knowing that he was unworthy of the love and admiration that she had bestowed upon him. She knew that he was proud, passionate and exacting, yet she loved him; for these very characteristics, mingled as they were with more endearing qualities, had a peculiar charm for her. How happy she had been to feel that he loved her; and oh! the pain, the agony, of knowing that he did so no longer. Why, why had he written that letter? ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... I was exacting in those days and was not contented with the people, who were no better than they could be. I did not understand that they felt it as a duty to submit to the ideas of the group, just as I felt it my duty to break loose from it. I did not recognize the relative value ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... motive forces which enabled them to work their bellows. In practical affairs those who were under the necessity of labouring were driven, under the then machinery of social life, to the humaner and less exacting kinds of butchery, such as the Arts, Education, the practice of Religions and Medicine, and the paid representation of their fellow-creatures. Those not so driven occupied themselves in observing and complaining ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Coeur-de-Lion's discomfiture of the 'septemvirate of quacks' is hymned; and the finale is quite Attic. I do not know whether the thing has ever been attempted as an actual show. Though rather exacting in its machinery, it ought ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... business of selecting valentines in company with a small boy, a lengthy one. James Mandeville's taste was exacting. At first the comic ones caught his eye, and he was with difficulty induced to consider more worthy specimens of art; then he bestowed his favor upon an elaborate white satin heart, a combination sachet and valentine, and again had to be diverted. At length his selection ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... All the encouragement I dare offer is, that while there is life there is hope." He sank into a deep slumber, and I took my place to watch by him during the night. Mr. Worthing persuaded his parents to seek a few hours rest, as they were worn out with fatigue and anxiety; and exacting from me a promise that I would summon them if the least change for the worse should take place, they retired, and I was left to watch alone by my friend. All I could do, was to watch and wait, as the hours passed wearily ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell |
