"Insolent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... government were glad to welcome them and do them honor. Captain Bainbridge and the Turkish admiral became very good friends; and when the latter heard how the former had been treated at Algiers, he condemned the insolent Dey, and laid the matter before the Turkish Government. In consequence of this, Bainbridge was given a paper, signed by the Sultan, which would protect him thereafter from any such disrespectful treatment from any of the minor Mohammedan ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... mention my daughter's name in my presence? Can you think the son of your sister Gulnare worthy to come in competition with my daughter? Who are you? Who was your father? Who is your sister? And who your nephew? Was not his father a dog, and a son of a dog, like you? Guards, seize the insolent wretch, and cut ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... hand, smiling pleasantly upon her; but she clenched hers, as if tempted to strike him for the insolent offer, and turned away biting her ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... course of their own selection and creation at the top of the Meadow, and if by any chance the minister got a ball into a hole, then Nestie danced for a space and the minister apologised for his insolent success. Times there were—warm, summer days—when the minister would bring a book with him and read to Nestie as they lay in a grassy hollow together. And on these days they would fall a-talking, and it would end in a photograph being ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... have become me," said the Duke of Ormond, "to have been severe in prosecuting an attempt on my poor life, when your Majesty was pleased to remit his more outrageous and insolent attempt upon your royal crown. But I must conceive it as a piece of supreme insolence on the part of this bloodthirsty bully, by whomsoever he may be now backed, to appear in the Tower, which was the theatre of one of his villainies, or ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... moment the young clergyman would have enjoyed turning upon the insolent fellow standing there with his arms folded so evidently enjoying his discomfiture and thrashing him soundly, had he been able to find an excuse. Unhappily he had none, however, and his wrath all burst forth ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... interviews with this man, who was of a flighty and vainglorious character, and tried to restrain him from any act of open rebellion. Perceiving also that the Macedonian phalanx was grown very strong, and gave itself most insolent airs, he determined to raise up some counterpoise to it, in the shape ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... brusquely, was accompanied by frank, insolent looks which beneath their seeming openness concealed an intentness of purpose and a shrewd penetration. Only the first abrupt change in the fool's look, a slight one though it was, betrayed the jester to his caller. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... bankrupt. I went to tell Grandet of the steps his uncle and I took in his father's business, and the clever manoeuvres by which we had managed to keep the creditor's quiet until the present time. The insolent fellow had the face to say to me—to me, who for five years have devoted myself night and day to his interests and his honor!—that his father's affairs were not his! A solicitor would have had the right to demand fees amounting to thirty or forty thousand francs, one per cent on the ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... gave out a heat too great for any man to stand. He walked to the window, and stood looking out upon the long perspective of elms, where the avenue stretched away in the direction of Ripon House. As his eye wandered over the broad view of park and forest, a carriage, drawn by four horses, insolent in the splendor of its trappings, rolled toward him from the castle. In that moment it seemed to Ripon that he felt all the bitterness of hatred and envy that might have rankled in the hearts of all the poor wayfarers who had in eight hundred years peered through the park gate ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... naturally involved the Dutch in the general conquest of the Netherlands. The rash republicanism of the factions which had expelled the stadtholder, was speedily punished by the plunderings and corruptions of their new allies, and the insolent and atrocious annexation of Holland to the French empire was followed by the additional calamity of a war with England, which stripped her of all her colonies. An English expedition sailed for Java, stormed its defences, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... Oh! couldst thou yet again to life return, How hard would this appear, O Agricane! In that she whilom thee was wont to spurn, With sharp repulse and insolent disdain. O Ferrau, O ye thousand more, forlorn, Unsung, who wrought a thousand feats in vain For this ungrateful fair, what pain 'twould be Could you within ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... duty!" said Zenobia, in a whisper so full of scorn that it penetrated me like the hiss of a serpent. "I have often heard it before, from those who sought to interfere with me, and I know precisely what it signifies. Bigotry; self-conceit; an insolent curiosity; a meddlesome temper; a cold-blooded criticism, founded on a shallow interpretation of half-perceptions; a monstrous scepticism in regard to any conscience or any wisdom, except one's own; ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ideas by anticipation, with spending several days; this idea I say made me so ill, that I could not get the better of it; joined to that also was, I believe, the irritation of finding at my heels this insolent spy, a very fit subject, certainly, to outwit, if I had had the desire, but who did his duty with an intolerable mixture of pedantry and rigor*: I was seized with a nervous attack in the middle of the road, and they were obliged to lift me out of my carriage, and lay me down on the side ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... tempers are short in the morning), An inopportune joke is enough to provoke Him to give you, at once, a month's warning. Then if you refrain, he is at you again, For he likes to get value for money: He'll ask then and there, with an insolent stare, "If you know that you're paid to be funny?" It adds to the tasks Of a merryman's place, When your principal asks, With a scowl on his face, If you know that you're paid to ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... slander a considerable section of his fellow citizens. With a pious arrogance which is peculiar to his boastful faith, he turned what should have been a humanitarian assembly into a receptacle for his discharge of insolent fanaticism. Parentage is a natural fact, and the love of offspring is a well-nigh universal law of animal life. It would seem, therefore, that a Society for preventing cruelty to children by parents of perverted instincts, might live aloof from sectarian squabbles. But the Bishop ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... sought a diversion, at first by new matrimonial schemes of her own, has been told elsewhere, but her more effectual weapon was to arouse the fears of Scottish Protestants, and breed dissension in Mary's realm. "The young fool," Darnley, insolent and proud of his new greatness, offended all the nobles, whilst Mary grew daily more infatuated with him. They were married in July 1565, and the great conspiracy against Elizabeth and Protestantism was complete. Already the Scottish Protestant lords were in a panic, and after an abortive ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... that he went to the law, is, therefore, entirely credible in itself. The protracted trial, however, patiently persevered in for several long months, when he had every advantage, in his own house, to pray the devil out of the eldest of the children, resulting in her becoming more and more "saucy," insolent, and outrageous, may have undermined his faith to an extent of which he might not have been wholly conscious. He says, in concluding his story in the Magnalia, [Book VI., p. 75.] that, after all other methods had failed, "one particular Minister, taking particular compassion on the ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... lashing himself up to still another and more deadly assault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him, as the blood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus's elephants in the book of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in the foam of the whale's insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to swim,—though he could still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that; helpless Ahab's head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the least chance shock might burst. From ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... meats; it has not a tree near it. It is inhabited in part by tribes of South African niggers, who have lost all the picturesqueness of niggerdom in working for the white man's wages. The white man himself is insolent, ill-dressed, and ugly. The weather is very hot, and from morning till night there is no occupation other than that of looking for diamonds, and the works attending it. Diamond-grubbers want food and ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... ambassadors, so envied by the Spanish and the archduke's, were themselves not less chary, and crustily fastidious. The insolent Frenchman first attempted to take precedence of the Prince of Wales; and the Venetian stood upon this point, that they should sit on chairs, though the prince had but a stool; and, particularly, that the carver should not stand before him. "But," adds Sir John, "neither of them prevailed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... parting lips uttered a line she had thoroughly mastered them, the innate purity of her perfected womanhood, the evident innocence of her purpose, shielding her against all indecency and insult. The ribald scoffing, the insolent shuffling of feet, the half-drunken uneasiness, ceased as if by magic; and as her simple act proceeded, the stillness out in front became positively solemn, the startled faces picturing an awakening to ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... trap, and when he found that this slip of a girl was more than his match he started to give vent to his rage in vile, insolent language. ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... must act; and meeting Maignan's eager eye fixed upon my face, I nodded. In a second he seized the unsuspecting Gringuet by the neck, snatched him up from the chair, and flung him half-a-dozen paces away. "Lie there," he cried, "you insolent rascal! Who told you to sit before ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... great army cannot be quartered anywhere, even for a week, without scattering brands of ill-will all around it. The swagger of the troops, their warlike airs, and loud contempt of the undrilled swain, the dash of a coin on the counter when they deign to pay for anything, the insolent wink at every modest girl, and the coarse joke running along apish mouths—even before dark crime begins, native antipathy is sown and thrives. And now for nearly four years this coast had never been free from ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... have suspended his belief? ought he not to have told me of it, to have given me the power of clearing myself? 'The lock of hair, (repeating it from the letter,) which you so obligingly bestowed on me'—that is unpardonable. Willoughby, where was your heart when you wrote those words? Oh, barbarously insolent!—Elinor, can he be justified?" ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... about this time it was that the people of Sepphoris grew insolent, and took up arms, out of a confidence they had in the strength of their walls, and because they saw me engaged in other affairs also. So they sent to Cestius Gallus, who was president of Syria, and desired that he would either come quickly to them, and take their city under ...
— The Life of Flavius Josephus • Flavius Josephus
... therefore, insolent magisterial cur, who has recently made himself an object of unenviable notoriety, by asserting that "the Irish would swear anything," has shown himself to be as stupid as he is malignant. Would, for instance, the most hard-mouthed Irishman in existence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... too, that Zitlan, son of Teuxical, had paused and was standing quite still, with his unwavering and insolent eyes fixed on the girl. Resentment, and a touch of apprehension, agitated Dirk when he saw the expression on the face ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... know: that his War-Office has become a den of thieves and confusion, such as all men shudder to behold. That the Citizen Hassenfratz, as Head-Clerk, sits there in bonnet rouge, in rapine, in violence, and some Mathematical calculation; a most insolent, red-nightcapped man. That Pache munches his pocket-loaf, amid head-clerks and sub-clerks, and has spent all the War-Estimates: that Furnishers scour in gigs, over all districts of France, and drive bargains;—and lastly that the Army gets next to no furniture. No ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of Ringric, in Norway, who, having lost his wife, sent to Helge and Halfdan to ask Ingeborg's hand in marriage. Before answering this royal suitor, Helge consulted the Vala, or prophetess, and the priests, and as they all declared that the omens were not in favor of this marriage, he gave an insolent refusal to the messengers. This impolitic conduct so offended the would-be suitor that he immediately collected an army and prepared to march against the Kings of Sogn to avenge the insult with his sword. When the rumor ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... swarming with ragged children and foot-bound women, were in unpleasant contrast to the charming little Shan villages which we had seen in the low country. The inhabitants themselves appeared to no better advantage when compared with their Shan neighbors, for their stares and insolent curiosity were almost unbearable. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... Montcornet, with a smile. "Do you think you have a right to insult a poor general like me because, being a happy rival of Soulanges, you cannot even turn on your heel without alarming Madame de Vaudremont? Or is it because I came only a month ago into the Promised Land? How insolent you can be, you men in office, who sit glued to your chairs while we are dodging shot and shell! Come, Monsieur le Maitre des Requetes, allow us to glean in the field of which you can only have precarious possession from the moment when we evacuate it. The deuce is in it! We ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... temper so?" He was nearly choaked with passion; but at length he informed me, that one of his labourers, of the name of RODNEY, (who, by-the-bye, I believe had acquired this nick name from the circumstance of his having been a sailor, and fought under Admiral Rodney) had behaved to him in the most insolent manner. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... face as he passes, and mutters, "She is as the flower which is out of reach,—she is dedicated to God." That insolent official, the Baboo's pampered durwan, sees in her only Mamoul; he would as soon think of shaving himself as of driving her away. So, as the Baboo passes in or out through the great gate, the solemn coachman whips up the spanking Arabs, and the syces ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... accompanied Liszt to the Opera House, and, during an interval, joined him in the dressing-room of Josef Tichatschek, the tenor. Hearing that he was there, Wagner was coming to speak to him, "when he saw that his companion was a painted and bejewelled woman with insolent eyes." Thereupon, if his biographer is to be trusted, "the composer turned and ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... speedily routed and, with 38 of his men, taken prisoner. The siege of St. John's made but little progress. The, place was well provisioned, and the Americans encamped in the low, swampy ground around it suffered much from ill health. The men were mutinous and insolent, the officers incapable and disobedient. So far the invasion of Canada, of which such great things had been hoped by the Americans, appeared likely to turn out ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... all the mischief, Ammalat!" said the Captain, angrily, pointing to the Khan; "but for this insolent rebel not a trigger would have been pulled in Bouinaki! But you have done well, Ammalat Bek, to invite Russians as friends, and to receive their foe as a guest, to shelter him as a comrade, to honour him as a friend! Ammalat Bek, this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... "Insolent boy!" cried Raynal; "why, it is the referee of your own choosing, and as well behaved a lad as ever I ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... been a witness to this day has been but a sequel to behaviour equally improper and impertinent; that so far from having, as I thought, done your duty, you have constantly neglected it; and that the association you have formed with that drunken old man and his insolent son has led you into this folly. You may say that it was not your wish to remain on shore, and that you preferred being on the river. At your age it is too often the case that young people consult their wishes rather than their interests; and it is well for them if they find ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Macchiavelli, as is amply shown in the expansion of his greatness and the exercise of his power. Without faith in God, despising men, loving and thinking only of himself, distrusting all around him, audacious in design, immovable in resolution, inexorable in execution, merciless in vengeance, by turns insolent, humble, violent, or supple according to circumstances, always and entirely logical in his egotism, he is Cesar Borgia reborn as a Mussulman; he is the incarnate ideal of Florentine policy, the Italian prince converted into ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... dress himself during this long speech, assuming a show of contemptuous indignation as it progressed. When Overfield, astonished at his own eloquence, had subsided, the young man replied, in a quiet but rather insolent tone: ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of the deliberate and insolent indiscretion of her reply. Every line of her supple figure accented the listless, disdainful intention. As he remained motionless she turned, bent gracefully and laid her palms flat on the surface of the water, then looked idly over ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... is it possible he could, unless he were a witch, like his mother? Stay where you are, and let us hear what he has got to say. Of course, you can talk to him from the azotea, while he remains below. If he show any signs of being insolent, as he has already been to both of us, let us have him arrested, and cooled a few hours in the calabozo. I hope the fellow will give us an excuse for it, for I haven't forgotten his impudence ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... unsatisfactory reply, they proceeded to the Louvre, where they found the outer court filled with armed men, who, seeing them without the white cross and the scarf, abused them as "accursed Huguenots," whose turn would come next. One of them who replied to this insolent threat, was immediately run through with a spear. This, if the incident be true, occurred about one o'clock on Sunday morning, August 24th, the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... in greasy locks that fell upon their shoulders; the sais from his tail-board shouting ineffectual commands to make way for the Sahib; long-legged fowls, leaping and fluttering up under the pony's nose; pariahs, lazily insolent, almost allowing the wheel to graze thigh-bone or paw, before they condescended to loaf away to a fresh resting-place; and over all an arch of blue, so deep and passionate as to be almost vocal; and pervading all, the indefinable, unforgettable smell ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... and with a few photographs and tacks they had managed to impart an aesthetic appearance to the parlor. This place cost the huge sum of $25 a month. It might just as well have cost $100 for all Howard's ability to pay it. The past month's rent was long overdue and the janitor looked more insolent every day. But they did not care. They were young and life ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... feel them none the less. I consider it my duty as a gentleman to say that his bearing through the ordeal did credit to his noble family and his personal character. The Archduchess, who is foolhardy and insolent, does not deserve such a lover, and it is grievous to think that such a termagant should have so much power over such a man. I regard her as I would some poisonous reptile. Piety—which improves most women—only seems to render her the more defiant, and love—which softens most wills—makes ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... tenfold where it was entitled to go,—among the Indians. With the exception of an occasional bottle of whiskey, none of the tribute money went to the tribes, but was divided among the usurpers. They waxed fat in their calling and were insolent and determined, while our replies to all overtures looking to peace were firm and to the point. Even at that late hour I personally knew that the clique had strength in reserve, and had I enjoyed the support of ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... sisters much older and brothers much younger than himself; cut off, too, by reason of religion, from the society of neighbours, from school and college. Such companions as I could have were far below me in station, and either so servile as to foster pride, or so insolent as to inflame it. There was Father Danvers, it's true, that excellent Jesuit and our chaplain; and there were books. I was by nature a strong, healthy, active boy, but was driven by sheer solitariness to be studious. If it had not turned ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... before him and brought rum and many other presents. A slow, burning, sullen wrath was kindled in the King's heart as the three men drew near. His people, half-mad with excitement and debauch, needed only a cry from him to have closed like magic round these insolent intruders. His thick lips were parted, his breath came hot and fierce whilst he hesitated. But away outside the clearing was that little army of Hausas, clean-limbed, faithful, well drilled and armed. He choked down his wrath. There were grim stories about those who had yielded to the ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of mine who was visiting a poor woman in bereavement and casting about for some phrase of consolation that should not be either insolent or weak, said at last, "I think one can live through these great sorrows and even be the better. What wears one is the little worries." "That's quite right, mum," answered the old woman with emphasis, "and I ought to know, seeing I've had ten of 'em." It ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... most influential of all the Lavretskys was Fedor Ivanovich's paternal great-grandfather Andrei, a man who was harsh, insolent, shrewd, and crafty. Even up to the present day men have never ceased to talk about his despotic manners, his furious temper, his senseless prodigality, and his insatiable avarice. He was very tall ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... severe winter, the Supai Indians had come up from their home in Havasu Canyon, "Land of the Sky-Blue Water," made famous by Cadman, and were camped among the trees on a hillside. The barefoot women and dirty children were quite friendly, but the lazy, filthy bucks would have been insolent had I been alone. They lolled in the "hewas," brush huts daubed with mud, while the women dragged in wood and the children filled sacks with snow to melt for drinking purposes. To be sure they didn't waste any of ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... dirty waistcoat, buttoned up to his neck, showed not a trace of linen; a filthy black silk scarf, twisted till it resembled a cord, was round his neck, and his hands were unwashed. He looked round with an air of insolent effrontery. His face, covered with pimples, was neither thoughtful nor even contemptuous; it wore an expression of complacent satisfaction in demanding his rights and in being an aggrieved party. His voice trembled, and he spoke so fast, and with such stammerings, that he might ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... encounters with prisoners singly, a man of this type may show more of his real nature, especially if the prisoner be one of the inoffensive sort. He will be bland, insolent, indifferent or cruel, as suits his mood of the moment. "For God's sake, won't you let me write her just one letter?" implored a prisoner who had just got news of the fatal illness of his wife. Picture the situation—two human beings ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... over Shimei's brow! Hast thou been spoken for to the king or the captain of the host without success? Look not into the Court Calendar, the vacancy is filled in Shimei's face. Art thou in debt, though not to Shimei? No matter. The worst officer of the law shall not be more insolent. What, then, Shimei, is the fault of poverty so black? is it of so general concern that thou and all thy family must rise up as one man to reproach it? When it lost everything, did it lose the right to pity ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... deference are perhaps justly demandable of the obliged, and may be, with some reason at least, from expectation, paid to the rich and liberal from the necessitous; but that men should be allured by the glittering of wealth only to feed the insolent pride of those who will not in return feed their hunger—that the sordid niggard should find any sacrifices on the altar of his vanity—seems to arise from a blinder idolatry, and a more bigoted and senseless superstition, than any ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... there were no other reason for staying, I won't put it in the power of the Marquis of Trowbridge to say that he has turned me out of my parish, and so punished me because I have not submitted myself to him. I have not sought the quarrel. He has been overbearing and insolent, and now is meanly desirous to injure me because I will not suffer his insolence. No doubt, placed as he is, he can do much; but he cannot turn me out ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... America and the West Indies, having suffered much from the barbarity and depredations of pirates, complained to the King in council of the heavy losses the trade of the nation had sustained from those public robbers, who had grown so numerous and insolent, that unless a speedy check should be given to them, the navigation in those seas would be totally ruined. In consequence of which the King issued a proclamation, promising a pardon to all pirates who should surrender themselves in the space of twelve months, and at the same time ordered ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... the handle look smart with some coloured pieces of cotton and silk, which he sewed with packthread. Thus marched he out, swaggering down the streets, and swinging his twig of almond-tree in his hand. As he strutted along every one made way for him, imagining him to be one of those insolent retainers of office, who are supported by the great khans. Thus he continued a straight course, until he arrived at the market-place, where a multitude was assembled round two men, who were fighting desperately. Yussuf pressed forward, the crowd making way for him on both ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... with the Spaniards," had united for the purpose of taking revenge on seven Americans, whom they believed to be the originators of their insults. All well armed, they came from The Junction, where they were residing at the time, intending to challenge each one his man, and in fair fight compel their insolent aggressors to answer for the arrogance which they had exhibited more than once towards the Spanish race. Their first move, on arriving at Indian Bar, was to go and dine at the Humboldt, where they drank a most enormous quantity of champagne and claret. Afterwards ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... passed and repassed, rigid, supercilious, staring at the young girls with that half-sneering, half-impudent, near-sighted gaze peculiar to the breed. Their insolent eyes, however, dropped before the clear, mild glance of the ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... recognize the nobleman. But, instead of doing this, he refused to tarry, and even turned his head to the other side. Full of wrath, the nobleman made bitter complaint to the Ziogoon, who from that time turned his heart more resolutely than ever against the presumptuous and insolent foreigners. He again assumed the direct government of Nagasaki, and was about to adopt more vigorous measures, when he unexpectedly died, leaving the Christians a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... not surprised," he said, as he discharged his pistol and brought down a native who was in the act of battering in the head of a fallen man. "You said only yesterday, you thought there was mischief brewing—that the natives were surly and insolent; but I did not think they ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... march to Richmond was one continued insult from the troops that were hurrying to the front; one man being determined to kill Capt. Weiss, whom he thought was not humble enough. The female portion of the inhabitants were also very insolent. ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... he stood well with the rest of the townsmen; but he dared not risk Ned's going to work as an ordinary hand in one of the factories; public opinion is always against stepfathers, and assuredly this would be no exception. Hating him as he did, he dared not get rid of this insolent boy, who had struck and defied him. He cursed himself now with his rashness in letting his temper get the best of him and telling his wife openly that he had married her for her money; for this in Ned's hands would be a ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... An abjectness of character, likewise, is disgustful and contemptible in another view. Where a man has no sense of value in himself, we are not likely to have any higher esteem of him. And if the same person, who crouches to his superiors, is insolent to his inferiors (as often happens), this contrariety of behaviour, instead of correcting the former vice, aggravates it extremely by the addition of a vice still more odious. See ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... him into intercourse, long continued indignant. "Having presumed," said he, in one of those explanatory letters, "to put a test to me, which no man not born in Africa ever thought of taking, on my refusal he broke off all connexion with me in the most insolent manner. He, indeed, entered into two several negotiations afterwards, but both poisoned in their first principles by the same spirit of injustice with which he set out in his first dealings with me. I, therefore, could never give way to his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... indicated, whose name he had never known, had given him a pretty sword-stroke on the arm, then had gone toward Aramis, who at the same time came to meet him, having already finished his affair. "It is over," Aramis had said. "I think I have killed the insolent fellow. But, dear friend, if you ever need me you know that I am entirely devoted to you." Thereupon Aramis had given him a clasp of the hand and had disappeared under ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... have shot through my head from ear to ear. Ho, ho, how good it is to relax the nerves and to imagine that, with gleeful claws, one tears the enemies' flesh in bloody shreds! Ho, ho! S-c-r-a-t-c-h, and lift the paws on high! Lift them high as possible! It's a supremely insolent gesture.... ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... in irons; are exempt from the penalty of being marked. This punishment is said to produce considerable effect on the culprits, as well as on the spectators. Previously to its being revived, persons convicted of thieving were insolent beyond ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... to remove to a heathen land, to a land of ignorance and barbarism, where the people do nothing but rob, and fight, and gouge! Some parts of the West have obtained this character, but most undeservedly, from the Fearons, the [Basil] Halls, the Trollopes, and other ignorant and insolent travellers from England, who, because they were not allowed to insult and outrage as they pleased, with Parthian spirit, hurled back upon us their poisoned javelins and darts as they left us. There is indeed much ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... work and produce some more for their own needs; and even threatened to take some of the things by force if he did not comply with their demands. But the kind-hearted Capitalist told them not to be insolent, and spoke to them about honesty, and said if they were not careful he would have their faces battered in for them by the police, or if necessary he would call out the military and have them shot down like dogs, the same as he had done before ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... of the word, it sounds so much like a certain other word;' and then I made a face as if I were unwell. 'Perhaps it's Scotch also for that?' 'What do you mean by speaking in that guise to a gentleman?' said he, 'you insolent vagabond without a name or a country.' 'There you are mistaken,' said I, 'my country is Egypt, but we 'Gyptians, like you Scotch, are rather fond of travelling; and as for name—my name is Jasper Petulengro, perhaps you have ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... give you my opinion of the French, because I am very often taken for one of them, and several have paid me the highest compliment they think it in their power to bestow—which is, "Sir, you are just like ourselves." I shall only tell you that I am insolent; I talk a great deal; I am very loud and peremptory; I sing and dance as I walk along; and, above all, I spend an immense sum in hair-powder, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... others to get in. He was even somewhat insolent in his insistence. Finally he drove off with Bruce lazily waving his hand from the rear ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... we'll give you a thumping before we let you go, Diamond, just to teach you a lesson," he said, in a most insolent manner. "I've wanted to get at you or your friend Merriwell ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... well know what power a writer needs who would show the proud how great is the virtue of humility. For the law of our King and Founder is this: "God is against the proud but gives grace to the humble"; but the swollen and insolent soul loves herein to usurp the divine Majesty, and itself "to spare the subject and subdue the proud." Wherefore I may not pass over in silence that earthly city also, enslaved by its lust ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... But Bouquet had inflicted a very slight punishment upon them, and in concluding an unsatisfactory peace had caused them to make but a partial reparation for the wrongs they had done.[10] They remained haughty and insolent, irritated rather than awed by an ineffective chastisement, and their young men made frequent forays on the frontier. Each of the ten years of nominal peace saw plenty of bloodshed. Recently they had been seriously alarmed by the tendency of the whites to encroach on the great ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... that tributary of the St. Peter's I was anxious to visit, I found I could not penetrate to the Coteau de Prairie from that quarter, and no resource was left to me but to return, or go about three hundred miles higher up, where I was aware I should meet a pretty insolent set of fellows amongst the Yanktons and Tetons. The Sioux, who had committed pretty bad Indian murders amongst the Chippewas, were in great numbers about Lac qui Parle, and there was no avoiding them. However, it was ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... our English partridges, or at Crockford's, smiling as he swept up our English guineas from the board. Holker declares that, excepting Mr. Turner, he was the finest equestrian in London and describes how the mob would gather every morning round his door to see him descend, insolent from his toilet, and mount and ride away. Indeed, he surpassed us all in all the exercises of the body. He even essayed preeminence in the arts (as if his own art were insufficient to his vitality!) and was for ever penning impenuous verses for circulation among his friends. ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... played me during my absence? Is this, you rascal, the reward of all my care? Is this the fruit of all my devotion? Is this the respect due to me? Is this the respect you retain for me?"—Now then, now then.—"You are insolent enough, scoundrel, to go and engage yourself without the consent of your father, and contract a clandestine marriage! Answer me, you villain! Answer me. Let me hear your fine reasons"....—Why, the ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere
... Baroness had bravely faced the threefold torment which this explanation inflicted on her; for she was wounded as a woman, as a mother, and as a wife. In fact, so long as her son's father-in-law was insolent and offensive, she had found the strength in her resistance to the aggressive tradesman; but the sort of good-nature he showed, in spite of his exasperation as a mortified adorer and as a humiliated National Guardsman, broke down her nerve, strung to the point of snapping. She wrung her ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Position from the south side. On the north side, Finck has been ready these five hours.—Friedrich speeds the building of his batteries: "Silent, too; the Russians have not yet noticed us!" By degrees the Russians do notice something; shoot out Cossacks to reconnoitre. Cossacks in quantity; who are so insolent, and venture so very near, our gunners on the north battery give them a blast of satisfactory grape-shot; one and then another, four blasts in all, satisfactory to the gunner mind,—till the King's self, with a ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "This is too insolent!" said Tippoo. "Drag forward that Fakir, and cut his robe into tatters on his back with your chabouks." ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... and better nature of Iris recovered its influence at these words. "It is I who ought to beg pardon," she said. "Oh, I wish I could think before I speak: how insolent and ill-tempered I have been! But suppose I turn out to be right, Hugh, what will ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... thrown out before all the company at the Rehbock were very exasperating to Blasi and several times he seized the big bowl to throw it at the insolent fellow's head. He did not throw it however, for Veronica had charged him to have as little as possible to do with Jost, and especially never to quarrel with him, and Veronica's influence over Blasi grew stronger every day. So he did not throw the bowl, ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... "You are insolent," the inquisitor said, coldly. "It is rash to threaten men in whose power you are. These walls reveal no secrets, and though the town were full of your English pirates, yet would your doom be accomplished; without a possibility ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... our own department of State as Mr. Sumner alleges "the quarter-deck of a British man-of-war had been made a floating judgment-seat six thousand times and upwards, and each time some citizen or other person was taken from the protection of our national flag without any form of trial whatever." So insolent and oppressive had British aggression become before the war of 1812, that Mr. Jefferson in his somewhat celebrated letter to Madame de Stael-Holstein of May 24, 1813, said, "No American could safely cross the ocean or venture to pass by sea ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... rise and create a riot, the result of which might probably be the plundering and burning of the city, he immediately summoned the most influential Mohammedan nobles and others to meet him in council. They arrived fully armed, many of them assuming a bold and insolent air, and evidently ready to dispute his authority. As soon as they were seated, he addressed them in gracious tones; reminding them that he had not sought the position he now held, and that his sole aim since assuming the reins of government ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... him by his correct name. To wring this information from the sodden wretch was his first purpose. "Say, fellow," Joe almost pleasantly asked the beggar, "who told you that my name is McDonald?" "Did you think I did not recognize you?" replied the bum in a most insolent tone while at the same time he pointed his hand at Joe's birthmark. "When you bent forward to pick up your cap I remembered you the moment I put my eyes on that streak of white hair," and then, sure that he had before him a victim whom he could blackmail ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... provided by the butler, they all united in abusing their common enemy, the master of the house. For the time being, a pert little waiting-maid, with an odious turn-up nose, had the floor. She was addressing her remarks to a big, burly, and rather insolent-looking fellow, who had been added only the evening before to the corps of footmen. "The place is really intolerable," she was saying. "The wages are high, the food of the very best, the livery just such as would show off a good-looking man to the best ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... in the very lowest baseness of his character.—It is poor Olivia speaks. "Thus each day I grew more pensive, and he more insolent, till at last the monster had the assurance to offer me to a young baronet of his acquaintance." This scene is not fit for picture; it is seemingly nothing but successful villany, and of too gay a cast to be pathetic. The chapter from which it is taken would have furnished a much better ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... to his dinner or supper—rather glad that he had had the interview, for the man's manner was not so insolent as he had expected it would be; and he now felt tolerably confident that he should not again be solicited to keep the unfortunate promise ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... come—even in the Garden of Eden? Surely the serpent, pessimism, hasn't been insolent enough to draw you into conversation with him?" he ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... deliver your message," cried the colonel; "and tell his highness that if he dares to send any of his insolent mutinous scoundrels here again, I shall fire upon them. A flag of truce ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... have I done to you, that you should name that insolent intruder? A confident, opinionative fop. No, indeed, if I am, as a poetical lover of mine sighed and sung ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... an insolent sneer on the cutler's face that galled the young nobleman to the quick; and what was yet more annoying, there was an assumption of mutual intelligence and equality about him, that almost goaded the patrician's blood to fury. But by a mighty ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... concluded to be a chief) and made him a present of some nails and beads, which were accepted with evident pleasure, and immediately conciliated his friendship. This was a fortunate step, as he afterwards often showed his authority by checking the most insolent of his people when they pressed forward and endeavoured to steal whatever they could seize. One seaman holding his cutlass rather carelessly had it snatched from him, and the thief had so well watched his opportunity, that ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... them, "What they desired them to do, for that they would act with as much energy and vigour as the senators wished," they resolve that they should push on the levies as briskly as possible, that the people were become insolent from want of employment. When the house broke up, the consuls ascend the tribunal and summon the young men by name. But none of them made any answer, and the people crowding round them, as if in a general assembly, said, "That the people would no longer be imposed on. They should never list one ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... announced their intention of committing an army, destined for the invasion of England, to the conqueror of Italy. He wholly disapproved of their rashness in breaking off the negotiations of the preceding summer with the English envoy, Lord Malmesbury, and, above all, of the insolent abruptness of that procedure.[22] But the die was cast; and he willingly accepted the appointment now pressed upon him by the government, who, in truth, were anxious about nothing so much as to occupy his mind with the matters of his profession, and so prevent him from taking a prominent part ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... incapable. Raising her hand with an imperative gesture she said in a firm voice: "Back tempters, hinder not my husband from following the dictates of his better nature." For a few moments there was silence in the room, till one of the company, more drunken and insolent than the others, exclaimed in a loud, derisive voice: "Zounds, madam, but you would make a capital actress, specially on the tragedy parts; you should seek an engagement upon the stage." Mr. Harland's eyes flashed angrily as his listened to the insulting words addressed to his wife, and, turning ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... with Woodfall and others, to form a tolerably correct notion of his character. He was clearly a man not destitute of real patriotism and magnanimity, a man whose vices were not of a sordid kind. But he must also have been a man in the highest degree arrogant and insolent, a man prone to malevolence, and prone to the error of mistaking his malevolence for public virtue. "Doest thou well to be angry?" was the question asked in old time of the Hebrew prophet. And he answered, "I do well." This was evidently the temper of Junius; and to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... XIV. and Louis XV., performed as actors; that we give the title of the devil's works to pieces which are received by magistrates of the most severe character, and represented before a virtuous queen; when, I say, foreigners are told of this insolent conduct, this contempt for the royal authority, and this Gothic rusticity which some presume to call Christian severity, what an idea must they entertain of our nation? And how will it be possible for them to conceive, either that our laws give a sanction ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... pride, and as we regained health and strength the longing for fighting laid hold of us. It was disgraceful and irritating to know that within two or three leagues of us the Germans were victorious and insolent, to feel that we were protected by our captivity, and to feel that on that account we were powerless ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... to reach Kano by way of Zouari and Zegzeg, first crossing the Quorra. He soon arrived at Fabra, on the Mayarrow, the residence of the queen-mother of Nyffe, and then went to visit the king, in camp at a short distance from the town. This king, Clapperton tells us, was the most insolent rogue imaginable, asking for everything he saw, and quite unabashed by any refusal. His ambition and his calling in of the Fellatahs, who would throw him over as soon as he had answered their purpose, had been the ruin of his country. Thanks indeed ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... speculation? I have witnessed such a thing, and cannot but say that it appeared to me one of the most revolting and disgusting phases which it is possible that human nature should assume. I think I see the dirty, oily-looking animal, at once servile and insolent, with trickery and rascality in every line of his countenance, rubbing his hands in the hour of his triumph, and bustling about to make immediate preparation for availing himself of it. And following him, also sneakily exulting, I see an object more dirty, more ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... and firmness, told her that she intended to stay with her for just as long as it was necessary before finding some one to live with in a little flat in London. She felt the possibility, at first, of Mrs. Delaport Green's becoming insolent, but she was presently convinced that she had mastered the situation. They agreed to go to Eastbourne together next day, and then to look for a flat for Molly in London. The suggestion that Mrs. Delaport Green might help Molly ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... known me, and begin a new career of honesty, God permitting. I will not remain with the character of a thief stamped upon me, to be a drag round your neck, and I have made up my mind no longer to persecute dear Betty Bevan with the offer of a dishonest and dishonoured hand. In my insolent folly I had once thought her somewhat below me in station. I now know that she is far, far above me in every way, and also ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... and insolent because she had children, while Hannah was melancholy and discontented because she had none, hence Elkanah had no pleasure in his daily life with either. He had a difficult part to act. Hoping much from the consolations ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... he looked at the second man, who was sitting very upright, as if he had a particularly fine backbone, of which he was not a little proud. He was extremely big and handsome, with pronounced and regular nose and chin, firm, well-cut lips beneath a smooth moustache, direct and rather insolent eyes, a some what receding forehead, and an air of mastery over all around. It was obvious that he possessed a complete knowledge of his own mind, some brutality, much practical intelligence, great resolution, no imagination, and plenty of conceit. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 'recaptive' apparently can never throw off. Moreover, he became an inveterate slave-dealer, impudently placing himself under native protection, and renegading the flag that saved the crime-serf from lifelong servitude. These 'insolent, vagabond loafers' were the only men who gave me much trouble in the so-called 'Oil rivers,' where one of them accused a highly respected Scotch missionary of theft. Finally, the Gaboon merchants long preferred ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... sir, about Miss Iris.' 'Out with it, ma'am! what do they say?' 'They notice, sir, that their young lady has taken to going out in the forenoon, regularly every day: always by herself, and always in the same direction. I don't encourage the servants, Mr. Henley: there was something insolent in the tone of suspicion that they adopted. I told them that Miss Iris was merely taking her walk. They reminded me that it must be a cruelly long walk; Miss Iris being away regularly for four or five hours together, before she came back to the house. After that' ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... that matter, no better than so many poachers who draw wages. The border of his woods was peopled with the unfortunate wretches who had been driven from their homes into pitiful hovels. It is these repeated acts of tyranny that have raised up against him enemies of every kind, and all the more insolent, as Madame N. said, for having found out that the good philosopher is a trifle pusillanimous. I cannot see what he has gained by such a way of managing his property; he is alone on it, he is hated, he is in a constant state of fright. Ah, how much wiser ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... currant[465] & be of force till suche time as we[466] may knowe their farther pleasure out of Englande: for otherwise this people (who nowe at length have gotte[467] the raines[468] of former servitude into their owne swindge) would in shorte time growe so insolent, as they would shake off all government, and there would be ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... of the vexations and oppressions of the feudal system that produced its abolition after centuries of sufferings and of struggles. It was the experience of the caprice and tyranny of the Monarch that extorted Magna Charta at Runnymede. It was the experience of the arbitrary and insolent abuse of the prerogative in the reigns of the Tudors and the first Stuarts that produced the resistance to it in the reign of Charles I. and the Grand Rebellion. It was the experience of the incorrigible attachment of the same Stuarts to Popery and Slavery, with their many acts of cruelty, treachery, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt |
