"Overbearing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the king's service, give and receive every explanation which might be necessary with young Hazlewood. 'If he is not very wrong-headed indeed,' he thought, 'he must allow the manner in which I acted to have been the necessary consequence of his own overbearing conduct.' ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... apprentices for pleasure, letting them change in the middle of the day. The swagger of Giles actually forfeited for him the first turn, which—though he was no favourite with the men—would have been granted to his elder years and his relationship to the master; but on his overbearing demand to enter the boat which was to carry down a little anvil and charcoal furnace, with a few tools, rivets, nails, and horse-shoes, Tibble coolly returned that he needed no such gay birds; but if Giles chose to be ready in his leathern coat when Stephen Birkenholt came home ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Livingstone found himself without a servant. His demeanor toward this estimable class had always been imperious and stern to a fault, but latterly they, as well as others, had felt the effects of his exasperated temper, and he was sometimes brutally overbearing in his reprimands. On this particular occasion he must have been unusually oppressive, for it exhausted the patience of the much-enduring Willis, so that ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... continual, though indirect. Oh, he knew that even now Pyotr Stepanovitch might ruin him if it came to the worst. But he had long hated Pyotr Stepanovitch, and not because he was a danger but because of his overbearing manner. Now, when he had to make up his mind to such a deed, he raged inwardly more than all the rest put together. Alas! he knew that next day "like a slave" he would be the first on the spot and would bring the others, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... accused himself probably of more violence than he had really used, and was therefore unhappy; but, nevertheless, his indignation was not at rest. He was angry with himself; but not on that account the less angry with Lady Arabella. She was cruel, overbearing, and unreasonable; cruel in the most cruel of manners, so he thought; but not on that account was he justified in forgetting the forbearance due from a gentleman to a lady. Mary, moreover, had owed much to the kindness ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... there were signs of heat on both sides. My opponent spoke of "our democratic army" (familiar phrase!) and the overbearing manner in which he connected this dictum with a number of false, irrelevant or arbitrary generalizations made me feel a momentary pang of anger and I wished he could experience a term of military service. Nevertheless, there was no actual ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... and exciting. There were seven Democratic and seven Whig candidates for the lower branch of the Legislature. Forquer, though not a candidate, asked to be heard in reply to young Lincoln, whom he proceeded to attack in a sneering overbearing way, ridiculing the young man's appearance, dress, manners and so on. Turning to Lincoln who then stood within a few feet of him, Forquer announced his intention in these words: "This young man must be taken down, and I am truly sorry that ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... who early in the present century opened a bank at 189, Fleet Street. So, like three strands of a gold chain, the three banking families were welded together. In 1689 Child's bank seems to have for a moment tottered, but was saved by the timely loan of L1,400 proffered by that overbearing woman the Duchess of Marlborough. Hogarth is said to have made an oil sketch of the scene, which was sold at Hodgson's sale-room in 1834, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... touched by the rude hand of Samuel Johnson: whose fame and reputation indicate the decline of taste in a country that, after having produced an Alfred, a Wallace, a Bacon, a Napier, a Newton, a Buchanan, a Milton, a Hampden, a Fletcher, and a Thomson, can submit to be bullied by an overbearing pedant."-E. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... important department should have had the misfortune to have her affairs entrusted to Ministers and officials who were childishly incompetent and ludicrously vindictive. Men of meagre mental calibre, who hold office under the Crown or anywhere else, are invariably fussy, pompous, overbearing, and stifling with conceit. This condition of things was in full swing during the Napoleonic regime and captivity, and that is the period we are concerned about. There does not appear to have been a single ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... Preston 6. Captain Preston was acting under orders, was unwise, irritating, and he warned the colonists overbearing, and by his that he would preserve attitude provoked the order at any risk. colonists ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... defended Lord Cloncurry as a magistrate and a man, and appealed to his known loyalty and respect for the King as a proof that he would never have done anything derogatory to his own situation. The Duke's letter he described to have been overbearing and insolent, Lord Anglesey's[22] temperate, but firm. Lord Anglesey declares that these were all the grounds of offence he had given. Five weeks elapsed, during which he heard nothing from the Duke, and at the end of that time he received his letter of recall, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... many enemies, Marquis," he resumed, "for his manners are overbearing and exacting; but you have many friends, and among them all you will find none more devoted than myself, humble though my position may be. Many ladies of high rank take a great interest in you. ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... lawlessness of mere physical violence had come to a head. By 1855 and 1856 there was added to a recrudescence of this disorder a lawlessness of graft, of corruption, both political and financial, and the overbearing arrogance of a self-made aristocracy. These conditions combined to bring about a second crisis in the precarious ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... like this. Dame Anna's husband was a poor gentleman who had a little plot of land in the neighbourhood of the castle, which was the occasion of an eternal squabble between him and the lord of the manor. One day, Hetfalusy—you know how overbearing these great gentlemen are!—suddenly fell upon this poor gentleman as he was walking on this little plot of land of his and gave him a sound drubbing. The result was a great lawsuit. Hetfalusy questioned Dudoky's gentility, and the latter could not make good his claim to ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... reader of Bunyan's works will notice the difference between the trial of Faithful in the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and that of the prisoners brought to the bar as traitors in the 'Holy War.' The judge and jury are particularly overbearing to Faithful, much more so than to the Diabolonians. Still there is one very strong feature in which they all agree. The prisoners are all brought to their trial, not that their guilt or innocence might be proved, but in order to their condemnation and execution. All are brought ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... if my father and uncle were so far friendly with their mother that she could ask this favour, how odd that she leaves nothing, not so much as a remembrance, to either of them! The eldest son, by all accounts, was a very violent, overbearing man; I've heard my father say as much; but he has been dead so long that, if there was any estrangement on his account, they must have made it ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... to come?" he asked, stopping short. There was something overbearing in his voice and his ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... never quarrel in their cups. No one despises another, but every one assists his neighbour to the utmost. Their women are chaste, yet their conversation is frequently immodest. Towards other people they are exceedingly proud and overbearing, looking upon all other men with contempt, however noble. For we saw, in the emperor's court, the great duke of Russia, the son of the king of Georgia, and many sultans and other great men, who received no honour ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... rich brown complexion. I had blue eyes, golden hair, a Greek outline, and fair complexion. He was active and observing, I dreamy and inactive. He was generous to his friends and equals, but proud, dominant, overbearing, to inferiors, and utterly unmerciful to whatever set itself up against him. Truthful we both were; he from pride and courage, I from a sort of abstract ideality. We loved each other about as boys generally do,—off and on, and in general;—he was ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... met him once, in Howard's office, when he had greeted her gruffly, and the memory of his rugged features and small red eyes, like live coals, had remained. And she saw now the drama that had taken place before Ethel's eyes. The capitalist, overbearing, tyrannical, hearing a few, simple truths in his own house from Peter—her Peter. And she recalled her husband's account of his talk with James Wing. Peter had refused to sell himself. Had Howard? Many times during ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... heard of him; she smiled, I grieve to say, for this unfortunate lady cannot help having a sense of humour; and we could not help laughing outright sometimes at the idea of that discomfited wretch, that overbearing creature overborne in his turn—which laughter Mrs. Laura used to chide as very naughty and unfeeling. When we went into Newcome the landlord of the King's Arms looked knowing and quizzical: Tom Potts grinned ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of studies, I strolled along the bank of the river; and while sketching some men breaking stones an incident happened which first aroused me to the fact that the lot of the sketching artist is not always a happy one. A fiend in human shape—an overbearing overseer—came up at the moment, and roundly abused the poor labourers for taking the "base Saxon's" coin. Inciting them to believe that I was a special informer from London, he laughed on my declaring that I was merely a novice, and informed me that I ought ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... so long—when one morning the men came in to breakfast all out of temper together, complaining loudly of the person unknown who would persist in interfering with their work. They were the louder that their suspicions fluttered about Fergus, who was rather overbearing with them, and therefore not a favourite. He was in reality not at all a likely person to bend back or defile hands over such labour, and their pitching upon him for the object of their suspicion, showed how much at a loss they were. Their only ground for suspecting him, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the fashion of most Colonial governors, was willing enough to dull his wits to the extent of accepting the English seaman's story, disregarding any evidence that might belie it. He shared the hatred so richly deserved by arrogant, overbearing Spain that was common to men of every other nation from the Bahamas to the Main. Therefore he gave the Pride of Devon the shelter she sought in his harbour and every facility to careen ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... place, it comprehends almost everybody, and in the next it means men who, avowing war against Papacy, aim, many of them, at the destruction of regal power. The philosophers,' he goes on, 'are insupportable, superficial, overbearing, and fanatic. They preach incessantly, and their avowed doctrine is atheism—you could not believe how openly. Don't wonder, therefore, if I should return a Jesuit. Voltaire himself does not satisfy ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Excellent relations were established with Turkey and Rumania, valuable concessions were twice extracted from the Porte in regard to the Bulgarian episcopate in Macedonia, and loans were concluded with foreign financiers on comparatively favourable terms. His overbearing character, however, increased the number of his opponents, and alienated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... in life, and for a man of Johnson's imperfect faculties it was probably impossible. Errors of this kind were always pardonable, and are now simply ludicrous. But Johnson often shocked his companions by more indefensible conduct. He was irascible, overbearing, and, when angry, vehement beyond all propriety. He was a "tremendous companion," said Garrick's brother; and men of gentle nature, like Charles Fox, often shrank from his company, and ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... received several letters from home. Matters were going smoothly and Mr. Thompson was feeling better every day. The garden was doing finely. In one letter Mrs. Thompson wrote that there had been two strikes at the iron works, each due to Mr. Bangs' overbearing manner towards ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... of a man who, when in command of his ships and when everything went prosperously with him, was so overbearing and cruel that some of his men, in desperation at the treatment they received, mutinied against him. But the story shows another side of his character in adversity which it ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... children; in other words, he learns to take his place among other human beings. From the games in which the children take their turns at some activity the timid child learns that he has equal rights with others, and acquires self-confidence; whereas the child disposed to be overbearing learns the equally necessary lesson that others have rights which he must respect. Every child learns from these games how to be a good loser as well as how to be a good winner. Just those qualities ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... incomparable manifestation of a love deeper than our plummets can fathom. But probably we do not sufficiently realise what gigantic strength went to the completion of that sacrifice. We know the solemn imagining of a great artist who has painted a colossal Death overbearing the weak resistance of a puny Love; but here love is the giant, and his sovereign command brings Death obedient to it, to do his work. Yes, that weak man hanging on the Cross is therein revealed as 'the power of God.' Strange clothing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... had a visitor. Arni stood outside and stared at him. For a wonder, somebody had at last found his way to Arni's. Days and nights had passed, but nobody had come. They always came when they weren't wanted. And now came Jon of Lon, that overbearing fellow! But now he could see that Arni of Bali was also ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... this overbearing part in the English constitution, needs not be mentioned, and that it derives its whole consequence merely from being the giver of places and pensions, is self-evident, wherefore, though we have been wise ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... asked what is the most essential characteristic that underlies this word, the word itself will guide us to gentleness, to absence of such things as brow-beating, overbearing manners and fuss, and generally ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... But, while these things awakened in other minds feelings of interest in Cleopatra and attachment to her, they only increased the jealousy and envy of Pothinus. Cleopatra was becoming his rival. He endeavored to thwart and circumvent her. He acted toward her in a haughty and overbearing manner, in order to keep her down to what he considered her proper place as his ward; for he was yet the guardian both of Cleopatra and her husband, and the regent of ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... Following the proud and insolent traditions of his maternal ancestors, he began to discard the mask of civil urbanity with which Cosimo and Lorenzo had concealed their despotism. He treated the republic as though it were his own property, and prepared for the coming disasters of his race by the overbearing arrogance of his behaviour. Physically, he was powerful, tall, and active; fond of field-sports, and one of the best pallone-players of his time in Italy. Though he had been a pupil of Poliziano, he displayed but little of his father's interest in learning, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... woman has the most extraordinary ideas about me. Here I am, a shy, diffident sort of man. I've never been able to feel really grown-up and tremendous, like other chaps. And yet she's firmly persuaded that I'm an arbitrary overbearing bossing kind of person. I can't ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... the robes, who had charge of Isabella, had a son aged two-and-twenty, named Count Ernest, whom his great wealth, his high blood, and his mother's great favour with the queen, made too arrogant and overbearing. He fell most violently in love with Isabella, and, during Richard's absence, he had made some overtures to her which she had coldly disregarded. Although repugnance and disdain manifested at the outset usually make the enamoured ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of the Greek, nothing Italian, nothing French. In a word, this was a Corsican, which is to say that he was different from any other European race, and would, as sure as there is corn in Egypt, be overbearing, masterful, impossible. He was, of course, clean shaven, as brown as old oak, with little flashing black eyes. His cassock was a good one, and his hat, though dusty, shapely and new. But his whole bearing threw, as it were, into the observer's ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... of culture in the wide world—the nation with the best technical equipment of all others, glowing with ambition, with military training second to none, and gifted with an immense rate of increase as regards population. This nation would be forced to lay down her arms, lying as it does between the overbearing gigantic realm in the east and the warlike French to the west. The idea is incomprehensible. The universe would behold a competition in armaments such ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... abode of the Nibelungs. There they find Alberich, by virtue of his magic gold, lording it over his fellow-dwarfs. He has compelled his brother Mime, the cleverest smith of them all, to fashion him a Tarnhelm, or helmet of invisibility, and the latter complains peevishly to the gods of the overbearing mastery which Alberich has established in Nibelheim. When Alberich appears, Wotan and Loge cunningly beguile him to exhibit the powers of his new treasures. The confiding dwarf, in order to display the quality of ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... of conduct he wanted to adopt: he knew too well that his only chance was to natter, appear humble, meek and ignorant; he might, he knew, enlist England's sympathy by appearing in that light, and that an overbearing tone would not suit his purpose, nor secure him the object he longed for. Early the following day a messenger arrived from the Imperial camp with a letter from General Merewether, and another from Theodore. How different this letter from the one brought by Ras Engeddah! It was insinuating, ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... winter having come upon his country, he had removed from it with his subjects, and had retired to a secluded spot where he and his people enjoyed uninterrupted happiness. In this place was "neither overbearing nor mean-spiritedness, neither stupidity nor violence, neither poverty nor deceit, neither puniness nor deformity, neither huge teeth nor bodies beyond the usual meassure." The inhabitants suffered no defilement from the evil spirit. They dwelt amid odoriferous trees and golden pillars; their cattle ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... determined not to spare those who were so overbearing in their scorn, "he says that girls who have ideas like yours will never get any ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... mule to water, and others who, in regard to manners, were scarcely fit to follow the mule. But, thank God, the Boers have taught our nation this, if they have taught us nought else—that it needs something more than an eye-glass, a lisp, a pair of kid gloves, and an insolent, overbearing manner to make a ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... being afraid of this, surrendered their salaries to the Emperor. This was a frequent occurrence. When Peter was "Master of Offices," he daily harassed them with monstrous thefts. This man, although he was of a mild and by no means overbearing disposition, was the greatest thief in the world and an absolute slave to sordid avarice. He it was who (as I have related) contrived the murder of Amalasunta, ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... a few weeks the affairs of the Gilbert family were pretty generally canvassed in Rice Corner, Mercy Jenkins giving it as her opinion that "Miss Gilbert was much the likeliest of the two, and that Mr. Gilbert was cross, overbearing, and big feeling." ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... returned to Jerusalem, much to the mortification of his cousin Barnabas and the grief of Paul, since we have a right to infer that this brilliant young man was appalled by the dangers of the journey, or had more sympathy with his brethren at Jerusalem than with the liberal yet overbearing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... look of grave, overbearing indifference once well known and much dreaded by the better sort of thieves. Chief Inspector Heat, though what is called a man, was not a smiling animal. But his inward state was that of satisfaction at the passively receptive attitude of ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... whispered Phil. He knew, as well as did the others, that overbearing Nat Poole had scarcely a friend left at the school the lads attended. On several occasions Nat had tried to harm Dave, but each time he had gotten the ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... were frequently rough, overbearing men, who not only went armed, but who often treated their drivers tyrannically. They not only cowed the boys with abusive language, but with frequent threats of whipping, or ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... there per month required a peach-basket-full of currency with which to pay them, as the currency was then quoted. Besides, Gates had worried him, and made him think that patriotism was mostly politics. He was also overbearing, and the people of Philadelphia mobbed him once. He was reprimanded gently by Washington, but Arnold was haughty and yet humiliated. He got command of West Point, a very important place indeed, and then arranged with Clinton to swap ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... was thinking. He knew the well-dressed man with his milk-white face and overbearing way. He would expect to be greeted with raised hat but Bles bit his lips and pulled down his cap firmly. The axe, too, in some indistinct way felt good in his hand. He saw the horse coming in his pathway and stepping aside in the dust continued ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... mean to be. I would be glad to praise him, but he is so overbearing to those whom he considers his inferiors, that I am frequently ashamed of his manner of ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... to the brutal frankness of the northern worker. At first it had enraged him, but after a time he had grown callous to it, and accepted it as it was meant. But this was something different. It was insolence—brutal, overbearing insolence, with physical menace ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... miracles, considered as possible occurrences, is not reason, but something which on other great subjects is continually found on the opposite side to reason, resisting and counteracting it; that powerful overbearing sense of the actual and the real, which when it is opposed by reason is apt to make reason seem like the creator of mere ideal theories; which gives to arguments implying a different condition of things from one which is familiar to present experience the disadvantage of appearing like artificial ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... from her reverie by the sound of an auto upon the road. It drew up and stopped right in front of the gate. A man at once alighted and walked rapidly toward the house. Mrs. Hampton rose and met him just as he stepped upon the verandah. The visitor was a middle-aged man, of overbearing manner. He had not the courtesy to remove his hat in the presence of the woman, nor to take the big cigar he was smoking from his mouth. In an instant the thought flashed into Mrs. Hampton's mind that ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... One feels a certain amount of pity for these Boers; they are, owing to their reckless and cunning leaders, in the position of a conquered race, and this position to such a people who are naturally proud, cunning and overbearing must be awful. One notices this much even among the few old men, boys and women who are left on the farms; they display a certain air of dejection and are even cringing till they see that they are not going ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... reappeared. Never have I seen such a change as had been brought about in Silas Brown in that short time. His face was ashy pale, beads of perspiration shone upon his brow, and his hands shook until the hunting-crop wagged like a branch in the wind. His bullying, overbearing manner was all gone too, and he cringed along at my companion's side like ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... unwillingness to allow freedom to others; on the contrary, no man would more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought; but it is the impulse of a mind accustomed to follow out its own impulse as the hawk its prey, and which knows not how to stop in the chase. Carlyle, indeed, is arrogant and overbearing, but in his arrogance there is no littleness or self-love: it is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror,—it is his nature and the untamable impulse that has given him power to crush the dragons. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... quick by the overbearing insolence of this command, it required a prodigious effort for the young man to control his voice. ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... considerable portion of the night in drinking and making merry with them. He assumed with these friends none of the reserve and dignity of demeanor that we should naturally associate with the idea of a king. Indeed, he was very blunt, and often rough and overbearing in his manners, not unfrequently doing and saying things which would scarcely be pardoned in a person of inferior station. When thwarted or opposed in any way he was irritable and violent, and he evinced continually ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... leave in the mouth. Some of the incidents recorded, and many of the letters, present DICKENS with undue prominence in a possible phase of his character, as a ruthless tradesman in literature and lecturing, with some tendency to be overbearing in his social relations. In this little volume of letters to his old familiar friend we find him at his best, whether as a worker in literature or as a critic of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... calls me little coz, though I am a head taller than herself. She is as good as ever, quite as brusque, and at the first word apparently more overbearing. But she is as ready to listen to reason as ever was woman of my acquaintance; and I think the form of her speech is but a somewhat distorted reflex of her perfect honesty. After a little trifling talk, which is sure to come first when people are more than ordinarily glad to ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... was Moby Gore, the huge and overbearing first mate of the pirates on his daily mission of inspection and prisoner baiting. Quirl crept further into his corner. It would be fatal to his plan for him to attract the attention of this petty tyrant. It was hard enough to keep away ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... strange but quite unrealised Great Powers, understood (with difficulty) to be larger than Tonga and Samoa put together, and known to be prolific of prints, knives, hard biscuit, picture-books, and other luxuries, as well as of overbearing men and inconsistent orders. Laupepa had fallen in ill-blood with one of them; his only idea of defence had been to throw himself in the arms of another; his name, his rank, and his great following had not been able to preserve him; and he had vanished from the eyes of men—as the Samoan thinks ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more than her offence. They promptly rejected Tretherick as an injured husband and disconsolate father, and even went so far as to openly cast discredit on the sincerity of his grief. They reserved an ironical condolence for Col. Starbottle, overbearing that excellent man with untimely and demonstrative sympathy in bar-rooms, saloons, and other localities not generally deemed favorable to the display of sentiment. "She was alliz a skittish thing, kernel," said one sympathizer, with a fine affectation of gloomy concern, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... "overhaste never churned good butter, as the old saying hath it. Moreover, I do verily believe that this overstrength of my body hath taken the nimbleness out of my heels. Why, thou didst but just now rap me thrice, and I thee never a once, save by overbearing thee ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... was an overbearing man, and feeling quite impregnable in his northern realms beyond the mountains, assumed such a dictatorial air as to rouse the ire of the princes of Austria and Bavaria. These two houses consequently entered ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... 'Know, therefore, that this sweet and lovely to behold brute of a girl, is now beginning to suffer the castigation due to her innumerable offences. Swanhilda has sinned against all maidenly modesty, has borne herself proud and overbearing towards honourable gentlemen, and, besides, has most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... tickling the cupidity of one man and flattering the ambitions of another; by intimidating the weak, and groveling before the strong; by every species of fawning sycophancy on the one hand, and brutal overbearing ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... feeling humiliated somehow. "Can it be possible? What a fool he must be! That overbearing, impudent loafer! Why! He couldn't. . . . And yet he's nearly done it, I believe; for the Harbour Office ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... Bosher, a number of the rich, semi-imbecile old women who had helped to open the Labour Yard, and several other 'ladies'. Some of these were the district visitors already alluded to, most of them the wives of wealthy citizens and retired tradesmen, richly dressed, ignorant, insolent, overbearing frumps, who—after filling themselves with good things in their own luxurious homes—went flouncing into the poverty-stricken dwellings of their poor 'sisters' and talked to them of 'religion', lectured them about sobriety and thrift, and—sometimes—gave ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... actual physical weight in the stomach. This weight was his own selfish woe, but it was also the woe of the entire friendly world. Every architect knew and said that the profession of architecture would be ruined for years. Then the India Office woke George up. The attitude of the India Office was overbearing. It implied that it had been marvellously original and virtuous in submitting the affair of its barracks to even a limited competition, when it might just as easily have awarded the job to any architect whom it happened to know, or whom its wife, cousin, or aunt happened to ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... mystery and very soon felt in my bones there must be something hidden. Rupert might have had a dozen girls, for there's lots of meek women like his overbearing, brutal sort and would have been very well content to take him, well knowing he spelled safety if no more; but for him, a saver and dealer in the main chance to marry at all, let alone an object like Minnie, meant far more than I could fathom out. He'd said himself there ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... high horse; toss the head, carry, with a high hand. tempt Providence, want snuffing. Adj. insolent, haughty, arrogant, imperious, magisterial, dictatorial, arbitrary; high-handed, high and mighty; contumelious, supercilious, overbearing, intolerant, domineering, overweening, high-flown. flippant, pert, fresh [U. S.], cavalier, saucy, forward, impertinent, malapert. precocious, assuming, would-be, bumptious. bluff; brazen, shameless, aweless, unblushlng[obs3], unabashed; brazen, boldfaced-, barefaced-, brazen-faced; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... architecture or gardening, is a fine preparation for the same just relish of these qualities in character and behaviour. To the man who has acquired a taste so acute and accomplished, every action wrong or improper must be highly disgustful: if, in any instance, the overbearing power of passion sway him from his duty, he returns to it with redoubled resolution never to be swayed a second time."—Kames, Elements of Criticism, Vol. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... year,[75]no other question took precedence of that regarding the law. But like Volero, the originator of it, so his colleague, Laetorius, was both a more recent, as well as a more energetic, supporter of it. His great renown in war made him overbearing, because, in the age in which he lived, no one was more prompt in action. He, while Volero confined himself to the discussion of the law, avoiding all abuse of the consuls, broke out into accusations against Appius and his family, as having ever been most overbearing and cruel toward the Roman ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... are not bad men found in this party as well as in every other; nor that among those who are good men, there are not those who may have allowed party spirit to take the place of Christian principle; men who have exhibited a mournful destitution of Christian charity; who have indulged in an overbearing, denouncing, and self-willed pertinacity as to measures. Yet with these reservations, I believe that the above is no more than a fair and just exhibition of that class of men who are embraced in the party of Abolitionists. And ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... They made a contrast as they paced up and down on deck, or played cards in the evening; the Englishman being slight and almost fragile in build, the German of the bulldog order, with a manner at once curt and overbearing. I took a dislike to Wickham, and wondered what Cressley could see ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... had seen such and such a picture, talked of artists, and praised this and that man very fittingly, but with a certain timidity—a timidity that lured me back to my normally overbearing frame of mind. In such matters I was used to hearing my own voice. I could talk a man down, and, with a feeling of the unfitness of things, I talked Churchill down. The position, even then, struck me as gently humorous. It was as if some infinitely ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... immense energy, the gigantic egotism, the ravenous vanity, the fanaticism amounting to frenzy, the dominating power, the dictatorial temper, the indifference to suffering (whether his own or other people's), the overbearing suppression of opposing opinions, the determination to control everybody's interest, everybody's work—I thought all this was written in the Kaiser's masterful face. Then came stories. One of my friends in Rome was an American doctor who had been called to attend a ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... James Hardy, began to count the days which must elapse before her niece's return from London. His ill-temper even infected the other members of the household, and Mrs. Kingdom sat brooding in her bedroom all one afternoon, because Bella had called her an "overbearing dish-pot." ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... The Bowery, and it may interest you to learn that it is so called in memory of the farm where this arrogant old lion of a Dutchman spent his last days. He spent them peacefully and happily. Now that he was no longer a ruler he lost much of his overbearing pride, and all that was kindly in his nature showed itself. Many who had feared and hated him came to love and admire him. Among others he made friends with the Englishman who had ousted him, and many a jolly evening ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... the king, charged with "a tumultuous assembly." For the Quaker meeting-house in Grace Church Street, had been forcibly shut by the government, and Mr. Penn had preached to an audience of Dissenters in the street itself. The court was exceedingly insolent and overbearing, interrupting and insulting the defendants continually. The jury found a special verdict—"guilty of speaking in Grace Church Street." The judge sent them out to return a verdict more suitable to the desire of the government. Again they substantially found the same verdict. ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... though half unwilling to take what seemed as a forced gift. Yet to quiet Beorn—whom I never liked, as he was both overbearing and boastful, though of great skill in his art of falconry—I thanked the Dane, and went to where a hawking glove hung on the wall, for my arm would feel the marks of those strong talons for many a day, already. As I put ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... term or sitting in each county of the state, two of the judges officiating. In every court-room in Ohio where Judge Sherman presided he made friends. His official robes were worn by him as the customary habiliments of the man. He was never distant, haughty, morose, austere, or overbearing on the bench. It was not in his nature to be so anywhere, and it was therefore always a personal pleasure to practice in his courts. The younger members of the profession idolized him in every part of the state; for them and their early efforts he ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... possessed by his mistress Shakespeare was still an artist. In the sonnets he brings out her overbearing will, boldness, pride—the elemental force of her nature; in the play, on the other hand, while just mentioning her "power," he lays the chief stress upon the cunning wiles and faithlessness of ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... glad that he was not put in the same watch with Richard Horton, as, after their first meeting, the young lieutenant showed no signs of recognition. He was not, James found, popular among the men. He was exacting and overbearing with them, and some on board, who had served with him on his previous voyage, had ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... his speech, and overbearing to those who opposed him. When the Argives had a dispute with the Lacedaemonians about their frontier, and seemed to have justice on their side, Lysander drew his sword, saying, "He that is master ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... larger than the eight. If all these buds grew into peaches, and were left on these slender boughs, the tree might be killed outright by overbearing, and would assuredly be much injured and disfigured by broken limbs and exhaustion, while the fruit itself would be so small and poor as to be unsalable. Thousands of trees annually perish from this cause, and millions of peaches are either not picked, or, if marketed, may bring the grower into ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... had had poor hunts and who found themselves at the beginning of the Long Night with empty Mother Hubbard cupboards. The Eskimo winter has many mealtimes, and Roxi had but a poor idea of the higher mathematics. Long ere the darkness of the Great Night relaxed its overbearing blackness Roxi got very hungry, and he had no food. Life is dear, even on the edge of things. So into the silence Roxi crept and dug down through the ice and frozen sand to the skeleton of a stranded whale killed three years before. All the sustaining flesh had been eaten from ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... See what an angry and unpleasant expression her countenance has assumed. She is angry at her sister and is tearing up a note, sent to her sister by her grandmother. I will tell you the story. The grandmother of those three children, was on a visit to the house. She had observed how violent and overbearing Susan was, and how properly her sister Annie behaved. Annie was of a gentle, mild, and willing disposition. If Susan's brother should happen to take up her book, she would immediately scream out in a sharp tone, "let my book alone." If her brother should attempt to reply, she would snappishly ...
— The Girl's Cabinet of Instructive and Moral Stories • Uncle Philip
... continent, La Salle and Moranger were both slain by their murderous hands. Thus sadly perished, in a nameless wilderness, one of the most daring and gifted among those wonderful men to whom the discovery of the New World had opened a field of glory. His temper was, doubtless, at times, violent and overbearing,[400] but he was dearly loved by his friends, respected by his dependents, and fondly revered by those among the Indians who came within his influence. His greatest difficulties arose from those who were placed under his command, abandoned and ungovernable men, the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... upheld Lear; and good Democrats, who saw every measure refracted through the dense medium of party-spirit, of course defended their leaders, and took fire at Eaton's overbearing manner and insulting intolerance of their opinions. Thus, although the general sentiment of the country was strongly in his favor, at Washington he made many enemies. A resolution was introduced into the House of Representatives to present him with a medal, or with a sword; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... dingy room of the police station which had been transformed into a sort of recruiting station. The officer in charge was an overbearing First Lieutenant who was overworked, tired and irritable. He had come from a distant part of Greece, and the name of Zaidos carried no weight with him. He shook his head when Zaidos made his request. He even smiled a little. "Too thin, too thin!" he said. "I should say that all the mothers ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... Nevertheless, young Angleside liked Short after his own fashion, and Short did not dislike Angleside. John's father had given him to understand that as a general rule persons of wealth and good birth were a set of overbearing, purse-proud bullies, who considered men of genius to be little better than a set of learned monkeys, certainly not good enough to black their boots. For John's father in his misfortunes had imbibed sundry radical notions formerly peculiar to poor ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... speaks of his "unruffled good-humour." Sir Robert Inglis, a good observer with ample opportunity of forming a judgment, pronounced that he conversed and did not dictate, and that he was loud but never overbearing. As far back as the year 1826 Crabb Robinson gave a very favourable account of his demeanour in society, which deserves credence as the testimony of one who liked his share of talk, and was not willing to be put in the background for anybody. "I went to James Stephen, and drove with him ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... could see that, now, since it is her belief that Danes are always overbearing toward their captives," she told herself. "This one has no appearance of having felt blows or known hard labor. She could not have been entertained with greater ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... through this discipline of suffering. Such as rose in society, were seldom really respectable; they neither regretted their crimes, nor offered atonement. But if the prisoner was injured, the colonist was not less so. Social virtues were discouraged; all classes were contentious and overbearing: the police, ever prying into the business of life, thus intermixed with penal systems, filled the colony with exasperation, from which not even the mildest spirits could escape. He did not propose to abolish transportation, but that the government ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... said was true enough. His overbearing disposition had made him unpopular. He knew the others would side against him and that if it came to a showdown they would snuff out his life as a man does the flame of a candle. The rage died out of his eyes and gave place to a look ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... points in great leaps, leaving the intervening spaces unexplained, rendered it difficult to follow him. His mind still acted with power, and he seemed to presume that his hearers were as well up on his subject as he was. His manner was sometimes overbearing to the members of the bar, but no man was more open to reason or more sobered by reflection, and he was absolutely without malice. He was always recognized as an upright man, and he maintained, in spite of his infirmities, the respect ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... two men were well matched, but they had little else in common. Garstaing's reputation, at least amongst men, was not a happy one. He was known to be a hard drinker. He was hot-headed and pleasure-loving. Furthermore he was given to an overbearing intolerance, in the indulgence of which his position as Indian Agent yielded him ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... being started with a medal bearing the motto fideles jusqu' a l'infamie. The movement spread rapidly, but it remains a curious fact that the animosity of the Belgians, as yet, was directed against the Dutch ministers (especially Van Maanen the Minister of Justice) and the Dutch people, whose overbearing attitude was bitterly resented, rather than against the king or the House of Orange. William's good deeds for the benefit of the country were appreciated; his arbitrary measures in contravention to the Fundamental Law were attributed chiefly to his ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... of politeness in the sharp, overbearing tone of Red Wolf. It was only the ordinary manner of a warrior speaking to a squaw. It would therefore have been very absurd for Ni-ha-be to get out of temper about it; but her manner and the toss of her head as she turned away was decidedly wanting in the ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... above all else, courteous and considerate. He is master of himself, and that at all points,—in his carriage, his temper, his aims, and his desires. Calm, quiet, and temperate, he will not allow himself to be hasty in judgment, or exorbitant in ambition; nor will he suffer himself to be overbearing ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... we do not respect our children. We try to force them to follow us without regard to their special needs. We are overbearing with them, and above all, rude; and then we expect them to be submissive and well-behaved, knowing all the time how strong is their instinct of imitation and how touching their faith in and admiration of us. They will imitate us in any ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... West. 816-m. Templars the dream of sects of Gnostics or Illuminati, 815-l. Templars' trowel has triangular plates arranged in the form of a cross, 816-m. Templars united with Rose Croix Adepts and formed a Mystic Sect, 821-m. Templars, when rich, became insolent and overbearing, 820-u. Temple an abridged image of the world, furniture, symbolism, 410. Temple built by Wisdom has at its portal Jachin and Boaz, 860-m. Temple built painfully slowly, destroyed very quickly, 320-m. Temple gates opened but once ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... and his frank and liberal manners had secured him many - were no less disgusted than himself with the overbearing conduct of this new ally. They loudly complained that it was quite enough to suffer from the perfidy of Pizarro, without being exposed to the insults of his family, who had now come over with him to fatten on the spoils of conquest which belonged to their leader. The rupture soon proceeded ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... black, but exceedingly tenacious regarding his shade of colour, which he declared to be light brown. He spoke very bad English, was excessively conceited, and irascible to a degree. No pasha was so bumptious or overbearing to his inferiors, but to me and to his mistress while in Cairo he had the gentleness of the dove, and I had engaged him at 5l. per month to accompany me to the White Nile. Men change with circumstances; climate affects the health and temper; the sleek and well-fed dog is amiable, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... violent and vile passions,—by the overbearing pride and insolence of one, and the envy and villainy of another, derange this natural and smooth operation, which, nevertheless, continues to act in silence at all times, and in every circumstance, and which, indeed, is ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... instinct with the life of the worst ages of the past, and so endowed with the physical and intellectual potencies of the present. The national character of the South is that of the gentlemanly blackleg, bully, and desperado. Courteous when polished, but always overbearing; pretentious of a conventional sense of honor—which consists solely in a readiness to fight in the duel, the brawl, or the regular campaign, and to take offence on every occasion; with no trace of that modesty or delicacy of sentiment which ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... was making enemies, and in time became so insolent and overbearing that a conspiracy was formed for his overthrow. At the head of this was one of the royal princes, who engaged Yoritomo in the plot. The young exile sent out agents right and left to rouse the discontented. Many were won over, but one of them laughed the scheme to scorn, saying, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... was a man of some culture, and a little proud and overbearing in his manners. He had acquired what those poor men deemed considerable property. He lived in a framed house, and in his best room he had a rug or carpet spread over the middle of the floor. This carpet was a luxury which many of the pioneers had never seen or conceived ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... growled and fretted about the heat and other discomforts and he was so pompous and overbearing in his manner that it is not surprising that the boys of ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... so much it is lack living in another world now. Folks living in too much hurry. They getting too fast. They are restless. I see a heaps of overbearing folks now. Folks after I got grown looked so fresh and happy. Young folks look tired, mad, worried now. They fixes up their face but it still show it. Folks quicker than they used to be. They acts before they have time to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... reverently for some minutes, while he repeated his Latin prayer; then, rising and looking at Alberic, he said, "I must thank Him, indeed, for he has saved Osmond and me from the cruel King and Queen, and I must try to be a less hasty and overbearing boy than I was when I went away; for I vowed that so I would be, if ever I came back. Poor Osmond, how soundly he sleeps! Come, Alberic, show me the way ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by one of their number, and that the master's kindness on that occasion should have been requited by another robbery seemed a disgrace to the whole school. That Mather, too, always loud, noisy, and overbearing, should have been the thief was surprising indeed. Had it been some quiet little boy, the sort of boy others are given to regard as a sneak, there would have been less surprise, but that Mather should do such a thing was astounding. These were probably the first reflections which occurred ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... Reader, have a care, Tread lightly, lest you rouse a sleeping bear: Religious, moral, generous, and humane He was, but self-sufficient, rude, and vain; Ill-bred and overbearing in dispute, A scholar and a Christian—yet a brute. Would you know all his wisdom and his folly, His actions, sayings, mirth, and melancholy? Boswell and Thrale, retailers of his wit, Will tell you how he wrote, and ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... the large dogs, with whom she gave herself great airs, "because," as he said, "she looks so preposterously small." A few years later came "Don," a Newfoundland, and then "Bumble," his son, named after "Oliver Twist's" beadle, because of "a peculiarly pompous and overbearing manner he had of appearing to mount guard over the yard when he was an absolute infant." Lastly came "Sultan," an Irish bloodhound, who had a bitter experience with his life at "Gad's Hill." One evening, having broken his chain, he fell upon a little girl ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... far away, for he had surprised himself as well as the others by the quick transformations and was puzzled as to what to do next. Ruggedo the Nome was overbearing and tricky, and Kiki knew he was not to be depended on; but the Nome could plan and plot, which the Hyup boy was not wise enough to do, and so, when he looked down through the branches of a tree and saw a Goose waddling along below and heard it cry out, "Kiki ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... not so near the conclusion of my history, I should like to present him to my readers. As it is, I shall merely say he was a thorough specimen of one class of his countrymen,—a loud talker, a louder swearer, a vaporing, boasting, overbearing, good-natured, and even soft-hearted fellow, who firmly believed that Frenchmen were the climax of the species, and Napoleon the climax of Frenchmen. Being a great bavard, he speedily told me all that had taken ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the special request of Senator Conkling, and on my way I passed a day with him at Utica, taking a long drive through the adjacent country. Never was he more charming. The bitter and sarcastic mood seemed to have dropped off him; the overbearing manner had left no traces; he was full of delightful reminiscences and it was a day to ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... pointedly than by the present Secretary of State for India when addressing his constituents at Arbroath on October 21, 1907, when he informed them that "India is perhaps the one country—bad manners, overbearing manners are very disagreeable in all countries—India is the only country where bad and overbearing manners are a political crime." Or, as a prominent Mohammedan in India very well said, "When the English govern from the heart they do it admirably; ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay |
