"Pertinacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attendant appeared at his side again; and George began to think that his visits were discontinued. The hope was a relief that could not be calculated; but still George had a feeling that it was too supreme to last. His enemy had been too pertinacious to abandon his design, whatever it was. He, however, began to indulge in a little more liberty, and for several days he ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... sometimes to the pleasant surprise and half welcome of the members, more often to the bewilderment and prostration of numerous victims; and in a few signal instances, to the gnashing of angry men's teeth. I know of no two more pertinacious incendiaries in the whole country! Nor will they themselves deny the charge. In fact this noise-making twain are the two sticks of a drum for keeping up what Daniel Webster called "the rub-a-dub ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... suppress his exultation at what he supposed was a complete triumph over his anti-slavery brother. But the pertinacious guest continued ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... an inborn sense of propriety and a foolish ambition for high, life. In the "Conscript" his heroine displays the nobler virtues of uncorrupted humble life; and, with few characters, taken from the lowest walks, he shows the triumph of honest, straightforward earnestness and pertinacious courage, even when they are brought in conflict with authority. "The Poor Gentleman" closes the series; and, selecting a heroine from the educated classes of his country-people M. Conscience has demonstrated how superior a genuine woman becomes to all the mishaps of fortune, ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... not think him clear of this latter count, for he has not appeared many minutes before he is beset by a clamorous train of irate blue-tits, who go into an azure fume of minute rage; sparrows also chase him, as vulgarly insolent as himself, and robin redbreasts, persistent and perkily pertinacious, like spoiled children allowed to wear their ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... of her extravagance. Some cutting little sarcasms of Molly Gaverick's had likewise annoyed her, and she fretted under the miserable sense of her inadequacy to the demands of a world she despised and yet hankered after. Then Sir Luke had been tiresomely pertinacious over some small dereliction on Bridget's part from the canons of Government House etiquette, which he had requested should not be repeated. Rosamond Tallant had been tiresome also and had made her feel that even here she was no more than a dependent who must conform to the wills ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... of copper, owing to the soil of a mining country—the women (blessed be the Corporation therefor!) are flogged at the cart's tail when they pick and steal, as happened to one of the fair sex yesterday noon. She was pertinacious in her behaviour, and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... then, and discover it," said Alice—for a moment put out of temper at the Doctor's pertinacious self-importance—"Guess my purpose, as you can guess at every thing else. It is enough to have to go through my task, I will not endure the distress of telling it over, and that to one who—forgive me, dear Doctor—might ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... to which all this is preliminary, is the pertinacious hold which the belief in a human absolving power retains upon mankind. There has perhaps never yet been known a religion without such a belief. There is not a savage in the islands of the South Pacific who does not believe that his priest can shield him from ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... I write the present article,—to relieve myself from the pertinacious inquiries with which I have been assailed since my return from the melancholy episodes of the executions at Washington. I am button-holed at every corner, and put through a cross-examination, to which Holt's or Bingham's had no searchingness: "How did Mrs. Suratt die?" "Was the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... sighed her sister; "and then there is that pertinacious Count Girasole. Think what trouble we had in getting quietly rid of him. I'm afraid all the time that he will not stay at Florence, as he said, for he seems to have no fixed abode. First he was going to Rome, and then Venice, and at last he committed himself ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... ceased, and that the place at Court which he proposed to assign to her would be the best guarantee against its renewal. But all these attempts were in vain. The Queen refused any compromise; and on his side the King, whose superficial good humour was not incompatible with profound and pertinacious selfishness, did not scruple to expose her to every insult at Court. He threw himself with his usual cynicism into all the degraded pleasures of the libertine crew of his choice companions; openly pursued his intimacy with Lady Castlemaine, and taught his friends, as an easy means of access to ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... as possible. He examined the wound, stopped the bleeding, bound it up without a word, in spite of Aunt Ninette's pertinacious attempts to make him express an opinion. He then took his hat and ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri
... fastened it and fixed it, as it were, into his bosom, he cannot easily expel it,—even though personal interest should be on the side of such expulsion. It had become a settled belief with the Boltons that John Caldigate was a bigamist, which belief had certainly been strengthened by the pertinacious hostility of Hester's mother. Dick had heard something of all this, and thought that he would be able ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... extreme distress—more than once or twice—McClintock had both written off the obligation and added to it something for the day's need, in a grim but not unkindly fashion; always under seal of secrecy. No extortioner, this; a dry, passionless, pertinacious man. ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... made a movement, but met a look in Nikolai's face which made him feel justified in restraining himself. This pertinacious, silent working man looked as though he ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... no answer whatever to this round intimation, but continued to ride on, turning, in his own mind, whether it would not be wisest to come to a distinct understanding with his pertinacious attendant, and to explain, in so many words, that it was his pleasure to travel alone. But, besides that the sort of acquaintance which they had formed during dinner, rendered him unwilling to be directly uncivil towards a person ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... but vastly entertaining, and has been meat and drink to me for many a long evening. His manner is dry, brisk and pertinacious, and the choice of words not much. The point about him is his extraordinary readiness and spirit. You can propound nothing but he has either a theory about it ready-made, or will have one instantly on the stocks, and proceed ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... sir, that the utmost abilities of a nation can never be so well employed as in the unwearied, pertinacious defence of their religion and freedom. When these are lost, there remains nothing that is worth the concern of a good or wise man. Nor do I think it consistent with the prudence of government not to guard against future ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... cigar-case, and entered eagerly into the merits of his cigars; he proposed a cool drink, and described the right method of making it as distinguished from the wrong. Randal was not thirsty, and was not inclined to smoke. Would the pertinacious lawyer give way at last? In appearance, at least, he submitted to defeat. "You want something of me, my friend," he said, with a patient smile. ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... truly children of the stamp of Tiberius are rare enough; for with all his tenderness, his over-sensitiveness and timidity, put him to some task, whisper to him Duty!—and the little Tiberius is another child altogether: unflinching, silent, determined, pertinacious, ready to die rather than give in before the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... macaw!" Her lady, who perfectly understood the language of sighs, and felt the force of Marriott's, forbore to touch again on the tender subject of the macaw, hoping that when her house was once more filled with company, she should be relieved by more agreeable noises from continually hearing this pertinacious tormentor. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... was at its height. Sir James had as yet steadily refused to take any share in it. He had never forgiven the insult put upon him by the King, for like most of his race, of whom it was said that they never forgave an injury and never forgot a kindness, he was a pertinacious man. Therefore he would not lift a finger in the King's cause. But still less would he help the Roundheads, whom he hated with a singular hatred. So time went, till at last, when he was sore pressed, Charles, knowing ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... that, Diogenes barked and barked, and burrowed and burrowed, with pertinacious fury; and whenever he stopped to listen, appeared to receive some new conviction into his mind, for he set to, barking and burrowing again, a dozen times. Even when he was persuaded to return to his breakfast, he came jogging back to it, with a very ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... but the cuckoo has to work hard for the privilege, and it must at times be harried to the verge of desperation by the small birds that continually mob it in broad daylight. This behaviour on the part of its pertinacious little neighbours has been the occasion of much futile speculation; but the one certain result of such persecution is to make the cuckoo, along with its fellow-sufferer, the owls, preferably active in the sweet peace of the gloaming, when its puny tyrants are gone to roost. Much heated argument ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... wondered what they could find to say to each other, and next became irritated because they were always so grave and silent with him. All this time, he was perpetually devising small new pleasures for the child. His thoughts ran, in a pertinacious way, upon the desolate life before her; and often he came back from his day's work loaded with the very thing Alice had been longing for, but had not been able to procure. One time it was a little chair for drawing the little sufferer along the streets, ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... almost incomprehensible that there were men who withstood a misery which surpassed all human dimensions. And still there were such; who by manfully bearing these sufferings, set to others a good example; there were whole troops who, to protect others in pertinacious rear guard fights, ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... North Briton, and in which the diligence of Lord Bute in distributing places among his kinsmen and countrymen furnished the staple of almost every number; while in many the Princess of Wales herself was not spared, as the cause, for motives not obscurely hinted at, of his sudden elevation. So pertinacious and virulent were the attacks thus launched at him, coinciding as they did, at least in one point, with the prejudices of the multitude, that they were commonly believed to have had some share in driving Lord Bute from office, which, in the spring of 1763, he suddenly resigned, hoping, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... rose to the surface, snorting and blowing in his impotent rage; but as the ambatch float was exceedingly large, and this naturally accompanied his movements, he tried to escape from his imaginary persecutor, and dived constantly, only to find his pertinacious attendant close to him upon regaining the surface. This was not to last long; the howartis were in earnest, and they at once called their party, who, with two of the aggageers, Abou Do and Suleiman, were near at hand. These men arrived with the long ropes ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... with them argyments, an' so dead pertinacious to go, this yere trooper begins to act oneasy, like his resolootion gets shook some. At last he gridds his teeth together ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... just as pertinacious yourself in championing your opinions. What sustains you when nobody ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... contrast with Aurelia, who was seeing the world. That elegant beau, Sir Amyas, had just given a sample to tantalise their rusticity, and then had vanished; and here was that oddity, Mr. Arden, more wearisome and pertinacious than ever. So tiresome! ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all that was asked for it, but it came to earth—or rather to the surface of the lake—with a shock that put it out of commission. When Count Zeppelin's company estimated the cost of further repairs it gave a sigh and abandoned the wreck. Thereupon the pertinacious inventor laid aside his tools, got into his old uniform, and went out again on the dreary task of begging for ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... "Goose!" retorted that pertinacious Something; "is not every private a gentleman who acts like one? And is not every gentleman a blackguard ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... have rubbed him up the wrong way. He is devoted to his daughter, and he might look on my harmless but unavoidable guile with a prejudiced eye. In any event, I should be compelled to go slow in analyzing Mrs. Devar's motives, and this pertinacious Marigny seems to have been fairly intimate with him in Paris. Yes, on the whole, it is just as well that I missed him. Cynthia can put matters before him in a better light than is possible to one who is an utter stranger. I must tell her, in my best American, that ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... he said this, that he was not precisely voicing his own sentiments. He himself was mystified. He was still wondering why Pratt had been so pertinacious in asking the old woodman when, precisely, he had told Mrs. Mallathorpe about the unsafe condition of the bridge—still wondering about a certain expression which had come into Pratt's face when the old man told them what he did—still ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... these tyrants and their horrid avarice and oppression, they were not satisfied with being evil tyrants to the natives, but also to their own proper sons, brothers and relations, in defiance of their own laws and statutes, they were the worst and most pertinacious tyrants with an unheard-of inhumanity. For it was enacted among themselves and by their customs and laws that the eldest legitimate son should succeed, yet almost always they broke the law, as appears by the Incas ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... they seemed to melt into air. The features of the face, however, were by no means finished with the same delicacy; they were rather coarse, slightly inclined to coppery in complexion, and indicative, in expression, of a very pertinacious and intractable disposition in their small proprietor. When the dwarf had finished his self-examination, he turned his small sharp eyes full on Gluck, and stared at him deliberately for a minute or two. "No, it wouldn't, Gluck, my boy," said the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... parochial, paroxysm, parsimonious, parturition, patois, patriarchal, patrician, patrimony, peccadillo, pecuniary, pedantic, pellucid, pendulous, penultimate, penurious, peregrination, perfunctory, peripatetic, periphery, persiflage, perspicacious, perspicuity, pertinacious, pharmaceutic, phenomenal, phlegmatic, phraseology, pictorial, piquant, pique, plagiarize, platitudinous, platonic, plebeian, plenipotentiary, plethora, pneumatic, poignant, polity, poltroon, polyglot, pontifical, portentous, posterior, posthumous, potent, potential, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Jew-for this was the class through whom the bandits universally performed all their business arrangements with people whom they could not personally approach-himself interested by the large percentage which was the payment for his part of the business. The Jew was most pertinacious ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... did the gale from the south-west continue. The fourth day there was a change, the wind coming from the eastward. Roswell would now have gone out, had it not been for the apprehension of falling in with Daggett again. Having at length gotten rid of that pertinacious companion, it would have been an act of great weakness to throw himself blindly in his way once more. It was possible that Daggett might not suppose he had been left intentionally, in which case, he would be very apt to look for his lost consort in the vicinity of the cape. ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... developed at all. It recurs only when Elsa's pertinacious inquisitiveness threatens to rupture their somewhat hastily arranged alliance. Then it sounds out sinister, menacing, and the effect, both dramatic and musical, is overwhelming. Another example is the phrase representing Lohengrin ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... ablest romance-writers. When the post gets hold of a letter, worth, to it, from three to ten sous, and does not immediately know where to find the person to whom that letter is addressed, it displays a financial anxiety only to be met with in very pertinacious creditors. The post goes and comes and ferrets through all the eighty-six departments. Difficulties only arouse the genius of the clerks, who may really be called men-of-letters, and who set about to search for that unknown human being with as much ardor as the mathematicians of the Bureau give to ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... active with hands and arms, but rather helpless as to his legs, Tom Bodger was a splendid butt for the exercise of the boys' pertinacious tactics, and with mischief sparkling out of the young rascals' eyes they made their plans of approach and began to buzz round him like flies, calling names, asking questions, laughing and jeering too, all of which had but little effect upon the man, ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... practised small brutalities upon him, which had no effect. He just withdrew and came again next day with his big-dog smile, quiet and persistent as a tide. Shy he was, and singularly pertinacious. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... twitching his mouth and his legs, and flinging about his arms, and Noorna heard him mutter wrathfully, 'O accursed flea! art thou at me again?' And she heard him mutter as in anguish, 'No peace for thee, O pertinacious flea! and my steadiness of hand will be gone, now when I have him safe as the hawk his prey, mine enemy, this Shagpat that abused me: thou abominable flea! And, O thou flea, wilt thou, vile thing! hinder me from mastering the Event, and releasing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a most desperate, pertinacious man, Captain Ireton. Failing all else, you would even storm Heaven itself to gain your end," she scoffed; then, at the very pitch-point of the scornful outburst she put her face in her hands and fell a-sobbing as if her ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... frequent occurrence in the life of the generality of the people, it is probable that many of them have considerably protracted exemptions from any interference of conscience at all; it is certain that they experience no such pertinacious attendance of it, as to feel habitually a monitory intimation, that without great thought and care they will inevitably do something wrong. But what may we judge and presage of the moral fortunes of ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... the English Charlemagne, no doubt, with the same foreboding sorrow with which they had filled his Frankish prototype and master. In the course of the half century which followed, the swarms of rovers constantly increased, and grew more pertinacious and daring in their attacks. Leaving their ships they took horses, extended their incursions inland, and formed in the interior of the country strongholds, into which they brought the plunder of the district. At last they in effect conquered the North ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... inhabitants of which seemed to live in the full enjoyment of the ample productions of their country. As they became better acquainted with the people, it was discovered that, amiable as the people appeared, they had many vicious habits. They were generally expert and pertinacious thieves, although some of the chiefs appear to have been exempt from this vice, or to have been ashamed of practising it ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... mention, in its proper place, the astonishment of Frank at the sudden change in his father, and the firm resolution he took to discover the cause of this change. The obstinacy of Abimelech was extreme; but Frank was still more pertinacious, more determined, and so unwearied and incessant, in his attacks on his father, that the old man at last could resist no longer, and ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... retiring to rest herself, when the children cried out "Here they are again." The mother chid them and lay down, but as though in rebuke of her apparent indifference, they were on this occasion louder and more pertinacious than ever. Rest was impossible. The children kept up a continuous chatter, sitting up in bed to listen to the sounds. Mr. Fox tried the windows and doors, to discover, if possible, the source of ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... the explanation the girl had given, but being the slave of a methodical and pertinacious habit of mind, spent five busy minutes examining his room and all that it contained with a perseverance that would have done credit to a Frenchman searching for a ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... theory, he was bound to handle it with the same calmness which he would have expected to find in a pathological treatise by a physician. Who would write of the sweating sickness with indignation, or describe zymotic diseases with resentment? Condorcet's pertinacious anger against theology is just as irrational as this would be, from the scientific point of view which he pretends to have assumed. Theology, in fact, was partly avenged of her assailants, for she had in the struggle contrived ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... often lavished upon him, but which he himself now pronounced for the first time, he gave to his feudal enemy the full confidence of an haughty but honourable heart. The Master had been remarked among his contemporaries for sense and acuteness, as well as for his reserved, pertinacious, and irascible character. His prepossessions accordingly, however obstinate, were of a nature to give way before love and gratitude; and the real charms of the daughter, joined to the supposed services ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... believe it!' went on Gillian, feeling much injured for her hero's sake, and wearing what looked like a pertinacious pout. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wrote again to Sir James Graham, and also for the first time to the Earl of Aberdeen, on the 30th of December. "The pertinacious resistance made at Sebastopol, and the possibility of events that may still further disappoint expectation," he said to Sir James, "have induced me to address Lord Aberdeen, saying that 'if it is the opinion of the Cabinet, or of those ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... have sometimes thought that she took more pride in her leechcraft than becomes a Christian woman; she is even a little vain-glorious. For, to say nothing of her skill in compounding simples, she has occasionally brought down upon her head the sober remonstrances of her husband, by her pertinacious faith in the efficacy of certain spells in cases of intermittent. But there is no reasoning against her experience. She can enumerate the cases—"and men may say what they choose about its being contrary ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... widening of the original programme. Further, Sir Evelyn Baring used the terms "evacuation" and "abandonment" as if they were synonymous; while in Gordon's view they were very different. As we shall see, his nature, at once conscientious, vehement, and pertinacious, came to reject the idea of abandonment as ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... that kept on spattering about the rocks, every now and then striking up a shower of loose stones, waited, patiently watching a spot that he had marked down a couple of hundred yards away up the river to his left. For he had seen one of the most pertinacious of their aggressors draw ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... So perhaps our grandchildren may wonder that we endured, and even defended, present-day conditions, which to them will appear indefensible. And so looking back on the long continuance of the slave-trade, we wonder that it could have made so pertinacious a fight for life. We marvel, too, at the character of some of the men engaged in it in its earlier and more lawful days, forgetting that their minds had not been opened, that they regarded the negro as we regard ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... the Commons, 153; in the Lords, 87. Similar motions in the session of 1808, made by the same parties, were rejected by majorities somewhat reduced, and the question, on the whole, might be said to have recovered some of its former vantage ground, in despite of the bitter, pertinacious resistance of Mr. Perceval, in the one House, and the Duke ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Town as a phaenomenon, evincing the pertinacious adherence of man to the spot where he has once established himself. Once a year, for many successive springs, the Ohio, in its annual overflowings, has carried away the fences from the cleared lands of the inhabitants, till at length they have given them up, and ceased to cultivate them. Once a year ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... emphatic (Evan calls it pertinacious), but I'm sure the time will come when at least the crimson rambler, trained over a gas-pipe arch, except for purely decorative purposes, will be as much disliked by the real rose lover as the tripod with the iron pot painted red and filled with ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... this Perion whom Melicent had loved and loved to-day. And Demetrios of Anatolia had fought with a charmed sword against a person such as this, safe as an angler matched against a minnow; Demetrios of Anatolia, now at the last, accepted alms from what had been until to-day a pertinacious gnat. Demetrios was physically shaken by disgust at the situation, and in the sunset's glare his swarthy countenance showed like that of ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... conceded to them in England. His observations on that particular point are curious. In Ireland, he remarks, the sentiments of the lawyers have considerable weight in the discussion of political subjects, which, "whether it arises from the confident and pertinacious loquacity of gentlemen of that profession, or from the deference which is shown and felt for those in whose hands are entrusted the most interesting concerns of every family in the kingdom, and from their frequent intercourse ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... celebrated author of The Rambler, who is of all others the oddest and most peculiar fellow I ever saw. He is six feet high, has a violent convulsion in his head, and his eyes are distorted. He speaks roughly and loud, listens to no man's opinions, thoroughly pertinacious of his own. Good sense flows from him in all he utters, and he seems possessed of a prodigious fund of knowledge, which he is not at all reserved in communicating; but in a manner so obstinate, ungenteel, and boorish, as renders it disagreeable and dissatisfactory. In short it is impossible ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... did not love her, although you might not wish her death, you would most certainly be resigned to it. Perhaps this point is no longer a question with you, and my pertinacious dwelling upon it is a rude intrusion upon your feelings. If so, you must pardon me. You know the hell I have suffered on that point, and how tender I am upon it.... I am now fully convinced that you love ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... The pertinacious opposition of Angus to his doom irritated to the extreme the fiery temper of James, and he swore, in his wrath, that a Douglas should never serve him; an oath which he kept in circumstances under which the spirit of chivalry, which he worshipped[14], ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... case you are my prisoner in the king's name!' At the same time he stretched his hand towards Bertram's collar, while two of the men who had come up seized upon his arms; he shook himself, however, free of their grasp by a violent effort, in which he pitched the most pertinacious down the bank, and, drawing his cutlass, stood on the defensive, while those who had felt his strength recoiled from his presence and gazed at a safe distance. 'Observe,' he called out at the same time, 'that I have no purpose to resist legal authority; satisfy me ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... legeslators of antiquity.——Tyranny in every form, shape and appearance, was their disdain and abhorrence; no fear of punishment, nor even of death itself, in exquisite tortures, had been sufficient to conquer that steady, manly, pertinacious spirit, with which they had opposed the tyrants of those days, in church and state. They were very far from being enemies to monarchy; and they knew as well as any men, the just regard and honour that is due to the character of a dispenser of the mysteries of the gospel of grace: But they saw clearly, ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... your San Jago!—Well done again, Henry Sedley! but I must show you a better passado.—Have at thee, Don Inches!—Ah, Captain Baldry, Giles Arden, good Humphrey, give you welcome! Here's room for Englishmen.—Well, die, then, pertinacious senor!—Now, now, Henry Sedley, there are lions yet in your path, but not so many. Have at their golden banner an you prize the toy! No, Arden, no—let him take it single-handed. Our first battle is far behind us.... Now who leads here, since I think that he who did ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... poor little self? They did not know all they were doing; but if they had eyes, they must see a little of it. Why could she not have been allowed to keep her old free, simple feeling with everybody, instead of being hampered, and constrained, and miserable, from this pertinacious putting of thoughts in her head that ought not to be there? It had made her unlike herself, she knew, in the company of several people. And perhaps they might be sharp- sighted enough to read it; but, even if not, how it had hindered her enjoyment! She had ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... shrank away from these gruesome details, but Mr. Cazalette showed the keenest interest in them, and would not be kept from the doctor's elbows. He was pertinacious ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... scholar and idealist, with the hope of the Presidency as the reward of generous service. Where the race is to the slow you lay aside your winged gifts one by one and your ambition centers finally not on the Presidency but on some committee chairmanship clung to by a pertinacious octogenarian. ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... way down to St Kilda his reflections were of the same unpleasant nature, and he cast about in his own mind how he could get rid of this pertinacious friend. He could not turn him off openly, as Pierre might take offence, and as he knew more of M. Vandeloup's private life than that young gentleman cared about, it would not do to run the ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... established myself on the other side of the table, between Mrs Leicester and her younger daughter; and a hard post I had of it. Mary would not talk at all, and her mamma would do nothing else; and she was one of those pertinacious talkers, too, who, not content with running on themselves, and leaving you to put in an occasional interjection, inflict upon you a cross-examination in its severest form, and insist upon a definite and rational answer to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... me that it concerns me," returned Saracinesca, who was naturally pertinacious. "I am not inquisitive. I ask no questions. Giovanni has said very little about it to me. But I am not blind. He came to me one evening and said he was going to take you away to the mountains. He seemed very much disturbed, and I saw that ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... great force. A doubt whether it was worth securing would have been very strong ere this, had not others besides herself been concerned in her fortunes. She looked up from her letter, and beheld the pertinacious yacht; it led her up to a conviction that therein lay a means ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Tutchin prayed rather to be hanged at once. This privilege was refused, but as the poor prisoner, a mere youth, was taken ill with smallpox, his sentence was remitted. Tutchin became one of the most pertinacious and vehement enemies of the House ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... or tones of colour may be too often repeated in fainter shades or more glaring notes of assiduous and facile reiteration. The sturdy student who tackles his Herrick as a schoolboy is expected to tackle his Horace, in a spirit of pertinacious and stolid straightforwardness, will probably find himself before long so nauseated by the incessant inhalation of spices and flowers, condiments and kisses, that if a musk-rat had run over the page it could hardly be less endurable to the physical than it is to the spiritual ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... suspense in which Mr. Gammon had thought fit to leave him; I say that surely all this was enough for him to bear without having to encounter at night, as he did, on his return to his lodgings, his blustering landlady, who vowed that if she sold him out and out she would be put off no longer—and his pertinacious and melancholy tailor, who, with sallow unshaven face, told him of five children at home, all ill of the small-pox, and his wife in an hospital—and he implored a payment on account. This sufferer succeeded in squeezing out ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... bull began to grow daring, making short rushes at horse and rider, but they were of so clumsy a nature that Black Boy easily avoided them, closing in again in the most pertinacious manner upon the bull's flanks as soon as ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... by which the opposition to the Irish Commercial Propositions was directed, still continued to actuate Mr. Fox and his friends in their pertinacious resistance to the Treaty with France;—a measure which reflects high honor upon the memory of Mr. Pitt, as one of the first efforts of a sound and liberal policy to break through that system of restriction and interference, which ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... Northover, she had long been the wife of Mr. Job Legg. That pertinacious man achieved his end at last, and what his few enemies declared was guile, and his many friends held to be tact, won Nelly to him a year after her adventure with Mr. Gurd. None congratulated them more heartily ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... L1500 to the United States. After the close of the war, at a period of comparative inactivity, he began a profitable trade in illuminating oils, and in his character as prize money agent he continued to show his business dexterity. He began a long campaign of a year of most pertinacious and vigorous dunning for money due the United States, himself, and the officers and sailors under his command. He wrote innumerable letters to Franklin, to de Castries, the new Minister of Marine, to de Vergennes, Minister of Foreign Affairs; to many others, and ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... every person or thing that went in or out. If she had any purpose of losing herself in the thickets of fern, or copsewood, in the park, or holding unperceived conference under shelter of the chase, these plans were rendered impossible by the pertinacious presence of one or other of the Talbots, who acted completely up to ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cared for him so sedulously that he shall hardly know how to take care of himself; sheltered him so rigorously that, once removed from the sphere of your strong personality, he would be pitifully lost and helpless. In short, he is suffering of a surfeit of love, determined tenderness and pertinacious care—in a word, Julia, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... gives them a "sluggish and drowsie Belief, a lazy Lethargy to hugg their supposed acceptation with God"; it enables them "to grow big and swell with a mighty bulk with airy fancies and presumptions of being in favour with Heaven," and it fans up "a pertinacious Imagination that their Names are enrolled in the Book of Life, or crossed off in the Debt-Book of Heaven." But it is all "a meer Conceit or Opinion," for such men are "never the better in reality in themselves and God judges all things as they are." "While men continue ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... Praetorian; and had the records of the western Republic perished as completely as those of its commercial rival, the Appian Road would have handed down to the remotest ages one of the names of the pertinacious censor of the Claudian house. To the Commonwealth, perpetually engaged in distant wars on its frontiers, it was of the utmost importance to possess the most rapid means of communicating with its provinces, and of conveying troops and ammunition. ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... the offending:" he was talking to the little man of the famous will case, who appeared to be on the verge of a violent nervous fever. The latter wished to escape, but the lawyer was too resolute and pertinacious to be conquered by his weak irritability, and he was obliged to ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... slightish mourning—and she is quite young, they say,—not above five or six and twenty,—but so reserved! They tried all they could to find out who she was and where she came from, and, all about her, but neither Mrs. Wilson, with her pertinacious and impertinent home-thrusts, nor Miss Wilson, with her skilful manoeuvring, could manage to elicit a single satisfactory answer, or even a casual remark, or chance expression calculated to allay their curiosity, or throw the faintest ray of light upon her history, circumstances, ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... German fluently; he occupied himself not only in translating Goethe's poem "Faust," but tried his hand even in composing German verses. Enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare, Byron, Goethe, he used to spice his conversation abundantly with quotations from these his favorite authors. A pertinacious arguer, so much so that sometimes he watched my awakening in order to continue a discussion on some topic of science, poetry, or practical life, cut short by the chime of the small hours, he never lost his mild and amiable temper. Our faithful companion was Count Alexander ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... land or mountain pasture, with the wool of one breed good for one purpose, and that of another breed for another purpose; when we compare the many breeds of dogs, each good for man in different ways; when we compare the game-cock, so pertinacious in battle, with other breeds so little quarrelsome, with "everlasting layers" which never desire to sit, and with the bantam so small and elegant; when we compare the host of agricultural, culinary, orchard, and flower-garden ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... pertinacious, intrusive, aggressive, is, after all, the dependent follower, the abject copyist of the river. Toss and scorn as it may, the river is its leader and engineer. Fortunes and ages almost would have been necessary to tunnel those mountains, if indeed tunnelling had been possible, but the river winds ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... saw yet another Hyacinthe, a hard, pertinacious woman whom he had not known. Not a sign nor an accent of emotion, nothing, while she was describing the suicide of her first husband—she did not even seem to imagine that she had a crime on her conscience. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... exclaimed "Hereth a knocker—thuch a one, too!" The rush was instantaneous; and in the space of a moment one feeling seemed to have taken possession of the whole pack. A more splendid struggle was never witnessed by the oldest knocker-hunter! A more pertinacious piece of cast-iron never contended against the prowess of the Corinthian! After a gallant pull of an hour and a half, "the affair came off," and now graces the club-room of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... a pleasant one. I began to fear that I might not be permitted to escape at all. The bull seemed to be most pertinacious in vengeance. I could have shot him in the back, or the neck, or where I liked, if I had only one cap. He was within three feet of the muzzle of my rifle; but what of that when I could not get the gun to go off? After a while I thought of making some tinder paper, and then trying to 'touch ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... seen the swineherd painting with nature's own tints," said Master Swift, with a pertinacious adherence to his own view of things, which had always been characteristic of him, "I reckon you'd have thought he beat the shepherd boy. Not that I could pretend to be a judge of the painting myself, sir; what took MY mind was the inventive ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... will write and tell you all—all! I have an engagement now with a friend just around the corner!" he rushed from the room, and would have flown, but the pertinacious Celeste had followed, and just as he reached the outside hall, regardless of the publicity, flung herself around his neck, this time without bringing ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... paradoxically of the world war as primarily a struggle between the Latin and the Germanic ideal, ignoring the significance of Russia and of England. In spite of the heroic resistance of the French and the pertinacious thrust of the Italians against the steel wall in which Austria has bound them, the Latin forces engaged are obviously less than half of the Allied Powers. On the sea England is virtually alone. Nevertheless, I see the struggle ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick |
