"Rigid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... retained a resemblance of their ancestry, not only in their shapes and features, but also in their manners, their qualities, and the distinguishing characters of their minds. Some lines were noted for a stern, rigid virtue, savage, haughty, parsimonious, and unpopular: others were more sweet and affable, made of a more pliant paste, humble, courteous, and obliging, studious of doing charitable offices, and diffusive of the goods which they enjoyed. The last of these is the proper and indelible character ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... different turn; and what can the best of us do, when involved as we continually are in doubt and difficulty, but act as you do, with impartial self denial, and the most rigid ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... done? Yell? I couldn't do it for the life of me. Get up and look for him? Wild horses could not have dragged a toe of me out of bed. Stay where I was till the unearthly truant returned? No, thank you. At the bare notion my rigid muscles relaxed, my erect hair lay down, and I collapsed, a limp heap, on to the pillow, with every available sheet and blanket drawn over my tightly ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... 1820) remarks of this portion of the poem (184 fol.): "Perhaps the art of landscape-painting in poetry has never been displayed in higher perfection than in these stanzas, to which rigid criticism might possibly object that the picture is somewhat too minute, and that the contemplation of it detains the traveller somewhat too long from the main purpose of his pilgrimage, but which it would be an act of the greatest injustice to ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... greater and necessary safeguard against another invasion, he designated in the several election districts along the Missouri border two "free-State" men and one pro-slavery man to act as judges at each poll. He prescribed distinct and rigid rules for the conduct of the election; ordering among other things that the judges should be sworn, that constables should attend and preserve order, and that voters must be actual residents to the ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... wonderful hall of an austere, rigid, metallic and sepulchral magnificence, giving the impression of a Greek temple with columns, architraves, flagstones and ornaments of black marble, gold and ebony. The hall is trapezium-shaped. Basalt steps, occupying almost the entire width, divide it into three successive stages, which ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... believing from his training and experience in commanding bodies of men that he really would be the best leader they could have, in default of the captain; but, before consenting to the general wish, he addressed all hands, impressing on them the necessity of implicit obedience to his orders and a rigid attention to whatever duties he might set them— adding that they might be certain he would not tell them to do anything which was not, to the best of his ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... the basis of those higher and more complex systems which, if not peculiar to man, chiefly characterize him, and which we have called the sentiments, and this is the second stage. But character, if more or less rigid in the animals, is plastic in man: and thus the sentiments come to develop, for their own more perfect organization, systems of self-control, in which the intellect and will rise to a higher level than is possible at the emotional stage, and give rise to those great qualities of character ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... interested, he felt he must take a deeper glance into the character of this woman. What book could it be that she was so anxious to hide from him? These modern women read risky books in private, and love to be rigid moralists in public at ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... Sire to send on earth Virtue, his darling child, design'd, To thee he gave the heavenly birth And bade to form her infant mind. Stern rugged Nurse! thy rigid lore With patience many a year she bore: What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know, And from her own she learn'd to ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... the place where the deep grave was waiting, wide and hungry, to receive its dead. There, leaning against the headstones all around, were many standing—looking over the broad and placid sea, and turned to the soft salt air which blew on their hot eyes and rigid faces; for no one spoke of all that number. They were thinking of the violent death of him over whom the solemn words were now being said in the gray old church, scarcely out of their hearing, had not the sound been broken by the measured lapping of ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... strong heaves, found the right ladder, and dropped down without touching. His knees flexed to take up the shock. He came out of the crouch facing a black-clad Planeteer sergeant who snapped to rigid attention. ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... "Can nothing be done?" she asked beseechingly. "It is that of which I wish to speak," he replied. "If you have sufficient confidence in me to place the case in my hands, I will do everything in my power to establish the truth,—on one condition," and he glanced at her face, now pale and rigid from her long-continued effort of self-control. "And that condition is?" she said quickly. "That you follow my directions and permit me to order your movements in all things, so long as the case remains in my ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... put upon human nature by the full Stoic ideal of submerging self in the larger interests of being, led to various compromises. The rigid following out of the ideal issued in one of the paradoxes, namely.—That all the actions of the wise man are equally perfect, and that, short of the standard of perfection, all faults and vices are equal; ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... time I finished nursing school, it was clear that the hospital was not for me. I especially didn't like its rigid hierarchical system, where all bowed down to the doctors. The very first week in school we were taught that when entering a elevator, make sure that the doctor entered first, then the intern, then the charge nurse. Followed ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... restriction was made even more severe. In 1903, anarchists were excluded and the bureau of immigration was transferred from the Treasury Department to the Department of Commerce and Labor, in order to provide for a more rigid execution of the law. In 1907 the classes of persons denied admission were widened to embrace those suffering from physical and mental defects and otherwise unfit for effective citizenship. When the Department of Labor was established ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... Keith, without looking toward her. But so quietly authoritative was his voice and manner that in spite of herself her impulse was checked. She remained rigid. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... Lima, the strangest, saddest city thou can'st see. For Lima has taken the white veil; and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe. Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new; admits not the cheerful greenness of complete decay; spreads over her broken ramparts the rigid pallor of an apoplexy that ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... to his feet, with his powerful, muscular arm propping him against the table. His unusually handsome face was all broken and twisted up with an expression of malignant fury. He stood there for a moment or two like a statue of uncontrollable passion, rigid, fixed, and motionless, save for the twitching of his face. Then, gradually he dropped back into his chair again, a broken and huddled heap, quivering from head to foot with the pain caused by his recent exertion. A moment later he took from his breast pocket ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... The Doctor sank into his study chair. He grasped at the arms convulsively. His broad chest heaved and panted, his breath came in hoarse gasps. He was too much stunned to speak. Ralph poured out a glass of water, and held it to his white and rigid lips. ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... months ahead the Government must give priority to activities that are urgent—like military procurement and atomic energy and power development. It must practice rigid economy in its nondefense activities. Many of the things we would normally do ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... was, I could not help observing all this, and noting, as the commander had pointed out to me, how, thanks to a rigid discipline and the inexorable regularity, almost like that of a machine, with which the routine of duty is conducted on board a man-of-war, every officer and man, from the captain down to the smallest "powder-monkey," was in his proper place and at his station before ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... which as numerous and equally inexplicable discrepancies cannot be discovered. If there be none, then how far shall we adopt and carry out the principles of Strauss? for if we carry them out with rigid equity, the whole field of history is abandoned to scepticism: it is henceforth the domain of doubt and contention; as, in truth, a very large part of it in Germany has already become, in virtue of these very principles. Much of profane ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... to have resembled the love of a sighing swain of Arcadia. This error in the original conception of the character must doubtless be ascribed to Dryden's habit of romantic composition. Montezuma and Almanzor were, like the prophet's image, formed of a mixture of iron and clay; of stern and rigid demeanour to all the universe, but unbounded devotion to the ladies of their affections. In Antony, the first class of attributes are discarded: he has none of that tumid and outrageous dignity which characterised ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... very dear friend, I could not bear to let that frigid, rigid exercise, called a version and called mine, cold as Caucasus, and flat as the neighbouring plain, stand as my work. A palinodia, a recantation was necessary to me, and I have achieved it. Do you blame me or not? Perhaps I may print it in a magazine, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... on the man's countenance, as much as anything else, which made me behave as I did. I said something to him,—some nonsense, I know not what. He regarded me with a silence which was supernatural. I spoke to him again;—not a word issued from those rigid lips; there was not a tremor of those awful eyes,—eyes which I was tolerably convinced saw something which I had never seen, or ever should. Then I took my hand from off his shoulder, and let him go. I know ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... throat nearly white, and the whole under surface pale whitish brown. These various tints are all well reproduced in Mimeta virescens, the chief want of exact imitation being that the throat and breast of the Tropidorhynchus has a very scaly appearance, being covered with rigid pointed feathers which are not imitated in the Mimeta, although there are signs of faint dusky spots which may easily furnish the groundwork of a more exact imitation by the continued survival of favourable variations ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... first time since they had sailed together through stress and storm under the White Ensign, saw him start. The pupils of his eyes suddenly dilated; his eyelids and eyebrows went up for an instant and came down again, and the rigid calm of the British Naval Officer came back. He put the letter into his hip pocket, buttoned it up, and ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... objectors. Whether Christ's tasting death for every man be Popery or not, I am sure absolute predestination is; and it argues, that they who start that objection are ignorant of the tenets of the Papists. It is well known, that that large fraternity among the Papists called Dominicans, were all rigid predestinarians, as well as those called Jansenists. And I very much question if Calvin himself did not spring from the former stock; and, when he came from the church of Rome, brought that branch of Popery along with him, by which means the leaven spread among many ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... Stenson pointed out, "that so little news of this gain of strength on the part of the Socialists has been allowed to escape from Germany. However rigid their censorship, copies of German newspapers reach us every day from neutral countries. I cannot believe that Socialism has made the advance Freistner claims for it, and I agree with our friends, Mr. Cross and Mr. Sands here, that you ought to be very sure that ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a rule, And lump them aye thegither: The Rigid Righteous is a fool The Rigid Wise anither: The cleanest corn that e'er was dight May hae some pyles o' caff in; Sae ne'er a fellow-creature slight For random fits ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... to Americanize his name, did not faint. After reeling uncertainly for a moment, he obtained command of his muscles, straightened up, and stood rigid. ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... remained there round the tomb quizzing the little foibles of our dear friend and hoping that O'Brien would be quick in what he was doing. That he would undoubtedly get a slap in the face, metaphorically, we all felt certain, for none of us doubted the rigid propriety of the lady's intentions. Some of us strolled into the buildings and some of us got out on to the road, but we all of us were thinking that O'Brien was very slow a considerable time before we saw Mrs. Talboys reappear ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... earlier in the West than in the East. The result was that Gnosticism was rapidly expelled from the Church, though in some forms it lingered for centuries ( 30), and that the Church, becoming organized around the episcopate, assumed by degrees a rigid hierarchical ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... wondering if it might be possible that Kilmeny should come to it. But a moment later it was opened by an elderly woman—a woman of rigid lines from the hem of her lank, dark print dress to the crown of her head, covered with black hair which, despite its few gray threads, was still thick and luxuriant. She had a long, pale face somewhat worn and wrinkled, but possessing a certain harsh comeliness of feature which neither ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Sulpice who had sent Mr the abbey de Queysac, in the hope of making a bishop of him; the former wishing to have one of their nomination presented to the Queen-mother of the reigning King, whom God preserve, M. de Laval, to-day elder and first bishop, who, very rigid, not only backed the Jesuits against the governor in all difficulties but specially in the matter of the liquor traffic with the indians. Although (D'Argenson) a much God-fearing-man he had his private opinions, and this offended him; he asked ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... in reality an ocean, with an the usual characteristics of an inland sea, only horribly wild—so rigid, ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... gray dawn of the morning when the party arrived at the house of the constable, Daniel Bascom. Here breakfast was prepared, and after full justice had been done to a bountiful repast, an examination of the effects of Newton Edwards was commenced. Ever since his arrest the young man had maintained a rigid silence, not deigning to notice the detectives in any manner whatever. He partook of his breakfast in a dazed, dreamy fashion, scarcely eating anything, and pushing back his plate as though unable to force ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... naive, for creation is seething in him; but in execution he is conscious, critical, eclectic and methodical, in order that he may be completely master of the one-sided element into which he has forced himself. The man of forms, however, is, in his soul, rigid and conscious, but in action naive, because he does not know the meaning ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... let himself sink again to the full length of his arms, hung motionless for a few moments, and then, keeping himself perfectly rigid, allowed his fingers to glide over the stone, and dropped the two feet to the ledge below, perfectly upright and firm. In all probability he would have found hand-hold the next moment, but, scared anew by the rush through the air, the young ravens ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... resolute old woman, if she had had to hold the child till his beard was grown. "I am seventy years of age," the queen said, facing a mob of ruffians who stopped her sedan: "I have been fifty years Queen of England, and I never was insulted before." Fearless, rigid, unforgiving little queen! I don't wonder that her ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and only the professional student has occupied himself with their language. This is unfortunate because the speech of the common people has many points of interest, and, instead of being illogical, is usually much more rigid in its adherence to its own accepted principles than formal speech is, which is likely to be influenced by convention or conventional associations. To take an illustration of what I have in mind, the ending -s is the common ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... the body, sobbing violently; he kissed his mother's rigid face, and wept so, that great tears fell on the dead woman's face, like drops of water, and, naturally, Madame Caravan, Junior, showed a decorous amount of grief, and uttered feeble moans, as she stood behind her husband, while ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Academic" were blended into one in proclaiming to all whom it might concern that it was five minutes past the half-hour 'twixt seven and eight, and there were girls in every group, and many a young fellow in the rigid line of gray and white before them, resentful of the fact that dress parade was wofully late and long, with tattoo and taps only two hours or so away. The season for the regular summer "hops" had ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... writing wind-music all their long century lives. Little, however, of this noble tree-waving and tree-music will you see or hear in the strictly alpine portion of the forests. The burly Juniper whose girth sometimes more than equals its height, is about as rigid as the rocks on which it grows. The slender lash-like sprays of the Dwarf Pine stream out in wavering ripples, but the tallest and slenderest are far too unyielding to wave even in the heaviest gales. They only shake in ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... of the fall surprised him. "I am not dead apparently," he thought to himself, when he heard the execution platoon reloading its arms at the word of command. It was then that the hope of escape dawned upon him for the first time. He remained lying stretched out with rigid limbs under the weight of two bodies collapsed ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... only the sister of an uncle by marriage and no blood relation—a dispensation for which, at not infrequent intervals of Nan's career, Mrs. McBain had been led to thank the Almighty effusively. Born and reared in the uncompromising tenets of Scotch Presbyterianism, her attitude towards Nan was one of rigid disapproval—a disapproval that warred somewhat pathetically against the affection with which the girl's essential lovableness inspired her. For there was no gainsaying the charm of the Davenant women! But Eliza still remembered very clearly the ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... leave behind a confused impression of recklessness, irony, and cynicism. Mademoiselle Servien alone never relaxed her attitude of uncompromising dislike and disdain. She said nothing against him, but her face was a rigid mask of disapproval, her eyes two flames of fire, in answer to the courteous greeting the tutor never failed to offer her with a special roll of ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... nerves strung taut as if the ordeal were his, wishing the services would begin and yet dreading it. His eyes swept the gathering worshipers idly until they happened upon a familiar face across the church, a homely face set sternly rigid toward the ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... been towards the busy and noisy haunts of men. However, she did not think of this till a few minutes afterwards; she thought now that Mr. Dillwyn's words regarded Madge's sister, and her feeling of independence became rigid. ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... Miss Du Prel will not find much to see in the old house," said Mrs. Fullerton, whose manner had grown rigid, partly because she was shy, partly because she was annoyed with Hadria for her impulsive conduct, and largely because she disliked the idea of a literary acquaintance for her daughter, who was quite extraordinary ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... night dragged on. A couple of owls were hooting to one another across the garden, and far away a dog barked at intervals. Old Sir Beverley never stirred in his chair. His limbs were rigid, his eyes fixed and watchful. But his face was grey—grey and stricken and incredibly old. He had the look of a man who carried a burden ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... seat her by a sea-coal fire; Or had the bard at Christmas written, And laid the scene of love in Britain; He surely, in commiseration, Had chang'd the place of declaration. In Italy, I've no objection, Warm nights are proper for reflection; But here our climate is so rigid, That love itself, is rather frigid: Think on our chilly situation, And curb this rage for imitation. Then let us meet, as oft we've done, Beneath the influence of the sun; Or, if at midnight I must meet you, Within your mansion let me greet you: [i.] 'There', we can ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... would think that the Knight, from a nice sense Of honor, should put Lurline's name in the license, And that, for a man of his breeding and quality, To break faith and troth, Confirm'd by an oath, Is not quite consistent with rigid morality; But whether the nymph was forgot, or he thought her From her essence scarce wife, but at best wife-and-water And declined as unsuited, A bride so diluted— Be this as it may, He, I'm sorry to say For, all things consider'd, I own 'twas a rum thing, Made proposals in form to ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... that the chief object of a statesman should be rather to proclaim his adhesion to certain doctrines, than to achieve their triumph by quietly accomplishing his ends. In our opinion, there is no more unsafe politician than a conscientiously rigid doctrinaire, nothing more sure to end in disaster than a theoretic scheme of policy that admits of no pliability for contingencies. True, there is a popular image of an impossible He, in whose plastic hands the submissive destinies of ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... forty houses, and its members strove to keep the Augustinian ideal of a parochial and monastic life. But the chief fame of the abbey itself comes from its scholastic work, and it became known both as the stronghold of a somewhat rigid orthodoxy and as the home of a mystical theology which was developed among ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... a hand nor a foot; there was only a still quivering now and then as of intense effort, but they made no other movement. Their heads were bent forward slightly, their arms folded, their bodies straight, rigid, and inclined slightly backwards from each other like two spokes of a gigantic wheel. What were they, these figures? I knew not, and yet gazing upon them, thought which took no words to clothe itself mutely read their meaning. Here were the culminations of the human, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... have read the signs of the times with the prophetic eye of a poet. In his rambles about the environs of Paris he was struck with the immense quantities of game running about almost in a tame state; and saw in those costly and rigid preserves for the amusement and luxury of the privileged few a sure "badge of the slavery of the people." This slavery he predicted was drawing toward a close. "When I consider that these parliaments, the members of which are all created by the court, and the presidents of which ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... quiver on her lips and a sudden look of terror in her eyes; but both disappeared instantly and her features remained rigid and haughty. ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... rigid and one great shoulder turned toward the young bull, Tarzan of the Apes sidled nearer and nearer. His face was partly averted, but his keen gray eyes never left those of Taug, and as he came, his growls increased in ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... constituted the human mind that it cannot repose in error, however sincere may be the faith it exercises. There is still a growing vacuum within that nothing but the powers of truth can fill. Philosophy has endeavoured to search out that system of moral duties, in the rigid performance of which, that happiness, peace and joy might be found, for which all mortal beings pant with the same aspirations of strong desire, but has sought in vain. From the earliest ages, one ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... the door, and Jean, her fingers rigid with fear, stood waiting for its fall. But the rain came to her rescue by lashing the precentor until even he was forced ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... Pronounc'd a peace, and gave the Latian lands? What fear or hope on either part divides Our heav'ns, and arms our powers on diff'rent sides? A lawful time of war at length will come, (Nor need your haste anticipate the doom), When Carthage shall contend the world with Rome, Shall force the rigid rocks and Alpine chains, And, like a flood, come pouring on the plains. Then is your time for faction and debate, For partial favor, and permitted hate. Let now your immature dissension cease; Sit quiet, and compose ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... daughter to the Immortals gave, Ganga whose waters cleanse and save— Who roams at pleasure, fair and free, Purging all sinners, to the sea. The three-pathed Ganga thus obtained, The Gods their heavenly homes regained. Long time the sister Uma passed In vows austere and rigid fast, And the King gave the devotee Immortal Rudra's bride to be— Matching with that unequalled Lord His Uma through the worlds adored. So now a glorious station fills Each daughter of the King of Hills— One honored as the noblest stream, One mid ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... that profession and in those times which had a tendency to develop the sterner qualities, and was what would be termed in these times a man of stern, rigid, and imperious nature. It is said he never retired at night without first loading his pistols and swinging them over the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... even absolutely certain that the exercise of the stranger faculties—for instance, that the production of anaesthesia and rigidity—are the results merely of 'suggestion' and expectancy. A hypnotised patient is told that the middle finger of his left hand will become rigid and incapable of sensation. This occurs, and is explained by 'suggestion,' though how 'suggestion' produces the astonishing effect is another problem. The late Mr. Gurney, however, made a number of experiments in which no suggestion was pronounced, nor ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... recent, the protagonist of chaos in these things happened to be that rigid but curiously amorphous power which Prussia has wielded for many years to no defined end. The protagonist upon the other side of the arena was that same Romanized Gaul which had ever since the fall of the Empire least lost the continuity with the past whereby ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... very brisk and business-like about this gambling-hell. Early settlers doubtless remember in the days of "prohibition," when four per cent. beer was supposed to be the only beverage of the country, and before rigid legislation, backed by the armed force of the North-West Mounted Police, swept these frightful pollutions from the fair face of the prairie, how they thrived on the encouragement of gambling and the sale of contraband spirits. The ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... girl pushed open the walls which communicated with the next room, an exact replica of the one in which they were sitting. An elderly woman in a sea-grey kimono was squatting there silent, rigid and dignified. For a moment Geoffrey thought that a mistake had been made, that this was another guest disturbed in quiet reflection and ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... ride on them over slippery hillocky ice where a man could not possibly walk. The yak thrusts down his hoofs so that the white powdered ice spurts up around him, and if the slope is so steep that he cannot get foothold, he stretches out all four legs and holds them stiff and rigid as iron and thus slides down without tumbling. Sometimes I rode over moraine heaps of huge granite blocks piled one upon another. Then I had to take a firm grip with my knees, for the yak springs and jumps ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... a dame, Stainless and faithful, would feel all the wrong Of such a slander; and less rigid ladies, Such as abound in Venice, would be loud And all-inexorable ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... Elmer?" whispered Lil Artha, suddenly, throwing out a hand so as to clutch the other's arm; while everyone became rigid with suspense. ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... and the desolate passes, beyond the rigid pines, low down in the darkness, there was a reddish glow in the air, a strange, yellowish, quivering mist of light that hovered and moved restlessly, and yet kept its place where it hung suspended between white earth and black sky. All around was majestic peace and calm and stillness, nature ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... Motionless, too, lie the bright patches cast by the stained windows at thy feet on the worn flags. And lo, violently thrilling the incense-clouded air, thrilling us within, rolled out the mighty flood of the organ's notes... and I saw thee paler, rigid—thy glance caressed me, glided higher and rose heavenwards—while to me it seemed none but an immortal soul could look so, with ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Kenkenes lowered the weapon. For a space the two regarded each other savagely. The contemplation endured only the smallest part of a moment, but it was eloquent of the bitterest mutual antagonism. There was no relaxing in the rigid lines of the young sculptor's figure, but the fan-bearer recovered ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... to accept any money payment short of the full amount with interest, and then he averred, that as criminal proceedings had been taken they could not now be stayed. Whether or no Alaric's night attack had anything to do with this, whether Undy had been the means of instigating this rigid adherence to justice, we are ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... but the sense of the loss is not less painful to him if his mind be rightly constituted; and it would be with infinite gratitude that he would regard the man, who, retaining in his delineation of natural scenery a fidelity to the facts of science so rigid as to make his work at once acceptable and credible to the most sternly critical intellect, should yet invest its features again with the sweet veil of their daily aspect; should make them dazzling with ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... has made one of his happiest efforts, and given in this volume a tale which will stand the test of the most rigid criticism, and be read by all lovers of literature that embodies the true, the thrilling, the powerful, and the sublime. In fact, we would have thought it impossible to produce such a tale of the Republic in ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... by this volume of eloquence, but not for long, for I was pledged. A wild glance round the kitchen showed me a kettle standing empty in a corner. I seized it, and though it was heavy, swung it to an open door near which I could see a ghostly pump. I flew out, and seized that ghost by its long and rigid arm. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... apartment had been used as a drawing-room. Julian, by the merest accident, for the pleasure of a stolen glance at Catherine, happened to look in it as he leaned over towards the window fastening. For a single moment he stood rigid. Catherine had risen to her feet and, without the slightest evidence of any fatigue, was leaning, tense and alert, over the tray on which his untouched whisky and soda was placed. Her hand was outstretched. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this postulate will put me on quite easy terms with regard to the very positive objection entertained by me towards a certain Mr. Desole Arcubus, who, by provision of an immutable Medo-Persic edict promulgated by Mrs. Silvernail, occupied the chair next mine at the first-rate table of that rigid expounder ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... eyes might strain and hearts might plead, For their darlings crying wildly, they would never rise nor heed! Ay, we yearned into their faces looking for the life in vain, Wailing like to children blinded with a mist of sudden pain! Dear hands clenched, and dear eyes rigid in a stern and stony stare, Dear lips white from past affliction, dead to all our mad despair, Ah, the groaning and the moaning—ah, the thoughts which rise in tears When we turn to all those loved ones, looking backward five long years! The fathers and mothers, ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... buildings, tall dark-green planting against walls, black vertical shadows; shading of lawn; flood light standards, spots of dull orange light through translucent rigid shields. Spots of light from single globes along avenue, on water front, white lights on booths; glow from lamps at entrance to Court ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... him once or twice. He is somewhat stiff and rigid in appearance, but he is very courteous—more than courteous, Lady Alice tells me, for he is kind. He wishes to disturb her as little as possible—entreats her to stay at Courtleroy, and so on; but naturally she wishes to have ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... provided for, she should gain greatly under Tariff Reform. The effect of the Whig finance, inaugurated by Gladstone in 1853, accompanied by a rigid application of the Ricardian theories of political economy, and the continuous narrowing of the basis of indirect taxation, told against Ireland most severely, depleted her resources and retarded her progress. Sir Stafford ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... of Prague proved to have been veracious; and yet, the horror of that certitude! Behind the slim girl Bertha, whose words and looks I watched for, whose touch was bliss, there stood continually that Bertha with the fuller form, the harder eyes, the more rigid mouth—with the barren, selfish soul laid bare; no longer a fascinating secret, but a measured fact, urging itself perpetually on my unwilling sight. Are you unable to give me your sympathy—you who react this? Are you unable to imagine this double consciousness ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... thing, so great a chance, that of the adventurers who had bravely fought on yesterday more than one felt his cheek grow hot and the blood drum in his ears. Arden cared not for preferment, but Henry Sedley's eyes were very eager. Baldry, having no hopes of favor, sat like a stone, his great frame rigid, his nails white upon the hilt of his sword, his lips white and sneering beneath his short, ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... vital and spiritual as that of Spener, and as fruitful in good works as that of Francke. He and his followers nursed that orthodoxy so faithfully and fenced it in so securely as to make Missourianism the synonym for the straitest sect of Lutheranism in the world. A doctrine of rigid aloofness and separatism was developed as a wall of defense, as binding upon a Missourian's conscience as almost any article in the Augsburg Confession could possibly be. It was inevitable that he and his followers ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... in fact, it is to this date, as far as official action can make it so, and it is interesting to conjecture what the results might be were some malicious person, or some "legal-minded stickler for rigid adherence to the law," to bring suit against those whose deeds, titles, leases, or other documents declare it ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... man can repeal the inexorable laws of nature. Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little. We contemplate the immediate task of putting our public household in order. We need a rigid and yet sane economy, combined with fiscal justice, and it must be attended by individual prudence and thrift, which are so essential to this trying hour and reassuring ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... universal reign. This, however, is what we come here to look at, and, in so far as there seems to be proper occasion, to admire; though I am by no means sure that we can hope to establish within an appreciable time a corresponding change in the somewhat rigid fabric of English manners. I am not even prepared to affirm that such a change is desirable; you know this is one of the points on which I do not as yet see my way to going as far as Lord B— . I have always held that there ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... to dinner, and the reader has now an accurate picture of the course of Kant's day; the rigid monotony of which was not burthensome to him; and probably contributed, with the uniformity of his diet, and other habits of the same regularity, to lengthen his life. On this consideration, indeed, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... flower of youth)—Ver. 319. Ovid makes mention of the "flos" or "bloom" of youth, Art of Love, B. ii., l. 663: "And don't you inquire what year she is now passing, nor under what Consulship she was born; a privilege which the rigid Censor possesses. And this, especially, if she has passed the bloom of youth, and her best years are fled, and she now pulls out ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... thought of. She prepared the warm bath, and tried it with her husband's own thermometer (Mr. Jenkins was as punctual as clockwork in noting down the temperature of every day). She let his mother place her baby in the tub, still preserving the same rigid, affronted aspect, and then she went upstairs without a word. Mary longed to ask her to stay, but dared not; though, when she left the room, the tears chased each other down her cheeks faster than ever. Poor young mother! how she counted the minutes till ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... fully; so that it is only the climbing and mole-like piercing, and not the sitting upon their central throne, nor emergence into light, of the intellectual faculties which the full heart feeling allows not. Hence, therefore, in the indications of the countenance, they are only the hard cut lines, and rigid settings, and wasted hollows, that speak of past effort and painfulness of mental application, which are inconsistent with expression of moral feeling, for all these are of infelicitous augury; but ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... grey rocks, the brown fields, the purple, undulating distances harmonized in luminous accord, exhaled already the scents of the evening. The two figures down the road presented themselves like two rigid and wooden silhouettes all black on the ribbon of white dust. General D'Hubert made out the long, straight, military capotes buttoned closely right up to the black stocks, the cocked hats, the lean, carven, brown countenances—old soldiers—vieilles ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... cried Saint Simon, as he felt about the panel, which was perfectly rigid; and just then the hostess entered, followed by the maids bearing fresh dishes, to look wonderingly ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... gold-braided and with a row of small gold buttons. She walked, brown and alert, all of a piece, with short steps, the eyes lively in an impassive little face, the arched mouth closed firmly; and her whole person breathed in its rigid grace the fiery gravity of youth at the beginning of the task of life—at the beginning ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... has asked me to present his excuses to your Excellency—" began the first lieutenant in his best tone of ceremony; and, with that, took a step backward as His Excellency flung out a rigid arm. ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... down with a strong hand; but the sharper the punishment is made the more rigid we ought to be in requiring proof of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... the nature and execution of things, or from an envy and spite at the execution of them. Now if murmurings arise from this pretended wisdom of the flesh, then instead of fearing of God, his actions are judged to be either rigid or ridiculous, which yet are done in judgment, truth, and righteousness. So that a murmuring heart cannot be a good one for the fear of God to grow in. Alas! the heart where that grows must be a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of a character to make him proud, for no one ever had anything but good words to say of the honest and thrifty carpenter, whose work always bore the most rigid scrutiny, and could be ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... in his university militia, pupils of the Ecole Normale, seminarians for the priesthood, on condition that they shall engage to do service in their vocation, and do it effectively, some for ten years, others for life, subject to a discipline more rigid, or nearly ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... cannot have proceeded far in development. At the most we can imagine some strange lowly forms of vegetation lingering here and there in pools of heavy gas, expanding during the blaze of the sun's long day, and frozen rigid ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... short cylindric, and obtuse, dusky stipitate; stipe short, black, tapering rapidly upward from an expanded base; hypothallus scant or none; columella erect, rigid, sometimes reaching nearly to the apex of the sporangium, sometimes dichotomously branched a little below the summit, before blending into the common capillitium; capillitium lax, of slender, horizontal branches, anastomosing ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... Shirley was rigid with fright. She wanted to hang on to Rosemary and it was necessary to force her to face the ladder and come down step by step, Rosemary just below her steadying her with a light touch and constant words of encouragement. Shirley cried piteously, she stopped often and refused to take ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... tradition. This was represented as a punishment from Heaven on the said bishop for his tyranny and oppression towards the poor; but the story was invented by the monks in order to vilify his memory, for it appears he was obnoxious to them on account of his attempts to enforce a rigid discipline among them and to check ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... living, growing, plastic unit; moving towards a racial future yet unperceived by us, and carrying with him a racial past which conditions at every moment his choices, impulses and acts. Only the most rigid self-examination will disclose to us the extent in which the jungle and the Stone Age are still active in our games, our politics and our creeds; how many of our motives are still those of primitive man, and how many of our social ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... that morning he took a car to the palace, and I accompanied him. He had an interview with Her Majesty, who was attired in a rich dressing-gown of pale-blue silk, and the pair resolved upon a rigid inquiry regarding the affair. ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... graceful abandonment, the friendly talk played round that circle; for the burden was rolled from every heart; the barriers of Ceremony, which are indeed the laws of polite living, had melted as into vapour; and the poor claims of Me and Thee, no longer parted by rigid fences, now flowed softly into one another; and Life lay all harmonious, many-tinted, like some fair royal champaign, the sovereign and owner of which were Love only. Such music springs from kind hearts, in a kind environment of place and time. And yet as the light grew more aerial ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... pleasure, for instance, what more active roue than he? As a jeune homme, who could be younger, and for a longer time? As a country gentleman, or an l'homme d'affaires, he insisted upon dressing each character with the most rigid accuracy, and an exactitude that reminded one somewhat of Bouffe, or Ferville, at the play. I wonder whether, when is he quite old, he will think proper to wear a pigtail, like his old father? At any rate, that was ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the tone that made Pendleton look at him swiftly. The splendid head was bent over the portraits; eagerness blazed in the dark eyes; the keen face was rigid with interest. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... Cohering masses are rigid in respect only of the constancy of the dynamic process of transmutation in which cohesion consists. The sun shines eternally steady only in consequence of the ceaseless kinetic energies which ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... not assured him that his honourable wounds, though painful (as a matter of fact, after they had set, they kept him stiff as a mummy for some days, so that unless he stood upon his feet, he had to be carried, or lie rigid on his face) would probably not prove fatal? And had he not actually survived to reach the upper air again, which was more than he ever expected to do? No wonder that ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... (As regards thyself however), giving up happiness, kingdom, friends, and wealth, great will be thy calamity if thou seekest war with the Pandavas. How canst thou vanquish the son of Pandu, when Draupadi who is truthful in speech and devoted to rigid vows and austerities, prayeth for his success? How wilt thou vanquish that son of Pandu who hath Janardana for his counsellor, and who hath for a brother that Dhananjaya who is the foremost of wielders of weapons? How wilt thou vanquish that son of Pandu, of severe austerities, who ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... heart full of love, but a wild hurrahing is unseemly. All unseemly conduct in modes and forms of worship—such as tossing the head to and fro, swaying the body, the loud stamping of feet, rolling on the floor, lying stiff and rigid, shouting until the face reddens and veins distend and exhaustion overcomes, are disgracing to God and disgusting to refined ears and ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... at St. Petersburgh, and underwent a rigid examination. She asseverated with the most earnest truthfulness, that all the depositions were fictitious; that the chemical analysis was a wicked invention; and that the signature to her fabricated confession was a forgery. She also ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... plans, where locomotives eternally whistled for grade-crossings, and parlor-cars of fabulous expense and unrestful design skated round curves that the Great Buchonian would have condemned as unsafe in a construction-line. From the edge of his lawn he could trace the chaired metals falling away, rigid as a bowstring, into the valley of the Prest, studded with the long perspective of the block signals, buttressed with stone, and carried, high above all possible risk, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... persons are said to possess in a state of crisis, of deciphering a letter at a distance with the foot, the nape of the neck, or the stomach. The word impossible in this instance seemed quite legitimate. Still, I do not doubt but some rigid minds would withhold it after having reflected on the ingenious experiments by which Moser produces, also at a distance, very distinct images of all sorts of objects, on all sorts of bodies, and in the ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... their bed at break of day, And to the cell repaired without delay Our tale to shorten, Lucius kind appeared To rigid rules no longer he adhered. The mother with him let her girl remain, And hastened to her humble roof again. The belle complying looked:—he took her arm, And soon familiar grew ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... constitution in all its parts had begun to be open questions, speculation had not as yet attacked either of the two bases of society, property or the family. Loud was the outcry of the Philistines. There was no doubt that the rigid bonds of Presbyterian orthodoxy would not in any case have long held Milton. They were snapped at once by the publication of his opinions on divorce, and Milton is henceforward to be ranked among the most independent of the new party which shortly ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... traced to the want of the proper police and sanitary regulations, and to the absence of intelligent organization and division of labor. The abuses were in a large measure due to the almost total absence of system, government, and rigid, but wholesome sanitary regulations. In extenuation of these abuses it was alleged by the medical officers that the Confederate troops were barely sufficient to guard the prisoners, and that it was impossible to obtain any number of experienced ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... face became rigid; only the flicker of her eyelids betrayed how her nerves were quivering. Suddenly she threw her hands ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sit on the ground, facing each other, legs straight and the soles of the feet in contact. The cane is grasped as in 2 but close to the feet. Object: To pull the opponent to his feet. The legs throughout the contest must be kept rigid. ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... measure of strength is alloted to him; far more people, however, are capable of knowledge and insight. Indeed, one may well say that everyone is thus capable who can deny himself and subordinate himself to external objects, everyone who does not strive with rigid and narrow-minded obstinacy to impose upon the highest works of Nature and Art his own ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... distinction which he draws between despotism and its abuse, and from a phrase, disparaging to elections, about rivers that cannot rise above the level of their source, it would appear that Mr. Lea is not under compulsion to that rigid liberalism which, by repressing the time-test and applying the main rules of morality all round, converts history into a frightful monument of sin. Yet, in the wake of passages which push the praises of authority to the verge of irony, dire denunciations follow. When the author looks back upon ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... a curve in the drive brought the house into view. It was a big, square building, with not the slightest touch of green to relieve the monotony of the rigid white walls, and level rows of windows, which seemed to have been placed in position by some precise, mathematical calculation. A boy was lounging about in front of the porch, with his hands in his pockets, kicking ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... fact that the stranger had already visited the ship with letters from the eminently respectable consignees at St. Kentigern, and contented himself with lingering near them. The young girl was accompanied by her father, a respectably rigid-looking middle-class tradesman, who, however, seemed to be more interested in the novelty of his surroundings than in the movements of his daughter and their departing friend. So it chanced that the consul re-entered the cabin—ostensibly in ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte |
