"Exigent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... weakness, met with no tolerance from him. "He passed him up," on the spot, with a scornful wafture of his hand. That Marie had yielded to the stress of circumstances, had been unable to hold out in the Rogues' Gallery, galled the relatively uncompromising, exigent idealist. If she had resorted to temporary prostitution to hold the society together he would have admired her. But, instead, she weakly sought, like any merely conservative woman, the shelter of Katie's roof. The first seed of the essential discord which finally resulted, ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... matters in this way and, moreover, satisfied his appetite with a good supper, Pignaver took leave of the Bravi with considerable ceremony, for he perceived that they were as exigent and punctilious as to all points of courtesy as any noble in Italy, France, or Spain; and it would not be good to fall out with such touchy gentlemen on a point of manners. Indeed, as he retraced ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... had gifted me with an exigent conscience and a turn for oratory, I would, I like to think, have publicly confessed, at that first public performance, to all those tributary clarifying rills to the play's progress: but, as it was, vainglory combined with an aversion to "speech-making" to compel a taciturn if smirking acceptance ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... the course of nature was to produce in obedience to the ordinances of the Creator. But he was a man who reverenced all laws,—and a law, if recognised as a law, was a law to him whether enforced by a penalty, or simply exigent of obedience from his conscience. This girl had been thrown in his way, and he had first pitied and then loved her from his childhood. She had been injured by the fiendish malice of her own father,—and that father had been an Earl. He had been strong ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... Phillis, "the Exigent," asked "Damon thirty sheep for a kiss;" next day, she promised him thirty[TN-89] kisses for a sheep;" the third day, she would have given "thirty sheep for a kiss;" and the fourth day, Damon bestowed his kisses for nothing on Lizette.—C. Rivi['e]re Dufresny, La ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... understanding him, some little interesting secret. Thus it is to Sainte-Beuve that he defines and explains the origin and real meaning of the Petits Poemes en Prose: Faire cent bagatelles laborieuses qui exigent une bonne humeur constante (bonne humeur necessaire, meme pour traiter des sujets tristes), une excitation bizarre qui a besoin de spectacles, de foules, de musiques, de reverberes meme, voila ce que j'ai voulu faire! And, writing to some obscure person, he will take the trouble to be even ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... fulness gradually descend. The buildings and their traditions keep astir in his mind whatsoever is gracious; the climate, enfolding and enfeebling him, lulling him, keeps him careless of the sharp, harsh, exigent realities of the outer world. Careless? Not utterly. These realities may be seen by him. He may study them, be amused or touched by them. But they cannot fire him. Oxford is too damp for that. The "movements" made there have been no more than protests against the mobility of others. They have ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... the one that brought to White Orchards what was to be known for many moons as "the Big Storm." It had been gathering all afternoon, and by evening the heat had grown appalling and incredible, even to Janet's American and exigent standards. The smouldering copper sky looked as though it had caught fire from the world and would burn forever; there was not so much as a whisper of air to break the stillness—it seemed as though the whole tortured earth were holding its breath, waiting to see what would ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... are lawless because restless: are thy passions so extreme, that thou canst not conceal them with patience? or art thou so folly-sick, that thou must needs be fancy-sick, and in thy affection tied to such an exigent as none serves but Phoebe? Well, sir, if your market can be made nowhere else, home again, for your mart is at the fairest. Phoebe is no lettuce for your lips, and her grapes hang so high, that gaze at them you may, but touch ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... ill-interpreted—of the thieving pill-roller sets me on my guard against that of the undertaker. Shall I be too exigent if I enquire what precautions the observer adopted to recognize the owner of the Mouse on his return, when he reappears, as we are told, with four assistants? What sign denotes that one of the five who was able, in so rational a manner, to appeal for help? Can one even ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... reference to this year's style, pressed into the uncomfortable chairs, and folded their hands upon the desks before them in a sweet seriousness not unmingled with the desire of thriftily completing a duty no less exigent than pickle-making, or the work of spring and fall. Last came the boys, clattering with awkward haste over the dusty floor which had known the touch of their bare feet on other days. They looked about the room with some ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... and refused him. But he didn't propose—he took it for granted that they were no more to each other than the moment dictated. There was a kind of long headed caution in his diffidence with regard to the future. He was exigent too in his demands and would not tolerate her being pleasant to anyone else. It was her nature to be pleasant to all men and restraints were odious and insulting. That was how the row came about. It took place ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... and seeming happiness, not to shock them too much by the contrast between the delicate enjoyments of the life he now leads among the wealthy and refined, and that bald existence of theirs in his old home? A life, agitated, exigent, unsatisfying! That is what this letter really discloses, below so attractive a surface. As his gift expands so does that incurable restlessness one supposed but the humour natural to a promising youth who had still everything to do. And now the only ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... enough to see with eyes, and therefore to believe. And one day, in Philadelphia, you should have heard the wise young Philip Randolph defend you against objections of mine. But when I have such testimony, I say to myself, the high-seeing austerely exigent friend whom I elected, and who elected me, twenty years and more ago, finds me heavy and silent, when all the world elects and loves him. Yet I have not changed. I have the same pride in his genius, the same sympathy with the Genius that governs his, the old ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... be downright poisonous to him. He may yearn for a son to pray at his tomb—and yet suffer acutely at the me reapproach of relatives-in-law. He may dream of a beautiful and complaisant mistress, less exigent and mercurial than any a bachelor may hope to discover—and stand aghast at admitting her to his bank-book, his family-tree and his secret ambitions. He may want company and not intimacy, or intimacy and not company. He ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... which the surgeon is unpaid, And like to be, without our aid. 1030 Lord! what an am'rous thing is want! How debts and mortgages inchant! What graces must that lady have That can from executions save! What charms that can reverse extent, 1035 And null decree and exigent! What magical attracts and graces, That can redeem from Scire facias! From bonds and statutes can discharge, And from contempts of courts enlarge! 1040 These are the highest excellencies Of all ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... husbands have been ennobled only by their offices, of those whose genealogies are modern, or of the collaterals of ancient families, whose claims are so far removed as to be doubtful. The society of all these is very exigent, and to be avoided by the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... an hour that could hardly be spared. Lemoyne, who had been cast originally for a minor female part, now found himself transferred, through the failure of a principal, to a more important one. For him, then, rehearsals were more exigent than ever. He cut his Psychology once or twice, nor could he succeed, during office hours, in keeping his mind on office-routine. His superiors became impatient and then protestant. The annual spring dislocation of ordered student life ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... was real, and that he was really there close in front of me, a seraph and yet very human. He was all alone on the great platform, and the ebonized piano seemed enormous and formidable before him. And all around was the careless public—ignorant, unsympathetic, exigent, impatient, even inimical—two thousand persons who would get value for their money or know the reason why. The electric light and the inclement gaze of society rained down cruelly upon that defenceless head. I wanted to protect it. The tears rose to ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... Canada as a colony of the Crown—Dunlop continued—was imperiled by paying some exigent actors from the other side of the line the compliment of calling for a national air dear to republican hearts and ears, he did not for a moment believe. He was, at the same time, he affirmed, keenly sensitive ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... joining a picnic party in Haven Woods, but he had given no instructions that he wished the dinner-hour postponed, and now the beautiful little dinner which Mrs. Judson had prepared and cooked for her somewhat exigent employer had been entirely robbed of its pristine delicacy of flavour, since it had been "keeping hot" in the oven for at least ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... civilities without which it is impossible for man or woman to be amiable? Did she now coquet, prattle, and display her power; tempted as she was by such a public scene of triumph? Was not her demeanour as chastely cautious as my own exigent heart ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... for the statement of our view of the attitude a rational religion takes up in the solemn presence of death. "Stoicism shall not be more exigent," said Emerson of the new Church. We take no lax view of life and its responsibilities, but we refuse to magnify death into the one thing worth living for or thinking about. Homo liber de nulla re minus quam de morte cogitat. We do not set about ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... I tell them. And they smile and repeat that such and such a free will offering, under exigent circumstances, would be very acceptable to the revolutionary chiefs—meaning themselves. The big chiefs never finger one peso in ten of it. Good Lord! I show them what we've done. Steady work for five thousand peons. Wages ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... temperaments were different, but the bases of their characters were alike, and each could perfectly comprehend the other. They had, moreover, strong prejudices and dislikes in common. With his ruined fortune, his habits of expenditure, the exigent demands of his rank and station, and the wretched pittance which he received from the king of three thousand francs a year, Frontenac was not the man to let slip any reasonable opportunity of bettering his condition. [Footnote: That he engaged in the fur-trade, was notorious. ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... appointed by the President a brigadier-general of volunteers, upon the unanimous recommendation of the congressmen from Illinois, most of whom were unknown to him. He had not won promotion by any fighting; but generals were at that time made with haste to meet exigent requirement, a proportional number being selected from each loyal State. Among those whom General Grant appointed on his staff was John A. Rawlins, the Galena lawyer, who was made adjutant-general, with ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... a lie of exigency be required, for to the word of the truly sanctified personality there belongs an imposing commanding power that casts out demons. It is this that we see in Christ, in whose mouth no guile was found, in whom we find nothing that even remotely belongs to the category of the exigent lie." ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... powerful manifestations, of family affection. It goes without saying that every tenement house contains women who for years spend their hurried days in preparing food and clothing and pass their sleepless nights in tending and nursing their exigent children, with never one thought for their own comfort or pleasure or development save as these may be connected with the future of their families. We all know as a matter of course that every shop is crowded with workingmen who ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... prose writers were dependent upon the existence of an intelligent and responsive reading public. The lectures of Emerson, the speeches of Webster, the stories of Hawthorne, the political verse of Whittier and Lowell, presupposed a keen, reflecting audience, mentally and morally exigent. The spread of the Lyceum system along the line of westward emigration from New England as far as the Mississippi is one tangible evidence of the high level of popular intelligence. That there was much of the ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... portion of thought and foresight can scarcely be expected to extend: whilst, on the other hand, they have before them a most bitter and arduous servitude, constant confinement, probably a severe task-mistress (whose mind is harassed and exacerbated by the exigent and thoughtless demands of her employers), and a destruction of health and bloom, which the alternative course of life can scarcely make more certain or more speedy. Goethe was well aware how much light he threw upon the seduction of Margaret, when he made her let ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... be found whereby we may be delivered." He would walk also solitarily in the fields, sometimes reading and sometimes praying; and thus for some days he spent his time. Graceless at that time and at that stage would have satisfied the exigent author of the Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection where he says that "we are too apt also to think that we have sufficiently read a book when we have so read it as to know what it contains. This reading may be quite sufficient as to many books; ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte |
