"Inflexibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... same time be deeply skilled in them; and is obliged to dispute the seat with competitors who are so much the more formidable as they are fired by a principle of glory, by interest, by the difficulty itself; and by that inflexibility of mind which is generally found in those who devote themselves to that pertinacious ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... Duke of Wellington is not, I am inclined to believe, a man of excitable temperament. His mind is of a cast too martial to be easily moved; but, notwithstanding his habitual inflexibility, I cannot help thinking, that when he heard his countrymen (for we are his countrymen) designated by a phrase so offensive he ought to have recalled the many fields of fight in which we have been contributors ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... inflexibility was, in its essence, a keener perception of duty than the ordinary: it was a determination to do what he believed to be for the good of South Africa and the Empire, irrespective of any consideration of personal or party relationship. It was in no sense the incapacity ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... it is to be so excellent a judge; this it is which gives a critic that exalted gratification which can never be attained by the illiterate,—the supreme power of pointing out faults, where others discern nothing but beauties, and preserving a rigid inflexibility of muscle, while the sides of the vulgar herd are shaking with laughter. These merry mortals, thinking with Plato that it is no proof of a good stomach to nauseate every aliment presented them, do ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... him to give each aspect of a complicated and confused situation its proper relative emphasis. At a later date, when he had become President and was obliged to take decisive action in order to prevent the House from utterly collapsing, he showed an inflexibility of purpose no less remarkable than his previous intellectual insight. For as long as he had not made up his mind, he hesitated firmly and patiently; but when he had made up his mind, he was not to ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... the latter hypothesis is the true one for the reasons about to be given; and if so, the finality of the process of domestication must be accepted as one of the most striking instances of the inflexibility of natural disposition, and of the limitations thereby imposed upon the [15] choice of careers for animals, and by analogy ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... mind any substitute for the rigidness of God, for the aim of the development is death—the death of the individual as well as of the universe. "He who has learned to get comfort in the deepest affliction from the absolute impartiality of the causal law, is on so good terms with death, whose inflexibility he comprehends, that without reluctance he gives to it the universe into ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... after having been changed to Port de la Montagne, Port North-West, and I believe borne one or two other names, was now called Port Napoleon; Port Bourbon and Isle Bourbon underwent similar changes: such was the inflexibility of French republicanism.] ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... appear. Mr Maplestone looked at her and—this was a curious thing—at one glance realised his defeat. All my efforts at dignity and firmness had failed to convince him, but behind Charmion's frail, essentially feminine exterior, those keen eyes had at once detected that strain of inflexibility which I was only slowly beginning ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... citizens thronged the narrow street of the Faubourg St. Honore, and waited patiently for hours outside the Embassy to catch one glimpse of the strong, stern, thoughtful face of the man who had come with his legions to assist France in the great hour of need. They talked to each other about the inflexibility of his character, about the massive jaw which, they said, would bite off Germany's head. They cheered in the English manner, with a "Heep! heep! hooray!"—when they caught sight for the first time of the khaki uniforms of English officers on the steps of the Ministry of War. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... upon which the estimate of his bearing and character has been predicated. He was irascible and quick in his temper, and when angered was violent in words and manner. It was at such moments that the stern inflexibility of his will was manifest; and his passion towered in proportion to provocation. But in private life and social intercourse he was bland, gentle, and conciliating. His manner was most polished and lofty in society, and in a lady's parlor, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... that she was the better of the two. But even so, the difference entitled her to authority on the subject with Anna-Felicitas, and by dint of doing all her calculations roughly, as she was careful to describe her method, she allowed room for withdrawal and escape where otherwise the inflexibility of figures might have caught her tight and held her down while Anna-Felicitas looked on and was unable to ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... best horse to be brought round to the door. There was no remedy for what was called by Lord Lovat's friends, the "rascality" of the judges:—and again this unworthy Highlander was driven from his own country to seek safety in the land wherein his offences had received their pardon. The inflexibility of the justiciary lords, or their known integrity, form a fine incident in history; for the Scottish nation was at this period, ridden by Court faction, and broken down by recent ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... owned no pockets, and were, with the exception of the legitimate outlet, continuous in the circumference of the waistband. No dangling strings gave them an appearance of senile imbecility. Were it not for a certain rigidity, sternness, and mental inflexibility,—we will call it military ardour,—with which they were imbued, they would have created envy in the bosom ...
— The Relics of General Chasse • Anthony Trollope
... Owen's inflexibility frightened her. She had half expected that when he knew her real and vital dislike for Miss Loder he would promise to send her away; but he had done nothing of the kind: and Toni felt again, as she had already felt once or twice of late, that Owen had no intention ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... almost every country there now appeared a king, that puppet pageant, that monster in creation, miserable itself, a combination of every vice, and invented for the curse of human kind. "Where now," she asked, "was the sternness and inflexibility of ancient story? Where was that Junius, that stood and gazed in triumph upon the execution of his sons? Where that Fabricius, that turned up his nose under the snout of an elephant? Where was that Marcus Brutus, ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... eyed one another. In his heart each hated the other, but in David the hate had come suddenly, the hysteric growth of a night's anguish. The mountain man's was tempered by a process of slow-firing to a steely inflexibility. He hated David that he had ever been his rival, that he had ever thought to lay claim to the woman who was his, that he had ever aspired to her, touched her, desired her. He hated him when he saw that, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... dominated in the land. If this class, like its predecessors, has in its turn mistaken its environment, a redistribution of property must occur, distressing, as previous redistributions have been, in proportion to the inflexibility of the sufferers. The last two redistributions have been painful, and, if we examine passing phenomena from this standpoint, they hardly appear to promise much that is reassuring for ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... mechanical processes of Reproduction have much to do with determining pen methods they become important factors for consideration. While their waywardness and inflexibility are the cause of no little distress to the illustrator, the limitations of processes cannot be said, on the whole, to make for inferior standards in drawing, as will be seen by the following rules which they impose, and for which a strict regard ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... of constitutions, writes in the "Nation," October 8, 1885: "The Referendum must be considered, on the whole, a conservative arrangement. It tends at once to hinder rapid change and also to get rid of that inflexibility or immutability which, in the eyes of Englishmen at least, is a defect in the constitution of ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... both of which required for their perfect accomplishment a few years of time and a large share of vital force: one was the education of the brain, the other of the reproductive system. The schoolmaster superintended the first, and Nature the second. The school, with puritanic inflexibility, demanded every day of the month; Nature, kinder than the school, demanded less than a fourth of the time,—a seventh or an eighth of it would have probably answered. The schoolmaster might have yielded ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... movement; her inflexibility recalled one who long ago had renounced his fealty to the throne; her resistance kindled the flame that had been smoldering in ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... regulations. Nevertheless (and this fact is very remarkable in the history of nations), these analogous circumstances have not effaced the individual features, or the shades of character which distinguish the American tribes. We observe in the men of copper hue, a moral inflexibility, a steadfast perseverance in habits and manners, which, though modified in each tribe, characterise essentially the whole race. These peculiarities are found in every region; from the equator to Hudson's Bay on the one hand, and to the Straits of Magellan on the other. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... measure at the possible misfortune to Miranda, which, by this untimely arrest, he was powerless to avert. Knowing nothing of the true contents of the letter which Philip had substituted for the one received from Beverly, he could not imagine an excuse for the marshal's inflexibility. He was quite ill, too, and what with fever and agitation, his brain was in a whirl. He leaned against the chair, faint and dispirited. The painful cough, the harbinger of that fatal malady which had already brought a sister to an early grave, oppressed ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... breath. Such was the envelope and the voice of the fanatical soul belonging to the Grand-master of Ceremonies and Captain General of the Bodyguard at the Headquarters of the Legitimist Court, now detached on a special mission. He was all fidelity, inflexibility, and sombre conviction, but like some great saints he had very little body to keep all ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... for that reason, if there had been no other, anti-mercurial. But the main cause of this reserve lay in the infrequency of visits consequent upon the difficulties of local movement. The other frost lay in the Spanish stateliness and the inflexibility of our social ceremonies. Our social meetings of this period, even for purposes of pleasure, were true solemnities. With usage of politeness that laid a weight of silence and delay upon every movement of ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... towards the same point. Puritans, whose cloaks were of the most formal cut, and whose hats emulated the steeple of St. Paul's; Levellers, with firm steps, wrinkled and over-hanging brows, and hard unchanging features, all denoting inflexibility of purpose and decision of character; Cavaliers, whose jaunty gait was sobered, and whose fashionable attire was curtailed in consideration that such bravery would be noticed and reproved by the powers that were; women attired in dark hoods and sad-coloured kirtles; some of demure aspect, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... and dignity of the man made his presence felt wherever he went. A contemporary said: "His features were refined and regular—the nose straight and finely shaped, his lips thin and compressed—the face and body seemed to represent the inflexibility of the inner man. His whole aspect was one of high and noble achievement—invincible purpose, iron ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... Mr. Balfour into the firm and tight grip of the rugged, uncultured country gentleman who sits remote and neglected close to him. There are the tightness and firmness of a death-trap in the large, strong mouth, a dangerous gleam in the steady eyes, infinite powers of firmness, inflexibility, and of even cruelty in the whole expression, not in the least softened, but rather heightened and exalted by the pretty constant smile—the smile that indicates the absence alike of the heat of passion or the touch of pity, and that ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... questioned whether a single suggestion was of sufficient moment to justify a revision of the system. There is abundant reason, nevertheless, to suppose that immaterial as these objections were, they would have been adhered to with a very dangerous inflexibility, in some States, had not a zeal for their opinions and supposed interests been stifled by the more powerful sentiment of self-preservation. One State, we may remember, persisted for several years in refusing her concurrence, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... consciousness of what was due to religion stood most prominently forward. At such times she became severe and abstracted; and yet her occasional austerity could hardly be condemned by her subjects, when it led to that firmness and courage, and that inflexibility in the decrees of justice, for which she was so remarkable. If the grave historian has stamped her character with these attributes of heroism, what scope may not be allowed to the writer of historical fiction? Distinguished ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... lives still,—scarce older to appearance than twenty years before,—prim, wiry, active,—proof against all ailments, it would seem. It is hard to conceive of her as yielding to the great conqueror. If the tongue and an inflexibility of temper were the weapons, she would whip Death from her chamber at the last. It seems like amiability almost to hear such a one as she talk of her approaching, inevitable dissolution,—so kindly in her to yield ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... we see a young performer gradually rising in estimation. To the manners of a gentleman, he adds a habit of discrimination, the effect of a liberal education; and could he get over a certain inflexibility of voice, (whether arising from nature or habit we know not) he must very soon become a ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... commonplace ordinary note to a commonplace ordinary woman!" Here a sly brain-devil whispered that Miss Vancourt might possibly be neither commonplace nor ordinary,—but he put the suggestion aside with a 'Get thee behind me, Satan' inflexibility. "The fact is, I had better not write to her at all. I'll send Bainton with a verbal message; he is sure to give a quaint and pleasant turn to it,—he knew her father, and I didn't;—it will be much ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... imbibed the most exalted ideas of the dignity and grandeur of the house of Hapsburg. She had also been taught that her inheritance was a solemn trust which she was religiously bound to preserve. Thus religious principle, family pride and maternal love all now combined to increase the inflexibility of a will which by nature ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... terrible that we may not follow it even in thought. We live alone with majestic forces,—forests greater than an empire, unmapped waters, and strange, savage men. We are pygmies; yet, if we have spirit we can grow into some measure of the greatness and inflexibility around us. Monsieur, when you asked me—what you asked me now—you were thinking of France and its standards. Of little, tidy, hedged-in France. You were not—— Oh, monsieur, I am sorry you asked me that question. Of ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... his friend had that inflexibility of principle in criticism and literary utterance which they adhered to as though it were a matter of high morals. This feeling contrasts with the easy adaptability of our day, when the critic so often has to shape his views according to interested aims. ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... found that he must "add" that the period had arrived which claimed from the legislative guardians of the national rights, a system of more ample provision for maintaining them. There was full evidence of the hostile inflexibility of Great Britain. She had trampled on rights, which no independent nation could relinquish, and Congress would feel the duty of putting the United States into an armour and an attitude, demanded by the crisis, and corresponding with the ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... 'Well,' retorted Ralegh, 'they will do for an Irishman;' and the prisoner was strung up by them accordingly. It is a savage legend which deserves to be remembered in justice to the audacity of the nameless peasant. Probably invented to glorify a renowned Englishman's inflexibility, it illustrates at all events the temper in which the war was waged. Ferocity to Irishmen was accounted policy and steadfastness. Every advantage was taken of the superiority of English steel and ordnance. Writing in 1603 for the ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... obstinate. Never change your mind when the result of the alteration would be detrimental to your comfort and interest; but do not maintain an inconvenient inflexibility of purpose. Do not, for instance, in affairs of the heart, simply because you have declared, perhaps with an oath or two, that you will be constant till death, think it necessary to make any effort to remain so. The case stands ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... worried, even almost to the grave, yet he will not desert the charge imposed upon him by his friend Sir Roderick Murchison. To the stern dictates of duty, alone, has he sacrificed his home and ease, the pleasures, refinements, and luxuries of civilized life. His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the enduring resolution of the Anglo-Saxon—never to relinquish his work, though his heart yearns for home; never to surrender his obligations until he can write FINIS ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... mixture of the Hebrew and the Puritan. She belonged in fact to a Christianized Jewish family, but how long since her ancestors became Christianized remains in doubt. Yet it is easy to recognize the Hebrew element in Sumner's nature; the inflexibility of purpose, the absolute self-devotion, and even the prophetic forecast. Sumner was an old Hebrew prophet in the guise of an American statesman. True to his mother's name, he was at once a Puritan and an Israelite in whom there was no guile; ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... ought to be steadfastly preserved. As Emerson says in continuation, "Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impressions with good-humoured inflexibility, then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense, precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our opinion from another." ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... of gray, was set on his shoulders at just the right poise for command. The high-bridged nose, inherited from the Umfravilles, was of the kind commonly considered to show "race." The eyes had the sharpness, and the thin-lipped mouth the inflexibility, that go with a capacity for quick decisions. While he was not so imposing in mufti as in his uniform, the trim traveling-suit of russet brown went well with the bronze tint of the complexion. It was so healthy a bronze, as a usual thing, that his present pallor ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... is surrounded by an orange circle; it is of bronze set in gold, but vivid gold and animated bronze. This pupil has depth; it is not underlaid, as in certain eyes, by a species of foil, which sends back the light and makes such eyes resemble those of cats or tigers; it has not that terrible inflexibility which makes a sensitive person shudder; but this depth has in it something of the infinite, just as the external radiance of the eyes suggests the absolute. The glance of an observer may be lost in ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... was no ordinary man to succumb to the fascinations of a woman. She had experienced his obstinacy, and knew the inflexibility of his nature. His determination was a rock against which she had been broken too many times not to know its strength. For a moment she despaired, then courage came to her again, thrusting away the doubts that crowded in upon her and leaving the hope that still lingered in her heart. ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... past. But—two months before—Jim had startled Links and horrified his priest by marrying Kitty Muckevay of the gold-red hair. Kitty had a rare measure of good sense but was a Protestant of Ulster inflexibility. She had taken Jim in hand to reform him, and for sixty days he had not touched a drop! Moreover he had promised Kitty to keep out of mischief on this day of days. All that morning he had worked among the horses in Downey's livery stable where ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... unerring discrimination, she drew the exact line between vivacity and satire, true religion and its semblance. She saw through and pitied those who, pluming themselves on the faults of others, and imparting to the outward man the ascetic inflexibility of the inner one, would fain propagate on all sides their rigid creed, forbidding the more favoured commoners of nature even to sip joy's chalice. If not a saint, however, but a fair, confiding, and romantic girl, she was good ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... change for him," responded Sylvia. Her heart was hot within her. Dunham might have come himself. Now she should never see him again, and she didn't care. The only reason she had wished to meet him was to show him her inflexibility and independence despite her acceptance of the despised money he ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... important vote, in which, I suspect, we should have been unanimous, the commodore and Capt. Hutchinson came on board to inquire into the cause of the dispute; and this lucky, and well timed visit, saved our credit; and established the Yankee character for inflexibility, beyond all doubt or controversy. These two worthy gentlemen soon discovered that Mr. O. had made representations not altogether correct. They therefore ordered the hatches to be taken off, and proper bread to be served out, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... abysses of knowledge, mirrors of truth, whose gravity is as that of lead, whose inflexibility is as that of iron, who rival the diamond in clearness, and possess no little affinity with gold; since I am permitted to address your august assembly, I swear by Ormuzd that I have never seen the respectable lady dog of the Queen, nor beheld the sacrosanct ...
— On the Method of Zadig - Essay #1 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the sentence had an accent of inflexibility that made it seem like a drawn sword across ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... prompt payment of 2,500l., being ten years in advance; and that the coachmen and lackeys of the grand duke and generals received money from the same fund, instead of wages from their masters. As the inflexibility and integrity of those gentlemen were proof against all bribes, the generals foresaw the impending storm which threatened to break and overwhelm them. In this critical situation, they conceived one of the most atrocious plots on record. Its object ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... family, bound together by the force of religious ties, by the inflexibility of its customs, by one solitary emotion, that of avarice, a passion which was now as it were its compass, Elisabeth was forced to commune with herself, instead of imparting her ideas to those around her, for she felt herself without equals ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... she was inwardly quivering, and every moment found it more and more difficult to control herself. Never in all her life before had she been so relentlessly, harshly accused. In trying to conceal her emotion she only gave herself the appearance of rigid inflexibility. ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... apart for daily meditating and reasoning upon them, attended by earnest supplication for the impressing influences of the Holy Spirit. The mind must thus be drilled to reflection upon them till they become principles of action, so vital and permanent, that a shape and inflexibility shall be given to the moral sensibilities, which no wear of time or circumstances shall change ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... more than their bodies, and the next world before this; and with respect to the distress I may leave them in, God is merciful, and will provide for them while they are worthy of his protection. Finding the inflexibility of this poor man, the monks cried,—Turn him off, turn him off, which the executioner did almost immediately, and the body being afterward cut down, was flung into ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... such matters as he took in hand a want of prudence and of judgment. His desire for glory sprang rather from impulse than from reason. His liberality was inconsiderate, immoderate, promiscuous. When he displayed inflexibility of purpose, it was more often an ill-founded obstinacy than firmness, and that which many people called his goodness of nature rather deserved the name of coldness and feebleness of spirit.' This ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... English ground and making almost a natural moat round Chester, the great Roman camp whose form and intersecting streets still bear the stamp of Roman regularity, and whose history long bore traces of the influence of Roman inflexibility mingled with British dash. The view of the city is fine from the Aldford road (or Old Ford, where a Roman pavement is sometimes visible in the bed of the stream), with the cathedral and St. John's towering ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... on metal roughened the deliberate speech with a suggestion of grim inflexibility. Flavia lifted vaguely startled eyes to ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... Eugene, if you please,' interrupted M. de Veron. 'The affair, as I have told you, is decided. You will marry Mademoiselle de Merode; or if not, he added with iron inflexibility of tone and manner—'Eugene de Veron is likely to benefit very little by his father's wealth, which the said Eugene will do well to remember is of a kind not very difficult of transference beyond the range of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... meant only to ask permission to address her. To win her heart I was well aware must be a work of time; but the first step was to deserve her esteem, and to begin by conducting myself towards her, and her father, with perfect sincerity and openness. The more I was convinced of my father's inflexibility, the more desperate I knew my circumstances were, the more I was bound not to mislead by false appearances. They would naturally suppose that I should inherit my father's fortune—I knew that I should ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... example which Urbain gave of this inflexibility was in 1620, when he gained a lawsuit against a priest named Meunier. He caused the sentence to be carried out with such rigour that he awoke an inextinguishable hatred in Meunier's mind, which ever after burst forth on the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... scrupulously kept than the ledgers of Napoleon's household, nor could they show a greater regard for economy than the tailor's bill, still extant, on which the future Emperor gained a reduction of four sous. But it was not on such trivial lines alone that they run parallel. An inflexibility of purpose, an absolute disregard of popular opinion, and an unswerving belief in their own capacity, were predominant in both. They could say "No." Neither sought sympathy, and both felt that they were masters of their own fate. "You can be whatever you resolve to be" may be well placed ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... marriage, found it easier to submit than contend; and so Dinah had ruled supreme. This was the easier, in that she was perfect mistress of that diplomatic art which unites the utmost subservience of manner with the utmost inflexibility as ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... forest attire, lending an air of romantic wildness to the aspect of an individual, who, seen by the sober light of day, would have exhibited the peculiarities of a man remarkable for the strangeness of his dress, the iron-like inflexibility of his frame, and the singular compound of quick, vigilant sagacity, and of exquisite simplicity, that by turns usurped the possession of his muscular features. At a little distance in advance stood Uncas, his whole person thrown powerfully into view. The travelers anxiously regarded the ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... sense of impending disaster, she would hastily consume one or the other; again, supported by a beginning self-imposed inflexibility, she would turn steadily away from temptation. In the end the latter triumphed; and her normal appetite, ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... reader might justly reckon it to me for a sin and shame. For more than twelve long years I have borne it in my memory, and could now reproduce it as freshly as if it were still before my eyes. Of all modes of death, methinks it is the ugliest. Her wet garments swathed limbs of terrible inflexibility. She was the marble image of a death-agony. Her arms had grown rigid in the act of struggling, and were bent before her with clenched hands; her knees, too, were bent, and—thank God for it!—in the attitude of prayer. Ah, that rigidity! It is impossible to bear the terror ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... be thus put off. Every day Lizaveta received from him a letter, sent now in this way, now in that. They were no longer translated from the German. Hermann wrote them under the inspiration of passion, and spoke in his own language, and they bore full testimony to the inflexibility of his desire, and the disordered condition of his uncontrollable imagination. Lizaveta no longer thought of sending them back to him; she became intoxicated with them, and began to reply to them, and little by little her answers became longer and ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... shades which a courtier ordinarily borrows from the same color—the desire to please. Athos knew his own personal value, and bowed to the prince like a man, correcting by something sympathetic and undefinable that which might have appeared offensive to the pride of the highest rank in the inflexibility of his attitude. The prince was about to speak to Raoul. Athos forestalled him. "If M. le Vicomte de Bragelonne," said he, "were not one of the humble servants of your royal highness, I would beg him to pronounce ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... spot. He promised their friends that they should meet them again in a better world. He said that a virtuous life secured us this happiness; he said: do good to mankind, that God may heal in your heart the wound of grief. He testified his astonishment at the inflexibility and hard-heartedness of man, the creature of a day, to his fellow man equally with himself the creature of a day, and seized upon that terrible idea of death, which the living have conceived, but which they will never be able to exhaust. In short, he said nothing that was not affecting and ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... drink is peculiarly fitted to bring out this perverse quality—drink that blurs all the conventionalities, even those built up into moral ideas by centuries and ages of unbroken custom. The human animal, for all its pretenses of inflexibility, is almost infinitely adaptable—that is why it has risen in several million years of evolution from about the humblest rank in the mammalian family to overlordship of the universe. Still, it is doubtful if, without drink ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... hurt me, though I knew no reason why. 330 Hence, Ignorance!—thy slavish shackles bind The free-born soul, and lethargise the mind. Of thee, begot by Pride, who look'd with scorn On every meaner match, of thee was born That grave inflexibility of soul, Which Reason can't convince, nor Fear control; Which neither arguments nor prayers can reach, And nothing less than utter ruin teach. Hence, Ignorance!—hence to that depth of night Where thou wast born, where not one gleam of light 340 May wound thine eye—hence to some dreary cell Where ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... is he more courageous, and he is certainly less powerful: nevertheless Massan looks up to him and speaks of him as if he were greatly his superior. The secret of his power must lie in that steady, never-wavering inflexibility of purpose, that characterises our good ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... her acquiescence. His guest could not help thinking to himself that however pacific might be Mr. Ringgan's temper, no man in those days that tried men could have brought to the issue more stern inflexibility and gallant fortitude of bearing. His frame bore evidence of great personal strength, and his eye, with all its mildness, had an unflinching dignity that could never have quailed before duty ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... her reason for the delay. Few people argued with Mrs. Ogilvie; there was an inflexibility about her which made protest impossible. He knew that the case was a hopeless one, but life might certainly be prolonged if she would submit ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... that almost everybody must at this stage have become aware of how immensely stupid the academical idea of a canon appears besides this idea. How suitable both to life and the desire for perfection the Greek practice was! How theologically dense the unprogressive inflexibility of the academical practitioner! And ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... come into them, provided the senate would first banish Arnold of Brescia out of Rome, abolish the republic, and, together with the citizens, return to their duty. After much hesitation, and some attempts to procure a modification of such sweeping terms,—attempts which the inflexibility of the pope entirely frustrated,—those terms were accepted. On their completion, Adrian revoked the interdict, held his triumphant entry into Rome, and celebrated in the church of St. John Lateran, with great pomp and jubilee, ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... Wolsey.—The inflexibility of your mind had like to have ruined you in some of your measures; and the bigotry which you had derived from your long abode in a cloister, and retained when a Minister, was very near depriving the Crown of Castile of the new-conquered kingdom of Granada by the revolt ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... understands that it is necessary to begin afresh, since the usual result has not been attained. He is then capable of reflection, and the series of acts which he accomplishes are not ordained with such inflexibility that it is impossible for him to modify them in order to conform them to ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... something of its hue from the cold sad tones of the forest. The serious depth of expression in her dark eyes seemed to deepen yet more, and become yet more concentrated—their glance acquired a yet keener intentness—an inflexibility of direction—which suffered them seldom to turn aside from those moody contemplations, which had made her, for a long time, infinitely prefer to gaze upon the rocks, and woods, and waters, than upon the warm and wooing ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... reputation of learning and piety which this prelate enjoyed in common with so many of his clerical contemporaries, he added an extraordinary earnestness in the promotion of Christian knowledge, and a courageous inflexibility on points of professional duty, imitated by few and excelled by none. His manly spirit disdained that slavish obsequiousness by which too many of his episcopal brethren paid homage to the narrow prejudices and state-jealousies ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... ask, what equal he has? The heart of him is of the true Prophet cast. "He lies there," said the Earl of Morton at his grave, "who never feared the face of man." He resembles, more than any of the moderns, an old Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking adherence to God's truth, stern rebuke in the name of God to all that forsake truth: an old Hebrew prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh minister of the sixteenth ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... thinner and older. I saw him very near, and once through my glass; the resemblance to Branwell struck me forcibly—it is marked. He is not ugly, but very peculiar; the lines in his face show an inflexibility, and, I must add, a hardness of character which do not attract. As he stood near me, as he looked at me in his keen way, it was all I could do to stand my ground tranquilly and steadily, and not to ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Irrevocable was the doom, and the lowering aspect of the proud dame of Waddow, as the door unclosed, and a faint light from the loophole opposite revealed her enemy in all the mockery of repose—grim, erect, and undisturbed—showed the inflexibility ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... confession, even when it described a doubleness that was conscious and deliberate, really implied no more than that wavering of belief concerning his own impressions and motives which most human beings who have not a stupid inflexibility of self-confidence must be liable to under a marked change of external conditions. In a life where the experience was so tumultuously mixed as it must have been in the Prate's, what a possibility was opened ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Elisabeth with a gentle inflexibility of purpose. "Will you give a message to Sara for me?" Audrey nodded. "Ask her to come and see me to-morrow, and tell her that—that I will explain." Suddenly she stretched out an impulsive hand. "Oh, Mrs. Maynard! If you knew ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... been a sturdy cottage, with a grim endurance and inflexibility which even some later and lighter additions had softened rather than changed. On either side of the door, against the bleak whitewashed wall, two tall fuchsias relieved the rigid blankness with a show of color. The windows ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... was a comparative stranger in Carleton, having but recently purchased the factories from the heirs of the previous owner; but he had been in charge long enough to establish a reputation for sternness and inflexibility ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... over her forehead. That was the epoch when her calamity came to her, when the hair was worn in that fashion. A woman seldom alters her coiffure after a calamity of a certain nature happens to her. The figure had taken a compact rigidity, an unfaltering inflexibility, all the world away from the elasticity of matronhood; and her eyes were clear and fixed like her figure, neither falling, nor rising, nor puzzling under other eyes. Her lips, her hands, her slim feet, were conspicuously single, too, in their intent, neither ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... character. We admire people who stand for something; who are centered in truth and honesty. It is not necessary that they agree with us. We admire them for their strength, the honesty of their opinions, the inflexibility of their principles. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... inflexibility in trampling on rights which no independent nation can relinquish, Congress will feel the duty of putting the United States into an armor and an attitude demanded by the crisis, and corresponding with the national ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... who at once began to batter it passionately with a pole, and a long line of sneering camels confronted them, treading stealthily, and turning their serpentine necks from side to side as they came onwards with a soft and weary inflexibility. In the distance there was a vision of a glaring market-place crowded with moving forms ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... not bad sort of a fellow, captain, but no hero. I have had one or two qualities which have pushed me up—a skill—craft with using words, as you have with tools, for instance, an inflexibility of purpose, a certain tact in influencing large bodies of men. I have never had any affection for them. I have two or three stanch friends. Other men and women are part of the world's furniture ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... complexity of human action as civilization advanced outstripped the efforts of the law. Sometimes ancient custom furnished no redress for a wrong which sprang from modern circumstances. Sometimes the very pedantry and inflexibility of the law itself became in individual cases the ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... took place in the afternoon of the day succeeding his return; perhaps, because the boys acquired strength of mind from the suspense of the morning, or, possibly, because Mr Squeers himself acquired greater sternness and inflexibility from certain warm potations in which he was wont to indulge after his early dinner. Be this as it may, the boys were recalled from house-window, garden, stable, and cow-yard, and the school were assembled in full conclave, when Mr Squeers, with a small bundle of papers ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... moment the indomitable inflexibility of purpose of our heroine had not faltered for an instant, neither had she suffered the slightest despondency, in view of the terrible array of disheartening circumstances that had continually confronted her, but when she realized ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... So long as the band of believers was a small and persecuted one, no temptation to violate the rule could exist. But as the Church grew, and acquired influence and position, it discovered that good policy demanded that the sternness and inflexibility of its youthful theories should undergo some modification. It found that it was not the most successful method of enticing stragglers into its fold to stigmatize the gods they ignorantly worshipped as devils, and to persecute them as magicians. The more impetuous and enthusiastic supporters did ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... a place called Green Bay, which serves as the extreme frontier between the United States and the Indians on the north-western side. Here I became acquainted with an American officer, Major H., who, after talking to me at length on the inflexibility of the Indian character, related the following fact:—"I formerly knew a young Indian," said he, "who had been educated at a college in New England, where he had greatly distinguished himself, and had acquired the external appearance of a member of civilized ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... than any other human being. Here his character displayed itself; he was more amazed than overcome. Made a judge, and the judge of an adored woman, he found in his soul the equity of a judge as well as the inflexibility. A lover still, he thought less of his own shattered life than of his wife's life; he listened, not to his own anguish, but to some far-off voice that cried to him, "Clemence cannot lie! Why should she ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... Neapolitan frontier into the States of the Church with twelve thousand men, taking the towns {p.276} that lay in his way; and protesting while he did it that he was the most faithful servant of the Holy See. Individually a pious Catholic, officially a military machine, Alva obeyed orders with mechanical inflexibility, and, irresistible as destiny, advanced towards Rome. The college of cardinals, who remembered the occupation of the city by Bourbon's army, implored the pope to have pity on them. The pope had been too precipitate in commencing operations without waiting for the ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... multitude, indignant at public ingratitude, and taking a ruthless revenge. But the performance of the great actor on this night opened another and a finer view to me. Till now, I had seen the hero, a Roman, merely a gallant chieftain of the most unromantic of all commonwealths, the land of inflexibility, remorseless daring, and fierce devotement to public duty. But, by throwing the softer feelings of the character into light, Kemble made him less a Roman than a Greek—a loftier and purer Alcibiades, or a republican Alexander, or, most and truest of all, a Roman Achilles—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... feelings, he took measures to have De Soto assassinated. Such is the uncontradicted testimony of contemporary historians. But every day revealed to him more clearly the strength of Isabella's attachment for De Soto, and the inflexibility of her will. He became seriously alarmed, not only from the apprehension that if her wishes were thwarted, no earthly power could prevent her from burying herself in a convent, but he even feared that if De Soto were to be assassinated, she would, by self-sacrifice, follow ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... both as regards good and evil in the world, which are by no means inferior to the inflexibility of purpose ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... holiness? I can well remember that as a child I used to tremble at the thought of it, for somehow, like a good many other people, I had been taught to think of the divine holiness as synonymous with merciless inflexibility. But holiness, righteousness, justice, mercy, love, are but different expressions of the same spiritual reality. One might go on multiplying these considerations for ever, but there is no need to do so. Sufficient has been said to demonstrate the fact that the doctrine of the Fall is ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... pleasant, this sweet possession and command. How much like an overgrown boy he had become, since she had wakened to find herself in his power that morning in the hills! The harshness and inflexibility had left his atmosphere entirely. She was only afraid of him now because he had refused to be dismissed. But ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... Sacramento, on further business of the mine, leaving his two daughters in the family of a wealthy friend until he should return for them. He opposed their ready suggestion to return to Devil's Ford with a new and unnecessary inflexibility: he even met their compromise to accompany him ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... greater story in which it is enshrined and with which it is interwoven, the story of that other snare in which my Lord Viscount Wellington took the French, goes on. This story is the history of the war in the Peninsula. There you may pursue it to its very end and realise the iron will and inflexibility of purpose which caused men ultimately to bestow upon him who guided that campaign the singularly felicitous and fitting ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... She wore also a large, loose, dark-coloured wrapper, which came well up round her neck, and which was not buoyed out, as were her dresses in general, with an under mechanism of petticoats. It clung to her closely, and added to the inflexibility of her general appearance. And then she had encased her feet in large carpet slippers, which no doubt were comfortable, but which struck her visitor as being strange and unsightly. "Do you find a difficulty in getting your people together for early morning prayers?" she said, as ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... tribes in Amazonia, each having a different language; even the scattered members of the same tribe can not understand each other.[181] This segregation of dialects is due in great part to the inflexibility of Indian character, and his isolated and narrow round of thought and life. When and where the Babel existed, whence the many branches of the great Tupi family separated, we know not. We only know that though different in words, these languages have the same grammatical construction. ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... from the unrivalled delicacy of her sentiments, I cannot but admire. Ah, cruel Matilda, and will not one banishment satisfy the inflexibility of thy temper, will not all my past sufferings suffice to glut thy severity? Is it still necessary that the happiness of months must be sacrificed to the inexorable laws of decorum? Must I seek in distant climes a mitigation of my fate? Yes, too amiable tyrant, thou ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... army, and his patronage being almost unlimited, it was natural, they say, that he should be received with cheers. From a lieutenant up to a general, all are dependent on his favor for promotion. At all events, his austerity and inflexibility have been relaxed, and he has made popular speeches wherever he has gone. I hope good fruits will ensue. But he returns to find the people here almost in a state of starvation in the midst of plenty, brought on by the knavery or incompetency of ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... to Miss Howe.—Another visit from her aunt and sister. The latter spitefully insults her with the patterns. A tender scene between her aunt and her in Arabella's absence. She endeavours to account for the inflexibility ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... freely his own inflexibility and censoriousness. His account of his father makes one believe in the fatality of heredity. Born of old nonconformist stock, the elder Spencer was a man of absolute punctuality. Always he would step out of his way to kick a stone off the pavement ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... Anthony considered swiftly what to do. He studied the grave brown eyes an instant in silence, their beauty and the inflexibility in their depths appealing to him with equal force. He loved the tough little will. He recognised it as his own—the same powerful quality which had brought him thus far on the road to fortune after being landed at the furthermost end from ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... go away. They obeyed at once, and scarcely had they left by one door than the curtain of the other was raised, and the monk, pale, immovable, solemn, appeared on the threshold. When he perceived him, Lorenzo dei Medici, reading in his marble brow the inflexibility of a statue, fell back on his bed, breathing a sigh so profound that one might have supposed it ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Inflexibility. This seemed to be the characteristic that marked Baker and his kind. Defender of the Fixed Position might well have been his title. With all his might and power, Bill Baker defended the Fixed Position he had chosen, the Fixed Position behind ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... had no children, and her most tender affections were concentrated upon her husband and her brother. The scruples which caused the latter to forswear matrimony grieved her deeply, for, knowing the inflexibility of his character, she was sure that no one in the world could make ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... with her young mistress, because she now considered his interest as inseparably connected with her own. Surely nothing could be more absurd or preposterous than the articles of this covenant, which she insisted upon with such inflexibility. How could she suppose that her pretended lover would be restrained by an oath, when the very occasion of incurring it was an intention to act in violation of all laws human and divine? and yet such ridiculous conjuration is commonly the cement of every conspiracy, how dark, how treacherous, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... answer. Only in the silence that followed she saw his face change. Something that had been hope—a fighting hope—died out of his eyes and his jaw seemed to set itself with a curious inflexibility. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... myself: either God himself, being omnipresent, is the cause of everything—even of every thought and volition of mine—and so in a sense offers prayers to himself through me, or, if my will is independent of God's will, it implies arrogance and a doubt as to the inflexibility as well as the perfection of the divine determination to believe that it can be influenced by human appeals. When not quite seventeen years old I went to Goettingen University. During the next eight years I seldom saw the home of my parents; my father indulgently refrained ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... deep place in my brain through carrying it so long, and it is a subject that galls me to mention it. Yet, I must be consistent with my only eccentricity. Wherever I may go, there goes my hat; it makes my identity, my inflexibility; it achieves my promise to myself, that men shall respect ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... in special answers to prayer. They were not stumbled by the objection about the inflexibility of the laws of Nature; because they had the idea, that, when the Creator of the world promised to answer human prayers, He probably understood the laws of Nature as well as they did. At any rate, the laws of Nature were His affair, and not theirs. They were men, very apt, as the Duke of Wellington ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... gave him greater boldness to oppose the Protestants. Their demands were rejected, and the Diet broke up without coming to a decision. But Matthias was the victim of this dispute. The Protestants refused him their supplies, and made him alone suffer for the inflexibility of the ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... this fine young man touched us all. Every body was whispering about him; every body pitying him; the more, that there appeared no means of saving him. Every one knew well the necessity of punishing this double treason, and the inflexibility of Alexei Petrovitch in matters of this publicity: and, therefore, no one dared to intercede for the unfortunate culprit. The commander-in-chief was unusually thoughtful for the remainder of the evening, and the party separated early. I determined to speak a word for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... rejected thoughts:[152] they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when[153] the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... me," exclaimed Mr. Talboys, who, taking a stand upon his own vanity, traced every event in life from that one center, and resolutely declined to look at it from any other point of view. "For the purpose of influencing me. He knew the inflexibility of my character; to a certain degree he was acquainted with me, and knew that all attempts at softening my decision, or moving me from the fixed purpose of my life, would fail. He therefore tried extraordinary means; he has kept out of the way in order to alarm me, and when after due time he discovers ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Antipater[662] of Tyrus, a Stoic, he attached himself mainly to Ethical and Political studies, occupying himself with every virtue as if he were possessed by some divine influence; but above all that part of the beautiful which consists in steady adherence to justice and in inflexibility towards partiality or favour was his great delight. He disciplined himself also in the kind of speaking which works upon numbers, considering that, as in a great state, so in political philosophy, there should be nurtured with it ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... death, or by yielding to those arguments of their keepers which persuaded them to enlist in British regiments, to serve in other countries. Many yielded to these arguments, with the simple hope of escape from the horrors by which they were surrounded. When arts and arguments failed to overcome the inflexibility of these wretched prisoners, compulsion was resorted to, and hundreds were forced from their country, shipped to Jamaica, and there made to serve in British regiments.* Citizens of distinction, who, ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... misery results from man's helplessness and ignorance and nature's inflexibility in this one matter of crossing the ocean! What agonies of prayer there were during all the long hours that this ship was driving straight on to these fatal rocks, all to no purpose! It struck and crushed just the same. Surely, without the revelation of God in Jesus, who could believe in the divine ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... and unnatural, and you must have exceeding false notions of national honor to suppose that the world can admire a want of humanity or that national honor depends on the violence of resentment, the inflexibility of temper, or the vengeance ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... would have to contend with observations and prayers of all sorts, and resolved not to yield, determined to cut short all useless supplications, which would only make him lose precious time. He said, therefore, with a grave, severe, and almost solemn air, which showed the inflexibility of his determination: "Listen to me, wife—and you also, my son—when, at my age, a man makes up his mind to do anything, he knows the reason why. And when a man has once made up his mind, neither wife nor child can alter it. I have resolved to do my duty; so spare yourselves useless ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... distinguishes nothing, while in the vagueness and confusion of the distance it erects the hollow idols of its own Utopia.—But when power is to be seized by assault, and a dictatorship arbitrarily exercised, the mechanical inflexibility of such a mind is useful rather than detrimental. It is not embarrassed or slowed down, like that of a statesman, by the obligation to make inquiries, to respect precedents, of looking into statistics, of calculating and tracing beforehand in different directions the near and remote consequences ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... her while he questioned her. After the slovenly methods of Madame, after the loose reasoning and the muddled thinking of all the women she met in the course of her work, there was a positive pleasure in following the exactness and inflexibility of his logic. His reasoning was orderly, neat, elastic, without loose ends or tangled skeins to unravel, and she felt again, while she listened to him, the confidence which had come to her as soon ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... and refined pride gained from the English blood of the Maldens. For his part, Felix really loved the girl, and had let his impatience, that very day, carry him into a step that failed to move the elder Montmorot's inflexibility. He refused absolutely to give his daughter to a man without fortune or prospects. Felix was crushed, his hopes all shattered at a blow, by this answer, though he had a thousand reasons to expect it. And at what a moment! A half-unfolded ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... loss to discover an adequate cause. An oak, for instance, which loses its leaves in a St. Helena winter of 68 degrees, scarcely experiences the difference of temperature, which, reasoning by analogy, could cause that change. It would have continued to maintain inflexibility, in its original climate, its old habits, though exposed to far greater irregularity and severity of climate. But though the law is obeyed by many plants, it does not determine the periodical changes of the whole, nor do they all submit to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... yawning, for which much is to be said, nature itself suggests such correctives and preventives. To save men from being victims of their occupations is often to add a better and larger half to their motor development. The danger of the system, which now best represents this ideal, is inflexibility and overscholastic treatment. It needs a great range of individual variations if it would do more than increase circulation, respiration, and health, or the normal functions of internal organs and fundamental physiological activities. To clothe the frame with honest muscles that are faithful ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... very few days—or weeks, at the most, he would have recalled his erring son and have given Cynthia his blessing. He would, he told himself, have been forced eventually to yield when that paragon of inflexibility, Bob, dictated terms to him at the head of the locomotive works. Better let the generosity be on his (Mr. Worthington's) side. At all events, victory had never been bought more cheaply. Humiliation, in Mr. Worthington's eyes, had an element of publicity in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Mr. Forester's letter, not merely a willingness, but an alacrity and impatience, to return. We procured a second horse. We proceeded on our journey in silence. My mind was occupied again in endeavouring to account for Mr. Forester's letter. I knew the inflexibility and sternness of Mr. Falkland's mind in accomplishing the purposes he had at heart; but I also knew that every virtuous and magnanimous principle ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... charming, she made as if to rise, but Ellen still stood before her. She had something more to say. "If ever I am able," she said—"and I shall be able some day if I have my health—I will repay you." Ellen spoke with the greatest sweetness, yet with an inflexibility of pride evident in her face. Cynthia smiled. "Very well," she said, "if you feel better to leave it in that way. If ever you are able you shall repay me; in the mean time I consider that I am amply paid ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman |
