"Insolence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... delivered from love of such a nature. For if I, a stranger, had been one-tenth part so gross and so discourteous, you would most righteously have broke my head. It would have been in your part, as lover, to protect her from such insolence. Protect ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... too soon. We never felt this so deeply as when we finished the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work. Macaulay died too soon—for none but he could mete out complete and comprehensive justice to the insolence, the impertinence, the presumption, the mendacity, and, above all, the majestic ignorance of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... however, were not at all disposed to acquiesce in their defeat, and during the whole of the following year they were busy organising a fresh expedition on a vast scale, being resolved at all costs to put down the insolence of Corcyra. These preparations caused no small anxiety to the Corcyraeans. Hitherto they had stood apart, and refused to take any share in the complicated game of Greek politics. The course of affairs during the last forty years had tended more ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... him, but already the trouble had begun. Tuscaloosa, making an excuse, had withdrawn into the house, and when Soto wished to speak to him sent back a haughty answer. Soto would have soothed him, but one of Soto's men, made angry with the insolence of the Indian who had brought the Cacique's answer, seized the man by his cloak, and when the Indian stepped quickly out of it, answered as quickly with his sword. Suddenly, out of the dark houses, ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... she would have made a marvellous mannequin, except for the fact that mannequins are not usually allowed to perfume themselves in business hours. Her thin, rather high voice, which somehow matched her complexion and carriage, had its customary tone of amiable insolence, and her tired, drooping eyes their equivocal glance, as she faced the bearded and grave middle-aged bachelor and the handsome, muscular boy; even the boy was older than Queen, yet she seemed to condescend to them as if she were an immortal from everlasting to ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... skill as a pugilist which alone would have made him formidable. As it was, he was the autocrat of the village, and carried not the sceptre in vain. Conscious of his superiority, and perfectly secure of impunity, he lorded it over his fellows in a spirit of cowardly and brutal insolence, which made him hated even more profoundly than ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... an eternal entry long and narrow, is a puffy pug-dog, with a personal animosity towards us, who triumphs over Time. The bark of that baleful Pug, a certain radiating way he had of snapping at our undefended legs, the ghastly grinning of his moist black muzzle and white teeth, and the insolence of his crisp tail curled like a pastoral crook, all live and flourish. From an otherwise unaccountable association of him with a fiddle, we conclude that he was of French extraction, and his name FIDELE. He belonged to some ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... the Titans' insolence? Who rescued me from certain death, From slavery? Didst thou not do all this thyself, My sacred glowing heart? And glowedst, young and good, Deceived with grateful thanks ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... reinforcements to be had from the North; vast fatigue duties in throwing up earthworks imposed on our insufficient garrison; the enemy continually increasing both in insolence and numbers; our only success the capture of Fort Pulaski, sealing up of Savannah; and this victory offset, if not fully counter-balanced, by many minor gains of the enemy; this was about the condition of affairs as seen from the headquarters fronting Port Royal bay, ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... Wood, that he is guilty of great indiscretion, by causing so honourable a name as that of Mr. Walpole to be mentioned so often, and in such a manner, upon his occasion: A short paper printed at Bristol and reprinted here reports Mr. Wood to say, that he "wonders at the impudence and insolence of the Irish in refusing his coin, and what he will do when Mr. Walpole comes to town." Where, by the way, he is mistaken, for it is the true English people of Ireland who refuse it, although we take it for granted that the Irish will do so too whenever ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... me I was a regular modern Frankenstein, and that I had made a young monster to worry me to death. Such insolence! Dexter's growing a very nice lad, and I feel as if I could make a nobleman of him if I liked, but I think I'll send him to a good school for a bit. You see, he's full of ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... ease here,' said Montesma, facing the two men with a diabolical recklessness and insolence of manner. 'Not one of these fellows on board knows a dozen ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... opened, and a man unceremoniously walked in, his entrance immediately following a little sullen knock that had made a mockery of asking permission. An ill-looking man, in the worst sense; his face being a mixture of cunning, meanness, and insolence. He shut the door, and came with a slow, leisurely step into the middle of the room, without speaking a word. Mr. Carleton saw the blank change in Fleda's face. ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... praised your dress," Philip replied, looking wise. "Did ever you know anything so cool in your life? Was it ignorance, now, or insolence?" ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... a person of this brand is not a rebel or a revolutionary, but quite simply a thick-skin; a thick-skin endowed with that insolence of cleverness which is the enemy of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... of Edward III. was enacted what is called the Statute of Labourers. In the preamble, it complains much of the insolence of servants, who endeavoured to raise their wages upon their masters. It therefore ordains, that all servants and labourers should, for the future, be contented with the same wages and liveries (liveries in those times ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... turned him about, and straightway knew Pallas Athene; and terribly shone her eyes. He spake to her winged words, and said: "Why now art thou come hither, thou daughter of aegis-bearing Zeus? Is it to behold the insolence of Agamemnon, son of Atreus. Yea, I will tell thee that I deem shall even be brought to pass: by his own haughtinesses shall ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... too, in all the insolence of beauty, defying criticism, and challenging the admiration that was lavished on her. I should like to describe her dress; but I know how dangerous it is for the uninitiate to venture within the verge of those awful mysteries over which, as hierophants, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... Bishop into a conversation that lasted for ten minutes. The women looked on Lucien as a phenomenon. His unexpected insolence had struck Mme. du Chatelet dumb; she could not find an answer. Looking round the room, she saw that every woman admired Lucien; she watched group after group repeating the phrases by which Lucien crushed her with seeming disdain, and her ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... success in the House of Commons is not, indeed, so rare as it was twenty years ago, for the studied rhetoric which served our great-grandfathers in their ambitious pursuit of notoriety has given place to the arts of audacity, innovation, and the sublime courage of youthful insolence, which have occasionally worked ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of such insolence?" sputtered Mr. Downes. "You see, Mary, what this young ruffian has done to poor Paul? Stand still, will you?" he added, jerking Paul around as he tried to untie the cod line. Paul began to snivel; I reckon his father ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... defiant; and the young potato-diggers, having, as they supposed, got the information they wanted, suffered their insolence to ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... scene Rance had been sitting back in his chair chewing his cigar in contemptuous silence, while his face wore a look of languid insolence, a fact which, apparently, did not disturb the woman in the least, ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... promotion than valor in an engagement with the enemy. Such were the substantial wrongs inflicted by Great Britain; nor were any pains taken to cloak their character; on the contrary, they were done with more than British insolence and offensiveness, and were accompanied with insults which alone (p. 045) constituted sufficient provocation to war. To all this, for a long time, nothing but empty and utterly futile protests were opposed by this country. The affair of the Chesapeake, indeed, threatened ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... commission pour corriger les statuts de la republique, et reprimer par les lois l'insolence des nobles. Une ordonnance fameuse, connue sous le nom d'Ordinamenti della Giustizia, fut l'ouvrage de cette commission. Pour le maintien de la liberte et de la justice, elle sanctionna la jurisprudence la plus tyrannique, et ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... furnish occasion to the States General, when they shall have leisure to attend to matters of this kind, to disavow any future tributary treaty with them. These pirates respect still less their treaty with Spain, and treat the Spaniards with an insolence greater than ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... cynically, shrugged her shoulders. First, Craig's impudent assumption that she loved him, and his rude violation of her lips; now, this frank insolence of insult, the more savage that it was unconscious—and from the oldest and closest of her men friends. If one did not die under such outrages, but continued to live and let live, one could save the situation only by laughing. So, Margaret ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... twenty years ago that this part of the country was seized by the British without bloodshed, and the foolish and dissolute King Theebaw was made prisoner for his stupid insolence, and deported, with his two wives, to India, where they are still spending their days in retirement. Upper Burma has, however, put on new beauty and prosperity since the British have taken it over; and the people ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... there was something about this man's face and manner, his masterful spirit underneath his courteous bearing, his look of masculine power and domination, his admiring eyes that fixed themselves on her so unflinchingly—not with insolence, but as if he had the prescriptive right of manhood to look at her, only a woman, as he chose, he commanding and she obeying—that quelled and silenced her even beyond her wont. He was the first gentleman of noteworthy appearance who had ever spoken to her—not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... one single drop of alcohol?... Science and technical knowledge are passing through a great period now, but for our sort it is a flabby, stale, dull time.... The causes of this are not to be found in our stupidity, our lack of talent, or our insolence, but in a disease which for the artist is worse than syphilis or sexual exhaustion. We lack "something," that is true, and that means that, lift the robe of our muse, and you will find within an empty void. Let me remind you that the writers who we say are for all time or are simply good, ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... established, notwithstanding the violent assaults made by Genet's partisans upon the integrity of Messrs. Jay and King; and on the very day when, as we have observed, he was received in New York in the midst of pealing bells and roaring cannon, a public meeting was held, in which his insolence was rebuked, and the policy of Washington's proclamation of neutrality strongly commended. Similar meetings were held throughout the Union, and there soon appeared a demonstration of public sentiment, the existence of which was not suspected by ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... were repealed by authority of parliament. The commons next deliberated, and presented their petitions. They attributed the insurrection to the grievances suffered by the people from: 1. The purveyors, who were said to have exceeded all their predecessors in insolence and extortion; 2. From the rapacity of the royal officers in the chancery and exchequer, and the courts of king's bench and common pleas; 3. From the banditti, called maintainers, who, in different counties, supported themselves ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... business it is to examine and settle the public accounts, that so he may be enabled to obtain a proper and early settlement, and prevent the dangerous effects of inattention or corruption on one hand, or of delay, insolence, and tyranny to individuals concerned in such accounts, on the other. And on account of this power the Financier should have no accounts with the public himself, but wherever expenditures are necessary in his department, he should employ proper persons ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... the latter of these two classes. 'Presumptuous sins' does not, perhaps, convey to an ordinary reader the whole significance of the phrase, for it may be taken to define a single class of sins—namely, those of pride or insolence. What is really meant is just the opposite of 'secret sins'—all sorts of evil which, whatever may be their motives and other qualities, have this in common, that the doer, when he does them, knows ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... universe which it is to explain, and therefore far broader than anything which the mind of man can conceive. A protest against sectarian thought must always be an aspiration towards truth. Who shall dare to claim a monopoly of the Almighty? It would be an insolence on the part of a solar system, and yet it is done every day by a hundred little cliques of mystery mongers. There lies ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... with a narrow-minded ignorance of all beyond the circle in which its members moved. In our day of comparative equality and general civility, no one who has not arrived at my age, and lived in Paris, can form any idea of the insolence and hauteur of the higher classes of society in 1815. The glance of unutterable disdain which the painted old duchesse of the Restoration cast upon the youthful belles of the Chausse d'Antin, or the handsome widows of Napoleon's army of heroes, defies description. Although ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... people, her dauntless courage and her amazing self-confidence. Her harsh, manlike voice, her impetuous will, her pride, her furious outbursts of anger came to her with her Tudor blood. She rated great nobles as if they were schoolboys; she met the insolence of Lord Essex with a box on the ear; she broke now and then into the gravest deliberations to swear at her ministers like a fishwife. Strangely in contrast with these violent outlines of her father's temper stood the sensuous, self-indulgent nature she drew from ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... "The insolence!" muttered the King to Denis. "These English islanders are brutal in their ways. If they knew who I was! Here, let's ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... forestal our forward war, And leave our legions full of dalliance: Waiting our idle wills at Capua. Fie, Romans! shall the glories of your names, The wondrous beauty of this capitol, Perish through Sylla's insolence and pride; As if that Rome were robb'd of true renown, And destitute of warlike champions now? Lo, here the man, the rumour of whose fame, Hath made Iberia tremble and submit: See Marius, that in managing estate, Though many cares and troubles he hath pass'd, And spent his youth, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... aunt Helen compared the conduct of that wretched slave Clare to Lucy's, who, she had the cruel insolence to say, entangled me into marriage?" the hero broke out loudly and rapidly. "You know—I told you, Adrian—how I had to threaten and insist, and how she pleaded, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was no bad miniature of her whole life. Very sad, very happy, full of danger, conflict and strife, warmed by outside sympathy, wounded by outside insolence. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Count's pardon, as a rebel should? Then will we tame your spirit. Is a little arrogant Corsican to defy all France, and Brienne school besides? Go, sir! We will devise some fine punishment for you, that shall well repay your insolence and disobedience." ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... waned. The tumult of the place had died down, for men were gathering in the houses to discuss and conjecture. And presently, sauntering along the street in a careless fashion, his spurs trailing in the dust, came Nicholas Temple. He stopped before the house and stared at me with a fine insolence, and I wondered whether I myself had not been too hasty in reclaiming him. A greeting died ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the bondage of truce in which the Atterburys held him. Wesley was no coward, and he ached to meet Jack face to face, arm to arm, and settle with that thoughtless insubordinate a rankling list of griefs heaped up in moments of over-vivacious frankness. He would make Jack smart for his arrogance, his insolence, his cursed condescension so soon as they were ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... arm, and the other infant endeavored in vain to prevent his design. They entered the dark world by compulsion, and their mother expired in a few minutes. One of them possessed a gentle disposition, and was named Enigorio, the Good Mind. The other possessed an insolence of character, and was called Enigonhahetgea; that is, the Bad Mind. The Good Mind was not content to remain in a dark situation, and was desirous to create a great light in the dark world; but the Bad Mind was desirous that the world should remain in its ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... boy? Remember, I want none of your insolence here. I will listen to you, but you ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... the successful insolence of victory, ventured to jeer him on the supposed reason for his vehement and ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... many years of vicissitude, adventure and intrigue, he was again on the throne of his ancestors, but placed there by the bayonets of the Government whose creature he was, an insult to the nation whom he had the insolence to call his people. ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... judgements above the more obvious and conventional considerations of propriety and style, praised the work as 'natural and elegant' in thought, and in language 'inexpressibly beautiful,' while at the same time with the petty insolence which habitually marked his utterances concerning any who stood in rivalry with his hero, he referred to the Faithful Shepherdess as being 'insufferably tedious' as a poem, and held that as a drama 'its heaviness can only be equalled by its want of art.' Gifford's spleen, however, had evidently ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... had till this very night preserved? But so it was. In the face of all we had seen it was difficult for us as ordinary reasoning men any longer to doubt its truth, and therefore at last, with humble hearts and a deep sense of the impotence of human knowledge, and the insolence of its assumption that denies that to be possible which it has no experience of, we laid ourselves down to sleep, leaving our fates in the hands of that watching Providence which had thus chosen to allow us to draw the veil of human ignorance, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Don't stand none o' her tricks, pal, though her'll take a lot o' taming, an' you ain't no match for 'er by your looks, but lay into 'er wi' yon stick an' do your best—" Having said which, he laughed again and, turning his pony, trotted off. Outraged by his insolence, I caught up the stick with some notion of running after him, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... rising from the bed of ease, Ran round the land, and pointed to the seas; When Emulation, born with jealous eye, And Avarice, lent their spurs to industry; Then one by one the numerous laws were made, Those to control, and these to succour trade; To curb the insolence of rude command, To snatch the victim from the usurer's hand; To awe the bold, to yield the wrong'd redress, And feed the poor with Luxury's excess." {3} Like some vast flood, unbounded, fierce, and strong, His nature leads ungovern'd man along; Like mighty bulwarks made to stem that tide, ...
— The Library • George Crabbe
... of the theater. I desired, anyhow, to tell him that I thought I would recover my voice, and that I might want another engagement with him after awhile. When I met him I fancied there was a shade of insolence in his manner. When I spoke of singing again he laughed, and said he guessed I would never want to go on the boards again. Why? I asked. Then he laughed again, and said "Mr. Phillips would not let me;" and then he began to abuse you, and said you "had forced him to give me fifty dollars ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... (against whom, for subtle reasons, he was already prejudiced) had taken offence; either she would not reply at all, or presently there would come a few lines of polite displeasure, intimating her disinclination to aid his project. He silently raged against 'the woman'. Her neglect was insolence. Had she not delicacy enough to divine the anxiety natural to one in his dependent position? Did she take him for an every-day writer of mendicant appeals? His pride fed upon the outrage ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... during Johnny's speech, and doubted whether the hanging of the head, etc., was merely acting; but before he had spoken two sentences he saw he was a beaten fox. Many said that the extreme flippancy and insolence of his manner was more remarkable than ever, from their being evidently assumed with difficulty. I have always thought Palmerston very much overrated as a speaker; his great power arose from his not only knowing his subject ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... take precaution, is to be feared, nothing, if you are negligent, goes as you desire. Take for examples the strength of the Lacedaemonians then, which you overcame by attention to your duties, and the insolence of this man now, by which through neglect of our interests we are confounded. But if any among you, Athenians, deem Philip hard to be conquered, looking at the magnitude of his existing power, and the loss by us of all ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... had not been able to speak to you since then. Well! last night, what do you think he did? When you were gone, he had the insolence to congratulate me on the opportunity then afforded of playing double dummy; and when I declined his proposition, but said that if he wished to have an hour's conversation I was at his service, he coolly told me ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... some insolence of manner, but as he might be addressing a future customer from the country, he replied with a show of civility that Master Cale was in the room behind the shop, curling the perukes of some gentlemen, but that Tom ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... sister of Ewan Macpherson; and no sooner did he suspect the truth, than he dashed from his mind every friendly and grateful feeling towards the man who had saved his life; and saw in Allan Cameron only the hereditary foe of his clan, whose daring insolence had attempted to disgrace the name of Macpherson, by seeking to win the heart of its most loftily descended maiden. Full of resentment at what he deemed so deep an insult, he was ranging the groves and thickets of Glen Feracht in quest of Cameron, like a wolf prowling ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... With your obstinacy, your insolence, your savage boisterous temper towards all who you think have no business to speak to you, your malicious pranks, your ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... at the comparison between the houses, but at the ingratitude and insolence of the girl. "Very well," said she, addressing herself to her aunt; "if her parents are contented, of course it is not for me or for papa to be discontented. The thing to think of is the honesty of the man and his industry,—not ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... December and the publisher was clamouring for copy. In the proud insolence begot of January's shining possibilities and Kate's neat memorandum, Hugh had ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... rambles! If he might even go to play with her sometimes in the garden behind Peter Stuyvesant's house. He frowned at the thought: it was not hard to picture the old governor falling into one of his rages at the insolence of the Jewish boy who dared to walk down the garden path. And yet what fun they would have had with every bush a mysterious fairy castle, every tree a pirate ship to take them across the Main. He sighed regretfully, turning to listen to his ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... by the dignified official who filled the post of Governor of Cuba, he stormed and fairly foamed at the mouth. To be utterly foiled and discomfited by this resurrected pirate, and to be afterwards addressed in terms of such unheard-of insolence and abuse, was more than he could bear, and, in the presence of many of his officials and attendants, he swore a terrible oath that after that hour he would never again give quarter to any buccaneer, no matter when or where he was captured, or what he might be doing at the time. ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... message, Jane," cried Mary. "I have ears and can hear for myself." Then turning to Brandon: "If your insolence will permit you to receive a message from so insignificant a person as the king's sister, I beg you to say to the queen that I shall be with ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... Monopoly in its most aggressive form. Among the intrenched powers which have sapped the vitality and are a menace to the existence of our form of republican government, he is strong with their strength, dangerous with their power, perilous with the insolence of their courtesies, the blandishment of their open or ...
— How Members of Congress Are Bribed • Joseph Moore
... he added the next moment, "that I am excusing you for impertinence, not at all; but it was what you have had to suffer from Enna's insolence. I shall put a stop to that, for I ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... their lights at the accustomed hours, according to the good and ancient usage of this City and Acts of the Common Council on that behalf." The result of this neglect was "when nights darkened the streets then wandered forth the sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine." ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... capable as monarchs of the most cruel oppression and injustice. It is but too true, that the love, and even the very idea of genuine liberty is extremely rare. It is but too true, that there are many whose whole scheme of freedom is made up of pride, perverseness, and insolence. They feel themselves in a state of thraldom, they imagine that their souls are cooped and cabined in, unless they have some man, or some body of men, dependent on their mercy. The desire of having some one below ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... weakest among us know what he is next to do—for the silliest are those who spread these rumors. Let us dismiss such talk, and remember only that Philip is our enemy—that he has spoiled us of our dominions, that we have long been subject to his insolence, that whatever we expected to be done for us by others has proved against us, that all the resource left us is in ourselves, and that, if we are not inclined to carry our arms abroad, we may be forced to engage at home. Let us be persuaded of this, and then we shall come to ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... benevolence, and a steadfast purpose. Others had ridiculed his inability to understand manners different from those of his own country. He had seen a good deal of society both in London and in the country, and had never hesitated to express his opinions with an audacity which some had called insolence. When he had trodden with his whole weight hard down on individual corns, of course he had given offence,—as on the memorable occasion of the dinner at the parson's house in Dillsborough. But, on the whole, he had produced for himself a general respect among educated men which was not diminished ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... in a cowed voice, "you know too much. Well, then, she was taken that you might follow her to Zululand to ask her life, and you see that the plan was good, for you came; and," he added, recovering some of his insolence and familiarity: "we are here together, two white people among all ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... dressed with that perfection crowned with negligence which the Englishman of the upper classes so admirably achieves. He was, in fact, unmistakably a gentleman, at least by birth, though his bored manner held a hint of insolence, a suggestion of the bounder. His hazel eyes, glancing about with irritable restlessness, were curiously devoid of any depths, his mouth showed a mixture of weakness and obstinacy, devil-may-care courage and lack of moral stamina. An after-the-war ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... gained a livelihood. They believed that this was the fault of the republic which they had at first adored and from which each day they were now becoming more detached. The financiers, both Christians and Jews, became by their insolence and their cupidity the scourge of the country, which they plundered and degraded, as well as the scandal of a government which they never troubled either to destroy or preserve, so confident were they that they could operate without hindrance under all governments. Nevertheless, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... prohibition; the Count de Frontenac at once sent M. Bizard, lieutenant of his guards, with an order to arrest them. The governor of Montreal, M. Perrot, who connived with them, publicly insulted the officer entrusted with the orders of the governor-general. Indignant at such insolence, M. de Frontenac had M. Perrot arrested at once, imprisoned in the Chateau St. Louis and judged by the Sovereign Council. Connected with M. Perrot by the bonds of friendship, the Abbe de Fenelon profited by the occasion to allude, in the sermon which he delivered in ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... the heavens lay; Around her, flowers scattered earth with gold, Or down the path in insolence held sway— Like cavaliers who ride the elves' highway— Scarlet and blue, within ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... situation. His brother-in-law, M. Pelletier, then Econome of the Lycee at Vendome, was in the thick of the strife, and his post was not unattended with danger—though the Lycee had become an International Ambulance. It was sometimes hard for him to restrain his indignation before the insolence and partiality of the victors: once, for instance, he appealed to the general in command to obtain for the French wounded an equal portion of the bread given to the Prussians; but he was pushed by ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... but one small canoe that intended to accompany us any longer, and that in which Mr Hamilton had been to this time intended to proceed no further to the northward, our cacique proposed to him to come into our canoe, which he refused, as the insolence of this fellow was to him insupportable; he therefore rather chose to remain where he was, till chance should throw in his way some other means of getting forward; so here we left him, and it was some months ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... what it pleases me to do," declared the don sternly. "Advice from my vaqueros I do not seek. And you," he said haughtily, "have choice of two things; you may crave pardon for your insolence to my guest, who is also my friend, and who will henceforth have charge of my vaqueros and my cattle, or you may go whither you will; to Don Jose Pacheco, I ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... Unable to endure the insolence of a subordinate toward the great Chieftain, whom he loved with a boy's blind devotion, Hay sprang ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... entertainment of the evening. When the merriment is at its height, a heavy step is heard in the corridor, and the marble man enters. Don Giovanni is still undaunted, and even when his terrible visitor offers him the choice between repentance and damnation, yields not a jot of his pride and insolence. Finally the statue grasps him by the hand and drags him down, amid flames and ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... trying to disconcert the young captain with a stare of cold insolence, "I guess you don't understand quite who ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... following. And though so be, that no man can tell utterly the number of the twigs, and of the harms that come of pride, yet will I shew a part of them, as ye shall understand. There is inobedience, vaunting, hypocrisy, despite, arrogance, impudence, swelling of hearte, insolence, elation, impatience, strife, contumacy, presumption, irreverence, pertinacity, vain- glory and many another twig that I cannot tell nor declare. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... suzerain.[66] This was called subinfeudation, and the vassal of a vassal was called a subvassal or subtenant. There was still another way in which the number of vassals was increased. The owners of small estates were usually in a defenseless condition, unable to protect themselves against the insolence of the great nobles. They consequently found it to their advantage to put their land into the hands of a neighboring lord and receive it back from him as a fief. They thus became his vassals and could ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... rude justice was the result, but it was much too rude to meet an evil which was soon seen to be developing into a trade of systematic oppression. A novel step was taken when in 171 delegates from the two Spains appeared in the Curia to complain of the avarice and insolence of their Roman governors. A praetor was commissioned to choose from the senatorial order five of such judges as were wont to be selected for the settlement of international disputes (recuperatores), to sit in judgment ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... with indignation: - "One would really think, from the lofty tone you take, that my power was at an end; but if I have not been degraded from my office, you shall be punished for your insolence. You shall be made to answer for the lives of the Christians who have perished through Pizarro's obstinacy and your own. A day of reckoning will come for all these disturbances and murders, as you shall see, and ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... insolence my face flushed hotly and I opened my mouth to make some indignant reply, but I thought better of it and only walked away, laughing softly to myself. As I went away, I heard him mutter, 'What ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... her side while they waited for her carriage, and looked at her critically. Her slim, elegant figure had never seemed more attractive to him. Even the insolence of her tone and manner had an odd sort of fascination. He tried to hold for a moment the fingers which grasped ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... related of the severity and insolence of sir Henry Beddingfield are to be received with more distrust. We are told, that observing a chair of state prepared for the princess in an upper chamber at lord Williams's house, he seized upon it for himself and insolently ordered his boots to be pulled off in that apartment. Yet we learn from ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... yacht's cruise been an adequate reason for leaving the strong-room untouched? Again, when he had offered terms, had he not known that we could not accept them, and why had he conducted himself with such easy insolence as to prevent us from accepting them had we been disposed to do so? This problem frankly baffled me. But the other thought was more consolatory. I was convinced that Legrand was not much injured, and I guessed ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... nature, quietly, harmoniously, he cherishes a delusion. It can never be done, unless the age of miracles returns. No; we must expect a collision, full of sharp asperities and bitterness. We shall have to contend with the insolence, and pride, and selfishness of ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... and sat down in its cool shade. And when they had sat down, Nakula stricken with sorrow and urged by impatience, addressed his eldest brother of the Kuru race, saying, 'In our race, O king, virtue hath never been sacrificed, nor hath there been loss of wealth from insolence. And being asked, we have never said to any creature, Nay! Why then in the present case have we ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... by this insolence, but angered; for it hurt her, and embittered the pleasurable home-coming. Yet she quickly grasped the significance of it: the old patriarchal status of her father's time had passed away, and civilization, in a scorching ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... cried. "He insults my courage! This from one who is a mere Gringo—the most cowardly race of people on the earth. Oh, I shall exact revenge for this insolence. And you, Nicolas, had the impudence to come here with such ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... the figure of irony, all this hypothesis is starkly incredible. James was not a recklessly adventurous character to go weaponless with Ruthven, who wore a sword, and provoke him into insolence. If he had been ever so brave, the plot is of a complexity quite impossible; no sane man, still less a timid man, could conceive and execute a plot at the mercy of countless circumstances, not to be foreseen. Suppose the Master slain, and Gowrie a free man in the street. ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... Bulgars be so demented by the Lord as to attempt aggression, I have not the slightest doubt that Servia, moved by her treaty obligations, her interests, and her gratitude for our present aid, would again co-operate with us to humble Bulgarian insolence." [7] ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... possible that there may be a third sister, yet I think I have heard you say you had but one, and this reminiscence is anguish to my mind. Even more, the careless and unwarrantable allusions of Mr. Gregory to certain scars, evidently from burns that he had the insolence to observe on your neck and arms, and remark upon as mere foils to their beauty, in my first acquaintance with you and before I had a right to silence him, recurred to me as a partial confirmation of my fears. Without explaining ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... angry;—submissive this moment, arrogant and assuming the next;—seldom in a perfect calm, and frequently agitated to excess.—Hence arose contests and quarrels, even with those whose company in some humours he was most delighted with;—insolence to such whose way of thinking did not happen to tally with his own, and as partial an attachment to those who either did, or pretended ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... find it at the bottom of the hill again when another year called her to its renewed duties,—schooling her temper in unending inward and outward conflicts, until neither dulness nor obstinacy nor ingratitude nor insolence could reach her serene self-possession. Not for herself alone. Poorly as her prodigal labors were repaid in proportion to the waste of life they cost, her value was too well established to leave her without what, under other circumstances, would have been a more than sufficient compensation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... facility with which you adapt yourself to circumstances," scornfully. "You knew that I was but playing. I am fully capable of repaying any insolence offered to me, whether from D'Herouville, the vicomte . . . ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... where was Julien, the great manufacturer at the Gobelins, of the fine tapestry, so much distinguished both for the figures and the colours. The chevalier's carriage was very old. Says Julien, with a plebeian insolence, 'I think, sir, you had better have your carriage new painted.' The chevalier looked at him with indignant contempt, and answered, 'Well, sir. you may take it home and DYE it!' All the coffee-house rejoiced ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... lecturing me on how I should do things before he is in my establishment ten minutes. I don't know what it is. It may be that coming suddenly to a land where all men are treated on an equality and not kicked and expected to doff caps in thanks for the insolence, they can't stand the free rein and not go locoed. All I know is—where I'll employ an Irishman, or a Scotchman, or a Yorkshireman, on the jump, I will not employ a cockney. I ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... book was found, so I am not in a position to say what penalties my friend and her maid would have incurred if they had never been able to produce it. But Germans have often told me that servants as a class have real good reason to complain of police insolence and brutality. Here is an entry from a German servant's Dienstbuch, with nothing altered but the names. On the first page you found the ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... understand you, sir," he said, with a subdued air of insolence, glancing quickly about at the others who now ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... Walter. You shall know directly what he said about you—-but I can't repeat what he said to me. It was worse than the polite insolence of his letter. My hands tingled to strike him, as if I had been a man! I only kept them quiet by tearing his card to pieces under my shawl. Without saying a word on my side, I walked away from the house (for fear of Laura seeing us), and he followed, protesting softly ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... angrily. "Did you ever hear such amazing insolence? I give this pettifogging tradesman the privilege of publishing my novel in his rubbishy periodical and he dares to dictate terms to me! Half a novel, indeed! As if it were half a bale of calico. The besotted fool! As well ask a clock-maker to ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... itself in the Satanic to terrify cowards is the vilest form of impudence venturing at insolence; and an insolent impudence with Jew features, the Jew nose and lips, is past endurance repulsive. She dismissed her contemplation of Alvan. Luckily for the gentleman who had compared her to the Jew politician, she did not meet him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... change, every inadequate modification, is proclaimed aloud as a new or an improved method; and even the most foolish and superficial changes find at once their imitators, who themselves conceal their insolence behind some frivolous differences, and, with laughable ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... but there was something of mockery in the tone. Griggs might not have noticed it at any other time, but his thoughts had been occupied with Stefanone during the last two hours, and he resented what sounded like insolence. The tone implied that he had been on a fool's errand, and that Stefanone knew it. He said nothing, but stood still and scrutinized the man's face. There was an unwonted colour about the cheek bones, and the keen eyes sparkled under the brim of the soft hat. Stefanone ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... furnished after every encounter our troops had with the Dutch. It was the young men—some mere boys of fifteen—who displayed, with pardonable ignorance, bragging insolence. The men of maturer years, with very few exceptions, behaved like men, and in the hour of victory in many instances restrained the braggarts from committing cowardly acts. In this fight at the Nek, Private Venables of the 58th, who was one of the prisoners taken ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... were strolling through "Camp Buckingham," near Mansfield, Ohio, and came to a young soldier boiling beans. He was about to take them off the fire when Granger said: "My good fellow, don't take off those beans; they are not done." The young soldier squared himself and with some insolence said: "Do you think I don't know how to boil beans?" Granger, with great kindness of manner, said: "If you had eaten boiled beans in the army as many years as I have you would know it is better to leave them ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... your long train of cringing, trembling nobles, Your tribe of sallow monks, so deadly pale, All witnessed how you granted me this audience. Let me not be disgraced. Oh, strike me not With this most deadly wound—nor lay me bare To sneering insolence of menial taunts! "That strangers riot on your bounty, whilst Carlos, your son, may supplicate in vain." And as a pledge that you would have me honored, Despatch me straight to ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the plagues of his desperate trial. However I take it that the author was anxious that his parody should be as complete in form as possible, and, being rather impressed by the insouciance, not to say insolence, of the Satan of the original, seized his chance of bizarre characterisation and "celestial badinage" and let consistency go hang for the time. Certainly the theological disquisitions of Mr. WELLS ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... but safe, happy do we reckon our lot. But (to such a degree is no denial borne by villany) all things affright our virgin minds, and the dreadful Pyreneus is placed before our eyes; and not yet have I wholly recovered my presence of mind. He, in his insolence, had taken the Daulian and Phocean[29] land with his Thracian troops, and unjustly held the government. We were making for the temple of Parnassus; he beheld us going, and adoring our Divinities[30] in ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... hither harried whence, And without asking whither harried hence— O, many a taste of that forbidden Sole Must down the memory of that Insolence. ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten • Oliver Herford
... appearances, or, when necessary, under false statements. Somerset was sitting beside the king, whose hand rested familiarly on his shoulder, when the warrant was served on him. The haughty favourite frowned, and turned to his master with an exclamation against the insolence of daring to arrest a peer of the realm in the presence of his sovereign. But the king gave him poor encouragement, pretending to be very much alarmed by the power of the chief-justice, and saying: 'Nay, man, if Coke were to send for me, I must ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... note that, whereas he has accepted your advice and acted upon it, any further expression of advice from any of you or any future attempt of any legionaries to advise the Emperor will be regarded as an unbearable act of insolence and presumption and dealt with as such. Caesar commands you ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Orange, and desirous to be on friendly terms with France. But he had been sent in 1681 on a diplomatic mission to Versailles; and a short residence there had produced a complete change in his views. On a near acquaintance, he was alarmed by the power and provoked by the insolence of that Court of which, while he contemplated it only at a distance, he had formed a favourable opinion. He found that his country was despised. He saw his religion persecuted. His official character did not save him from some personal affronts which, to the latest day of his long career, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
