"Intractable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... given up hope of recovering his hold upon his sovereign, and turned his eyes elsewhere for support. The Earl of Crawford in the north country, and the Lord of Isles who was also Earl of Ross in the west, were as powerful and as intractable as Douglas himself, and more often in open rebellion than in amity with the King, a constant danger and disturbance of all good order and law. Douglas in his anger made an alliance with these two, by which all bound themselves to resent and avenge any injury offered to either. It was ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... brother, 'have the goodness not to interrupt me. This unhappy boy, Miss Trotwood, has been the occasion of much domestic trouble and uneasiness; both during the lifetime of my late dear wife, and since. He has a sullen, rebellious spirit; a violent temper; and an untoward, intractable disposition. Both my sister and myself have endeavoured to correct his vices, but ineffectually. And I have felt—we both have felt, I may say; my sister being fully in my confidence—that it is right you should receive this grave and dispassionate ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... quotha. Why, there you word the key-note, you touch the cornerstone, you ruthlessly illuminate the mainspring, of an intractable unfeeling universe. For instance, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Ethel romped with the little children—the rosy little trots—and took them on her knees, and told them a thousand stories. By these she was adored, and loved like a mother almost, for as such the hearty kindly girl showed herself to them; but at home she was alone, farouche and intractable, and did battle with the governesses, and overcame them one after another. I break the promise of a former page, and am obliged to describe the youthful days of more than one person who is to take a share in this story. Not always doth the writer know whither the divine Muse leadeth him. But of this ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pouring, like metal from the forge, into new shapes of society, of millions acting on a new scale of power, of nations summoned to a new order of existence, that I began to melt even the rigid prepossessions of that mass of granite, or iron, or whatever is most intractable—the Jew. I could perceive his countenance changing from a smile to seriousness; and, as I declaimed, I could see his hollow eye sparkle, and his sallow lip quiver, with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... had a horror of the Greeks. He said to his son: "I will tell what I have seen in Athens. This race is the most perverse and intractable. Listen to me as to an oracle: whenever this people teaches us its arts it ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... admirable political sense, the passion for work, the perseverance, magnanimity, and devotion to the future. It has allowed him, in the course of the last few years, to a certain extent to domesticate these intractable insects, though without their knowledge; for they yield to no foreign strength, and in their unconscious servitude obey only the laws of their own adoption. Man may believe, if he choose, that, possessing the queen, he holds in his hand the destiny and soul of the hive. In accordance ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... exaggeration to say that four fifths of our female servants are Irish. I have already given several reasons why this class are more intractable and difficult to manage than any other. To apply the rules I have given to this class will be more difficult than to the domestics of any other nation. But, as I have said, I have seen them enforced with success even in cases where an Irish domestic was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... awakened to the fact that Squire Rawson was not the simple cattle-dealer he appeared to be, but was a man to be reckoned with. He not only held a large amount of the most valuable property in the Gap, but had as yet proved wholly intractable about disposing of it. Accordingly, the agent of Wickersham & Company, Mr. Halbrook, came down to Gumbolt to look into the matter. He brought with him a stout, middle-aged Scotchman, named Matheson, with keen eyes and a red face, who was represented to be the man whom ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... to her," Patty sighed. "Azalea is really a trial. I don't know what to do with her. Sometimes she is so sweet and docile that I think I'm teaching her to be a civilised person, and then she flies off at a tangent and she's as unruly and intractable as she was ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... attended to. A different treatment is the fate of the state prisoners who languish in the dungeons of Austria. In Tuscany no man's life is taken for any offense whatever, and banishment is a common sentence against those who are deemed dangerous or intractable subjects. In all the other provinces a harsher system prevails. In Sardinia capital executions for political causes are frequent, and long and mysterious detentions are resorted to, as in Lombardy, with a view to strike terror into the ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... we brought up the story of German illumination to the time of the Hohenstaufen emperors. We may now make a new start with Frederick II., the eccentric, resolute, intractable, accomplished Stupor Mundi (1210-50). Not only was he a patron and encouraged art, but also an author. The work which he composed is still extant, and is preserved in the Vatican Library under the title De arte venandi cum avibus. Paintings of birds and hunting scenes embellish ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... read by one of the members in rotation. After this another Psalm is to be sung. At the end of these exercises the court shall be opened for public business. The object of the association being to establish a harmonious society of persons of different religious sentiments, all intractable people shall be excluded from it, such as those in communion with the Roman See usurious Jews, English stiff-necked Quakers, Puritans, fool-hardy believers in the Millenium and obstinate modern pretenders ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... reforming scholasticism in the light of a new physical science. The science was mathematical in its form, mechanistical in its doctrine, and unanswerable in its evidence—it got results. But it was metaphysically intractable, and the doctrines of infinite and finite substance which it generated furnish a gallery of metaphysical grotesques; unless we are to except Leibniz; his system is, if nothing else, a miracle of ingenuity, and there are moments when we are in ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... share. Finding her as ignorant as possible, and doubtless deeming her less intelligent than she really was, they intended to do as they liked with her. They must soon have discovered that it was not always easy. She was a saint, saints are intractable. What were the true relations between the Royal Council and the Maid? We do not know; and it is a mystery which will never be solved. The judges at Rouen thought they knew that she received letters from Saint Michael.[90] It is possible ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... the bounds of good government and protection, presented gradually such defenceless gaps as became inviting and easily penetrable by the intelligence of Mackenzie, and Alastair Ionraic acquired a great portion of his estates by this legitimate advantage, afterwards secured by the intractable arrogance of Macdonald of Lochalsh and the valour and military capacity of ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... Cyrene, a Greek colony on the north coast of Africa. He is said to have come to Athens because of his desire to hear Socrates; but from the notices of him which we find in Xenophon's memoirs he appears to have been from the first a somewhat intractable follower, dissenting especially from the poverty and self-denial of the master's mode of life. [205] He in course of time founded a school of his own, called the Cyrenaic from his own place of birth, and from the ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... revived. Poor Overtop did not know how much he loved her, until he saw how near he came to losing her. She had completely recovered, was ruddy and pretty with new health, and was Pet's first bridesmaid. Overtop thought pleasantly of her, and combed back his intractable cowlick. Matthew Maltboy was happy because he had taken a serious fancy to Miss Trapper, the second bridesmaid, a charming but peculiar girl, and the particular juvenile friend of Mrs. Frump. Matthew had met this young lady two or three times, and ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... on this new intractable material, this disconcerting revelation of the fact that success and art are in the modern world two very different things, the one belonging to the crowd, the other to solitude.... This old man might have waited. ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... the popular lecturer, though the devoted advocate of freedom to the slave, has rarely been regarded as either a trustworthy or an important man in the party which has represented his principles in this country. He has always been too free to be a partisan, too radical and intractable for a party seeking power or striving to preserve it. No party of any considerable magnitude has ever regarded him as its expositor. A thousand times have party-speakers and party-organs, professing principles identical with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... clusters of small red berries, which are used for Christmas decorations. The fully-developed leaves are too hard for her, too tough; she wants the tender tips of the nascent foliage. When I take this precaution, I can feed her on the intractable vine as readily as ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... for him to insist and to beg her; she showed herself intractable, and when they got to the door, she stated her conditions. "I will undertake not to leave this with you," she said, "if you will promise to do all I want to-day." And the whole affair seemed so funny to him that he agreed. "What do you ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... replied, "you expect me to do the same at will. I repeat to you, as to all the rest, I would not give a kopeck for any man I have ever met. Pouf! they do not interest me. Look! my adored one, I warn you that I shall prove a most intractable guest if you attempt to inveigle me into any alliance. Ah! you look guilty already! You see, I know you of old, you dear ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... her, but all in vain. In an easy quiet way, she either sent her rider over her head, or by a laughable manoeuvre sitting down like a dog on her haunches, slipped him off the other way. Her drollery made the poor men so fond of her that she was rarely chastised; and such a wilful, intractable wild Arab it would be hard to find. Upon her I was daily mounted; and surely the Lord watched over me then indeed. Inexperienced in riding, untaught, unassisted, and wholly unable to lay any check upon so powerful an animal, with an awkward country saddle, which by some fatality was never well ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... to precept and instruction, or redeemable from vice only by reason, but that it needed some other persuasion and moulding and softening influence to co-operate with reason, unless it were to be altogether intractable and refractory to philosophy. And Plato saw very plainly and confidently and decidedly that the soul of this universe is not simple or uncomposite or uniform, but is made up of forces that work uniformly and differently, in the one case it is ever marshalled in the same order and moves about ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... opposite, adverse, counter, opposed; repugnant, incompatible, contradictory, retroactive, antagonistic, conflicting, abhorrent, inconsistent; perverse, wayward, refractory, headstrong, intractable. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... of men, who, dealing as they constantly are with the most prosaic and intractable material, are yet poets at heart, there appears that other group who, headed perhaps by Mr. Shaw, and kindred in method with Thomas Hardy, are the chief gods of a younger race, as hostile to "sentimentalism" as George Meredith, but without either the power—or the ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... investigated. He did not deny the serious charge to this superintendent of public proprieties. With a heart as hard as old Pharaoh's he proposed to go on and do more likewise. In short, the representative of the Constitution could do nothing with this intractable professor. Hence "he did not stand upon the order of his going, but went at once," and reported that "according to Mr. Suiter's own statement, he is teaching a colored class, and he has lost a white pupil, which shows that his course is ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... I confess it?—to the experience meeting rather inclined to scoff, and I stopped, if not altogether to pray, at least to think very seriously of the value of the instrumentality thus brought to bear on such intractable material as the Kensal New Town population. The more cumbrous, even if more perfect or polished, machinery of the Established Church has notoriously failed for a long time to affect such raw material; and if it is beginning to succeed it is really by "taking a leaf out ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... intractable, and is to be combated by saline purges, bleeding, and stimulating application to the organ itself. Mercurial ointment, rubbed over the eyebrow, will ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... bother; the younger not so much, since, as they said, he continued to reveal a steady nature. The elder, however, was rebellious and intractable. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Under the intractable form of Boehme's speculations and amid their riotous fancy, no one will fail to recognize their true-hearted sensibility and an unusual depth and vigor of thought. They found acceptance in England and France, and have been revived ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... for the protection of a country, than along the sea-shore, where the savages generally dwell. From this course, he believed the king would derive an inestimable profit; for it is easy to suppose that Europeans will seek out this advantage rather than those of a jealous and intractable disposition to be found on the shores, and the ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... fallen to their lot at any time during the journey. There were a few who manifested sorrow at having been separated from relatives or friends with whom they had succeeded in travelling to the very gates of the city; and some others, as yet unbroken to misfortune, maintained a rebellious and intractable demeanor. But the majority had already made up their minds that slavery was henceforth their inevitable fate, and that their highest future happiness must be looked for in its alleviation rather than in its abolition; ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... within the trim mould of the sonnet. Pindar, the most passionate of poets, drove and pressed his feelings through the convolutions of the ode. Bach wrote fugues. The master of St. Vitale found an equivalent for his disquieting ecstasies in severely stylistic portraits wrought in an intractable medium. Giotto expressed himself through a series of pictured legends. El Greco seems to have achieved his stupendous designs by labouring to make significant the fustian ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... landed at Borneo, and passed into the interior on an excursion of pleasure. Himself and a companion had captured the Ourang-Outang. This companion dying, the animal fell into his own exclusive possession. After great trouble, occasioned by the intractable ferocity of his captive during the home voyage, he at length succeeded in lodging it safely at his own residence in Paris, where, not to attract toward himself the unpleasant curiosity of his neighbors, he kept it carefully secluded, until such time as it should recover from ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Each piece was his own, each piece was the product of his own versatility and his own strength. His pride and pleasure in this work were very great, and well they might be, for it is a fine thing to have learned to handle so intractable a material as iron. But in handling the iron patiently and consistently until he could do it without too much conscious thinking, and so without effort, he had also learned to handle himself naturally, more ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... Horkey.— Can anybody explain the etymology of the word Howkey or Horkey, generally used to denote a harvest-home merriment in our eastern counties? Forbes speaks of it as an intractable word, and neither he nor Sir J. Cullum have succeeded ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... inferior arts of communication by sea and land, maintained their dominion in a considerable part of Europe, Asia, and Africa, over fierce and intractable nations: what may not the fleets and armies of Europe, with the access they have by commerce to every part of the world, and the facility of their conveyance, effect, if that ruinous maxim should prevail, that ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... they have already accomplished in the pursuit of agricultural and mechanical work, the remarkable success which has attended the experiment of employing as freighters a class of Indians hitherto counted among the wildest and most intractable, and the general and urgent desire expressed by them for the education of their children may be taken as sufficient proof that they will be found capable of accomplishing much more if they continue to be wisely and fairly guided. The "Indian ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... other human being to realize the former and avoid the latter. And directly one has got to this critical pose towards things, just as one ceases to be content with things anyhow and to want them precisely somehow, one begins to realize just how intractable, confused and disingenuous are human affairs. Mr. Brumley had made himself see and had made her see how inevitable these big wholesale ways of doing things, these organizations and close social co-operations, have become unless there ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... small, woolly tufts. In the vicinity of Lake Ngami, Livingstone found them to be of larger stature and darker color, while Baines measured some in this region who were five feet six inches in height. In disposition the Bushmen are strikingly wild, malicious, and intractable, while their cerebral development is classed by Humboldt as belonging to almost the lowest class ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... bigots at the French court who could not follow the tangled thread of his tortuous policy.[1206] It was difficult for him to convince them that he had made this extraordinary concession simply in order to induce Antoine and his more intractable queen in their turn to attend the Roman Catholic services. Navarre was naturally the person whom legate and nuncio were most anxious to influence. For, respecting Catharine, they soon satisfied themselves that, if she was not a very ardent Romanist, she was nothing of a ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... hold you for an accursed person, and shake off the dust from their feet at you. And the more I thought over what I had got to say, the less I found I could say it, without some reference to this intangible or intractable part of the subject. It made all the difference, in asserting any principle of war, whether one assumed that a discharge of artillery would merely knead down a certain quantity of red clay into a level line, as in a brick field; or whether, out of every separately Christian-named portion of the ruinous ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... air of his nose being too big for his face, and his feet for his legs, gave him a look of awkwardness and extreme youth. His robes were red, according to the King's heraldry, and, alone among the Provosts, he was girt with a great sword. This was Adam Wayne, the intractable ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... to his wife when his visitors came, and demanding explanation. He could think of several possibilities, any one of which in his unenlightened mind might give him a claim, even a hold on the hitherto intractable West Pointer. Why, why had he not heard or dreamed before this long trial came to its dramatic close that there was some strong and mysterious connection between him and Loring, between prosecutor ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... intractable. She appeared to be smiling out of the corners of her eyes, while her back was half turned to Ferragut, acknowledging his mute and scrutinizing admiration. She had her hair loosely arranged like a woman who is not afraid of naturalness in her coiffure, and lets her waving ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... is easier to obtain coolies in the Khasi than in the Jaintia Hills, where a large proportion of the population is employed in cultivation. The Khasis are excellent labourers, and cheerful and willing, but they at once resent bad treatment, and are then intractable and hard to manage. Khasis are averse to working in the ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... added to the value of the claim. Such unamiable reluctance to sell advertised but one thing to him, and he was aware of a great relief when Hootchinoo Bill sank snoring to the floor, and he was free to turn his attention to his less intractable partner. ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... as time passed my evil grew worse, my moments of malignity and irony became more sombre and intractable. A real physical fever attended my outbursts of passion; I awakened trembling in every limb and covered with cold sweat. Brigitte, too, although she did not complain of it, began to fail in health. When I started to abuse her ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... from symmetry in the tune as raw material. The chorus of his cantata Jesus nun sei gepreiset is one of the most perfectly designed and quite the longest of movements ever based upon a chorale-tune treated phrase by phrase. Yet the tune is one of the most intractable in the world, though its most unpromising portion is the basis of the most impressive feature in Bach's design (the slow middle ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... would not have scrupled to sacrifice her to a man of ruined fortune, since by that means he could enrich himself; and he forbore to mention to her the motive of his sudden journey, lest the hope it might revive should render her more intractable, when submission ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... for them, Inseparably and eternally! The wisest and the best will prize thee most, And solitudes and cities will contend Which shall receive thee kindliest—sigh not so; Violence and fraud will never penetrate Where piety and poverty retire, Intractable to them, and valueless, And looked at idly, like the face of heaven. If strength be wanted for security, Mountains the guard, forbidding all approach With iron-pointed and uplifted gates, Thou wilt be welcome too in Aguilar, Impenetrable, marble-turreted, Surveying from aloft the limpid ford, The ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... study comes hard to you, my dear Enrico, as your mother says: I do not yet see you set out for school with that resolute mind and that smiling face which I should like. You are still intractable. But listen; reflect a little! What a miserable, despicable thing your day would be if you did not go to school! At the end of a week you would beg with clasped hands that you might return there, for you would be eaten up with weariness and shame; disgusted with your sports and with ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... Ishmael regarded his intractable mate with a smile of indulgent pity. Observing that she had already struck out a path for herself, different both from that of Abiram and the one he had seen fit to choose, and being unwilling to draw the cord of authority ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... land is mentioned in some ancient writings. Burning and slaking afforded the only known method of reducing stone for use in sour soils. Lime in this form not only is an effective agent for correcting soil acidity, but it improves the physical condition of tough and intractable clays, rendering them more friable and easy of tillage. Caustic lime also renders the organic matter in the soil more quickly available, an increase in yield quickly following an application. These three effects of burned ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... strong and vehement inclinations to all sorts of dishonesty as the most notorious of those engineers, but want abilities to put them in practice; and as they are always found to be the most obstinate and intractable people to be prevailed upon by reason or conscience, so they are as easy to submit to their superiors—that is, knaves—by whom they are always observed to be governed, as all corporations are wont to choose their magistrates out of their own members. As for knaves, they ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... a kind of impatient joy for the reply about to be made to this embarrassing question by Raoul, the intractable enemy of the king, his rival. The father hoped that the obstacle would overcome the desire. He was thankful to M. de Beaufort, whose lightness or generous reflection had thrown an impediment in the way of the departure of a son, now his only joy. But Raoul, still firm and tranquil, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the New England States have many excellent parts, I would be the last to deny; but that they were in the main a quarrelsome, intractable, mutinous, and mischief-making element in our armies during the Revolution, is not to be gainsaid. I know, of my own knowledge, how their fractious and insubordinate conduct grieved and sorely disheartened poor ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Dutch Calvinist, more nearly with the Puritans than with the Church of England. At the same time he had no great liking for so much independence of thought and action as New England had exhibited. In the negotiations which now definitely settled the affairs of this part of the world, the intractable behaviour of Massachusetts was borne in mind and contrasted with the somewhat less irritating attitude of the smaller colonies. It happened that the decree which annulled the charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut had not yet been formally enrolled. It was accordingly treated ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... swearing that he saw a tear in his eye, writes the following: "Up to this time I observed in my friend only the dominating traits of a hard-headed, hard-hearted boy, stubborn, impetuous, intractable. But from the time he related to me his dream, a change in his character was become manifest. In fact a new phase was being gradually unfolded. Three things I must emphasise in this connection: namely, the first dream ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... river to be loved: it is a barrier to be passed over. From its beginning in the marshes of Huleh to its end in the Dead Sea, (excepting only the lovely interval of the Lake of Galilee), this river offers nothing to man but danger and difficulty, perplexity and trouble. Fierce and sullen and intractable, it flows through a long depression, at the bottom of which it has dug for itself a still deeper crooked ditch, along the Eastern border of Galilee and Samaria and Judea, as if it wished to cut them off completely. There ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... casting of this size, if the material had been, for example, iron, would have offered no difficulties beyond those with which every practical founder is well acquainted, and which he has to encounter daily in the course of his ordinary work. But speculum metal is a material of a very intractable description. There is, of course, no practical difficulty in melting the copper, nor in adding the proper proportion of tin when the copper has been melted. There may be no great difficulty in arranging an organization by which several crucibles, filled with the ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... notions about liberty of thought and speech, and hovers between a latitudinarian and an enthusiast. Much admired and followed by the youth of his own age—modest, quiet, and unassuming in manner, but in his heart peculiarly bold and intractable. He is—Here follow three red crosses, Mr Morton, which signify triply dangerous. You see how important a person you are.—But what does ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... an establishment, which the traders had been compelled to abandon, in consequence of the intractable{25} conduct and pilfering habits of the Assineboine{26} or Stone Indians; and we learned that all the residents at a post on the south branch, had been cut off{27} by the same tribe some years ago. We travelled twelve miles to-day. The wolves ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... from England in a state of desperation, flew over to Ireland, threw up his commission, and took orders in the church. But instead of adopting the quietude which would have been suitable for his new profession, the clerical robes seem to have made him more intractable than the military uniform. After some months of rambling and romance in Ireland, he rushed over to England again, resolving to conquer or die at her feet; but the lady still rejected him, and, being alarmed at his violence, threatened to appeal to Lord ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... about what goes on in Khandawar. I doubt if there's another Resident in India who knows as little of the underhand devilment in his State as I do. His Majesty the Rana loves me as a cheetah loves his trainer. He's an intractable rascal." ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... covers sins?" Answer. Whoever has hatred toward another, says Solomon, ceases not to stir up strife and bitterness. But where there is love, it covers sins and cheerfully forgives. Where there is wrath, or in other words, where there is an intractable man, reconciliation is not permitted; he remains full of wrath and hate. On the other hand, a man who is full of love is he whom one cannot enrage, however much injury may be done him; he perceives it all, but does as though he saw it not. So that the covering ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... carp at them and not partake of them at all. And trying the prince in this way for a while, when the Muni found that the king Duryodhana was neither angered, nor annoyed, he became graciously inclined towards him. And then, O Bharata, the intractable Durvasa said unto him, 'I have power to grant thee boons. Thou mayst ask of me whatever lies nearest to thy heart. May good fortune be thine. Pleased as I am with thee, thou mayst obtain from me anything that is not opposed to religion ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... what I never knew before—the meaning of the common saying, A fool you can neither bend nor break. Pray heaven I may never have a wise fool for my friend! There is nothing more intractable.—"My resolve is fixed!"—Why so madman say too; but the more firmly they believe in their delusions, the more they stand in ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... decision. Firmness, gentle firmness, is absolutely necessary in this and certain other relations. Mr. Rarey with Cruiser, Richard with Lady Ann, Pinel with his crazy people, show what steady nerves can do with the most intractable of animals, the most irresistible of despots, and the ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sluggish, snapping, snarling, sneaking, sour, testy, tiresome, tormenting, touchy, arrogant, austere, awkward, boorish, brawling, brutal, bullying, churlish, clamorous, crabbed, cross, currish, dismal, dull, dry, drowsy, grumbling, horrid, huffish, insolent, intractable, irascible, ireful, morose, murmuring, opinionated, oppressive, outrageous, overbearing, petulant, plaguy, rough, rude, rugged, spiteful, splenetic, stern, stubborn, stupid, sulky, sullen, surly, suspicious, treacherous, troublesome, turbulent, tyrannical, virulent, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... are celebrating, but the Pilgrims themselves. So we have struck an inconsistency here —one says it was the landing, the other says it was the Pilgrims. It is an inconsistency characteristic of your intractable and disputatious tribe, for you never agree about anything but Boston. Well, then, what do you want to celebrate those Pilgrims for? They were a mighty hard lot—you know it. I grant you, without the slightest unwillingness, that they were a deal more gentle ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... she had marked down in Christophe all sorts of notions and ideas which she thought childish and extravagant: they were weeds to her: she tried hard to eradicate them. She did not get rid of a single one. She did not gain the least satisfaction for her vanity. Christophe was intractable. Not being in love he had no reason for surrendering his ideas ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... pleases, and convulses the reader at every turn. The author triumphs with a master hand over every variety of stanza, however complicated or exacting; not a word seems out of place, not an expression forced; syllables the most intractable, and the only partners fitted for them throughout the range of language are coupled together as naturally as those kindred spirits which poets tell us were created pairs, and dispersed in space to seek out their particular ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... position in this house. You are absolutely dependent, and—unless you marry—you will remain so, being quite unqualified to earn your own living. Therefore the whip-hand is mine, and if I find you insolent or intractable I shall use it without mercy. How dare you set yourself against me in this way?" She stamped with sudden fury upon the ground. "No, not a word! Leave the room instantly—I will have no more of it! Do you hear me, Sylvia? Do you ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... journey to Aragon, in order to preside at the deliberations of the cortes, and enforce the grant of supplies, to which the nobles, from selfish considerations, made resistance. The king failed, indeed, to bend their intractable tempers, but he displayed on the occasion all his wonted ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... and then, if things didn't go quite as he wished, he would fly into comic rages, and become quite violent and intractable for at least five minutes, and for quite five minutes more he would silently sulk. And then, just as suddenly, he would forget all about it, and become once more the genial, affectionate, and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... our Lenglet. Had he composed his own life, it would have offered a sketch of political servitude and political adventure, in a man too intractable for the one, and too literary for the other. Yet to the honour of his capacity, we must observe that he might have chosen his patrons, would he have submitted to patronage. Prince Eugene at Vienna; Cardinal Passionei at Rome; or Mons. Le Blanc, the French ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the men grew more and more intractable and insubordinate. That day, when Madden had ordered Heck Mulcher to paint in a certain place, the navvy had grumbled out a "That's all very well for you, sir," and the rest ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... foxy ecclesiastic wished two things, both of which his heritors flatly refused: (a) a new manse, and (b) a site with a wide prospect. Finding them intractable, he professed humility, and craved merely a species of scaffolding to buttress up one of the walls of the old manse. The heritors marvelled a little at the strange request, but, glad of being saved from the cost of a new building, authorised the buying ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... invasion till late in the year. They were increased by the emptiness of Henry's treasury. His father's hoard had melted away, and it was absolutely necessary to obtain lavish supplies from Parliament. But Parliament proved ominously intractable. Thomas Cromwell, now rising to notice, in a temperate speech urged the folly of indulging in impracticable schemes of foreign conquest, while Scotland remained a thorn in England's side.[452] It was three months from the meeting of Parliament before the subsidies were granted, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... language is French. Though peopled nearly to the limit of its capacity, the whole number of its inhabitants can hardly exceed Half a Million, nine-tenths of its entire surface being covered with sterile, intractable mountains. Savoy must always be a poor country, with inconsiderable commerce or manufactures (for though its water-power is inexhaustible, its means of communication must ever be among the worst), and seems to have been created mainly as a barrier against that guilty ambition which ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... she wished to live her own life—logic which she had gathered largely from Cowperwood's attitude. Haguenin did nothing about it at first, thinking to send Cecily off to an aunt in Nebraska; but, finding her intractable, and fearing some counter-advice or reprisal on the part of Cowperwood, who, by the way, had indorsed paper to the extent of one hundred thousand dollars for him, he decided to discuss matters first. It meant a cessation of relations and some inconvenient financial readjustments; but it had to ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Europe. Pompadour and Maria Theresa. Infatuation of the French Court. The European War. Montcalm to command in America. His early Life. An intractable Pupil. His Marriage. His Family. His Campaigns. Preparation for America. His Associates. Levis, Bourlamaque, Bougainville. Embarkation. The Voyage. Arrival. Vaudreuil. Forces of Canada. Troops of the Line, Colony Troops, Militia, Indians. The Military Situation. Capture ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Leander presided, enacted various canons which give some interesting sidelights on the times. It appears that ecclesiastics had already been forbidden to keep women servants in their houses, but the rule was so often disregarded that it was enacted that in the future, as a punishment for such intractable churchmen, their servants should be sold as slaves and the proceeds handed over to some charitable organization. In just what way this punishment was to affect the clergy, beyond causing them temporary annoyance, it is difficult to understand, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... incredulous amazement, at this remarkable world. Eh? ... You found yourselves suddenly upon a mountain top! Fortunate men!" He chuckled. "For my part I found myself in the still stranger position of infant to two parents of the most intractable dispositions!" ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... used to have was with a high-strung and almost intractable pair of horses, Pintos, or painted, which means piebald, a very handsome team indeed, whose former owner simply could not manage them. Every time we came to a gate through which we had to pass I, being alone, had to get down and throw the gate open. Then after taking ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... forthwith. The culprits - some of them abundantly able to throw the old fellow over their shoulders - instinctively obey; but they move off at a snail's pace, with lowering brows, and muttering angry growls that betray fully their untamed, intractable dispositions. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... this, with the light of the gospel, and without taking other arms than the cross and the scourge of penance, by which all the wretchedness and misfortunes there were changed into delights and comforts. The suffering of great hardships was inevitable; for since those brutes were intractable and ferocious, they did not show the fathers any hospitality, that had any mark of reason and sense. The fathers sought them through the thickets and fields where they were living, and, alluring them with loving ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... the falling of a tumbler-pigeon, but on closer examination proves to be simply a closing of the wings, and a consequent drop of about a foot. Sometimes, this is repeated every few yards, as long as in sight. It is occasioned by some large and intractable insect having been captured, and the anterior joint of the wing, with its well-armed thumb, is required in retaining it until masticated." Notwithstanding this little difficulty, however, the Noctule is pretty rapid in disposing even of his most recusant ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... to be successfully treated by any modern author. Mr. Keats has unquestionably a very beautiful imagination, and a great familiarity with the finest diction of English poetry; but he must learn not to misuse or misapply these advantages; and neither to waste the good gifts of nature and study on intractable themes, nor to luxuriate too recklessly on such as ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... a navy, and bark and snap at the heels of the great German Empire. But Becker could not prevent the hunted Laupepa from taking refuge in any hole that offered, and he could afford to smile at the fantastic orgie in the embassy. It was another matter when the Hawaiians approached the intractable Mataafa, sitting still in his Atua government like Achilles in his tent, helping neither side, and (as the Germans suspected) keeping the eggs warm for himself. When the Kaimiloa steamed out of Apia on this visit, the German war-ship Adler followed at her heels; and Mataafa was no ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he cried, in affectionate distress, "I know that you will not forget that rank, birth—" He looked at her, and, seeing that she appeared intractable, exclaimed further, "It's no new thing that ladies should, in a fit of madness, demean themselves—young ladies frequently marry grooms; but, believe me, my dear Sophia"—earnestly—"no happiness ever came of such a thing—only misery, ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... What, is that expensive? Well, what's the difference, God be with you! I see you're a travelling man, I don't want to rob you; let it go at thirty, then. What? That ain't cheap either? Well, shake hands on it! Twenty-five kopecks apiece. OI! What an intractable fellow you are! At twenty! You'll thank me yourself later! And then, do you know what else? When I come to K—, I always stop at the Hotel Hermitage. You can very easily find me there either very early in the morning, or about eight o'clock ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... vegetables which they exhibited in the market or carried to their homes. Nay more, the loyalty of a loyal man may in certain circumstances be more emphatically expressed by a rude, extemporaneous symbol, hastily constructed of intractable materials, than by the most elaborate and leisurely products of the needle or the loom. In such cases, the will of the man is everything; the wealth of the man nothing. The meanest rag suddenly thrown across the shoulders, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... eyes, and its soft, woolly fleece suggest softness of disposition. But in reality no animal is more deceptive. In a wild state amongst its own kind, or in captivity,—no matter how considerately treated,—it is a quarrelsome and at times intractable animal. "A pair of wild guanacos can often be seen or heard engaged in desperate combat, biting and tearing, and rolling over one another on the ground, uttering their gurgling, bubbling cries ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... her twice or three times when she was at Martindale, and she told me how much there was in her, but I never tried to develop it. I thought when Helen was her sister—but that chance is gone. That intractable spirit will never be tamed but by affection; but, unluckily, I don't know,' said John, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... They did not consider that the value of those metals has, in all ages and nations, arisen chiefly from their scarcity, and that their scarcity has arisen from the very small quantities of them which nature has anywhere deposited in one place, from the hard and intractable substances with which she has almost everywhere surrounded those small quantities, and consequently from the labour and expense which are everywhere necessary in order to penetrate, and get at them. They flattered themselves that veins of those metals might in many ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... curiously does an author mould and remould the plastic verse in order to fit in the favourite thought; and when he finds that he cannot introduce it, as Corporal Trim says, any how, with what reluctance does he at last reject the intractable, but still cherished offspring of his brain! Mr. Tennyson manages this delicate matter in a new and better way; he says, with great candour and simplicity, 'If this poem were not already too long, I should have added the following stanzas,' ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... of great pleasure, and sometimes, on the other hand, he is the means of great annoyance and vexation. This depends upon whether he is obedient, patient, quiet, and gentle in his manners and demeanor, or noisy, inconsiderate, wilful, and intractable. A great many children act in such a manner, whenever they take a journey or go out to ride with their parents, that their parents, in self-defence, are obliged to adopt the plan of almost always contriving to leave ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... comfort in relying upon his simple and untroubled devotion. They were piqued by being treated as souls rather than bodies, but this was perhaps one of the secrets of his influence. Every woman of his flock had unconsciously some secret conviction that to her was reserved the triumph of subduing this intractable nature, hitherto unconquered by the fascinations of the sex. An ugly man may generally be successful with women if he remains sufficiently indifferent to them. His unattractiveness, suggesting, as it must, ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... was angry enough without all that; and asked me to what purpose I came down, if I were still so intractable. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... favour of the King; and none of us had lost an opportunity of assisting in this work. Our joy, therefore, was extreme when we saw all Harlay's hopes frustrated, and we did not fail to let it burst forth. The vexation that Harlay conceived was so great, that he became absolutely intractable, and often cried out with a bitterness he could not contain, that he should be left to die in the dust of the palace. His weakness was such, that he could not prevent himself six weeks after from complaining to the King at Fontainebleau, where ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... therefore, in America—that is, all white men—are "free and equal;" and every thing that has been done in her political world for the last half century has gone to illustrate and carry out this somewhat intractable hypothesis. Upon this principle, the vote of John Jacob Astor, with his twenty-five millions of dollars, is neutralized by that of the Irish pauper just cast upon its shores. The millionaire counts one, and so does the dingy unit of Erin, though the former counts for himself, and the latter for ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... reading-room with a green table. A rather slatternly but very active girl soon converted this into a neat breakfast-table, and gave me an excellent breakfast. The landlord found me a good car, and off I set for the residence of Father Maher, the curate of whom I had heard as one of the most fiery and intractable of the National League priests ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... to me?" It was impossible to get the last word; indeed he used to give my sister Maggie, when she taught him, what he called "Temper-tickets," at the end of the lesson; and on one occasion, when he was to repeat a Sunday collect to her, he was at last reported to my mother, as being wholly intractable. This was deeply resented; and after my sister had gone to bed, a small piece of paper was pushed in beneath her door, on which was written: "The most unhappiest Sunday I ever spent in my life. ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... judge the rhythmic merit, but I believe I feel it. Our admirable, talented, and original friend Wolf—although he becomes intractable in case of contradiction—who spent a number of days with me, speaks very highly of your careful work. It will be instructive to see how the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Collector's handsome face greeted her with a scowl and a hard stare; he could be intractable in ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... under and over-do, but we keep an eye to the prominent features, the main chance. We are more for weight than show; care only about what interests ourselves, instead of trying to impose upon others by plausible appearances, and are obstinate and intractable in not conforming to common rules, by which many arrive at their ends with half the real waste of thought and trouble. We neglect all but the principal object, gather our force to make a great blow, bring it down, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... with this strange deflexion on one side, a not less convulsive rationalist movement on the other,—all ending in contention and estrangement, and in suspicions worse than either, because less accessible and more intractable.' ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... romped with the little children, the rosy little trots, and took them on her knees, and told them a thousand stories. By these she was adored, and loved like a mother almost, for as such the hearty, kindly girl showed herself to them; but at home she was alone, and intractable, and did battle with the governesses, and overcame them one ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... suitors and the temptations of courts; but it was her pleasure to forget all such advantages and dedicate the golden hours of her youth to the task of raising a name by working in wet clay, plaster of Paris, stubborn marble, and still more intractable bronze." ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... get it very abundantly to-day, let us admit the fact freely. But the fault is not altogether the poets'. The fault is in the intractable mediocrity of the age, which resists transference into poetry as stiff clay resists the hoe of the cultivator. The fault lies in the general reader himself, whose very opposition to poetry because it is poetry makes him a difficult ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... live too freely, it is by no means confined to such, but may arise in connexion with disturbances of the general health, especially of the function of digestion, and in females with menstrual disorders. It is apt to be exceedingly intractable to treatment, which is here too, as in the preceding form, partly local and partly constitutional. Of internal remedies preparations of iodine and of arsenic are sometimes found of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... sympathies, which fatally separates one nature from another nature, which does not hesitate, which feels no disquiet, which does not hold its peace, and which never belies itself, clear in its obscurity, infallible, imperious, intractable, stubborn to all counsels of the intelligence and to all the dissolvents of reason, and which, in whatever manner destinies are arranged, secretly warns the man-dog of the presence of the man-cat, and the man-fox of the presence ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Swine.—A.J.T., Emery, Ill. Most internal diseases of swine, especially inflammation of the lungs, which is often given the wrong name of thumps, are very intractable and apt to prove fatal when occurring during the winter months. Prevention is the sheet anchor for these troubles, and it must be a poor farmer indeed who can not manage to provide clean, comfortable ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... was more intractable. He distinguished the Sabbath from the rest of the week, by making the most of his ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... unless the prevotal court itself assumed the functions of grace by recommending them to royal clemency. One of the most enthusiastic Royalists of the right-hand party, M. Hyde de Neuville, objected energetically, but without effect, to a clause so harsh and anti-monarchical. The two most intractable of passions, anger and fear, prevailed in the Chamber; it had its own cause, as well as that of the King, to defend and avenge, and persuaded itself that it could neither strike too soon nor too strongly when ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... advisable but to engage some of the Bhotan run-aways domiciled in Dorjiling, who are accustomed to travel at all elevations, and fear nothing but a return to the country which they have abandoned as slaves, or as culprits: they are immensely powerful, and though intractable to the last degree, are generally glad to work and behave well for money. The choice, as will hereafter be seen, was unfortunate, though at ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... attendant outside the city. The bandits carried their two captives to Anatolia, and there sold them. The little girl, who gave promise of great beauty, fell to the lot of a rich merchant of Broussa, the harshest, most severe, and intractable man of the town; but the artless grace of this child touched even his ferocious heart. He conceived a great affection for her, and distinguished her from his other slaves by giving her only light employment, such as the care of flowers, etc. A European gentleman who lived with this merchant ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... she was committed to custody and underwent rigorous examinations before a whole board of magistrates: but to what end? She was as wild as the sea, as intractable as the wind. What threats, indeed, what voice, what sound—except it were the sound of the last trumpet wakening her from the grave—shall ever again alarm her? What cares she for judge or jury? The last ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... in general or special literature, enuresis mentioned as a diseased condition peculiar from babyhood to puberty; to find it fully described and to have it stated that it is a widely-prevalent distemper, affecting both sexes alike; to know that it is an annoying, intractable, persistent condition, wearing to the child in every sense, subjecting it to a demoralizing mortification as well as to unmerited scoldings, humiliations, and punishments, and that its habit, in badly-ventilated quarters, will breed other diseases,[107] as well as that its continued ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... are very troublesome, but all except two have been running to-day, and until this evening there were no excitements. After tea Oates suggested leading out the two intractable animals behind other sledges; at the same time he brought out the strong, nervous grey pony. I led one of the supposedly safe ponies, and all went well whilst we made our journey; three loads were safely brought in. But whilst ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... played upon him. He lay there, and time passed; he had no way of measuring it, no idea whether it was hours or days. It was cold and clammy in the stone cell; they called it the "cooler," and used it to reduce the temperature of the violent and intractable. It was a trouble-saving device; they just left the man there and forgot him, and his own tormented mind ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... defiance of a thing which never should be considered—luck—I took Haught's rifle again, and my lazy, sullen, intractable horse, and rode with Edd and George down into Horton Thicket. At least I could not be cheated out of fresh air ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... can never be easy, but the difficulty was still greater to me than to you. For I had a lion to tame, from whose intractable fury the greatest men of my country, and of the whole world, with all their wisdom and virtue, could not save themselves. Themistocles and Aristides were examples of terror that might well have deterred ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... disposed to do so; moreover, many of my ideas were opposed to his own. I think the heaviest piece of work I ever undertook was when, some months before, I had endeavored to convert him to the civil-service-reform forces; but while I had succeeded in converting a good many others, he remained intractable, and on that subject we were at opposite ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... use of alcohol, by exhausting the nervous energy, predisposes the system to disease, and at the same time renders the disease, when it has commenced, so much more intractable; what shall be said of the common use of tobacco, which is allowed by all to be a still more deadly poison, and of course must exhaust the power of the ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... declared that it was not the thing after all. His life was spent in constant excitement; he was ever on the watch, on the point of setting his hand on the realisation of his dream, which always flew away. In reality, beneath his intractable realism lay the superstition of a nervous woman; he believed in occult and complex influences; everything, luck or ill-luck, must depend upon ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... that the Chinese train these birds to catch fish, I endeavoured to induce one to come to me, and serve his apprenticeship as a fisherman, but to no purpose. It was just as well I could not catch one, for I find they must be trained from their young days to the art, as they are intractable in their grown-up wildness, and I was thus spared a great deal of unnecessary trouble and ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... that the position of the umpire has been rendered more arduous by reason of the world's series. The argument is advanced that the players are more intractable, by reason of their eagerness to play in the post-season games. That argument would be stronger were it not for the fact that some of the worst disturbances emanate from the players of the clubs that have no chance to play in ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... crotchety obstinacy, repelled people, and consequently those who at any time during his life really understood him must have been very few. How was it, then, that such a man wandered about over Europe and fraternized so completely with a race so suspicious and intractable as the gipsies? A natural enough question, which I have often been asked, and ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... nun returned to Wei-hai-wei with her subscriptions, and the work of casting the image was duly begun. When the time had come for the process of smelting, it was observed that the copper remained hard and intractable. Again and again the furnace was fed with fuel, but the shapeless mass of metal remained firm as a rock. The head workman, who was a man of wide experience, volunteered an explanation of the mystery. ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... the door of his hut; yet he could tear in pieces with his hands the still quivering limbs of his prisoner. The famous republics of antiquity never gave examples of more unshaken courage, more haughty spirits, or more intractable love of independence than were hidden in former times among the wild forests of the New World. *i The Europeans produced no great impression when they landed upon the shores of North America; their presence engendered neither envy nor fear. What influence could they possess over such men as we ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... much farther from our admiration, if we were less inconsiderate, selfish, and vile? I will not however stop thee long, for thou wert going on quite consistently. As thy great men are fighters and wranglers, so thy mighty things upon the earth and sea are troublesome and intractable incumbrances. Thou perceivedst not what was greater in the former case, neither art thou aware what is greater in this. Didst thou feel the ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... is, as Epictetus says, more intractable than the aimless and unwitting fool; because there is substance to his folly. There is at least some truth on his side. But his folly is folly none the less. He hardens himself against that which would save him; while ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... Dely had no resource but to stay at home and endure her disagreeable position as well as she could, for Tom Kenyon swore and chewed, and smoked beside; moreover, he drank,—not to real drunkenness, but enough to make him cross and intractable; worse than all, he had a son, the only child of his first marriage, and it soon became unpleasantly evident to Dely that Steve Kenyon had a mind to marry her, and his father had a mind he should. Now it is all very well to marry a person one likes, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... oceanic precipices is nothing but a weed, "with a tall stem and scanty disordered leaves of a crude green, an acrid savour, and a rank smell"; he speaks of wheat, formerly a poor unknown grass; the primitive pear-tree "an ugly intractable thorny bush, with detestable bitter fruit"; the wild celery, which grows beside ponds, "green all over, hard, with a repulsive flavour, and which gradually becomes tenderer, sweeter, whiter," and "ceases to distil ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... it. He studied the indications to be observed in animals: a vicious horse, if gelded, will cease to bite and be restive, but he will charge as gallantly as ever; a bull that has been cut will become less fierce and less intractable, but he will not lose his strength, he will be as good as ever for work; castration may cure a dog of deserting his master, but it will not ruin him as a watch-dog or spoil him for the chase. [63] So, too, with men; when ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... inhabited and well cultivated, abounding with flesh, fowl, fish, fruit, and other refreshments. The inhabitants made use of canoes of all sizes, were armed with slings, darts, and wooden swords, wore necklaces and bracelets of pearl, and rings in their noses. They were, however, very intractable, notwithstanding all the pains that could be taken to engage them in a fair correspondence, so that Captain Schovten was at last obliged to fire upon them to prevent them from making themselves masters of his vessel, which they attacked with ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... furious, intractable child whose favorite precious treasure had been broken; and he burst out into a torrent of incoherent speech, apparently reasons why this and that were so. Slone did not make out what Bostil meant and he did not care. When Bostil got ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... them friends to humanity, and grateful to their creator; but he considers it very wrong to load their weak minds with a belief in supernatural dogmas, such as a belief in a future state. He says, "such knowledge is apt to render them intractable, averse to labor, and induces them to commit suicide on themselves and their children, of which the colony, the State, and ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... its complex and toilsome journey through the coming centuries towards this Great State are fundamentally difficulties of adaptation and adjustment. To no conceivable social state is man inherently fitted: he is a creature of jealousy and suspicion, unstable, restless, acquisitive, aggressive, intractable, and of a most subtle and nimble dishonesty. Moreover, he is imaginative, adventurous, and inventive. His nature and instincts are as much in conflict with the necessary restrictions and subjugation of the Normal Social Life as they are likely to be ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... stunted thorn bushes scattered here and there, all dry and withered. In short, I believe this to have been the land which God appointed for Cain. There are however, inhabitants of tolerable stature, but wild and intractable, who wear their hair tied upon the top of their heads, like a wreath of hay, stuck through with a wooden pin, and ornamented with birds feathers. Both men and women are clothed in the skins of beasts; but the garments ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... harassing difficulties. The aeronauts had, indeed, won the respect and admiration of the army, but this did not compensate for the terribly fatiguing work of holding on, with scarcely a moment's intermission, to the ropes of the intractable monsters during long and frequent marches. The second balloon at length succeeded in breaking loose, and was so much damaged as to become unserviceable, and the first one was afterwards found riddled with balls—destroyed, it was supposed, by its own men, who had become tired of the hardships ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... feeble, like those of an orphan. If I were in the midst of you, I would join with you in annulling the interdiction." From this it is evident that the strongest weapon of the rabbinical authorities against the intractable was, as in the Church, excommunication; but that sometimes individuals asserted, and even swore in advance, that they would not yield to the decree against them. Rashi considered that this oath, being contrary to ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... bedquilts, petticoats, warriors' armor, and similar purposes. It was bought by the pound, East India cotton, in small quantities; the seeds were picked out one by one, by hand; it was carded on wool-cards, and spun into a rather intractable yarn which was used as warp for linsey-woolsey and rag carpets. Even in England no cotton weft, no all-cotton fabrics, were made till after 1760, till Hargreave's time. Sometimes a twisted yarn was made of one thread of cotton and one of ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... they had not found an opportunity of discussing. It was necessary to arrive at some new arrangement regarding Wager's children; for the boy, Albert, would soon be nine years old, and, as Mrs. Abbott confessed, he had given her a great deal of trouble. Both the children were intractable, hated lessons, and played alarming pranks; Master Albert's latest feat might have cost him his life, for he struck furiously through a pane of glass at a child mocking him from the other side, and was all but fainting from loss of blood when Mrs. Abbott came to his help. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... grows as sharply ocean-odorous as the beach, while the many bare feet are continually toiling slowly up and quickly pattering down it. Yet their efforts are rewarded by only meagre and stunted growths; so intractable is the material upon which they are expended. Micky Joyce has been heard to declare, as he took a despondent bird's-eye view of his holding, that "you might as well be thryin' to raise crops in the crevices of ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... put him out, Although he went on steadily, but faster. There were some maladies he'd read about Which seemed, at first, most difficult to master; They looked intractable at times, no doubt, But all they needed was a little plaster; This was a thing physicians long had pondered, Considered, weighed ... and then ... and ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... the carriages on land, I must still unroll a blank mind until I can secretly, and without undue hazard, examine them more closely. If, as you maintain, it is the work of captive demons hidden away among their most inside parts, it must be admitted that these usually intractable beings are admirably trained and controlled, and I am wide-headed enough to think that in this respect we might—not-withstanding our nine thousand years of civilised refinement—learn something of the methods of these barbarians. ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... utilise a good thing when he observed it, saw in this dislike of this old sleigh dog to having fresh young dogs ahead of him just the assistance he needed; and so, although he selected three other dogs, that at first were about as ugly and intractable as Spitfire had been, he was able in this way to subdue them all with firmness and patience, and he not only made them his affectionate friends, but he became the master of one of the most spirited trains in the ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... that her temper is intractable, but I never saw a face less indicative of any evil disposition than hers; and from what I can see of the behaviour of each to the other, the invariable severity of Lady Susan and the silent dejection of Frederica, I am led to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... "he is as proud as a peacock, and would trample upon us all, and gore us too, like one of the wild bulls of Bowland, if we would let him have his way. But I would treat him as I would the bull aforesaid, a wild boar, or any other savage and intractable beast, hunt him down, and poll his horns, or ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... altogether so rapidly accomplished, or so entirely successful. The circumstances were in some degree different and less simple. In the first place the frontier was 800 miles long, and was inhabited by Afghan tribes, who were more predatory and intractable than the Beloochees; they were not only independent of each other, but for the most part acknowledged no allegiance to the Ameer of Cabul. Border disputes therefore had to be settled with individual chiefs; and no opportunity was offered for our mediation in internal ...
— Indian Frontier Policy • General Sir John Ayde
... familiarity better than his great rival and neighbor, the Englishman; and it was natural with our hero to be frank and free with all, whether above him or below him in condition. The temperaments to be brought into subjection were not as rude and intractable as those of the Anglo-Saxon, and the off-hand, dashing character of Raoul was admirably adapted to win both the admiration and the affections of his people. They now thronged about him without hesitation or reserve, each man anxious to make his good ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and lemonade in the same stomach, and at some refusal holding his breath till he gets black in the face, so that to save the child from fits the mother is compelled to give him another dumpling, and he afterward goes out into the world stubborn, willful, selfish and intractable,—I say that boy was brought up in a "patented self-rocker." The old-time mother would have put him down in the old-fashioned cradle, and ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... all his resources of brain and address, and brought Catherine to the point of consenting to sign the charter he needed. Before it was ready for the imperial signature she died. Rezanov was forced to begin again with her ill-balanced and intractable son. Natalie Shelikov, his famous mother-in-law, the old shareholders of the Company, and the many new ones that had subscribed to Rezanov's ambitious project, gave themselves up to despair. For a time the ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... makes me suspect it to be a development of fever. I have found lunar caustic useful: a plaister of wax, and a little finely-ground sulphate of copper is used by the Arabs, and so is cocoa-nut oil and butter. These ulcers are excessively intractable, there is no healing them before they eat into the bone, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... face-oval A basket-work of braids which seem as if they were Spun in King Minos' hall From metal, or intractable amber; ...
— Hugh Selwyn Mauberley • Ezra Pound
... was still too weak to pull a load. Oates also was having great trouble with Christopher, who did not appreciate being harnessed and generally bolted at the mere sight of a sledge. 'He is going,' Scott, in referring to this most intractable pony, wrote, 'to be a trial, but he is a good strong pony and should do yeoman service. Day is increasingly hopeful about the motors. He is an ingenious person and has been turning up new rollers out of a baulk of oak supplied by Meares, ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley |
