"Litigious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cause of discontent, that of tythes; a cause that disturbs half the villages in the kingdom, and that frequently exhibits the man who is sent to preach peace, and afford an example of mild forbearance and Christian humility, as a litigious, quarrelsome and odious tyrant; much better qualified to herd with wolves than to be the shepherd of his meek master. It is sufficiently certain that neither Christ nor his apostles ever took tythes; and the esquires, farmers, and landholders, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... witchcraft before would give color to the charge when made in 1645. We have indeed a clue to the motives for this accusation. A parishioner and a neighboring divine afterwards gave it as their opinion that "Mr. Lowes, being a litigious man, made his parishioners (too tenacious of their customs) very uneasy, so that they were glad to take the opportunity of those wicked times to get him hanged, rather than not get rid of him." Hopkins had afforded them the opportunity. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... is spying for a place to break out of your great court, and unless you be on your guard, he has a considerable plot against you." "Then," said the Schemer, "Let him also be called, to wit, The Accuser-of-his-Brethren, alias Faultfinder, alias Complaint-monger." "Here, here he is," cried the Litigious Wrangler—for each one knew the other's name, but none would acknowledge his own. "You are also called," said the Accuser, "Mr. Litigious Wrangler, alias Cumber-of-Courts." "Witness, witness, all of you, what names ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... was now engaged in Court two or three times a week. Though he was overwhelmed with business, he found time to attend the trials, call on the litigious merchants, and conduct the Review; keeping up his personal mystery, from the conviction that the more covert and hidden was his influence, the more real it would be. But he neglected no means of success, reading up the list of electors of Besancon, and finding out their interests, ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... changes which he attempted and effected, had introduced the Norman law into England [o], had ordered all the pleadings to be in that tongue, and had interwoven, with the English jurisprudence, all the maxims and principles, which the Normans, more advanced in cultivation, and naturally litigious, were accustomed to observe in the distribution of justice. Law now became a science, which at first fell entirely into the hands of the Normans; and which, even after it was communicated to the English, required so much study and application, that the laity, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... in order to live, or advance themselves in the world, they act with an independent spirit. I never yet have heard of anything like domineering or oppression, excepting such as has arisen from natural causes. The freedom the people enjoy may, perhaps, render them a little litigious, and subject them to the impositions of cunning practitioners of the law; but the authority of office is bounded, and the emoluments of it do ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the service. This advice is for your own good; not that I interfere in these things, as everybody and everything finds its level in a man-of-war; I only wish you to draw a line between resistance against oppression, which I admire and respect, and a litigious, uncompromising disposition, which I despise. Now wash your face and go on board. Try by all means to conciliate the rest of your messmates, for first impressions are everything, and rely on it, Murphy's report will not ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... pulpit because poor dear Mr. Tilton had a prettier wife than poor, dear Mr. Beecher? The bench had its Jeffrey, yet it is necessary that we have the deliveries of judgment between ourselves and the litigious. The medical profession has nursed poisoners enough to have baned all the rats of christendom; but the resolute patient must still have his prescription—if he die for it. Shall we disband our armies because in the hand of an ambitious ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... promise themselves much greater success than their neighbours; though more rigid and austere in their manners, and more religiously disposed, their scrupulosity about trifles and ceremonies, and their violent and litigious dispositions, created trouble to all around them, and disturbed that general harmony so necessary to the welfare and prosperity of the young settlement. From the various principles which actuated the ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... recorded, hereditary title to all which can be dear to the man and the citizen to that vague, speculative right which exposed their sure inheritance to be scrambled for and torn to pieces by every wild, litigious spirit. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... lunatics. At all events, you will come within hearing of the human passions. Misers will visit you at times, and beautiful ladies in mourning deep as their distress; and from your desk you will catch a glimpse of the sombre pageantry of litigious man. ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... members were obtained by fraud, as was subsequently proved by a sworn official protestation. The first presentment tells its own tale, as it refers to the only courts in which French-Canadian lawyers were allowed to plead. 'The great number of inferior Courts are tiresome, litigious, and expensive to this poor Colony.' Then came a hit at the previous military rule—'That Decrees of the military Courts may be amended [after having been confirmed by legal ordinance] by allowing Appeals if the matter decided exceed Ten Pounds,' which ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... the farm at Mazenes has been decided in due course of law by Count Annas, and there is no reasonable ground for appeal[219], let that sentence be held final and irreversible. We must sometimes save a litigious man from himself, as a good doctor will not allow a patient to take that which is ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... respublica. You will be told that where the laws be few they leave much to arbitrary power; but where they be many, they leave more, the laws in this case, according to Justinian and the best lawyers, being as litigious as the suitors. Solon made few, Lycurgus fewer, laws; and commonwealths have the fewest at this day of all ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... troops, the Landsknechte, we find uncomplimentary allusions to the race of advocates, notaries, and procurators who, as one writer has it, "are increasing like grasshoppers in town and in country year by year." Whenever they appeared, we are told, countless litigious disputes sprang up. He who had but the money in hand might readily defraud his poorer neighbour in the name of law and right. "Woe is me!" exclaims one author, "in my home there is but one procurator, and yet is the whole country round about ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... a good-sized volume. When his life is adequately written, as it will be some day, this department will have to be entrusted to a skilled lawyer. No other person could do anything like justice to a most important part of the career of one whom the Tories used to call "that litigious man," when they were trying to ruin him in the law courts and he was only defending ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... potatoes is more waxy than they ought to be—if every shabby dandy, who has bought a glossy satin hat, 'warranted superfine, price only 5s.,' and who finds it washed into a kind of dingy serge by the next shower—had his action for the infliction of penalties, it would be a more litigious world even than it is. With thimble-riggers, chain-droppers, fortune-telling gipsies, and the like, the law wages a most unproductive war. Penal statutes and the police do little to put them down, while there are fools whose silly selfishness or ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... native mahogany, sometimes mahogany chairs, and corresponding articles. If a white family, on removing, expose their furniture to sale, it is caught up by the people with eagerness at almost any price asked. The very improvidence of the negroes stimulates their industry. They are exceedingly litigious, and exceedingly ostentatious on the few grand occasions they enjoy.[10] These luxuries, especially the former, cost them dear, but their very expense makes it the more necessary to work to find the means of indulging in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the Silence? Brotherhood prodigious, A babble-ridden age might well rejoice Could you but give instead of talk litigious, The Silence ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... whose good services I can never sufficiently vaunt, came to me one day, and said, "I think that I have found a lady . I have a dame of quality who will do what we want." "Who is it?" said I, with joy. "A comtesse d'Escarbagnas, a litigious lady, with much ambition and avarice. You must see her, talk with her, and understand each other." "But where can we see her?" "That is easy enough. She claims from the house of Saluces a property of three hundred thousand ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will soften the course I take, even though you disapprove of it; and— and in short," said Richard, who had been hesitating through these words, "I—I don't like to represent myself in this litigious, contentious, doubting character to a confiding girl ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Temple, where he lived gaily for some years, observing the humours of the town, enjoying its pleasures, and picking up just as much law as was necessary to make the character of a pettifogging attorney or of a litigious ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fact he looked upon himself as manfully standing in the gap for freedom of speech. "These suits," he said "will determine whether an Independent Press is to be protected in the free exercise of honest opinion, or whether it is to be overawed and silenced by the persecutions of an inflated, litigious, soured novelist, who, in his better days by the favor of the Press, made the money with which he now seeks to oppress its conductors, and sap its independence." He did not purpose to flinch from his duty. Accordingly he announced that he should continue ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... then is the time to ask favours of him; and, says the crafty bishop, many a time have I lost the game, and won my cause thereby. At three begins again the toil of state. The knockers return, and those who shove them away return too; everywhere the litigious crowd murmurs round; and follows him at evening, when he goes to supper, or gets its matters settled by the officers of the court, who have to stay there till bed- time. At supper, though there are but rarely 'mimici sales,' which I ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... differences and the provisional nature of numbers and classes, there is little scope for that blind-folded lady with the balances, seeking always exact equivalents. Nowhere in my system of thought is there work for the idea of Rights and the conception of conscientious litigious-spirited people exactly observing ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... again. Another brawl! The judgment of God be on us! How did it happen? Tell me! This matter must be hushed up. I am sick already of seeing so many acts of folly; I have more important business than to reconcile litigious squabblers; but I ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... alludes to lawyers, as on a former occasion, Diaz mentions a request from the Spaniards that none of that fraternity might be sent over to New Spain, probably to avoid the introduction of litigious law suits.—E. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... them unto divers persons and made shift for all, save only he abode in doubt whom he might leave sufficient to the recovery of the credits he had given to certain Burgundians. The cause of his doubt was that he knew the Burgundians to be litigious, quarrelsome fellows, ill-conditioned and disloyal, and could not call one to mind, in whom he might put any trust, curst enough to cope with their perversity. After long consideration of the matter, there came to his ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the Churchyard of that parish. He was the eldest son of the late Wm. Keightley, Esq., of that place, who some years ago, to his immortal honour, stood forward on behalf of the parish, and at his own expense supported a very litigious and expensive law-suit, which he gained and for which the said parish as an acknowledgment made him and his posterity a present of the ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... people were divided by political brawls, altercations, affrays, squabbles, feuds, often with the loss of life. The general disposition was choleric, pugnacious, litigious. ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... I was a boy, and listened to Homer's and Hesiod's tales of war and civil strife—and they do not confine themselves to the Heroes, but include the Gods in their descriptions, adulterous Gods, rapacious Gods, violent, litigious, usurping, incestuous Gods—, well, I found it all quite proper, and indeed was intensely interested in it. But as I came to man's estate, I observed that the laws flatly contradicted the poets, forbidding adultery, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... trade. Mercantile interests, especially in a Corsair state, are likely to clash with the duties of a consul. Some consuls, moreover, were clearly unfitted for their posts. Of one it is recorded that he drank to excess; another is described as "a litigious limb of the law, who values himself upon having practised his talents in that happy occupation with success, against every man that business or occasion gave him dealings with;" a third is represented as "sitting on his bed, with his ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... government, which had been laid down by the Nanking Provisional Constitution and endorsed by the Abdication Edicts, was a system in which every man was as good as neighbour, swayed meaninglessly to and fro, vainly seeking to regain the equilibrium which had been so sensationally lost. A litigious spirit became so universal that all authority was openly derided, crimes of every description being so common as to force most respectable men to withdraw from public affairs and leave a bare rump of ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... the evidence and depositions were then read in court, sworn to, and signed, after which the court adjourned to Wednesday at 10 of the clock. There are no lawyers in this place, the only blessing that God could bestow on such a litigious people. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... Europe, is common over the whole of New York. The physician with his theory, rather obtained from than corrected by experiments on the human constitution; the pious, self- denying, laborious, and ill-paid missionary; the half-educated, litigious, envious, and disreputable lawyer, with his counterpoise, a brother of the profession, of better origin and of better character; the shiftless, bargaining, discontented seller of his betterments; the plausible carpenter, and most of the others, are more ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... litigious Jarr, Belov'd by, all not vainly popular: Whate'er Assistance I had power to bring T'oblige my Country, or to serve my King, Whene'er they call'd, I'd readily afford, My Tongue, My Pen, my Counsel, or my Sword. ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... writing. all the Evidences [and] deposition were read in Court, Sworn too and Signed, then the Court Adjourned till Wednesday 10 of the Clock. no Lawyers in the place, the only blessing that God coud bestow on such a Litigious people. ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... Church of England, though not necessarily Communicants, may report to the Bishop anything their clergyman does which they believe to be unlawful. The Bishop may use his discretion whether proceedings are to be taken against the clergyman on the representation of his parishioners. If the litigious parties prefer it, the case may be taken out of the Bishop's hands and brought before a Judge appointed under this Act—at present ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... watch the fields at harvest time, for fear of losing a single sheaf, which he could not afford under peril of a day's starving; for according to the Scotch proverb, a hungry louse bites sore. This would of necessity, breed an infinite number of brangles and litigious suits in the spiritual courts, and put the wretched pastor at perpetual variance with his whole parish. But, as they have hitherto stood, a clergyman established in a competent living is not under the necessity of being so sharp, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... be very litigious and obstinate: constant disputes are taking place respecting their lands. A case came before the weekly court of the commandant involving property in a palm-tree worth twopence. The judge advised the pursuer to withdraw the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... courses suggested by Mr. Stigma was very decided, Messrs. Roundhead, Roundhead and Lollard were not sorry to have three strings to their bow. The Detectoral Association were good clients; most of their funds went into their lawyers' pockets. It was part of their policy to be litigious. Thereby the world was kept alive to the existence of Papacy within its bosom. Who shall say the Association were wrong? Some healthy daylight was occasionally let in upon the mysteries of Jesuitism, and there are people who think that worth while at the risk of a chance injustice. Though the ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... writer of plays;—that he purchased property in Stratford, to which town he returned;—engaged in purchases and sales and law-suits (of no biographical interest except as indicating his money-making and litigious temperament); helped his father in an application for coat armour (to be obtained by false pretences); promoted the enclosure of common lands at Stratford (after being guaranteed against personal loss); made ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... made use of them without any disguise, obtaining a remission of taxes, and gaining two lawsuits. In every litigation he used the Public Prosecutor's name with such good effect that the matter was carried no further, and, like all undersized men, he was contentious and litigious in business, though ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... experiences of the lawyers who travelled the circuits at this period, Mr. Arnold says: "The State was settled with a hardy, fearless, honest, but very litigious population. The court-house was sometimes framed and boarded, but more frequently it was built of logs. The judge sat upon a raised platform behind a rough board, sometimes covered with green baize, for a table on which to write his notes. A small table stood on the floor ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... Treaties, Carlos of Naples, his Half-Brother (Termagant's Baby Carlos, whom we all knew), was to succeed him in Spain; Don Philip, the next Brother, now of Parma and Piacenza, was to follow as King in Naples,—ceding those two litigious Duchies to Austria, after all. Friedrich, vividly awake to every chance, foresaw, in case of such disjunctures in Italy, good likelihood of quarrel there. And has despatched the experienced old Marischal to be on the ground, and have his eyes open. Marischal knows Spain very well; and has often ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... men are allured to the trade of law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was never taught them, but on the promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... judgments by confutations. For in anything which is well set down, I am in good hope that if the first reading move an objection, the second reading will make an answer. And in those things wherein I have erred, I am sure I have not prejudiced the right by litigious arguments; which certainly have this contrary effect and operation, that they add authority to error, and destroy the authority of that which is well invented. For question is an honour and preferment to falsehood, as on the other side it is a repulse ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... good method, which made me afterward return to the first book and enlarge it with diverse propositions, some relating to comets, others to other things found out last winter. The third I now design to suppress. Philosophy is such an impertinently litigious lady that a man had as good be engaged in lawsuits as have to do with her. I found it so formerly, and now I can no sooner come near her again but she gives me warning. The first two books, without the third, will not so well bear the title of Philosophies ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... life, saw the ghost of his father one night, upon this very account, which told him of the money being paid, and where the acquittance lay. When he got up in the morning, he went and found the acquittance in that very place that his father's ghost had directed him to, and so was freed from the litigious suit of one that ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey |
