"Opinionated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that excessive vanity is his besetting sin. He is not too clever or too honest to act in union with other people, but he is too vain. He is by no means too good for the rest of the world; but he is too conceited and self-opinionated to condescend to cooeperate with them. As, at some of the minor theatres, a single actor may play an army, so, in the House of Commons, Roebuck is a host in himself,—is his own party, and leads it. His occasional popularity in his own country is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of thinking, they distributed a great number of books of this kind amongst the Spaniards who chanced to be in London; some of them fell into the hands of certain skippers of Padron, and these good folks, on their return to Galicia, were observed to have become on a sudden exceedingly opinionated and fond of dispute. It was scarcely possible to make an assertion in their hearing without receiving a flat contradiction, especially when religious subjects were brought on the carpet. 'It is false,' they would say; 'Saint ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... friend is not going to turn out well," Dr. Lindsay, who had overheard the discussion, added in a distressed tone. "I have done what I can for him, but he is very opinionated and green—yes, very green. Pity—he is a clever fellow, one of the cleverest young surgeons in ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... religion for yours, he will believe you a madman; you will only excite his indignation, elicit his contempt; he will propose to you, in his turn, to adopt his own peculiar opinions; after much reasoning, you will treat each other as absurd beings, ridiculously opinionated, pertinaciously stubborn; and he will display the least folly who shall first yield. But if the adversaries become heated in the dispute, which always happens, when they suppose the matter important, or when they would defend the cause of ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... fact, one of those people of exalted principles, one of those opinionated puritans, of which England produces so many, one of those good and insupportable old women who haunt the table d'hotes of every hotel in Europe, who spoil Italy, impoison Switzerland, render the charming cities of the Mediterranean ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... kind! That story, little as I heard of it, was told with an opinionated confidence I wish my poor father had something of. Could I ever be happy with this man, by study and piety? God might open the way, but it seems closed to ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... a surprise in a call from Cousin John's son. In fact, the call was a surprise on both sides. This is how it came about. The day before yesterday, Dr. Cricket, who is a good creature, though self-opinionated and always differing from me, was called to see a patient over at the inn; and yesterday, making his second call, he left his gold-bowed glasses, and spent the afternoon bewailing his loss, for he fancied ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... opinionated mortals! none of us know what was done yesterday, what is doing to-day even under our eyes; and we swear to what was done two ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... Williams. Long, who published his History of Jamaica in 1774, was of the planter class, and his prejudice on such a matter was probably so complete that he was not even conscious that prejudice existed. He says of Williams: "In regard to the general character of the man, he was haughty, opinionated, looked down with sovereign contempt on his fellow blacks, entertained the highest opinion of his own knowledge, treated his parents with much disdain, and behaved towards his own children and slaves with a severity bordering on cruelty. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... false and unjust. He has an overweening opinion of his own all-sufficiency, and that is his besetting sin, and the one which, if anything does, will overturn his Government, for if he would be less dictatorial and opinionated, and would call to his assistance such talents and information as the crisis demands, he would be universally voted the best man alive to be at the head of the Government; but he has such a set of men under him, and Peel ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... "Poor, old opinionated, stupid old, conscientious old thing!" she was saying to herself as she let herself, unattended, out of the front door. "And yet I'll wager he would sit up all night and work his fingers to the bone trying to save a life. And when it comes to serving poor people without ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... well known that the old Manton house is haunted. In all the rural district near about, and even in the town of Marshall, a mile away, not one person of unbiased mind entertains a doubt of it; incredulity is confined to those opinionated persons who will be called "cranks" as soon as the useful word shall have penetrated the intellectual demesne of the Marshall Advance. The evidence that the house is haunted is of two kinds; the testimony of ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... the fondest care, and he would have discovered, had he possessed sufficient consciousness, how completely he had wound himself round their hearts. He had done so, not by being proud, or boastful, or self-opinionated, or by paying them court, by any readiness to take offence, or by flattery, or by any other mean device, but by his bravery and honesty, by his gentleness and liveliness, by his readiness to oblige, and general good-nature and uprightness, and by being true to himself and ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... of those people of exalted principles; one of those opinionated puritans, of which England produces so many; one of those good and insupportable old maids who haunt the tables d'hote of every hotel in Europe, who spoil Italy, poison Switzerland, render the charming cities of the Mediterranean uninhabitable, carry everywhere their fantastic manias ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Frenchman—an early settler. He would not part with a foot of it. He was a peasant, with all the peasant's love of the soil, which, in him, had become an obsession, a disease. He was a land-miser. With no business capacity, old and opinionated, he was land poor, and it was an open question which would arrive ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... a general underwriter," returned the opinionated pilot; "my wife shall mend every hole I make in your sails, with a needle no bigger than a hair, and with such a ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... him; he could do as he liked, lacking nothing and bound by nothing. Neither relatives, nor fatherland, nor religion, nor wants, existed for him. He believed in nothing and admitted nothing. But although he believed in nothing he was not a morose or blase young man, nor self-opinionated, but on the contrary continually let himself be carried away. He had come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as love, yet his heart always overflowed in the presence of any young and attractive woman. He had long been aware that honours and position were nonsense, yet involuntarily ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... right or the power to be active on this planet? And if active on this planet at all, then in the individual lives of His children? And in His word, backed up by fulfilled prophecies, to prove that He is dealing with us, He tells us that He is. Is "the modern mind" too scholarly, too self-opinionated, to consider the following words from Prof. James Orr in his "The Resurrection of Jesus" ("the modern mind" is very careful not to attempt a thorough reply to Professor Orr's "Problem of the Old Testament," nor his "Resurrection of Jesus"—for ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... have fallen into certain habits of thought; for you the world has progressed in this or that direction; of certain results you feel very sure; you have fallen into harmony with your surroundings; you meet day after day people interested in the things that interest you; you are not in the least opinionated, it is simply your good fortune to look upon the affairs of the world from the right point of view. When you last saw your friend,—less than a year after you left college,—he was the most sensible and agreeable of men; he had no heterodox notions; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the opposite in nearly every particular, except height and angularity. She was bony and red-faced and opinionated. A few sallow years with a rapid, profligate nobleman had brought her, in widowhood, to a fine sense of appreciation of the slow-going though tiresomely unpractical men of the Odell-Carney type. It mattered little that he made poor investment of the money she had sequestered from his lordship; he ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... looking over the side of the vessel at the pier to which they are drawing near, and grumbling sternly at his sad fate; John Potter beside him, with his arms crossed, his eyes cast down, and his thoughts far away with the opinionated Martha and the ingenious Tommy; Mr Franks and the others standing near; all ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... had a certain shrewd business-like efficiency, and in most of his harangues there was a good deal of what, for want of a better word, might be termed horse sense. But he was so completely self-opinionated and sure of himself that he generally drove his audience to thoughts of poisons that left no trace or even fire-arms. Especially when he was holding forth on strategy. On that subject he considered himself an expert, and ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... he departed than the master of the house told me that his friend the traveller had just said that I was a confounded sensible young fellow, and not at all opinionated, a sentiment in which he himself perfectly agreed—then hemming once or twice, he said that as I was going on a journey he hoped I was tolerably well provided with money, adding that travelling was rather expensive, especially on horseback, the manner ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... jaundiced; shortsighted, purblind; partial, one-sided, superficial. narrow-minded, narrow-souled[obs3]; mean-spirited; confined, illiberal, intolerant, besotted, infatuated, fanatical, entete[Fr], positive, dogmatic, conceited; opinative, opiniative[obs3]; opinioned, opinionate, opinionative, opinionated; self-opinioned, wedded to an opinion, opinitre; bigoted &c. (obstinate) 606; crotchety, fussy, impracticable; unreasonable, stupid &c. 499; credulous &c 486; warped. misjudged &c. v. Adv. ex parte[Lat]. Phr. nothing like ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... about the blacks. What a fool you were—and how brutally self-opinionated! I don't wonder Bridget thought you ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... which the gruff, opinionated physician had always filled him. He recited the story of last night's dinner, of his experience in the cafe, of his few blurred impressions of the ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... interesting talks with the great enemy, and made religious appeals to him or entertained him with wild proposals for a joint war on France over Mexico. They returned, converted also. But in July Horace Greeley, the great editor, who was too opinionated to be quite honest, was somehow convinced that Southern agents at Niagara, who had really come to hold intercourse with the disloyal group among the Democrats, were "two ambassadors" from the Confederacy seeking an audience of Lincoln. He wrote to Lincoln, begging him to ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... offended fairy, "you are as opinionated as your brother. I fear the time may come when you will both repent not having paid more regard to my admonitions. And which of these, my gentle Claribel, (turning to her,) shall I present to you?" Claribel timidly answered, "I am not ambitious of riches, they would ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... opinionated. He had many patients, who were in the habit of knotowing to him and obeying his instructions implicitly. It was something which ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... taken up by a little, old-fashioned, wooded structure that might have been with propriety in Banbridge. He noticed this, and the thought came to him that possibly it was the property of some ancient and opinionated mortal who was either holding it for higher prices or for the sake of some attachment or grudge. And just as he reached it he saw coming from the opposite direction his old book-keeper, William Allbright. Allbright, moving with a due regard to the dangerous state of the pavement, had still ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... come and see me through," said Sir Philip, gallantly. "I want to quarrel with him about a label—and you remember Dizzy's saying—'a head gardener is always opinionated'? ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "A big, opinionated ramrod of a Scotchman who'd drive any girl to break her engagement a dozen times if she had promised ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... public likes to be amused, and small blame to it. It isn't very particular about the means, but it has rather a preference for amusements that I believes to be "improving," other things being equal. I don't think it's either very intelligent or at all opinionated, the dear old public it takes humbly enough what is given it and it doesn't cry for the moon. It has an idea that fine scenery is an appeal to its nobler part, and that it shows a nice critical sense in preferring it to poor. ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... self-opinionated, with an enormous capacity for liquor, Bismarck was an intellectual as well ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... in the presence of a deeply interested audience whose observation was unknown to him. Through the interstices of the lace curtains at an open window, the gaze of Julia and Florence was concentrated upon him in a manner that might have disquieted even so opinionated and peculiar a man as Mr. Atwater, had he been aware of it; and Herbert likewise watched him fixedly from an unseen outpost. Herbert had shown some recklessness, declaring loudly that he intended to lounge in full view; but when the well-known ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... impressions of the stranger, they were probably correct. We all disliked him; we thought him conceited, self-opinionated, selfish, and untrustworthy. But later, reflecting that this was possibly the result of Captain Jim's over-praise, and finding none of these qualities as yet offensively opposed to our own selfishness ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Englishman? Never, boys, never. These things are all taken out of them by fagging. It stands to reason they should be. If I shy my boots at a fellow's head, is he likely to domineer? If I kick a small boy who contradicts me, is he likely to be opinionated and dogmatic? If I eat up my fag's plum-cake just sent by his mamma, hot, as it were, from the maternal heart, and moist with a mother's tears, is that fag likely to be selfish? Not at all. The boots, and the kicking, and the general walloping make him manly. It teaches him to govern his temper ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... to seek to be always the leader of the conversation, and to push a good argument too hard, when we have found one. Civility often hides half its understanding, and when it meets with an opinionated man who defends the bad side, spares him the disgrace of ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... of the magistrate to whom Mr. Dignam Bailey, Q. C., (with him Mr. Adolphus Stigma), applied in the case of re an infant, exparte Ginx, is not material to this history. He was like his fellow stipendiaries—mild as to humor, vigilant in his duties, opinionated in his views, resenting the troublesome intrusion into his court of a barrister, apt to treat him with about one-eighth of the courtesy extended to the humblest junior by the Queen's Bench, and curiously unequal both with himself and his brother magistrates in adjusting punishment. ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... disagreeing qualities mixed with her perfections. She was imperious and proud even to insolence; vain and conceited even to folly; she knew her virtues and her graces too well, and her vices too little; she was very opinionated and obstinate, hard to be convinced of the falsest argument, but very positive in her fancied judgement: abounding in her own sense, and very critical on that of others: censorious, and too apt to charge others with those ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... no sort of answer; she gave no sign of yielding; but, because she had made no answer, he, self-willed and opinionated man that he was, felt assured that she had no answer to give, and went on to talk as if ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... written by the hand that wrote 'King Lear,' although, according to these wise doctors, it is assumed to be utterly impossible that the same man can use two styles, or that a man at seventy will write otherwise than he did at thirty. In short, we discovered that there is nothing more arbitrary, more opinionated, and more unphilosophical than this 'philological criticism.' Applied, as these wonderful German doctors apply it, to any book ever penned, and it can be shown, 'as the result of high critical ability,' that no author ever wrote his own book. It is the easiest thing in the world to prove ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... frequently placed upon the table to drink to the health of the guests, and to deliver short declamations, for which he had inherited a decided talent. He was flattered and fondled and indulged in every way. Is it strange that under this training he acquired a taste for strong drink, and became opinionated and perverse? ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... little prosy and opinionated; otherwise a good fellow. Whilst his homily in progress ground considerably cleared. Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Bill put oft till to-morrow; Kensington Subway Bill withdrawn; BAUMANN triumphant. Still remained ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various
... herself suspect whence she had the idea,—that it was her girlhood's converse with real, sturdy, honest, straight-forward, simple manhood, in the person of the youth of fiery temper, and obstinate, opinionated, sometimes even rude behaviour, whom she had chastised with terms of contemptuous rebuke, which had rendered her so soon capable of distinguishing between a profound and a shallow, a genuine and an unreal nature, even when the latter comprehended a certain power of fascination, active ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... Sisterhood—lost all she had, you know, and gave the rest to Heaven. Still, you can't call it a sudden calamity; that occurred when poor dear Marion was born. The doctors said at the time that she couldn't live more than a fortnight, and she's been trying ever since to see if she could. Women are so opinionated. ...
— Reginald • Saki
... and through, cold, shivering, and sleepy, glad indeed was I when a house appeared in view and we drew up at the door of a shanty for Food and fire. The house belonged to a Prussian subject of the name of Probsfeld, a terribly self-opinionated North German, with all the bumptious proclivities of that thriving nation most fully developed.' Herr Probsfeld appeared to be a man who regretted that men in general should be persons of a very inferior order of intellect, but who accepted the fact as a thing not to be avoided under the existing ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch—not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward—a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... there, Lynde and the old cousin vanished, and Alan found himself talking freely with the Captain who could, as it appeared, talk well on many subjects far removed from Four Winds. He was evidently a clever, self-educated man, somewhat opinionated and given to sarcasm; he never made any references to his own past life or experiences, but Alan discovered him to be surprisingly well read in politics and science. Sometimes in the pauses of the conversation Alan ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... officers of high rank, recently emerged from civil life, who nourish prodigiously in self-glorification upon their brief warlike experience. There are brave men, and men whose courage is suspected; quiet men, and men of opinionated perversity; quick-witted men, and men whose profound stupidity makes them continual butts for all kinds of practical jokes; refined, educated, poetical men, and men of boorish habits. In short, any camp presents such specimens of humanity as would ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Sibawai, Khalid and I have seldom been together. And he had become so opinionated that I was glad it was so. Even on Sunday I would leave him alone with Im-Hanna, and returning in the evening, I would find him either reading or burning a pamphlet. Once I consented to accompany him to one of the lectures he was so fond of attending. And I was really surprised that one had to pay ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... graceful compliment to a party who have numbered few good players in their ranks; for certainly the Tories could quote folly ten to one whisters against the Whigs. The Whigs are too superficial, too crotchety, and too self-opinionated to be whist-players; and, worse than all, too distrustful. A Whig could never trust his partner—he could not for a moment disabuse himself of the notion that his colleague meant to outwit him. A Whig, too, would invariably try to win by something ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... the story of a schoolmaster, his trials, disappointments, and final victory. It will recall to many a man his experience in teaching pupils, and in managing their opinionated and self-willed parents. The story has the charm which is always ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... Sirs, when, choosing out of many heresies, I think over in my mind certain portentous errors of self-opinionated men, errors that it will be incumbent on me to refute, I should condemn myself of want of spirit and discernment if in this trial of strength I were to be afraid of any man's ability or powers. Let him be able, let him be eloquent, let him be a practised ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... would take a long time. I have not decided whether to try his process, but have no doubt he understands my disease." Dr. Schieferdecker had been a pupil and was an enthusiastic disciple of Priesnitz. He had unbounded faith in the healing properties of water. He was very impulsive, opinionated, self-confident, and accustomed to speak contemptuously of the old medical science and those who practised it. But for all that, he possessed a remarkable sagacity in the diagnosis and treatment of ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... to hate the word "always." But it was true. In those exciting and intensely opinionated days it seemed there was never a subject that came up, whether at The Precincts or at home, but he found himself on the other side of the argument and giving intense displeasure because he was on the other side. In Mabel's ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... the confidence and tell Oliver how she wished her father could see some things in as clear a light, and be more gentle and less opinionated. She was too ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... had outgrown his social surroundings. They were absolutely good, but they were narrow; it could not be otherwise; he chafed under them." Furthermore, the youth, before he had found his real work as a poet, was restless, irritable, and opinionated; and an ever-present cause of friction was the fact that there were few subjects of taste on which he and his father did not disagree. Their poetic tastes were especially at variance. The father counted Pope supreme in poetry, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... thinks, after reading the present memoir, with much regard and some regret. He was a sturdy patriot and cordial democrat, but he seems not to have thought human slavery so very bad a thing. He is perceptibly opinionated, and would have carried things with a high hand, whether as one of the government or one of the governed. He was not swift to adopt new ideas, but he was thoroughly honest in his opposition to them. His somewhat exaggerated estimate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... incorrect, inconsequent and misleading, or persistently negative, they declared that the spirit was a deceiver, evil, or foolish, and, while having only themselves to blame, gave up the sittings in disgust, whereas, had they been less impetuous, less opinionated, less prejudiced, they would in all probability have eventually obtained satisfactory proofs of the presence of their ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... book set out to tell you all the things about Unix that tutorials and technical books won't. The result is gossipy, funny, opinionated, downright weird in spots, and invaluable. Along the way they expose you to enough of Unix's history, folklore and humor to qualify as a first-class source for these things. Because so much of today's hackerdom is involved with Unix, this in turn illuminates many ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... outraging every convention in the most virtuous manner, and opposing a dry reticence to the curiosity and wonderment of the few neighbours who continued to have any vivid remembrance of his existence. In fine weather his stout and opinionated cob bore him gravely along the lanes. The cottagers' children ceased their play and looked respectfully sheepish as he rode by; the farm girls dropped their elaborate curtseys, and the labourers at the roadside made efforts to appear at their ease. These and the farmers were the ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... half-tamed valley's bounty, spoils, and promise; of its motley human life, scarcely yet to be called society, so lately and rudely transplanted from overseas; so bareboned, so valiantly preserved, so young yet already so titanic; so self-reliant, opinionated, and uncouth; so strenuous and materialistic in mind; so inflammable in emotions; so grotesque in its virtues; so violent in its excesses; so complacently oblivious of all the higher values of wealth; so giddied with the new wine of liberty and crude abundance; ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... Company issued orders that the Clove, commanded by Saris, should proceed to the Far Eastern islands. The Clove reached Hirado on the 11th of June, 1613. Her master, Saris, soon proved that he did not possess the capacity essential to success. He was self-opinionated, suspicious, and of shallow judgment. Though strongly urged by Will Adams to make Uraga the seat of the new trade; though convinced of the excellence of the harbour there, and though instructed as ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... coterie, and to receive adulation without constraint. He produced less effect in English society than he had anticipated; he wanted more success and of a more varied character; he was looked upon as a distinguished writer, rather than as a great politician; they considered him more opinionated than profound, and too much occupied with himself. He excited curiosity, but not the admiration he coveted; he was not always the leading object of attention, and enjoyed less freedom, while he called forth little of the enthusiastic idolatry ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... felt a reluctant liking for him. He was a man with big dreams, a rough-and-ready idealist, an idealist with sharply marked limitations, some areas of his mind very broad, some dogmatically narrow. Opinionated, obstinate, impulsive, of not very sound judgment, yet dictatorial because supremely certain of his rightness—courageous, unselfish, sincere—that was the way she now saw the ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... foibles, liked her cousin well enough to be generally glad of his company. During the last three months he had spent almost every week-end at Witanbury. And though it was true, as her mother often observed, that James was both narrow-minded and self-opinionated, yet even so he brought with him a breath of larger air, and he often told the ladies at the Trellis ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... garden, where they were consulting with the gardener and Father Coleman about the shape of some new beds, for the critical hour of filling them was approaching. The gardener, like all head-gardeners, was opinionated. Living always at Vauxe, he had come to believe that the gardens belonged to him, and that the family were only occasional visitors; and he treated them accordingly. The lively and impetuous Lady St. Jerome had a thousand bright fancies, but her morose attendant never ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... a sample of his cardinal virtues, some persist in asking why the good silversmith remained as unmarried as an oyster, seeing that these properties of nature are of good use in all places. But these opinionated critics, do they know what it is to love? Ho! Ho! Easy! The vocation of a lover is to go, to come, to listen, to watch, to hold his tongue, to talk, to stick in a corner, to make himself big, to make himself little, to agree, to play music, to ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... agree with me? All right! Quite useless to dispute about it. I don't know what you may be—I am the most opinionated man in existence. Sheer waste of time, my dear sir, to attempt convincing Me. Now, just look at that child!" Here Mr. Nugent Dubourg's attention was suddenly attracted by the baby. He twisted round on his heel, and addressed Mrs. Finch. "I take the liberty ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... status of the workingman from the figures you read in your study. You're like half the smug people in the world who discuss this question in the railway carriages and in their clubs. I've heard 'em till I'd like to shove their self-opinionated arguments down their throats, strip their clothes off their backs, and send them down to live with my pals, or starve with them. Any little idiot who buys a penny paper and who's doing pretty well for himself, thinks he can lay down the law about Free Trade. ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the study of books, but as an artist through the experience of life. When life had impressed upon him what seemed to him a truth, he then applied his intellect to it to bolster up that truth. Hence it is that, however opinionated Strindberg may at times seem, his writings carry that conviction which we receive only when the author reproduces' truths he has obtained first-hand from life. One-sided he may occasionally be in Married, ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... the Mormon creed, nothing that if read aloud could have disturbed Halsey's peace. "Perchance," he had said, "as a medical man applies a poultice or blister to a diseased body to draw out the evil, so to those who pray and are too ignorant, i.e. opinionated, to follow perfectly the greatest teacher of prayer, God may apply circumstances to bring all the evil of heart to the surface, that in this life and the future it may the more quickly work itself ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... are mastered by it, and it is prevalent in youth. It may be useful when it keeps a man away from vice and unworthy things, inspiring him to rise to nobility of character and the service of God. But generally it is useless and leads to many evils, especially if it causes one to be self-opinionated, refusing to seek the advice of anyone. When a man sees this quality gaining mastery over him, he should consider the origin and end of existing things. When he sees that all things are destined to pass away, and himself likewise, his pride ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... the best of the higher stamp of men, my dear. They know when they are wrong, and own it. In fact, that's the greatest difference between men. The feeble and self-opinionated never acknowledge an error, but the truly sincere can confess and retrieve their hallucinations and prejudices. Well, I am glad to have seen Prometesky, and to be disabused of some ideas ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... grown up under his eye, and humour him in his old age. He once attended the Squire to Oxford, when he was a student there, and enlightened the whole university with his hunting lore. All this is enough to make the old man opinionated, since he finds, on all these matters of first-rate importance, he knows more than the rest of the world. Indeed, Master Simon had been his pupil, and acknowledges that he derived his first knowledge in hunting from the instructions of Christy: and I much question whether the old ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... with a cargo of good horses, cattle and hogs. His plan for renting Washington's farm fell through, by his account because it was so poor, and ultimately he settled for a time near Baltimore, where he underwent such experiences as an opinionated Englishman with new methods would be likely to meet. Soured by failure, he returned to England, and published an account of his travels, partly with the avowed purpose of discouraging emigration to America. His opinion of the country he summed up thus: "If a man should be so unfortunate as ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... the part an air of Spanish loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved like an old Castilian. He was starch, spruce, opinionated, but his superstructure of pride seemed bottomed upon a sense of worth. There was something in it beyond the coxcomb. It was big and swelling, but you could not be sure that it was hollow. You might wish to see it taken down, but you felt that it was ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... have you delivered me over to a stranger; to a man unacquainted with government and business, and too opinionated to learn; to a man whose ignorance and prejudices operate to the neglect of every good measure, or the liberal cooeperation with any that wish well to the public interests; to a man who, to pursue his own passions, plans, and designs, will certainly ruin all mine, as well as the Company's affairs. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... natural valor, joined to his blind confidence in himself, sometimes precipitated him into almost inextricable situations, into which he threw himself headlong, and from which he never emerged without hard blows—for if he was as adventurous and boastful as a Gascon, he was as obstinate and opinionated as a Breton. ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... "Your self-opinionated talk does you little credit," Faltonius retorted. "Since you know so much you must know also that for many years each Emperor has designated some priest as Pontifex of Vesta to be his deputy and to stand in the closest ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... and the great wagon behind him. When all was ready I touched him up; and, to my great delight, he moved off with the two-horse load of stone as easily as if he were drawing his own cart. I led him out into the public road, along which he proceeded without difficulty. He was an opinionated little beast, and sometimes stopped, not liking the peculiar manner in which he was harnessed; but a touch of the switch made him move on, and I soon turned him and brought the wagon back into the ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... was a sly hit at Ingeborg, who was sitting by, for she was well known to have a shrewish temper, and to be self-willed and opinionated, in so much that most men kept out of her way. She was very unlike Erling, or her father and mother, or her little sisters, in ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... virtuous as his prototype Timothy; but he's an opinionated old fogey all the same,' ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... the quotation when, having walked towards Fleet Street, they were confronted by the heads on Temple Bar. Even when Goldsmith was opinionated and wrong, Johnson's contradiction was in a manner gentle. "If you put a tub full of blood into a stable, the horses are like to go mad," observed Goldsmith. "I doubt that," was Johnson's reply. "Nay, sir, it is a fact well authenticated." Here Thrale interposed to suggest ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... was still more elderly, was a thick-set and rather portly personage, of that quiet, reserved, and somewhat haughty demeanor, which usually belongs to men of much self-esteem, and of an unyielding, opinionated disposition. The ladies were both young, and in the full bloom of maidenly beauty. But their native characters, like those of their male companions, seemed to be very strongly contrasted. The one seated ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... doubted. It is as certain as the payment of a good draft, by Crommeline, Van Stopper, and Van Gelt, of Amsterdam. Ah! old valet! she is fresh and blooming as a rose, and a girl of excellent qualities! 'Tis a pity that she is a little opinionated; a defect that she doubtless inherits from her Norman ancestors; since all of my family have ever been remarkable for listening to reason. The Normans were an obstinate race, as witness the siege of Rochelle, by which oversight ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... and her son, on the other hand, seems to have found immediate favour in the eyes of Mr. Smith. It is, perhaps, easy to exaggerate the ready-made resemblances; the tired woman must have done much to fashion girls who were under ten; the man, lusty and opinionated, must have stamped a strong impression on the boy of fifteen. But the cleavage of the family was too marked, the identity of character and interest produced between the two men on the one hand, and the three women on the other, was too complete to have been the result of influence ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "at all events, the most foolish fools I have ever known stayed still and didn't do anything. Rushing shows a certain movement of the mind, even if it is in the wrong direction. However, Mr. Macdonald is both opinionated and dogmatic, but his worst enemy could never call him ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... which time had made among his teeth. He was tall, but had lost something of his height from stooping,—was slight in his form, but well made, and vain of the smallness of his feet and the whiteness of his hands. He was generous, quick tempered, and opinionated; generally very mild to those who would agree with him and submit to him, but intolerant of contradiction, and conceited as to his experience of the world and the wisdom which he had thence derived. To those who were manifestly his inferiors ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... better than being a saint, isn't it? Look at that hateful child, Cedric Burton—detestable little ape! That Burton complacency gets on my nerves, especially in a child. But then look at the Burtons! How could they help having horrible little self-opinionated apes for children?" ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... however, and indeed the whole picture of the ordinary English life of his time which Rous sets forth, suggest a wider reflection. We realise what has always been the English temper. It is the temper of a vigorous, independent, opinionated, free-spoken yet sometimes suspicious people among whom every individual feels in himself the impulse to rule. It is also the temper of a people always prepared in the face of danger to subordinate these native ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... my selfe more towardes my louely Polia, and bound my affections more surely to hir. Being perswaded and firmely opinionated, that this sight was a traunce in loue, for shewing that I should dye and lose my loue. Oh how extreamely did it vexe mee. Neyther did it refuse or make resistance to anye sharpe and newe assaulte of loue, which ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... considerable power. It was pointed out to him that his construction was not sufficiently strong, in view of the speed at which his machine would pass through the air. But he was of the quiet, determined, self-opinionated type, who pursued his own way and said little. He did not strengthen his constructional, and he began a series of flying tests. In the first of these, which were short, the planes stood up to their work, and the fears ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White |
