"Overbearing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... overlooked all this time, and the pretty little creature proved a far greater mystery to the shrewd, right-judging friend of the family than seemed at all reasonable. There were times when, had she seen her elsewhere, she would not have hesitated to pronounce her frivolous, vain, overbearing. Even now, seeing her loved and cared for, in the midst of the bairns, there were moments when she found herself saying it in her heart. A duller sense, and weaker penetration could not have failed to ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... personality—even tending to malignity—that no one possessing respect for human nature can read them without being tempted to regard them as mere biographical fabrications. But such a construction cannot be put upon the stories told of Lord Chancellor Thurlow, whose overbearing insolence to the Bar is well known. To a few friends like John Scott, Lord Eldon, and Lloyd Kenyon, Lord Kenyon, he could be consistently indulgent; but to those who provoked him by an independent and fearless manner he was little short of a persecutor. ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... survive this overbearing Or live a life of mad despairing, My proffered love despised, rejected? No, no, it's not to be expected! (Calling off.) Messmates, ahoy! ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... a story of a man who, when in command of his ships and when everything went prosperously with him, was so overbearing and cruel that some of his men, in desperation at the treatment they received, mutinied against him. But the story shows another side of his character in adversity, which it ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... rapidity and self-assurance. I observed that all the other officers bowed politely at the end of each, no one questioning any of his statements. Even Captain Collyer let him run on without differing from him in the slightest degree. I took a dislike to him from the first from his overbearing manner at times. Still he was certainly amusing, and everybody present laughed very much at his jokes. He talked incessantly, and did not scruple to interrupt anybody speaking. Among his stories was an account he gave of his own prowess, when ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... overbearing and uncontrollable, misanthropy, excessive dogmatism, a singular pleasure in giving others pain, were among his personal faults or misfortunes. He abused his companions and servants; he never forgave his sister for marrying a tradesman; he could attract with winning words and repel with furious ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... drill was finished, and in spite of the overbearing manner of the instructor, Richard was pleased with the exercise, and even began to entertain ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... enemies and at the same time earned for him the distrust and aversion of his political coadjutors, he has found countless accusers and not a single vindicator. Resembling George Jeffreys in temper and mental capacity, he resembled him also in posthumous fame. A shrewd, selfish, overbearing man, possessing wit which was exercised with equal promptitude upon friends and foes, he alternately roused the terror and the laughter of his audiences. At the bar and in the Irish House of Commons he was ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... concealed the despotism of an inexorable master, slavery, before whom the most powerful of slave-holders was himself but a slave, as abject as the meanest." Over wide sections, untitled manorial lords, "more intelligent than educated, brave but irascible, proud but overbearing," controlled all voting and office-holding. Congressional districts were their pocket-boroughs, and they ignored the common man save to use him. The system grew, instead of statesmen, sectionalists, whom love ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... kindly man despite that overbearing "von": yet, he speaks to us like this! The survivors of our half dead force are to "push on"; for, "it is important to push on" although Whitehall seems to have time and to spare to "consider" my cable ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... of them to poverty, and stripped them all of a great part of their power. The Greek Patriarch was deposed, on complaint by the British Ambassador of his interference with matters in the Ionian Islands; and the Armenian Patriarch found himself in trouble with his own people. He was too overbearing, and was obliged, in November, 1840, to resign his office, to avoid a forcible deposition; and it was a significant sign of the times, that Stepan, who had been ejected from office on account of his forbearance ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... understanding of its duties and requirements. Though he had, with an ill grace, apologized for his conduct, he seemed to feel no compunction on account of it; but, on the contrary, he every moment grew more overbearing and insolent. He could not speak to his companions in a gentlemanly manner, as they had been accustomed to be addressed. He was course, rude, and vulgar; and the members, who had received him among them in the best spirit possible, began to ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... Now, a different order of things prevailed. Boulton was simply unendurable. His capacity was barely such as to enable him to discharge his official functions, and what he lacked in ability he made up for in bluster. He had an abominable temper, and a haughty, overbearing manner. He was always committing blunders which he refused to acknowledge, and he roared and bullied his way through one complication after another in a fashion which disgusted even those with whom he acted. During the discussion on the Salary Bill he shrieked and raved ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... straight up toward the village of Romero. When challenged by an under-sized soldier he merely spurred Montrosa forward, eyeing the sentry so grimly that the man did no more than finger his rifle uncertainly, cursing under his breath the overbearing airs of all Gringos. Nor did the rider trouble to make the slightest detour, but cantered the full length of Romero's dusty street, the target of more than one pair of hostile eyes. To those who saw him, soldiers and civilians alike, it was evident that ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... habit to speak in this strain to anyone; but there seemed to be a something connected with Peg Grant that irritated him. The manner of the other was so overbearing as to appear almost rude. He had had his own way a long time now; and thus far no one connected with the big ranch owned by his father had arisen to take ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... on bombast and grandiloquence and mannerism; be neither supercilious nor overbearing; cease to carp at other people's performances and to count their loss your gain. And then, perhaps the greatest of all your errors is this: instead of arranging your matter first, and then elaborating the diction, you find some out-of-the-way ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... Evil which has prevailed from Generation to Generation, which grey Hairs and tyrannical Custom continue to support; I hope your Spectatorial Authority will give a seasonable Check to the Spread of the Infection; I mean old Mens overbearing the strongest Sense of their Juniors by the mere Force of Seniority; so that for a young Man in the Bloom of Life and Vigour of Age to give a reasonable Contradiction to his Elders, is esteemed an unpardonable Insolence, and regarded ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Hartopp there was a weight of soft quietude, of placid oppression, wholly irresistible. It would have buried a Titaness under a Pelion of moral feather-beds. Mass upon mass of downy influence descended upon you, seemingly yielding as it fell, enveloping, overbearing, stifling you; not presenting a single hard point of contact; giving in as you pushed against it; supplying itself seductively round you, softer and softer, heavier and heavier,—till, I assure you, ma'am, no matter how high your natural wifely spirit, you would ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a word. He had lost somewhat of his assurance, his pride and overbearing haughtiness. Perhaps he had already heard some tales of ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... comprehend the greatness of his schemes, and to realize, as he did, the importance of securing the new empire to the English before it was occupied by the Spanish and the French. His conceit, his boasting, and his overbearing manner, which no doubt was one of the causes why he was unable to act in harmony with the other adventurers of that day, all told against him. He was that most uncomfortable person, a man conscious of his own importance, and out of favor ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in the hall. His aunt's eyes were full of tears, for she loved him dearly, her brother's only son, early left motherless, whom she had regarded like her own child, and who had so nobly fulfilled all the fondest hopes. All his overbearing ways and uncalled-for interference were forgotten, and her voice gave way as she ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and a very good horse was brought to satisfy the white men, who were now determined to pursue a rigid course with the thievish Indians among whom they found themselves. These people, the Eneeshurs, were stingy, inhospitable, and overbearing in their ways. Nothing but the formidable numbers of the white men saved them from insult, pillage, and even murder. While they were here, one of the horses belonging to the party broke loose and ran towards the Indian village. A buffalo robe attached to him fell off and was gathered ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... sketching the house. What wonderful eyes the man has! With what a proud, confident manner he looks around! What a brow! Truly he is a handsome fellow, and Herzberg may be right after all. That brow betokens thought, and from those eyes there flashes a divine light. But he looks overbearing and proud. Now, I am doubly pleased that I refused Herzberg to have any thing to do with him. Such presumptive geniuses must be rather kept back; then they feel their power, and strive to bring themselves forward. Yes! I believe that man has a future. He looks like ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... for English-speaking visitors to travel there. Nothing is farther from the truth; there is no hatred of American or English, and, if there had been, they little know the innate courtesy of the Spanish people, who fear insult that is not due to the overbearing manners of ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... Elector had many a time showed his teeth to the knighthood of Brandenburg, appealing to law and justice when he had taken part with the citizens and humbled the overbearing pride of the nobles. It was now his part to show that he would not suffer noble blood to be spilt unavenged, though it were by the devilish skill of a citizen; forasmuch as that if indeed he should do so all men would know thereby that he was the sworn foe of the nobles of Brandenburg and kept ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "The Rambler," "Rasselas," "The Lives of the English Poets," and his edition of Shakespeare. In person, Johnson was heavy and awkward; he was the victim of scrofula in his youth, and of dropsy in his old age. In manner, he was boorish and overbearing; but his great powers and his wisdom caused his company to be sought by many eminent ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... magic gold, lording it over his fellow-dwarfs. He has compelled his brother Mime, the cleverest smith of them all, to fashion him a Tarnhelm, or helmet of invisibility, and the latter complains peevishly to the gods of the overbearing mastery which Alberich has established in Nibelheim. When Alberich appears, Wotan and Loge cunningly beguile him to exhibit the powers of his new treasures. The confiding dwarf, in order to display ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... of the island he threw the schooner up into the wind, and ordered the large boat to be hoisted out and put in the water. Gascoyne issued his commands in a quick, loud voice, and Ole shook his head as if he felt that this overbearing manner proved what he had expected; namely, that when the pirate got aboard his own vessel, he would come out in ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... had helped to open the Labour Yard, and several other 'ladies'. Some of these were the district visitors already alluded to, most of them the wives of wealthy citizens and retired tradesmen, richly dressed, ignorant, insolent, overbearing frumps, who—after filling themselves with good things in their own luxurious homes—went flouncing into the poverty-stricken dwellings of their poor 'sisters' and talked to them of 'religion', lectured them about sobriety and thrift, and—sometimes—gave them tickets for soup or orders ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... against the overbearing arrogance of these younger gods. Athene bears their rage with equanimity, addresses them in the language of kindness, even of veneration, till these so indomitable beings are unable to withstand the charm of her mild eloquence. They are to have a sanctuary ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... bare the Cyclopes, overbearing in spirit, Brontes, and Steropes and stubborn-hearted Arges [1606], who gave Zeus the thunder and made the thunderbolt: in all else they were like the gods, but one eye only was set in the midst of their fore-heads. And they were surnamed ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... the words he had spoken to his guest; and he took Siegfried into his own chamber, and told him all; and he asked him what answer they should send on the morrow to the overbearing North-kings. ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority."[34] ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... between the pretended character of this being as the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, and his real character as a man, who, for a vain attempt to reform the world, paid the forfeit of his life to that overbearing tyranny which has since so long desolated the universe in his name. Whilst the one is a hypocritical Daemon, who announces Himself as the God of compassion and peace, even whilst He stretches forth His blood-red hand with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... by the sound of an auto upon the road. It drew up and stopped right in front of the gate. A man at once alighted and walked rapidly toward the house. Mrs. Hampton rose and met him just as he stepped upon the verandah. The visitor was a middle-aged man, of overbearing manner. He had not the courtesy to remove his hat in the presence of the woman, nor to take the big cigar he was smoking from his mouth. In an instant the thought flashed into Mrs. Hampton's mind that this was the man who had come to take away her ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... as a mere child, and spoils him accordingly. He is, in fact, childish in every way, deserving his sobriquet, and is followed about everywhere by his old nurse, Eremyeevna. Mr. Simpleton has very little to say, and that little, chiefly, in support of his overbearing wife's assertions, and at her explicit demand. She habitually addresses every one, except her son, as "beast," and by other similar epithets. She has taken into her house, about six months before the play opens, Sophia, a fairly ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... vanished into space, both Americans, and the only men of any good in a fight. Things were looking rather blue, and I began to think that I also should like to disappear, provided I could carry off my money and my mistress with me. My scruples about loyalty had been removed by the colonel's overbearing conduct, and I was ready for any step that promised me the fulfillment of my own designs. It was pretty evident that there would be no living with McGregor in his present frame of mind, and I was convinced that my best course would be to cut the whole thing, or, if that proved impossible, ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... 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, wrangling, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... fail, the cause would seem to be lost forever. What then? Why only a monarchy on our Southern border, insolent provinces on our Northern; Spain strengthened in her position, and recovering her lost ground; Mexico an empire; England audacious and overbearing as of yore, and France joining to fill our waters with mighty naval armaments. We, having witnessed the dismemberment of our country, and possessing no longer a nationality, but broken into fragments, to become the jest and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... it without complaining—her husband knew that she had never complained—it was for the children's sake. But it was really unnecessary now, and "it may be just as well to seize the opportunity; she has become far, far too overbearing in ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... apt to parley and bargain, to compromise. I think that, as a people, we are so timorous that we would concede almost anything in order to avoid strong measures. And that is where Sachar has already the advantage. He is not timorous; on the contrary, he is bold, courageous, overbearing—he frightens people into surrendering to his will. And if ye also are prepared to be firm, resolute, fearless, I believe ye will conquer; for if once the people can be brought to realise that your determination ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... of the entire friendly world. Every architect knew and said that the profession of architecture would be ruined for years. Then the India Office woke George up. The attitude of the India Office was overbearing. It implied that it had been marvellously original and virtuous in submitting the affair of its barracks to even a limited competition, when it might just as easily have awarded the job to any architect whom it happened to know, or whom its wife, cousin, or aunt happened to know, or whose wife, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... dictatorial, was sometimes a little overbearing, but being a man of great ability, and universally respected for his high rank in the scientific world, his colleagues usually bowed to his decisions. On this occasion his force of character sufficed to silence the doubters, and when the statement intended ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... Johnson. Reader, have a care, Tread lightly, lest you rouse a sleeping bear: Religious, moral, generous, and humane He was, but self-sufficient, rude, and vain; Ill-bred and overbearing in dispute, A scholar and a Christian—yet a brute. Would you know all his wisdom and his folly, His actions, sayings, mirth, and melancholy? Boswell and Thrale, retailers of his wit, Will tell you how he wrote, and talked, and ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... contradict—no one to question even his stockings—speckled or others. Even when he was clearly wrong, it was an affront to hint at it. He had much in common with that great man, Mr. Gladstone, who was the political Pickwick of his time. He was overbearing and arrogant and unrestrained, and I am afraid vindictive. Dodson and Fogg were associated with the great mortification of his life. He could not forgive them—the very sight of them roused his hatred, and the having to pay them ransom stung him to fury. All which is ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... the terrific boom came the discordant blare of a megaphone, faint at first but swiftly overbearing the ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... his frank and liberal manners had secured him many—were no less disgusted than himself with the overbearing conduct of this new ally. They loudly complained that it was quite enough to suffer from the perfidy of Pizarro, without being exposed to the insults of his family, who had now come over with him to fatten on the spoils of conquest which belonged to their leader. The rupture soon ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... temperament, experience, and behavior. There were the captain's two, Trumpet and Jip, who, by virtue of their reflected rank and authority, held places of privilege and pickings under the table, and were jealous and overbearing as became a captain's favorites, snubbing and bullying their more accomplished and versatile guests, the circus dogs, with skipper-like growls and snarls and snaps. And there was our own true Bessy,—a Newfoundland, great and good,—discreet, reposeful, dignified, fastidious, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... Warsaw or in camp at the front. The other noticeable characteristic is the friendly terms he is on with his officers. The Prussian soldiers rarely seem to like their officers, and it is not to be wondered at, as they treat their men in a very harsh, overbearing way. On duty the Russian discipline is strict, but off duty an officer may be heard addressing one of his men as "little pigeon" or "comrade" and other terms of endearment, and the soldier, on the other hand, will call his officer "little father" or "little brother." ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... half-demented woman, I am GLAD when you blame me. But don't blame me when I tell you to fight. Don't do that, or you will regret it when you must die. Ah, your father was stiff and proud enough before men of better rank than himself. He was overbearing enough with his equals and his betters. But he humbled himself before the poor, he made me ashamed. He must hear it—he must hear it! Better he should hear it than die coddling himself with peace. His humility, and my pride, ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... revenue of eight million kokus reverted to the Government, with the exception of seven hundred thousand kokus. The title of Hatamoto exists no more, and those who until a few months ago held the rank are for the most part ruined or dispersed. From having been perhaps the proudest and most overbearing class in Japan, they are driven to the utmost straits of poverty. Some have gone into trade, with the heirlooms of their families as their stock; others are wandering through the country as Ronins; ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... assembly is always vastly impressive; when the word coincides with private sentiment it excites enthusiasm. Alfred hated the aristocratic order of things with a rabid hatred. In practice he could be as coarsely overbearing with his social inferiors as that scion of the nobility—existing of course somewhere—who bears the bell for feebleness of the pia mater; but that made him none the less a sound Radical. In thinking of the upper classes he always ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... dainty mirth and mischief. "When he comes to spend the evening I feel as if I should like to tear his finery to pieces as the old strutting cock sometimes gets torn when the others can no longer endure his overbearing ways. And there is Mr. Rittenhouse, who does nothing but talk of the Junta and the learned men of the Philadelphia Society, and the grand new hall they mean to build, and chemistry, as if one was so anxious to know what was in one's body and ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... with a trio in it. Three men mighty, manly, overbearing, which see no one abiding at their three hideous crooked aspects. A fearful view because of the terror of them. A ... dress of rough hair covers them ... of cow's hair, without garments enwrapping ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... a knuckled knot— An aching kind of core within his throat— An ache, all dry and swallowless, which seemed To ache on just as bad when he'd pretend He didn't notice it as when he did. It was a kind of a conceited pain— An overbearing, self-assertive and Barbaric sort of pain that clean outhurt A boy's capacity for suffering— So, many times, the little martyr needs Must turn himself all suddenly and dive From sight of his hilarious playmates ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... twenty-seven, certainly. Something had agreed with her—whether the medicine, or the mountain air, or so much masculine company; whatever had done it, she had bloomed into brutal comeliness. Her hair looked curlier, her figure was shapelier, her teeth shone whiter, and her cheeks were a lusty, overbearing red. And there sat Molly Wood talking sweetly to her big, grave Virginian; to look at them, there was no doubt that he had been "raised good enough" to appreciate her, no matter what had ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... Monmouthshire; the greatest increase during the same period of any county in the British empire.[3] Here then, if anywhere, it might have been expected that a general feeling of insecurity, the sense of an overbearing necessity, would have overcome the general repugnance of men towards local assessment, and led to the establishment of a police force in all the counties of South Wales, on a scale adequate to the magnitude of the danger with which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... He has his own yacht, a house in town as well as a large place in the country, and he will probably get a seat in Parliament at the next election. I'm not greatly taken with the man myself," declared Colonel de Vigne. "He is too overbearing. At the same time," again his eyes followed his wife's, "he would no doubt ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... was studied or natural. She was a terrible antagonist; for she united the tongue of a woman to the logical faculty of a man, and it was impossible to get the better of her. Her faults were the faults of youth, as she was occasionally vain, saucy or overbearing, and always self-conscious. It was this last trait that Lowell referred to when he represented her as saying that since her earliest years she had "lived cheek by jowl with the Infinite Soul." Much youthful vanity, however, can be forgiven to those who are generous and faithful. Besides, Margaret ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... accent whatever, and although his voice was deep and sonorous, it had not the peculiar richness of the South. His gray eyes smiled as they met hers, and his manners were charming; but Betty, accustomed to grasp the salient points of character in a first interview, fancied that he could be overbearing and truculent. ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... ceased to see in my husband one of the most estimable of men, to whom I felt it an honor to belong; but I have often realized that there was a lack of equality between us, that the ascendency of an overbearing character, added to that of twenty years more of age, gave him too much superiority. If we lived in solitude, I had many painful hours to pass; if we went into the world, I was loved by men of whom I saw that some might touch me too deeply. I plunged into work with my husband, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... the thane who had told me about him. "I mind when he and Alfred the king were the haughtiest and most overbearing of princes. But when Neot found out that his pride and wrath and strength were getting the mastery in his heart, he thrust himself down there to overcome them. So he grows more saintlike every day, and has wrought a wondrous change in ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... Esop, and, dissatisfied with my attempts, treating me as he had treated the Moldavian clerk; placing myself in a position which exposed me to such treatment would indeed be plunging into the fire after escaping from the frying-pan. The publisher, insolent and overbearing as he was, whatever he might have wished or thought, had never lifted his hand against me, or told me that ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... many good qualities, but it must be admitted that his temper was queer and uncertain. At times he was passionate and overbearing, and he never had the necessary patience to submit to what seemed to him the inanities and boredom of admirers, hero worshippers, and others who were desirous of being brought to his notice. Mr. J. W. Donne, who occupied the position ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... so much it is lack living in another world now. Folks living in too much hurry. They getting too fast. They are restless. I see a heaps of overbearing folks now. Folks after I got grown looked so fresh and happy. Young folks look tired, mad, worried now. They fixes up their face but it still show it. Folks quicker than they used to be. They acts before they have ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... a mutiny I take next (as it arose from a similar cause to the first). I was a passenger on a brig bound from Samoa to the Gilbert Islands (Equatorial Pacific). The master was a German, brutal and overbearing to a degree, and the two mates were no better. One was an American "tough," the other a lazy, foul-mouthed Swede. All three men were heavy drinkers, and we were hardly out of Apia before the Swede (second mate) broke a sailor's jaw with an iron belaying pin. The crew were ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... the great aversion which his nephew felt towards him. He looked like a gentleman and like a man of talent, nor was there anything of meanness in his face; neither was he ill-looking, in the usual acceptation of the word; but one could see that he was solemn, austere, and overbearing; that he would be incapable of any light enjoyment, and unforgiving towards all offences. I took him to be a man who, being old himself, could never remember that he had been young, and who, therefore, hated the levities of ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... could, and to try to make the home life pleasant. But this was by no means easy. To begin with, Raeburn himself was more difficult than ever to work with, and Tom, who was in a hard, cynical mood, called him overbearing where, in former times, he would merely have called him decided. The very best of men are occasionally irritable when they are nearly worked to death; and under the severe strain of those days, Raeburn's philosophic ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... ambitious souls were stirred by the statement of the city fathers was one, a bell-founder named Wolf, a man of evil passions and overbearing disposition, whose heart was firmly set on achieving success. In those days, let it be said, the casting of a bell was a solemn, and even a religious, performance, attended by elaborate ceremonies and benedictions. On the day which Wolf had appointed for the operation it seemed as ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... at stake in these disastrous wars; no burning question was settled by the victory of either side; no great principle or national interest was involved. It was little more in reality than the struggle for supremacy and place amongst the overbearing and ambitious nobles; hence the ease and readiness with which they changed sides on every imaginable pretext, and the hopeless character of the struggle, which ruined and exhausted the country without vindicating one moral or ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... one can tell a Prussian five blocks away by his swing. His stride is so individually overbearing that it is ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... exclaims, "Is this all!" and the other, with a bald head, "By St. Jago, I did not think of that!" In the face of Columbus there is not that violent and excessive triumph which is exhibited by little characters on little occasions; he is too elevated to be overbearing; and, pointing to the conical solution of his problematical conundrum, displays a calm superiority, and silent ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... As to the other half of him, he is said to be an insinuating, creeping mortal to any body he hopes to be a gainer by: an insolent, overbearing one, where he has no such views: And is not this the genuine spirit of meanness? He is reported to be spiteful and malicious, even to the whole family of any single person who has once disobliged him; and to his own relations most of all. I am told, that they are none of them such ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... presently, who are the philosophers? 'In the first place, it comprehends almost everybody, and in the next it means men who, avowing war against Papacy, aim, many of them, at the destruction of regal power. The philosophers,' he goes on, 'are insupportable, superficial, overbearing, and fanatic. They preach incessantly, and their avowed doctrine is atheism—you could not believe how openly. Don't wonder, therefore, if I should return a Jesuit. Voltaire himself does not satisfy them. One of their lady ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... solicited, he soothed, he supplicated, and made concessions in the name of his sovereign. He found the states were wholly guided by the influence of prince Eugene and the duke of Marlborough. He found these generals elated, haughty, overbearing, and implacable. He in private attacked the duke of Marlborough on his weakest side: he offered to that nobleman a large sum of money, provided he would effect a peace on certain conditions. The proposal was rejected. The duke found ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... children—twenty-two-year-old Jack, handsome and manly, so like—oh, so like that other Jack who had come wooing her nearly thirty years ago! Bridgie, slim and delicate—so unfit, poor child, to take the burden of a mother's place; Miles, with his proud, overbearing look, a boy who had had especial claims on her care and guidance; Joan, beautiful and daring, ignorant of nothing so much as of her own ignorance; Pat, of the pensive face and reckless spirit; and last but not least, Pixie, her baby—dear, naughty, loyal ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... not wonderful at all. I am revealing my heart to you, now, in a way I do not often open it, but I shall, to my last day, probably, be a proud, overbearing old woman with a sharp tongue. You, however, will know ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... Europe. The heart of the nation had not been in that strife against the Scots, a brave and impoverished people struggling for freedom. But hearts and pockets, too, welcomed the quarrel with France, overbearing France, that plundered their ships when they traded with their friends the Flemings. The Flemish wool trade was at this time a main source of English wealth, so Edward III of England, than whom ordinarily no haughtier aristocrat existed, made friends with the brewer Van Artevelde, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... passages, but is as unreal as Jane Eyre. It shares with many of Wordsworth's narrative poems the defect of being written to illustrate an abstract moral theory, so that the overbearing thesis is continually thrusting the poetry to the wall. Applied to the drama, such predestination makes all the personages puppets and disenables them for being characters. Wordsworth seems to have felt this when he published The Borderers in 1842, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... them to know. They mourned the loss of the fair abductor more than her offence. They promptly rejected Tretherick as an injured husband and disconsolate father, and even went so far as to openly cast discredit on the sincerity of his grief. They reserved an ironical condolence for Col. Starbottle, overbearing that excellent man with untimely and demonstrative sympathy in bar-rooms, saloons, and other localities not generally deemed favorable to the display of sentiment. "She was alliz a skittish thing, kernel," said one sympathizer, with ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... nobleman selected for the job, and as a stranger to his colleagues, who moreover were particularly given to factious disputes. It is not unlikely too that Lord Pigot himself had become touchy and overbearing in his declining years. Any way, he quarrelled with his Councillors almost immediately, and within six or seven months there had been some very angry scenes. He had been accustomed to being obeyed, and in his wrath at being obstinately resisted he went ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... sorts this morning, and Carl's absence, together with the extra work, made him irritable, cross, and overbearing. Fred endured this disagreeable mood for a while, but at last it grew intolerable to him, so when Hanks ordered him in an insolent tone to bring down more cloth he ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... give to have been there, had I not learned it all from the bright eyes of Amaryllis, and may one day make a Table-talk of it!—Peter Pindar was rich in anecdote and grotesque humour, and profound in technical knowledge both of music, poetry, and painting, but he was gross and overbearing. Wordsworth sometimes talks like a man inspired on subjects of poetry (his own out of the question)—Coleridge well on every subject, and G—dwin on none. To finish this subject—Mrs. M——'s conversation is as fine-cut as her features, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... accompanying page of studies, I strolled along the bank of the river; and while sketching some men breaking stones an incident happened which first aroused me to the fact that the lot of the sketching artist is not always a happy one. A fiend in human shape—an overbearing overseer—came up at the moment, and roundly abused the poor labourers for taking the "base Saxon's" coin. Inciting them to believe that I was a special informer from London, he laughed on my declaring that I was merely a novice, and informed me that I ought ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... scent—and behold a person, a scene, or a destiny, rises up before us. Very often the phantoms that come thronging around me are those of people whose existence is quite indifferent to me. But they appear all the same—importunate, overbearing, inevitable. ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... considerable portion of the night in drinking and making merry with them. He assumed with these friends none of the reserve and dignity of demeanor that we should naturally associate with the idea of a king. Indeed, he was very blunt, and often rough and overbearing in his manners, not unfrequently doing and saying things which would scarcely be pardoned in a person of inferior station. When thwarted or opposed in any way he was irritable and violent, and he evinced continually a temper that was very ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... actually intemperate, although it must be admitted that on some occasions he got into the debatable ground. To those who did not know him, and who were acquainted through common report only with his unmitigated abuse of Popery, he was looked upon as an oppressive and overbearing tyrant, who would enforce, to the furthest possible stretch of severity, the penal enactments then in existence against Roman Catholics. And this, indeed, was true, so far as any one was concerned from whom he imagined himself to have received an injury; against ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... with whom otherwise he closely mingled. It gave her the right, she thought, to indulge a friendship for him such as she had never felt for any other man; and in this friendship it made it easier for her to overlook a great deal that was rude in him, headstrong, overbearing. ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... hand. Then the Sumimoto branch of the Hosokawa, taking advantage of Ouchi's absence, mustered a force in Shikoku and moved against Kyoto. Takakuni found himself in a difficult position. In the capital his overbearing conduct had alienated the shogun, Yoshitane, and from the south a hostile army was approaching. He chose Hyogo for battle-field, and, after a stout fight, was discomfited and fled to Omi, the position of kwanryo being bestowed on his rival, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Both were men of rigid integrity: 'tis a glorious thing to be able to challenge the inquiry—when, for centuries, have other than men of rigid integrity sat upon the English Bench? Lord Widdrington, however, in temper was stern, arbitrary, and overbearing, and his manners were disfigured not a little by coarseness; while his companion was a man of exemplary amiability, affability, and forbearance. Lord Widdrington presided at the Civil Court, (in ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the man. A virtue went out from him overbearing the virtue of lesser persons. The Hajji told Bulaki Ram the clerk to occupy the seat of government at Dupe till our return. Bulaki Ram feared the Hajji, because the Hajji had often gloatingly appraised his skill in figures at five thousand rupees upon ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... act is amongst Wagner's noblest and most beautiful and dramatic. Every phrase given to Fricka proclaims her queenly and overbearing, with right and power on her side, and relentless determination to use them. Then there is the Valkyries' war-whoop—well known from its use in the Valkyries' Ride. Sieglinda has tender, piteous cries. In the scene of pleading and counter-pleading between Siegmund and Brunnhilda we have Wagner ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... haughty, peremptory, arrogant, controlling, imperative, positive, authoritative, despotic, imperious, supreme, autocratic, dictatorial, irresponsible, tyrannical, coercive, dogmatic, lordly, unconditional, commanding, domineering, overbearing, unequivocal. compulsive, exacting, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... saved by Phoebe, who had hung in the background waiting for what she thought might be the most telling moment to glide forward, but who, her natural pleasure at sight of her old playmate suddenly overbearing more studied considerations, could contain herself in silence and the shadows ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... For Magruder's insolent and overbearing attitude towards Steele, see his correspondence in Ibid., part ii. Magruder wanted Indian Territory attached to the District of Texas [p. 295] and was much disgusted that Gano's brigade was beyond his reach; inasmuch as Smith himself had placed it in Indian Territory and Steele could retain it ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... genial. Then at the sight of their startled faces he changed, with the swift transition of insanity, into overbearing fury. And it seemed as if he had suddenly recalled the quarrel of his departure. In such a huge voice as Mrs. Coombes had never heard before, he shouted, "My house. I'm master 'ere. Eat what I give yer!" He bawled this, as it seemed, without an effort, without a violent ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... out of temper together, complaining loudly of the person unknown who would persist in interfering with their work. They were the louder that their suspicions fluttered about Fergus, who was rather overbearing with them, and therefore not a favourite. He was in reality not at all a likely person to bend back or defile hands over such labour, and their pitching upon him for the object of their suspicion, showed how much at a loss they ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... rooms, next to the hall of the States-general. It was in the old cabinet that Henri III. hid the murderers when he sent for the Duc de Guise, while he himself remained hidden in the new cabinet during the murder, only emerging in time to see the overbearing subject for whom there were no longer prisons, tribunals, judges, nor even laws, draw his last breath. Were it not for these terrible circumstances the historian of to-day could hardly trace the former occupation of these cabinets, now filled with soldiers. A quartermaster writes ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... you wrong me; don't suppose I wish to be overbearing, or anything of the kind; and you will allow me to say this much, at any rate, that I have become interested in your wife, as well ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... threw the letter impetuously on the table. "Read it, Talleyrand," he said, carelessly. "It is always instructive to see how small these men are in adversity, and how overbearing in prosperity. And such men desire to be sovereign princes, and wear ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... not coalesce; our ideas, age and country are different; he is hard as a rock, brusque and overbearing—but amazingly clever and energetic. He seems to hold so many threads in his hands, to deal with such numbers of people; his correspondence is enormous; his office, when he is at home, is surrounded and stormed by all sorts of people—Mohammedans, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker |
