"Pugnacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was not a man in England who could have driven her against her will. She had a fortune of her own. Enoch Lovatt treated her with the respect due to an equal who had more than once proved herself capable of insisting on independence and equal rights in the most pugnacious manner. ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... still much in excess of their population? The war had seemed to me to show that mankind was too combative an animal ever to recognize that the good of all was the good of one. The coarse-fibred, pugnacious, and self-seeking would, I had become sure, always carry too many guns for the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... table of great people in Marshal d'Albret's time; yet he used to faint at the sight of one. It is not uncommon to meet with persons who faint at the sight of blood. One of the most inveterately pugnacious of Dr. Butts's college-mates confessed that he had this infirmity. Stranger and far more awkward than this is the case mentioned in an ancient collection, where the subject of the antipathy fainted at the sight of any object of a red color. There are sounds, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of danger, because he counted it as nothing; he gave it no thought, because it only affected himself; and he valued not his own safety and comfort, so long as he could serve the cause by forgetting them. Mere courage is combative, even pugnacious; but the voyageur fought only "the good fight;" he had no pride of conquest, save in the victories of Faith, and rather would suffer, himself, than inflict suffering upon others. Mere courage is restless, impatient, purposeless: but the voyageur ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... much from their wounds. The training for battle during an early period may be natural to the wild Gallus bankiva; but as man during many generations has gone on selecting the most obstinately pugnacious cocks, it is more probable that their pugnacity has been unnaturally increased, and unnaturally transferred to the young male chickens. In the same manner, it is probable that the extraordinary development of the comb in the Spanish cock has been unintentionally transferred ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... just been said that he was a favorite with all. Not the less beloved was he for having a highly pugnacious spirit, which, when roused, was one of the most picturesque exhibitions—off the stage—I ever saw. One of the transports of that marvelous actor, Edmund Kean—whom, by the way, he idolized—was its nearest resemblance; and the two were ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... make way for the advancing nerve-battalion; but in their exodus they are met by a fierce destroyer, in the shape of an east wind—a Caffre that suddenly throws the ranks of General Carbon into disorder, and drives them back upon the brilliant and pugnacious array of General Nerve: a battle-royal is the result. General Nerve immediately places lance in rest, and advances to the charge with the unsparing war-cry of: "Mr Ferguson, you don't lodge here!" and if Caffre East-wind is not despised and trifled with, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... unquestioned superiority to his schoolmates evokes a disquisition for the encouragement of dull boys, in which we are told that "the great philosopher, Newton, was one of the dullest scholars in school when he was twelve years old. Doctor Isaac Barrow was such a dull, pugnacious, stupid fellow, etc., etc. The father of Doctor Adam Clarke, the commentator, called his boy, etc. Cortina," (vernacular for Cortona, probably,) "a renowned painter, was nicknamed, etc., etc. When ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... anything especially magnificent to elate him; he had won, at the Chapter Meeting that morning, a cheap and easy victory over Canon Foster, the only Canon in Polchester who still showed, at times, a wretched pugnacious resistance to his opinion; he had met Mrs. Combermere afterwards in the High Street and, on the strength of his Chapter victory, had dealt with her haughtily; he had received an especially kind note from Lady St. Leath asking him to dinner early next month; ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... looked absolutely sharkish when he laughed. In a word, no one, after getting a fair look at him, would ever think of improving the shape of his nose, wanting in symmetry as it was. Notwithstanding his pugnacious looks, however, Jermin had a heart as big as a bullock's; that you saw at ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... Pensacola. The commander of the ship had before him the conflicting orders, one from the President, one from the Secretary of the Navy. He was about to sail under the President's orders for Pensacola; but wishing to make sure of his authority, he had telegraphed to Washington. Gideon Welles was a pugnacious man. His dislike for Seward was deepseated. Imagine his state of mind when it was accidently revealed to him that Seward had gone behind his back and had issued to naval officers orders which were contradictory to his own! The immediate result was an interview that same night ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... SERGEANT (pugnacious and patriotic, repudiating the idea of defeat). 'Tention. Now then: cock up your chins, and show 'em you don't care a damn for 'em. Slope ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... observations to translate for me. The crowd began to disperse, though many a deep-set black eye still glittered with an unnatural luster, as the warriors slowly withdrew to their lodges. This fortunate suppression of the disturbance was owing to a few of the old men, less pugnacious than Mene-Seela, who boldly ran in between the combatants and aided by some of the "soldiers," or Indian police, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... especially in verbal encounters. Fighting is in his blood. That is what makes the Irish soldier the best in the world, and that was why he used to revel in the faction fights. As a paternal Government now prevents the breaking of heads, at all events on a wholesale scale, the pugnacious instincts of the nation have to be gratified by litigation, and certainly there never was such a litigious race in history ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... own reputation; for the report that he kept a mysterious and pugnacious statue on the premises would not increase his custom. He must silence it, if possible. "I'm afraid it is, sir—in a ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... passive, but apparently selecting the more attractive females, as we may infer from the results. Certain hen birds have thus been rendered more highly coloured or otherwise ornamented, as well as more powerful and pugnacious than the cocks; these characters being transmitted ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... scanning several pages of type-written paper. He was a young judge with a keen, though somewhat weary, face and eyes, full of compassionate knowledge. But Nance did not see the judge; her gaze was riveted upon her two arch enemies: Mason, with his flat nose and pugnacious jaw, and "Old Cock-eye," the policeman who looked strangely ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... am greeted with the pensive, almost pathetic note of the wood pewee. The pewees are the true flycatchers, and are easily identified. They are very characteristic birds, have strong family traits and pugnacious dispositions. They are the least attractive or elegant birds of our fields or forests. Sharp-shouldered, big-headed, short-legged, of no particular color, of little elegance in flight or movement, with ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... personal visiting; shouldn't think that his scripture reader—a really good, hard-working man—can perform miracles, and do nearly everything; can talk genuine common sense if he likes, and make himself either very agreeable or pugnacious; is an Orangeman, with a holy horror of Popery; can give deliciously passionate lectures about the Reformation; considers money a very important article, and is inclined to believe that all people, particularly parsons, should ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... Mr. Dean, belonging to the church militant as you do, you are so heroically pugnacious! You must like ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... sat stiff and upright with her eyes bent on the ground. Only Charles and Molly looked up—she with a spot of red on either cheek, he with his bright pugnacious look, his nostrils slightly distended scenting battle with delight. Emilia and Patty were frowning; Kezzy, who hated all family jars, fidgeted with ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of indigenous bees in the Khasi Hills: one domesticated, called u ngap (apis Indica), and the other u lywai, which is never domesticated, and is very pugnacious; its hives are difficult of access, being always located in very high cliffs. A few hives of a third class of bee are now-a-days to be found in and around the station of Shillong, i.e. the Italian. This bee was imported into the hills by Messrs. Dobbie and Rita, and the species became ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... man deliberately swung his fist and struck the poor beggar between the eyes, knocking him senseless to the pavement. For a moment I was dumbfounded by this exhibition of brutality, and then instantly every drop of blood in my body was set boiling at the sight. I lost control of myself. My old-time pugnacious spirit asserted itself, and I sprang forward like a maddened bull, striking the brute a vicious blow upon the head with my fist, and sending him sprawling several feet away. As he scrambled to his feet, in a dazed condition, I rushed forward furiously, with the intention of felling him ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... ideas and cannot be managed, while with the Chinese a "boy" (a servant throughout the East is called "boy") is always a boy, and is constantly on the watch to serve his master. Again, the Japs are pugnacious, a race of little game-cocks, always in for a fight, especially with a Chinaman. The captain told us the other day a great big Chinaman had complained to him that one of the Japs had abused him. Upon calling ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... fight, or to run away, as the case may be; for at such times a Cassowary man will say to himself, "My leg is long and thin, I can run and not feel tired; my legs will go quickly and the grass will not entangle them." Members of the Cassowary clan are reputed to be pugnacious, because the cassowary is a bird of very uncertain temper and can kick with extreme violence. (A.C. Haddon, "The Ethnography of the Western Tribe of Torres Straits", "Journal of the Anthropological Institute", XIX. (1890), page 393; "Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... describe itself as a novel means little more than that its original purchasing price was four shillings and sixpence. It might also contain passages of love, hate, and other human emotions, but then again, it might not. But one thing it would contain, and that is war. G.K.C. would be pugnacious, even when there was nothing to fight. His characters would wage their wars, even when the bone of contention mattered as little as the handle of an old toothbrush. That, we should say, is the first factor in the formula of the Chestertonian romance—and all ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... once that some infraction of the railroad rules had occurred and that he had been "called down," or "jacked up" about it, as the railroad men expressed it. He was in a high state of dudgeon, and as defiant and pugnacious as his royal Irish temper would allow. At the same time he was pleased to think that I or some one had arrived who would relieve him of this damnable "nonsinse," or so he hoped. He was not so inexperienced as not to imagine that I could help him with all this. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... all violent excitement, hunting with dogs, riding or being ridden by cows in heat, driving in herd rapidly through narrow gateways, causing to jump ditches or fences, subjecting to blows with the horns of pugnacious cattle, driving on icy or otherwise slippery ground, carrying in railroad cars, kicking by vicious attendants, and fastening or throwing down for operations. The diet should be good, not of a kind to fatten, but with a generous ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... vantage looked down his unmitigated disapproval and contempt. Kirkpatrick would have given his hopes of the speedy demise of capitalism if Alexina had picked up her periwinkle skirts and fled up the avenue. His big hands clenched, he thrust out his pugnacious jaw, his hard little eyes glowed like poisonous coals. Mortimer, to do him justice, was entirely without physical cowardice, and continued to look like a stage lord ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... carefully placed his manuscript upon a chair, and sat down upon it. He was soon lost in a prolonged contemplation of the limited bill of fare posted on the wall, a study which resulted in his ordering, through a hustling, pugnacious-looking waiter, a ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... a pugnacious spirit—it was well that he was not—but with wide and thorough preparation he summoned all his energies to meet the foe. Archdeacon Farrar says of him, that he had been trained in the whole circle of science. He could argue with the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... does not eat the whole worm, only the outer skin, and, to get rid of the inner part, Mr. Robin takes the worm in his bill and dashes it about on a stone with great skill until he has effected his purpose. He is also a very pugnacious bird; that is he is very fond of fighting, I am sorry to tell you, but such is really the case. He will not allow other robins to build in the same bush with him. He never joins himself in friendly company ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... a weak and sickly child. His first years were spent in solitude, and when his elder brother, William, a real boy, came home, the young author followed in humility mingled with terror the diversions of that ingenious and pugnacious "son of eternal racket." De Quincey's mother was a woman of strong character and emotions, as well as excellent mind, but she was excessively formal, and she seems to have inspired more awe than affection in her children, to ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... they themselves do not repute so much as faults. I have, in my youth, seen a man of good rank with one hand present to the people verses that excelled both in wit and debauchery, and with the other, at the same time, the most ripe and pugnacious theological reformation that the world has been treated withal these many years. And so men proceed; we let the laws and precepts follow their way; ourselves keep another course, not only from debauchery of manners, but ofttimes by judgment and contrary opinion. Do ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... incomprehensible customs was that at certain intervals the tribe divided itself into two factitious divisions, each headed by various chiefs, and gambled furiously for many days, one party against the other. They were pugnacious, and in their uncivilised way fought frequent wars. They were remarkably loyal to each other, and treacherous to the foe; brave, and very stoical. "Monogamy was very prevalent." It is remarked that husbands and wives were very fond of each other, and the great ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... exception; consequently, no evening disturbance is to be anticipated from that source. It was found that there are over two thousand pulquerias in the capital. The effect of this special stimulant, however, is not to make those who indulge freely in it pugnacious or noisy. It acts more like a powerful narcotic, and puts those who are overcome with it to sleep, having, in fact, many of the properties of opium. The gilded bar-rooms where the upper classes seek refreshment, who, by the way, seem rarely to abuse the privilege, are permitted ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... the new, half-formed northern or American Mexico was Francisco Madero—rich, educated, well mannered, honest, and idealistically inclined. The representative of the old Mexico is Huerta—"rough, plain, old Indian," as he describes himself, pugnacious, crafty, ignorant of political amenities, without understanding of any rule except the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... the blood. This was found to be the case. Cannon of Harvard has built up an entire theory of the adrenal as the gland of emergencies upon the basis of these effects. In the facing of crises the adrenal functions as the gland of combat. And indeed, as I have mentioned, the more combative and pugnacious an animal, the more adrenal it has, while the timid and meek and ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... a military cousin of his, striding along, with his heavy armor clattering against the glass as he walks. A pugnacious fellow is that same soldier; and if he meet an opponent, you may see the tug of war. Should he chance to prefer the other's shield to his own, he will seize him in his burly arms, and shake him from under ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... entomologists; and it was only by a close inspection of their structural differences that the utter distinctness of the mimickers and the mimicked was satisfactorily settled. Scarcely less curious is the case of Mr. Wallace's Malayan orioles, two species of which exactly copy two pugnacious honey-suckers in every detail of plumage and coloration. As the honey-suckers are avoided by birds of prey, owing to their surprising strength and pugnacity, the orioles gain immunity from attack by their close resemblance to the protected ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... sunshine from morning until night. There are numbers of them. Their manners are very marked. They have quite the air of conquerors. All the other birds yield them precedence, and they positively domineer over the pugnacious little English sparrow, who is content to keep in the background and watch his chance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... poker, and casting a glance first at his hopeful son, and then at his hoping wife, replied that Jake was an ignorant, pugnacious, good-for-nothing scamp, and never would come to anything, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... in Barsetshire. If there was on Dr Thorne's cranium one bump more developed than another, it was that of combativeness. Not that the doctor was a bully, or even pugnacious, in the usual sense of the word; he had no disposition to provoke a fight, no propense love of quarrelling; but there was that in him which would allow him to yield to no attack. Neither in argument nor in contest would he ever allow ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... were recruited, from whom the Government did not receive so much service as would pay for the buttons on their uniforms. People expected that they would make themselves as troublesome to the Rebels as they were to good citizens and the Police, but they were only pugnacious to the provost guard, and terrible to the people in the rear of the Army who had ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... of the capital, and that others were assembling at Taos. This intelligence created quite a sensation in camp, and it was believed, and earnestly hoped, that the entrance of the troops into Santa Fe would be desperately opposed; such is the pugnacious character of the average American the moment he dons the uniform ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... the railroad which had taken him out of the steadying grind of regular work, Kent had been the prey of mixed motives. From the first he had thrown himself heartily into the problem of retrieval, but the pugnacious professional ambition to break the power of the machine had divided time pretty equally with sentiment. Elinor had said little about the vise-nip of hardship which the stock-smashing would impose upon three unguardianed ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... such blows, for they fell on the bare foreheads of the Arabs; but the objects of the American's wrath merely skulked away; and the others, convinced by the only arguments which they understood, followed in pursuit of victims who might be less pugnacious. ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... unembarrassed freedom as "The old chap out of the West Countrie" is made to do in the song. As to any of the more humble and conceding qualities usually attributed to the peaceful Quaker, Johnny had not an atom of those about him. Never was there a more pig-headed, arbitrary, positive, pugnacious fellow. He would argue anybody out of their opinions by the hour; he would "threep them down," as he called it, that is, point blank and with a loud voice insist on his own possession of the right, and of the sound common-sense of the matter; and if he could not convince them, would at least ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... made Casey Ryan an optimist. The blood of Ireland had made him pugnacious. And Mack Nolan had a way with him. Wherefore, Casey Ryan once more came larruping down the grade to Camp Cajon and turned in there with a dogged purpose in his eyes and with his jaw set stubbornly. History has it that ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... looking as boldly at us as any town sparrow. The little creatures, indeed, kept hovering about; and one came within a few feet of our faces, as much as to ask how we dared to intrude on its domains. More pugnacious or brave little beings do not exist ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... stains on it which might be from either coffee or tobacco. His eyes were set widely apart and were benignant and kind in expression. His brow was benevolent, and counteracted the lower part of his face, which in itself would be pugnacious. His nose was short, broad, and thick. His jaw betrayed the determination of the bulldog. The combination made an exceedingly interesting study. His coarse clothes formed a curious contrast to the elegance of his speech and the grace of his manner. He was simple, ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... whether I sleep or not." By all means relax the body. Choose a comfortable position and remain quiet, having the muscles relaxed. It is remarkable how soon a relaxed body brings tranquility to a disturbed mind. Let a man in pugnacious mood relax his face and his fists and in a very short time his anger vanishes. It makes no difference whether a person sleeps eight hours on a certain night. If he is fairly regular about going to bed he will get enough ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... appearance of this fellow, notwithstanding his pugnacious manner. He had an honest face, and bright blue eyes, in whose depths lurked a merry twinkle. He took it for granted that this was Jake Jukes who wanted ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... sweetheart, and showed himself a brown, straight youngster, with curly hair, pugnacious nose, good shoulders, and a figure so well put together that his height was not apparent until he stood alongside another man. Will's eyes were grey as Phoebe's, but of a different expression; soft and unsettled, cloudy ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... tidily in a corner till he has time to look at it while he drinks his coffee and smokes his cigar. If the ladies of the household are inclined that way they look at it too. But there really is not much to look at as a rule. These paragraphs about the wicked British that seem so pugnacious when they are printed on solid English paper in plain English words, are often in a corner with other political paragraphs about other wicked nations. At times of crisis, when the leading papers are attacking us at great length, the Germans themselves will talk ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... very good men who were cowards; men that I liked and trusted but who, from weakness of nerves or other physical causes—perhaps from prenatal influences—were easily frightened and always constitutionally timid. The Colonel was a very pugnacious man: he professed himself to be a lover of peace—and so did the Kaiser—but really he enjoyed the gaudium certaminis, ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... brother's pugnacious propensities, Miss Celia proposed milder measures, promising to speak to the boys herself if there was ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... hear!) expedition to Richmond, but Lincoln and Stanton opposed it. This lie divides itself into two points. 1st lie. In January, nobody opposed General McClellan's will, and, besides, he was sick. 2d lie. If he was so pugnacious in January, why has he not made with the same number of men a flying expedition only to Centreville, right ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... latter gravely. "They are decidedly a brave, bold, fighting race. Tall, dark, big-bearded, just such fellows as hill-tribes are; restless, pugnacious fighting-men, always engaged in petty warfare with the neighbouring ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... without cause. If a fight occurs, look for the motive. The wild creatures know that peace promotes happiness and long life. Now, of all wild quadrupeds, it is probable that the African baboons are pound for pound the most pugnacious, and the quickest on the draw. The old male baboon in his prime will fight anything that threatens his troop, literally at the drop of a hat. But there is method in his madness. He and his wives and children ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... long breath,—his compressed lips parted in a slightly sarcastic smile. Squaring his shoulders with that peculiar pugnacious gesture of his which always indicated to those who knew him well that his mind was made up, and that nothing would induce him to alter it, he said in a tone ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... comment on the ecclesiastical interpretation of religion that, ten years later, when the firmly expressed desires of all moderate men had given the Bishop of Toronto a good excuse for acquiescence in Sydenham's status quo, that pugnacious ecclesiastic still fought to save as much of the monopoly as ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... and not very healthy-looking person of about fifty years of age, ill-dressed in seedy black clothes and a flaming red tie, with a fat, pale face, a pugnacious mouth, and a bald head, on the top of which isolated hairs stood up stiffly. I knew him by sight, for once he had argued with me at a lecture I gave on sanitary matters, when I was told that he was a draper by trade, and, although ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... silence. In all the relations of husband and wife, never had there been a moment more crucial as affecting their ultimate future. They looked at each other unflinchingly, neither speaking. McKeith's lips were resolute, locked, his pugnacious jaw set like iron. Here was the stubborn determination of a fighting man, never to admit himself in the wrong. And his eyes seemed to have a steel curtain over them—which, however, had Bridget's spiritual intuition been awake to perceive it, softened for ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... sat down by himself to brood over his troubles, Hindenburg from a safe distance eyeing the bear, a dark ruff showing along his pugnacious little back. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... of me and the Nuestra?" he roared. His moustaches puffed out at each word, and his jaw lifted to a pugnacious angle as he threw back his head. He screwed up his eyes into a sort of malevolent grin which did not extend below the bridge ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... time-worn and weather-stained to one uniform and consistent drab. Round his neck he always wore a voluminous cravat of unstarched muslin fastened in front with an old-fashioned pearl brooch, above which protruded the two spiked points of a very stiff and pugnacious-looking collar. A strong alpaca umbrella, unfashionably corpulent, was his constant companion. Mr. Madgin's whiskers were shaved off in an exact line with the end of his nose. His eyebrows were very white and bushy, and could serve on occasion as a screen to the greenish, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... somewhat aloof, looking at the small, frail, pugnacious woman in the rocking-chair with perplexity and growing impatience. He wanted to go fishing that morning, and the vision of the darting trout in their still, clear pool was before him, like a vision of his own earthly paradise. He gave a despairing glance at Doctor Prescott, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... ceremoniously, in accordance to certain rules laid down for them by certain authorities, and for the delectation of highly critical audiences. But, if this custom prevailed, it would not seem to me stranger than the custom of training and paying pugnacious people to hit one another on the face and breast, with the greatest possible skill and violence, for the delectation of highly critical audiences. I do not say that a glove-fight is in itself a visually disgusting exhibition. I saw no blood spilt, the other night, and no bruises ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... the same thing and cannot be. Each sex has more power for one domain, and must have less power for another. Equality is an incongruous predicate. "Under the influence of the law of battle the male has become more courageous, powerful, and pugnacious than the female.... So, too, the male has, in the struggle, often acquired great beauty, success on his part depending largely, in many cases, upon the choice of the females who are supposed to select the most beautiful mates. This is thought to be notably the case with birds."[1130] ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... frequently invited me to spend Saturday at Pinkie. She was a very ladylike person, in delicate health, and with cold manners. Sir Archibald was stout, loud, passionate, and devoted to hunting. I amused myself in the grounds, a good deal afraid of a turkey-cock, who was pugnacious and defiant. ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... reasons, when the scrub first lined up against the 'Varsity, the alarum of battle that rode on Stover's pugnacious front was equaled by the intensity of his enemy's ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... wrong mark, and fell just in front of him, smashing to atoms the porcelain inkslab and water bottle, and smudging his whole book with ink, Chia Chn was, of course, much incensed, and hastily gave way to abuse. "You consummate pugnacious criminal rowdies! why, doesn't this amount to all of you taking a share in the fight!" And as he uttered this abuse, he too forthwith seized an inkslab, which he was bent ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... with discretion. The Captain was the general referee in all those abortive quarrels, which, at a place of this kind, are so apt to occur at night, and to be quietly settled in the morning; and occasionally adopted a quarrel himself, by way of taking down any guest who was unusually pugnacious. This occupation procured Captain MacTurk a good deal of respect at the Well; for he was precisely that sort of person who is ready to fight with any one,—whom no one can find an apology for declining to fight ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... effect,' and so forth. While his sermon rolled along, Dora stood nervously tying her bonnet strings, or buttoning her gloves. Her heart was full of a passionate scorn. Beside the bookseller's muscular figure and pugnacious head she saw with her mind's eye the spare forms and careworn faces of the young priests at St. Damian's. Outraged by this loud-voiced assurance, she called to mind the gentleness, the suavity, the delicate consideration for women ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... man Jonson, pugnacious, capricious, ill-mannered, sometimes surly, intemperate in drink and in other respects, is an object for only very qualified admiration; and as a writer he cannot properly be said to possess that indefinable thing, genius, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... the noise and concussion of the cars excite the same sort of dreams in every one's cranium as they do in mine, but they almost invariably produce in my brain mental phenomena of a pugnacious character, which are nothing modified by palace cars and steel rails. This particular night there was a perfect revelry of dreams in my brain. I was on the frontier with our corps, engaged in a glorious hand-to-hand conflict with men our ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... president of the room; who bawled out, "Silence, gentlemen; do have silence for the Body Snatcher!" which popular song began as Pen left the Back Kitchen. He flattered himself that he had commanded his temper perfectly. He rather wished that Huxter had been pugnacious. He would have liked to fight him or somebody. He went home. The day's work, the dinner, the play, the whisky-and-water, the quarrel,—nothing soothed him. He slept no better ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Manchester! Your policy of absorption is good enough when you're dealing with fragments. It's a devilish unlucky thing to attempt with a concrete mass. You might as well ask your head to absorb a wall by running at it like a pugnacious nigger. I don't want you to go into Parliament ever. You're a fitter man out of it; but if ever you're bitten—and it's the curse of our country to have politics as well as the other diseases—don't follow a flag, be independent, keep a free vote; remember how ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... itself always an unmixed blessing to its victims. It is apt to be incompatible with tolerance, with the practice of live-and-let-live, which alone can make the world endurable for its less pugnacious and energetic inhabitants. It is difficult for art or the contemplative outlook to exist in an atmosphere of bustling practical philanthropy, as difficult as it would be to write a book in the middle of a spring cleaning. The ideals which inspire a spring-cleaning ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... telegraph wire, dead tree, or fence rail and waiting for insects to fly within range. Sudden, nervous, spasmodic sallies in midair to seize insects on the wing. Usually they return to their identical perch or lookout. Pugnacious and fearless. Excellent nest builders and devoted mates. Kingbird. Phoebe. Wood Pewee. Acadian Flycatcher. Great Crested Flycatcher. Least Flycatcher. Olive-sided Flycatcher. Yellow-bellied Flycatcher. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... perceived that there was another man in the saloon, standing a little on one side and looking intently at me. The chief mate. His long, red moustache determined the character of his physiognomy, which struck me as pugnacious in (strange to say) a ghastly ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... Lords, were the pamphlets that came from John Lilburne and an associate of his named Richard Overton.—Lilburne, whom we left in October 1645, just released from the short imprisonment to which he had been committed by the Commons (ante, p. 390), had gone on again in his old pugnacious way, till, by Prynne's contrivance, he found himself in the clutches of the Lords. Called before that House, in June 1646, for a Letter he had printed, called The Just Man's Justification, he had ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... crossed, in the style which one has so often read about. The old fellow seemed to have been represented in chain armor; but he had been more battered and bruised since death than even during his pugnacious life, and his nose was almost knocked away. This figure had been dug up many years ago, and nobody knows whom it was meant ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the most pugnacious character, and a person incautiously getting in their midst finds himself furiously attacked. They climb up his legs, and, holding on by their pincer-like jaws, double in their tails, and sting with all their might. The natives, on seeing ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... like a cat to its prey, or like a jumping spider; and, as soon as it gets within two or three inches of the insect, by a sudden spring contrives to pop its underset mouth directly over the unlucky victim. He is, moreover, a pugnacious little fellow; and rather prolonged fights may be observed between him and his brethren. One, in fleeing from an apparent danger, jumped into a pool a foot square, which the other evidently regarded as his by right ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... idle, drinking, negligent, pugnacious Regan, by his own sheer neglect, put his property into the hands of the most relentless harpy that ever robbed and fleeced a tenantry. This mode of proceeding was, in fact, one of the many methods resorted to by rapacious agents, for filling their own pockets at the expense of the tenant, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the Crimean War; but Mr. Gladstone, who differed from him on this point, calls it the action of his life most worthy of honor. He was perhaps the most warlike opponent of war ever high in public life; the pugnacious and aggressive agitator, pouring out floods of fiery oratory to the effect that nobody ought to fight anybody, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... kinds of boar in India, the black and the grey. Their dispositions are very different, the grey being fiercer and more pugnacious. He is a vicious and implacable foe when roused, and always shews better fight than the black variety. The great difference, however, is in the shape of the skull; that of the black fellow being high over the frontal bone, and not very long in proportion to ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... laughed out of their silliness and sinfulness. There are tyrants, big and little, to be dethroned by ridicule. There are offences, proof against appeals to conscience, that wince and vanish before keen satire. Even as a well-aimed joke brings back good-humor to an angry mob, or makes mad and pugnacious bullies cower and slink away from derision harder to stand than hard knocks,—even so will a quizzical Punch be efficient as a philanthropist, when sedate exhortations or stern warnings would fail to move ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... descending close to them, strove to bear them away with their beaks. Each time we fired, the shock appeared to drive the gulls at a distance from us, as a discharge of heavy artillery might cause a regiment of soldiers to swerve backwards; but, as soon as the powder cleared away, these pugnacious birds returned to the vicinity of the rock, screaming loudly; and some of them were audacious enough to pounce upon our caps, and wreak their vengeance by giving us one or two hearty pecks. The cockswain, working like a telegraph with his swinging oar, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... lane, up and down; and he could there also give vent to his superfluous energy by lording it over a few sparrows and other small birds that visited the spot. I greatly admired the fine, alert figure of the pugnacious little creature, as he perched there so close to me, and so fearless. His striking resemblance to the robin in form, size, and in his motions, made his extreme familiarity seem only natural. The robin is greatly distinguished in a sober-plumaged company by the vivid tint on ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... great fun in frosty weather; Charlie and I used to die of laughing at him. I think cold made him pugnacious; he seemed always ready for a row, and was constantly in one. The January frost came in our Christmas holidays, so Jem had lots of time on his hands; he spent almost all of it out of doors, and he ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... tackled the other one, and found him much more pugnacious. With a vicious kick he struck the Indian in the stomach, who at once decided that he had had enough of that sport and quickly retired, leaving Sam now to struggle with him alone. Sam at first seized him by his long ears, but was unable to bring force enough ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... Unter den Linden, with its broad pavements gleaming in a characteristic misty winter night, through the Brandenburg Gate of his Brandenburg dynasty, or to the statue of the blood-and-iron Bismarck, with his strong jaw and pugnacious nose—the statesman militant in uniform with a helmet over his bushy brow—who had made the German Empire, that young empire which had not yet known defeat because of the system which makes ready and chooses the hour ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... not pugnacious, and could not very well be so in the presence of his huge antagonist; but he was no coward, and not seeing for the moment that his hat had hopelessly gone, he turned round savagely, and laying hold of ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha's Vineyard. A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of honour with him, to destroy them whenever encountered. So utterly lost was he ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... no answer save that her lips slowly reddened again after the pallor; then came a quiver in them, as though pity were conquering pride within her breast, and then that contemptuous curl that had often in the past cowed the heart of the fearless and pugnacious boy whom no peril of ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the pack-ice, but the blue-grey southern fulmar and the Antarctic petrel were also to be seen, and that unwholesome scavenger, the giant petrel, frequently lumbered by; while the skua gull, most pugnacious of bullies, occasionally flapped past, on his way to make some less formidable bird disgorge his ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... his white ducks. On regaining the ground he loaded the buggy with his spoils, despite the driver's assertion that "dat all trash." Unfortunately with his epiphytes he brought down whole colonies of ants, and the Jamaican ant is a most pugnacious insect with abnormal biting powers. After I had been forced to disrobe behind some convenient greenery in order to rid myself of these aggressive little creatures, I was compelled to put a stern ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... combatants were equally matched and very much in earnest. I am ashamed to say how many times since I have speculated as to which boy got licked. Maybe both the small rascals are dead now (not in consequence of the set-to, let us hope), or maybe they are married, and have pugnacious urchins of their own; yet to this day I sometimes find myself wondering ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... as he used to be, Clinton," Easton laughed; "just the same aggressive, pugnacious beggar ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... this pugnacious whale was captured by the Rebecca Simms of this port. Two of the Ann Alexander's harpoons were found in him and his head had sustained serious injuries, pieces of the ship's timbers being imbedded in it. The whale yielded 70 to 80 ...
— Bark Kathleen Sunk By A Whale • Thomas H. Jenkins
... to write his own life, and his pugnacious vivacity, and hardy frankness, would have seasoned a piece of autobiography; an amateur has, however, written it in the style which amateurs like, with all the truth he could discover, enlivened by some ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... are in the dark—we do not know sufficiently the habits of the bird to speak with certainty. I do not think they are pugnacious, and yet you never find more on a feeding ground than it will well accommodate for many days, nay weeks, together. One might imagine that their migrations would be made en masse, that all the birds ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... not be simply assumed, as is often done by the Chinese and some of the European historians, that the Turkish and Mongolian tribes were so savage or so pugnacious that they continually waged war just for the love of it. The problem is much deeper, and to fail to recognize this is to fail to understand Chinese history down to the Middle Ages. The conquering Chou established their garrisons everywhere, and these garrisons were ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... experiences, and most of them were pleasant ones. It was pleasant to be patriotic and pugnacious, to look out appropriate prayers to be read in the churches, to have news of glorious victories, and to know oneself, more proudly than ever, the representative of England. With that spontaneity of feeling which was so peculiarly her own, Victoria poured out her emotion, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... since the females are showy and build in an open nest. But even here the females are less brilliant than the males, and are sometimes greenish or olivaceous on the upper surface; while they very carefully conceal their nests among dense foliage, and the male is sufficiently watchful and pugnacious to drive off ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... are often the reverse. A Berlin professor has boldly likened the male Bavarian to the gorilla and the caricaturists have taken his cue. They are of the beer-barrel shape, coarse, rough, quarrelsome and quick to enter into a fight. It is the national dish of roast goose—a pugnacious bird—and bread of oatmeal that does it. They may well have one beauty of the sex among them. And the carnation on the cheeks of these waitresses is so remarkable that they find rouge superfluous. They are dull, and yet the twinkle in their eyes ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... carriage horses to India, there to be yoked to smoking guns, and went afoot in Cape Town. The maintenance of peace, among the pugnacious chiefs of South Africa, depended mainly upon his personal influence with them. He borrowed horses and rode round among those chiefs, binding them over, in their only recognisances, as honourable men, not to disturb the country. It was a strange Pax Britannica; ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... in pugnacious surveillance, in furies with difficulty restrained, and masked by a contraction of the face. He invokes Deroulede, and says that faith comes at will, like the rest. He lives in perpetual bewilderment and distress that everybody does not think as he does. He exerts real influence, for ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... all, this animosity, theological, moral, physical, did no great harm. It quickened the zeal and strengthened the resolve of one's supporters; and it procured one the inestimable aid of young, active, and pugnacious friends, who formed themselves into a body-guard and a cycle-corps, protecting their candidate when the play was rough, and spreading the light all ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... years passed by without war and retaliation, or that treaties made piracy impossible. In the early and more pugnacious days of the Saracen domination conflicts were frequent. The F[a]tim[i] Khalifs conquered and held all the larger islands of the Western Mediterranean, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Isles. In 1002 the Saracens pillaged Pisa, and the Pisans retaliated ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... appointed for the palaver, one of the most pugnacious of the Mountain-men got leave to open ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... high color lessened and Roger looked less pugnacious. Presently, each stole a sly glance at the other, both were caught in the act and simultaneously laughed. So the party reached the Manor ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... government which were well worthy of the serious consideration of English statesmen. In this respect he showed more intelligence than Papineau, who never understood the true principles of parliamentary government, and whose superiority, compared with the little, pugnacious Upper Canadian, was the possession of a stately presence and a gift of fervid eloquence which was well adapted to impress and carry away his impulsive and too easily deceived countrymen. If Mackenzie had shown more control of his temper and confined himself to such legitimate constitutional ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... his pastoral life with his nymph-like mistress completely cured him of his pugnacious propensity, or had he simply found it was inconsistent with his dancing, and seriously interfered with his "fancy steps"? Had he found tracts and hymn-books were as edible as theatre posters? These were ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... fighting is habitual among animals. The power of the Press in promoting war is entirely due to the fact that it is able to appeal to certain instincts. Man is naturally competitive, acquisitive, and, in a greater or less degree, pugnacious. When the Press tells him that so-and-so is his enemy, a whole set of instincts in him responds to the suggestion. It is natural to most men to suppose that they have enemies and to find a certain fulfillment of their nature when they embark upon a contest. What ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... WALDRON: I think I know quite well that the little girl of the curly black hair, red ribbons, and blue sailor dress was a very audacious, pugnacious little person, and I wonder that you were willing to help her through the tangle of fractions as you did so cleverly. I well remember thinking you a very wonderful scholar, but you were so much older than I that I admit not thinking about you very much. It was like that small girl to stamp ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... number, in its manners almost the counterpart of the Golden Crowned Thrush (soon to delight the eyes of the readers of BIRDS), though it is altogether a more conspicuous bird, both on account of its brilliant plumage and greater activity, the males being, during the season of nesting, very pugnacious, continually chasing one another about the woods. It lives near the ground, making its artfully concealed nest among the low herbage and feeding in the undergrowth, the male singing from some old log or low bush, his song recalling that of the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... somewhat famous but unscientific practitioner of phrenology gave a good illustration of this by mistaking a rugged development of the lambdoid suture for an enormous organ of combativeness, and ascribing to the gentleman a terrific, pugnacious energy which was the very ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... my party on the floor to aid me, and I had had but little experience as a presiding officer. Of the opposite party were Mr. Randall, who had been Speaker of the three preceding Congresses; Mr. Cox of New York, the pugnacious, who had acted as Speaker for a time in the Forty-third; Mr. Carlisle (my successor as Speaker), and Mr. Knott of Kentucky, and others who laid just claim to much parliamentary learning. The House was hardly Republican; and in my own party were disappointed aspirants who often ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... man of very violent temper, and his readiness to enter a quarrel and to draw his sword must have made him a very singular exponent of the gospel of peace. Olaf saw very soon that he would require further help than this pugnacious priest could give; so he sent Thangbrand over to England, bidding him fare to Canterbury and bring back with him as many holy men as might be willing ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... worn a wig in her life, and putting on one now seemed to be out of the question. This hair of hers was of a dark-brown hue, threaded with silver, and it grew in a tousled abundance of unruly wisps that seemed to be symbolic of her harum-scarum character. She was as pugnacious as she was charitable, and as quick to make up a quarrel as to pick one. Her husband, Michael Minsker, was a "worldly" man, with only a smattering of Talmud, and their younger children were being educated at the Russian schools. But they all humored her newly adopted old-fashioned ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... winter. They are studious of cleanliness and comfort in their lodges, and after their repasts, will carry out the sticks from which they have eaten the bark, and throw them into the current beyond the barrier. They are jealous, too, of their territories, and extremely pugnacious, never permitting a strange beaver to enter their premises, and often fighting with such virulence as almost to tear each other to pieces. In the spring, which is the breeding season, the male leaves the female at home, and ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... like your poor Dexie to be unhappy for life?" throwing her arms around his neck. "I am sure you would not," as he drew her closer to him. "I could never marry Hugh; his very presence makes me feel pugnacious, and I feel like picking a quarrel with him every time I speak to him, and I enjoy doing ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... memories of the Pit, like scenes from some monstrous nightmare, and, try as he would, he could not dispel them. He would fix his mind and eyes on Miss Wilson's face, who was now sitting at her desk, and even as he looked at her the face of Brick Simpson, impudent and pugnacious, would arise before him. It was of no use. He felt sick and sore and tired and worthless. There was nothing to be done but flunk. And when, after an age of waiting, the papers were collected, his went in a blank, save for his name, the name of the examination, and the date, which were ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... saw of this dogmatic dreamer, this erratic man of action, the more she liked him, the more she found really admirable in him. But mixed with her admiration was an alert and pugnacious fear, so big was he, so powerful, so violently hostile to all the principles involved in her belief that the whole wide world of action should in justice lie as much open to woman to choose from as ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... to house in a cave or big hollow log, one invariably remaining as a sentinel close to the mouth, looking out. If this sentinel were shot, another would almost certainly take his place. They were subject to freaks of stupidity, and were pugnacious to a degree. Not only would they fight if molested, but they would often attack entirely ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... exhibitions of acrobatic skill. There were two kinds of squirrels—the fat gray ones, of which there were not many, and the venomous little red ones, of which there seemed an overproduction. They were cute little wretches, but we did not care for them. They were pugnacious pirates; they robbed their unmilitant gray relative and chased him from the premises. Earlier in the season they had thrown down quantities of green nuts to be wasted, and we were told they robbed birds' nests, not only of their eggs, but of their young. Those red ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... neighbouring clans, or else crossed over to Holland to keep their hands in there till fortune favoured them once more at home. The old castle, with its rambling towers, and walls, and buttresses was a sort of rallying-point for all the pugnacious spirits of the time, and its bluff walls showed many a scar and many a dint where hostile guns had played upon them, not, you may be sure, ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... and indulged at home, he does not appear to have been in sympathy with his surroundings. Already dowered with the "hate of hate, the scorn of scorn," he appears to have made foes both among those who envied him and those whom, in the pride of intellectuality, he treated with pugnacious contempt. Beneath the haughty exterior, however, was a warm and passionate heart, which only needed circumstance to call forth an almost fanatical intensity of affection. A well-authenticated instance of this is thus related ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... suggest some of the inspiring ones. If Germany and France are burdened, at least they are defended—at least they are armed for conflict and victory. There seems to be a good deal of doubt as to how far this is true of the nation which has hitherto been known as the pre-eminently pugnacious one. Where France and Germany and Russia count by hundreds, England counts by tens; and it is only, strictly speaking, on the good old principle that one Englishman can buffet a dozen foreigners that a very hopeful view of an Anglo-continental collision can be maintained. This good old principle ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... although a child's shoe lay on the floor, and a woman's linsey dress dangled from a hook against the wall. I crept forward, my heart pounding madly, until I could gain sight of his face. He was a big fellow, not more than thirty, with sandy hair and beard, and a pugnacious jaw, his coarse hickory shirt slashed into ribbons, a bullet wound in the center of his forehead, and one arm broken by a vicious blow. His calloused hands yet gripped the haft of an axe, ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... you needn't tell me that," he observed presently, in a pugnacious tone, as if poor Gritty had been urging that lawyer's capabilities; "but, you see, he isn't up to the law as Wakem is. And water's a very particular thing; you can't pick it up with a pitchfork. That's why it's been nuts to Old Harry and the lawyers. It's plain enough what's the rights ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... be allowed at least half an hour's run every day, precautions being taken against its burrowing habits, and against its finding anything poisonous to eat. More than one family should not be allowed out at the same time, as they are very pugnacious. Most diseases are the result of neglect in cleaning out the hutch regularly and thoroughly. Rabbits which most nearly approach the wild ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... that set out from the rancher's that morning after the fight. First went the police, each man on his little box-like jumper with its steel-shod runners drawn by a hardy half-bred broncho. Next came Rory in a dog-sled cariole, with his several pugnacious canine friends made fast by moose-skin collars. They would have tried the patience of Job. They fought with each other on the slightest pretext from sheer love of fighting, and knew not the rules of Queensberry. If one of them happened to get down in one of their periodical little outbreaks, ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... and disorderly in their conduct. They broke through the fence the first night, went up into a quaking asp patch where there was nothing eatable, and had a scrap with two bears who thought Senor Ortiz had invested in edible pork. The hogs were wiry and pugnacious, and the circumstantial evidence plainly indicated that the bears had no walk-over. However, the bears managed to get one emaciated porker after a long chase, and they bit several samples out of him. They didn't devour the whole carcass, and ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... to provoke a battle with the whites, and boasting that formerly they had driven them back from the Darling, was a blow that they could not get over, and the result was that the whites were not again molested. It turned out that this pugnacious tribe was the same that threatened Sturt at the Darling junction, when the energetic interference of one man was so effectual. This remarkable savage, it seems, was dead and his ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... fifth century as the Dionysiaca of Nonnus of Panopolis could not fail to excite their most lively interest. Forty-eight books of verse on the exploits of Bacchus in the age of pugnacious prelates and filthy coenobites, of imbecile rulers and rampant robbers, of the threatened dissolution of every tie, legal, social, or political; an age of earthquake, war, and famine! Bacchus, who is known from Aristophanes not to have excelled ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... preferred to hunt the pugnacious woodchuck. He bore a special grudge against this clover-eater, beyond the usual hostility that boys feel for any wild animal. One day on his way to school a woodchuck crossed the road before him, and John gave chase. The woodchuck scrambled into an orchard and climbed a small ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... religious reforms, few men better illustrate this hard moral manliness, as distinguished from the highest moral heroism, than the sturdy Scotch reformer, John Knox. Tenacious, pugnacious, thoroughly honest and thoroughly earnest, superior to all physical and moral fear, destitute equally of fine sentiments and weak emotions, blurting out unwelcome opinions to queens as readily as to peasants, and in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... moving up to him, 'is physically impossible. Don't be so pugnacious. We leave you the front of the box, and when we appear in your territory our mouths are closed. But in our own domain we claim the rights ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nations of the East dice, and that pugnacious little bird the cock, have been and are the chief instruments employed to produce a sensation—to agitate their minds and to ruin their fortunes. The Chinese have in all times, we suppose, had cards—hence the absurdity of the notion that they were 'invented' for the amusement of ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... then abandoned. Capt. Liddell had his H.Q. in J.4 at this time. The first night he went with me to this trench with a party of bombers, and we stayed from 2 A.M. till dawn was breaking. Capt. Liddell was a great tower of strength to us in these trenches, one of the most fearless and pugnacious of men, with a taste for wandering about No Man's Land o' nights. It did you good ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... spot of cleared ground for the combat, he would throw down his gallant bird, and conceal himself in the brushwood; the game-cock would immediately crow, and his challenge was immediately answered by the pugnacious male pheasant, who flew down to meet him: the combat was short, for the pheasant was soon pierced by the sharp steel of his adversary; and as one antagonist fell dead, again would the game-cock crow, ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... and Comus were indulging themselves in two pennyworths of Park chair, drawn aside just a little from the serried rows of sitters who were set out like bedded plants over an acre or so of turf. Comus was, for the moment, in a mood of pugnacious gaiety, disbursing a fund of pointed criticism and unsparing anecdote concerning those of the promenaders or loungers whom he knew personally or by sight. Elaine was rather quieter than usual, and the grave serenity of the Leonardo da Vinci portrait seemed intensified in her face ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... If you're pugnacious, people think you're plucky, and they're ready to stand up for you. Whereas, if you forgive easily, you're not ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... it was too late. The combatants had been seen in an attitude that left no doubt as to their pugnacious intentions. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... the sensible dissuasion of a friend. Some interesting extracts from the letter are printed in Forster's Life of Landor, pp. (76-85). He protested especially against the imputed plagiarisms from Milton and gave ample evidence of the pugnacious spirit that brought him into difficulties several times during his life. See also the Imaginary Conversation between Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor, wherein the reception of Gebir is discussed and Southey's ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... horns in these differences. Both is a mighty sight too well brought up for that; moreover, they don't allow to set the camp no sech examples. They entertains too high a regyard for each other to take to pawin' about pugnacious, verbal or otherwise. ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis |
