"Stubbornness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... N. {ant. 328} tenacity, toughness, strength; (cohesion) 46; grip, grasp, stickiness, (cohesion) 46; sequacity^; stubbornness &c (obstinacy);; glue, cement, glutinousness^, sequaciousness^, viscidity, (semiliquidity) 352. leather; white leather, whitleather^; gristle, cartilage. unbreakability, tensile strength. V. be tenacious &c adj.; resist fracture. grip, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and held that inquisitive gaze, held it until Robinson affected to consult his notes. There was a moment of tense silence. Then the reply came with an icy stubbornness that ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... but a little pyramidal, stiff, twiggy mass, almost as solid and impenetrable as a rock. Some of the densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have ever seen, as well on account of the closeness and stubbornness of their branches as of their thorns, have been these wild-apple scrubs. They are more like the scrubby fir and black spruce on which you stand, and sometimes walk, on the tops of mountains, where cold is the demon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... what they are! I'm frozen to the bone! This will be the end of us both! Dragging people of our age around at this hour of night. Of all the accursed stubbornness!" ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... low laugh from the hold; nor yet the presaging vibrations of the winds in the cordage; nor yet the hollow flap of the sails against the masts, as for a moment their hearts sank in. For again Starbuck's downcast eyes lighted up with the stubbornness of life; the subterranean laugh died away; the winds blew on; the sails filled out; the ship heaved and rolled as before. Ah, ye admonitions and warnings! why stay ye not when ye come? But rather are ye predictions than warnings, ye shadows! Yet not so much predictions from ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... blame the factory workmen who had destroyed his father, or to blame his father for the egotism and selfishness that had driven his employees into reckless stubbornness. He saw behind both the urge of the inevitable, unquenchable desire of human beings for happiness; for the happiness that comes only when men have sufficient leisure in which to expand their minds ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... he blurted out, with the ungracious stubbornness of a weak mind which fears to be over-persuaded. Afraid lest he should consent, he refused ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... stubbornness is encountered, the agent merely shelves the manuscript and tells the writer it has ...
— The Smiler • Albert Hernhunter
... No argument and no appeal can bring it about. It makes me shudder to think of it. Really I can't understand it. The situation to me is most unnatural. But I won't be harsh with you. But I must say that I don't know where you get your stubbornness. No, I won't be harsh. Let me tell you what I will agree to do. He may come to this house and stay here until—may stay here and the best of care shall be taken of him, and you may nurse him, but you must not bear his name. ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... from her own than from Halvard's race. Only the bright flaxen hair and his square, somewhat clumsy stature might have told him to be the latter's child. He had a hot temper, and often distressed his mother by his stubbornness; and then there would come a great burst of repentance afterwards, which distressed her still more. For she was afraid it might be a sign of weakness. "And strong he must be," said she to herself, "strong enough to overcome all resistance, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... whole thing," he told himself many times a day. "I always humored Jimmy. I always took the muddy side of the road, and the big end of the log, and the hard part of the work, and filled his traps wi' rats from my own; why in God's name did I let the Deil o' stubbornness in me drive him to his death, noo? Why didna I let him have the Black Bass? Why didna I make him come home and put on dry clothes? I killed him, juist as sure as if I'd taken an ax ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... I dare be bound the right choice lies hidden away somewhere." "And I repeat," interrupted Martin impatiently, "that my son-in-law shall be,—I am resolved,—shall be none other than a skilful cooper." Paumgartner almost got angry at Master Martin's stubbornness; he controlled himself, however, and, rising from his seat, said, "It's getting late, Master Martin, let us now have done with our drinking and talking, for neither methinks will do ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Porter might give it to him in exchange for a guarantee of the hydroelectric post. But Crane suspected that even Porter did not have this information. The higher you went in these top-secret projects, the more silence and stubbornness you found. The men up above, it seemed, were never as open to discussion as were the lower-echelon eager beavers. They indulged in horse-trading and played politics to a certain extent, but the lines of demarcation were sharper. That was why he could get Taber discredited, even crippled. But knocking ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... them with mendicant looks, And care pushes by them with dirt-laden crooks; And strife's grazing wheels try between them to pass, And stubbornness blocks up the way ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... to act by any other rules. Where differences of opinion exist, time and forbearance not infrequently will work the desired change, where stubbornness or rudeness would utterly fail. More than that, a junior owes this much consideration to any senior whose heart is in the right place. It is bad manners, but even worse from the standpoint of tactics, to attempt publicly to score a victory over a senior ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... soldier who had lost a leg in the West Indies, was sent as governor to New Amsterdam, and he arrived in May, 1647. The stern, stubborn old soldier was received with great demonstrations of joy by the Hollanders. Despite all his stubbornness, Stuyvesant was a man of keen sagacity. He was despotic, yet honest and wise. He set about some much needed reforms, refusing to sell liquors and arms to the Indians. He soon taught the Indians to respect and fear him; ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... peculiar verve and dash of Take Ionesco, but one or two were decidedly "smooth" in a grave, slightly heavy way, and all suggested stubbornness, intense patriotism, and a keen eye for the ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... received this order Mr. Hammond would have been only too glad to go home. Now he was startled and angry and, being angry, his habitual stubbornness developed. ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... while not markedly better in a melee than the war-seasoned French, the British infantry had in its volleys a power which no other troops then existing possessed, and it was these volleys that decided the day even more than the individual stubbornness of the men. The 42nd, twice charged by cavalry, had but thirteen men wounded by the sabre. Part of the French losses, which were disproportionately heavy, were caused by the gunboats which lay close inshore and cannonaded the left flank of the French columns, and by a heavy naval ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... stay with the king than to go to Iceland and preach the faith to them there, and said he could not be contending by force against his own kindred. "Moreover, it would be more likely that my father and other chiefs, who are near kinsmen of mine, would go against thy will with all the less stubbornness the better beholden I am under your power." The king said, "This is chosen both wisely and as beseems a great man." The king gave Kjartan a whole set of new clothes, all cut out of scarlet cloth, and they suited him well; for people said that King Olaf and Kjartan were of an even height when they ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... said the doctor, doubtfully. "To be sure, I never liked them Puntzes, they're so damned thick-headed. Dummness runs in that family so, it's somepin' surprisin'! Dummness and stubbornness is all they got to 'em. But Absalom he's so well fixed—Tillie she might go furder and do worse. Now there's you, Teacher. If she took up with you and yous two got married, you'd have to rent. Absalom he'd ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... most commodious. She had fought a hard fight, when her widowhood began, and the children were too young to help her, rather than give up the home of her love-time, and the cradle of her little ones. Some of her neighbours (who wanted the house) were sadly pained at her stubbornness, and even dishonesty, as they put it, when she knew that she never could pay her rent. But "never is a long time," according to the proverb; and with the forbearance of the Admiral, the kindness of his daughters, and the growth of her own children, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... her, with a look of dumb and inflexible defiance. "Dirk Hatteraick, dare ye deny, with my blood upon your hands, one word of what my dying breath is uttering?" He looked at her with the same expression of hardihood and dogged stubbornness, and moved his lips, but uttered no sound. "Then fareweel!" she said, "and God forgive you! your hand has sealed my evidence. When I was in life, I was the mad randy gipsy, that had been scourged, and banished, and branded—that had begged from door ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... that he was riding he had bought with his legacy, before he bought the land on the Three-Notched Road. He was now considering whether he could afford to buy in Richmond a likely negro to help him and Lewis in the fields. With all the stubbornness of a dull mind, he meant to keep Lewis in the fields. Long ago, when he was a handsome young giant, he had married above him. His wife was a beautiful and spirited woman, and when she married the son of her father's tenant, it ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... altogether in a strange, incomprehensible mood that afternoon, and when he learnt next day that she had taken to her bed he was not surprised. Perhaps he was not altogether grieved. It seemed right that she should be punished for her stubbornness. Punishment might ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... thought I caught a glimpse of my masked youth in another part of the crowd prompting the demand. So Messer Guido, as herald of the general wish, smilingly refused to take back the paper parchment, and Dante, ever too wise to be stubborn for stubbornness' sake, surrendered, where to persist in refusal would have seemed churlish to his host and to ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... discipline, and the refractory must be subdued by harsher methods. The degrees of scholastick, as of military punishment, no stated rules can ascertain. It must be enforced till it overpowers temptation; till stubbornness becomes flexible, and perverseness regular. Custom and reason have, indeed, set some bounds to scholastick penalties. The schoolmaster inflicts no capital punishments; nor enforces his edicts by either death or mutilation. The civil ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... patrons in good humor; but I was myself often vexed at the persistent stubbornness of the whale in not calmly floating on the surface for the gratification ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... and looked as if they had not the courage to keep up the prices. Ladies and housekeepers wandered from stall to stall followed by their maids, a few of whom wore picturesque caps, conspicuous in their rarity: for even Breton stubbornness has yielded very much, where, for once, it should have been firm as a rock, and it is only in the remoter districts that costume is still general. We were invited to many purchases as we looked around, and had we yielded to all might ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... hiccough with rage, and I wrestled from my very inmost soul with my misery; made a right gallant effort not to sink down. It was not my intention to collapse; no, I would die standing. A dray rolls slowly by, and I notice there are potatoes in it; but out of sheer fury and stubbornness, I take it into my head to assert that they are not potatoes, but cabbages, and I swore frightful oaths that they were cabbages. I heard quite well what I was saying, and I swore this lie wittingly; repeating time after time, ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... receives the income of it. But some of the Goths in Picenum and the two Tuscanies[339] are evading the payment of their proper taxes[340]. This vicious practice must be suppressed at once, lest it spread by imitation. If anyone in a spirit of clownish stubbornness shall still refuse to obey our commands as expressed through you, affix the proper notice to his houses and confiscate them, that he who would not pay a small debt may suffer a great loss[341]. None ought to be more prompt ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... interests of the pope, and change the religion which had been used both in the days of her father, king Henry, and in those of her brother Edward: for in all his time she had manifested the greatest stubbornness and inflexibility of temper, as must be obvious from her letter to the lords of the council, whereby she put in her claim to the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... the guidance and control they all needed, the temper and stubbornness Lulu had shown, the watchful care requisite for Gracie in her feeble state, he hesitated to ask Mrs. Dinsmore and Elsie if they still felt inclined to undertake the charge ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... discordant, and with malevolent obstinacy he led all the other instruments in the orchestra through a seemingly endless series of musical pyrotechnics. There never was a more remarkable exhibition of stubbornness. When the violins and the 'cellos, the hautboys and the flutes, the cornets and the trombones, said "Come, let us work together in G minor," or "Let us do this passage in B flat," the bassoon would lead off with a wild shriek in D sharp or ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... believe it. Don't I know the stubbornness of your heart? You see, you are but young, and I make excuses for you; but, after you have been the object of my special and judicious training for a few years, I quite hope ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... as be found the Ordinary was in the right, and that all expectation of a reprieve or pardon were totally in vain, Trippuck began, as most of those sort of people do, to lose much of that stubbornness they mistake for courage. He now felt all the terrors of an awakened conscience, and persisted no longer in denying the crime for which he died, though at first he declared it altogether a falsehood, and Constable, his companion, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... Rick didn't think Orvil had been a party to the shooting. Maybe it was stubbornness, refusing to think the crabber was involved just because they liked him. Or maybe it was because the crabber had no reason for helping Merlin and his gang; at least Harris had no reason ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... had passed, and Graham and his wife, after their saunterings over the Continent, were spending the summer in the Scottish Highlands. They sailed on the lochs, fished from their banks, and climbed the mountain passes on little shaggy ponies that were Scotch in their stubbornness and unflinching endurance. Grace had become even companionable in her growing intelligence, and in the place of her silent, inquiring glances there were sometimes ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... she replied, with Indian stubbornness; "I cannot leave him. Was I not like his mother? How can I go and leave him for others? The roots of the old tree grow not in new soil. If it is pulled up ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... renounced as sinful, and the green became the resort of conceited politicians, who, with misapplications of Scripture in their mouths and newspapers and libels in their hands, boasted their renunciation of the sensual vices, yet cherished as graces the baneful passions of pride, malice, and stubbornness, which the Scriptures assure us are most odious in the ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... have any peace of mind while such a rebel of a child is so near her. Your aunt Hervey will not take a charge which all the family put together cannot manage. Your uncle Harlowe will not see you at his house, till you are married. So, thanks to your own stubbornness, you have nobody that will receive you but your uncle Antony. Thither you must go in a very few days; and, when there, your brother will settle with you, in my presence, all that relates to your ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... and what an employment will that be for a father! Ah! if you do not dread death, at least cherish some fears of afflicting me with the mortal grief of imbuing my hands in your blood." "Once more father," replied Scheherazade, "grant me the favour I solicit." "Your stubbornness," resumed the vizier "will rouse my anger; why will you run headlong to your ruin? They who do not foresee the end of a dangerous enterprise can never conduct it to a happy issue. I am afraid the same thing will happen to you as befell the ass, which was well ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... everlasting delay of the younger brother as ground to attack the older one's conduct and to arraign the entire ministerial policy. The English people had heard of the Spanish insurrection with wild delight, but the inefficiency and stubbornness of the insurgent leaders, together with the untrustworthiness of the provisional governments, had cooled their ardor, and after the defeat at Ocana—a battle which the vainglorious Spaniards had fought in direct opposition to Wellington's ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... I. (1603-1625), son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and the first of the Stuart line to reign in England, succeeded Elizabeth. His stubbornness and folly not only ended the intense patriotic feeling of the previous reign, but laid the foundation for the deadly conflict that resulted. In fifty-four years after the defeat of the Armada, England was ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... with more frequency and fervor than any creatures it has been my lot to encounter throughout an adventurous life. After we got the vessel into the inner harbor,—though not without a mishap, owing to the captain's drunken stubbornness,—my Irish friends resolved to take lodgings for a while on shore. For two days they did not make their appearance; but toward the close of the third, they returned, "fresh," as they said, "from the theatre." It was very evident that the jolly god had been their companion; and, as I was not a ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... he murmured, wearily. "Only, none for this deficient child, thank you." He walked to the window and stood looking out into the blown spring green of the elm opposite. His ebbed anger had left a residuum of stubbornness. There was still an act of justice to be consummated and the position of grand-justicer offered a certain righteous attraction. As he reminded himself, if you put your will to work on a difficult action you were fain to commit, after a while the will worked automatically and your ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... Tamas, Tamas has the ascendancy, aided and, as it were, worked by Rajas, so that they predominate over Sattva in the foreseen evolution, when the two combining overpower the third, when the force of Rajas and the inertia and stubbornness of Tamas, binding themselves together, check the action, the harmony, the pleasure-giving qualities of Sattva, then comes one of the conditions in which the Lord comes forth to restore that which had been disturbed of the balanced interworking ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... won't." And the detective's tone became eminently friendly. "You'll just produce it within the next half minute. You are not the sort of man who would care to drag a lady's name into a police-court wrangle, which can be the only outcome of present stubbornness on your part. I know you were hidden among those cedars between, say, eight o'clock and half past nine. I know that Miss Manning bathed in a lake well within your view. I know, too, that you sketched her, because I saw the canvas a moment ago—an oil, not a water color. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... visit in the course of that day, and it was a proof of what Aunt Emmeline would call my stubbornness that I came through the ordeal without wavering. Regardless of Bridget's appealing eyes, I led the way forward, always affecting a buoyant hope that our next visit would be successful, while mentally I was holding a Jekyll and Hyde argument with ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... terrible enemies; but excited by the danger of their little main body, then completely surrounded by the Chouans, they flung themselves headlong into the road with fixed bayonets and made the battle even for a few moments. Both sides fought with a stubbornness intensified by the cruelty and fury of the partisan spirit which made this war exceptional. Each man, observant of danger, was silent. The scene was gloomy and cold as death itself. Nothing was heard through the clash of arms and the grinding of the sand under foot but ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... said Cap'n Sproul, with severity, and when the astonished Butts blazed indignant remonstrance, he insisted on his point with a stubbornness that allowed no compromise. "It don't make any difference even if it is only a painted figger. It's showin' disrespect to the sex, and sence I've settled on shore, Butts, and am married to the best woman that ever lived, I'm standin' up for ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... business as private bankers. "That will never do in England," said Mr. Alberry. "An old established business like that might be worth L100,000. We must sell it to some one, not close it." So we sold it to Mr. George Washington Phipps. This last character illustrates, again, the stubbornness of dramatic law. Mr. Alberry and I tried to make him an Irishman, or a Scotchman, or some kind of an Englishman. But we could not. He remains an American in England in 1886, as he was in Chicago in 1873. He declined to change either his citizenship or his name; "G. Washington—Father ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard
... herself favourable to the Indulgence. Which side she might take depended on the will of others. For her understanding was sluggish; and, though there was latent in her character a hereditary wilfulness and stubbornness which, many years later, great power and great provocations developed, she was as yet a willing slave to a nature far more vivacious and imperious than her own. The person by whom she was absolutely governed was the wife of Churchill, a woman who afterwards exercised ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Vendean peasant and militant Royalist. Removing at an early age to Paris he began as clerk to a paint-dealer who was from Mayenne and a distant relative of the Orgemonts. A mistaken idea led him toward art. His Breton stubbornness led him successively to the studios of Servin, Schinner and Sommervieux. He afterwards studied, but fruitlessly, the works of Granet and Drolling; then he completed his art studies with Duval-Lecamus. Grassou profited nothing by his work with these masters, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... lady) by getting her teeth into the two or three things which she thinks she stands for. I would observe here in parenthesis that much of the recent official trouble about women has arisen from the fact that they transfer to things of doubt and reason that sacred stubbornness only proper to the primary things which a woman was set to guard. One's own children, one's own altar, ought to be a matter of principle—or if you like, a matter of prejudice. On the other hand, who wrote Junius's Letters ought not to be a principle or a prejudice, ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... she went back to her sofa again; there she was safe, for all Bruce's devotion to his ladye-love and stubbornness of character could not give him courage enough to affront, at close quarters, the mingled dislike and scornful humor that played round Flora's lips, and gleamed in her eyes like summer lightning. He had to retreat upon Lady Catharine, who, thinking him hardly used, in her inextinguishable ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... we are reconciled to our occupation. We are like horses in a manege, or oxen or dogs taught to draw the plough, or be harnessed to a carriage. Our stubbornness is subdued; we no longer exhaust our strength in vain efforts to free ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... displayed. But why he risked giving offence to Napoleon at all by the disregard of orders, there is, it would seem, nothing in Decaen's papers to show. M. Prentout, who has studied them carefully, is driven back on the suggestion that the prolongation of the captivity was due to "entetement"—stubbornness. But it cost the administration four hundred and fifty francs per month to maintain Flinders,* (* Prentout, page 382.) and it seems improbable, when the finances of the island were difficult to adjust and ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... its capture, making three desperate assaults, all of which were repulsed. In October the city was invested with an army of forty thousand men, under the intrepid General Skobeleff, with a determination to win. But Osman held out with all his old stubbornness, and continued his unflinching defence until starvation forced him to yield. He had lost his city, but had held back the Russian army for nearly half a year and won the admiration of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... attention! He bridled them by the nose, not with rings through the gristle, but with nose-bands of iron, bluntly spiked inside, against which they could not pull hard without pain, and had made some progress, though he could by no means trust them yet: every now and then a fit of mingled wildness and stubbornness would seize them, and the contest would appear about to begin again from the beginning; but they seldom now held out very long. The nose-band of one of them had come off, Alister had him by a horn in each hand, and a ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... difficulties indeed came not so much from the enemy as from the ignorance and timidity of his own allies. He was never defeated in the field, but victory after victory was snatched from him by the incapacity of his officers or the stubbornness of the Dutch. What startled the cautious strategists of his day was the vigour and audacity of his plans. Old as he was, Marlborough's designs had from the first all the dash and boldness of youth. On taking the field in 1702 he at once resolved to force a battle ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... hearers for the message which he daily grew a little more doubtful of his ability to deliver. A native streak of stubbornness kept him studying the language along with his daily tussle with the axe and saw. But the rate of his progress was such that he pessimistically calculated that it would take him at least two years before he could ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... public. Her reward would come when she had brought the world, listening, to her feet. Seized in the thrall of his work, Barney grimly held to it, come what might. No such absorbing passion possessed Iola. And Iola, while she was provoked by what she called his stubbornness, was yet secretly proud of that silently resisting strength she could neither shake nor break. No, Barney was not fitted for the role of the ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... his lofty position on the steed, addressing his favourite little pet. "Get along," he continued, striking the animal gently with his whip. But Pete was as immovable and unconscious of the lash as would have been a stone. And the steed seemed likewise to be infected with the pony's stubbornness, after the wagon ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... had not availed to shake his will. The possibility of surrender did not occur to him, partly because he felt sure that James McMurrough would not be so foolish as to let him die; but partly, also, by reason of a noble stubbornness in the man, a fixedness that for no pain of death would leave a woman or a child to perish. More than once Colonel Sullivan had had to make that choice, amid the horrors of a retreat across famished lands, ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... roughshod over me and my commands? You have queened it long enough, my lady. If I don't rein you up, you will turn your aunt and me out of the house next, and invite that precious Aubrey crew to take possession. Your confounded stubbornness will ruin you yet. You deserve a good whipping, miss; I can hardly keep my hands ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the distance, a mannish spring in his stride, and with every evidence that he took himself seriously. He was of that peculiar stubbornness and determination that had the children failed to carry out his plan of procedure he would have gone deliberately by and refused to ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... where upon the curling hills Glow clusters of the bright-eyed grape, Or where the hand of labour drills The stubbornness of earth ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The stubbornness of the Scot is an inheritance from his Norse forebears, who discovered America five hundred years before Columbus turned the trick. These men were well called the "Wolves of the Sea." About the year One Thousand, a troop of them sailed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... move past. What a life he had lived! He thought of the evenings spent in society, the horse races, card parties, love affairs ordered in advance and served at the stroke of midnight, in his rose-colored boudoir! He recalled faces, expressions, vain words which obsessed him with the stubbornness of popular melodies which one cannot help humming, but which suddenly and inexplicably end ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the word. The big soul of him with his ready kindliness. Oh, it was a pity. It was a distracting thought. And why should it be? For the life of her she could see no need. A little yielding on his part. Just a shade less iron stubbornness. The whole thing could have been avoided she was sure. The olive branch had been held out by the Skandinavia. But he had deliberately ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... to all entreaty, and flings her from him. At last, half mad through her lover's stubbornness Santuzza betrays him and Lola to Alfio, warning the latter, that his wife has proved false.—After church Alfio and Turridu meet in mother Lucia's tavern.—Alfio refusing to drink of Turridu's wine, the latter divines that the ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... browbeat or bully him is the last way under the sun of getting him to do any certain thing. He will dare willingly, but he will not permit himself to be driven. So this attempt of the boatmen to force Alf only aroused all the dogged stubbornness of his race. The same qualities were in him that are in men who lead forlorn hopes; and there, under the stars, on the lonely pier, encircled by the jostling and shouldering gang, he resolved that he would die rather than submit to the indignity of being robbed of a ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... she met Claybrook again. Nothing had been decided. Maida had seemed utterly indifferent. "Perfectly satisfied with things as they are," she had said; there was a diabolical stubbornness in her manner. She made capital of her own inertia. She was as cool as if dealing with an entire stranger. Finally, after two days of backing and filling, of bickering and contesting, she had named her price. "Fifteen ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Englishman feel what a great country Poland had been and would be again; what great people his ancestors had been; and what a leading part they had played in the national movements. And the more he hit against an answering stubbornness—or coolness—in Falloden, the more he held forth. So that it was an uncomfortable dinner. And again Falloden said to himself—"Why did I do it? I am only in his way. I shall bore and chill him; and I don't seem to ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dead, lifeless spirit?—whether we can praise God, and be resigned in all trials, or feel murmurings, fretfulness, and impatience under them?—is it not easy to know if we feel anger at provocations, or whether we feel our tempers mild, gentle, peaceable, and easy to be entreated, or feel stubbornness, self-will, and pride? whether we have slavish fears, or are possessed of that perfect love which casteth out ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... than the little lady. As a mortal, she may have been in the wrong, of course; only she very seldom acknowledged the circumstance to herself, and to others never. Her father, in his old age, used to watch her freaks of despotism, haughtiness, and stubbornness, and amuse himself with them. She felt that his eye was upon her; his humour, of which quality she possessed little herself, subdued and bewildered her. But, the Colonel gone, there was nobody else whom she was disposed to obey,—and so I am rather glad for my part ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... submitted; and Clarke is but a shadow of himself, owing to the unwholesome nature of the place in which he is confined. I do not despair yet of bringing him to reason and submission. He is not like Dalaber. There is no stubbornness about him. He will speak with sweet courtesy, and enter into every argument with all the reasonableness of a great mind. But he says that to walk in that procession, to take part in that act of so-called recantation and reconciliation, would be in itself as a confession that ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... more of a cherished project, knowing Francis' temper and his stubbornness when crossed. She merely shrugged her white shoulders and watched him closely. The monarch had not scrupled once to break his covenant with Charles, holding that treaties made under duress, by force majeure, were legally void, while now— But the king was composed of ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... American Army.—Meantime the American soldiers on shore at Santiago were doing their work under great discouragement, but with a valor and stubbornness that will always compel admiration. While the navy was silently and efficiently increased to be a well-ordered force, the army was not so well managed at first. Soldiers there were in plenty. From all parts of the Union, from the South and from ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... informed Marquis Spinola by letter—and so intense was his desire for the termination of that disastrous war, that he did not hesitate indulgently to grant what had been so obstinately demanded. Little was to be expected, he said, from the stubbornness of the provinces, and from their extraordinary manner of transacting business, but looking, nevertheless, only to divine duty, and preferring its dictates to a selfish regard for his own interests, he had resolved ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... withholding from coquetry, but from dread lest she should give herself away and show herself over-willing. She noticed everything he did, without watchful scrutiny, and with the merest quickness of her caressing glance. She loved everything in him, his speech and his movements, his strength, his stubbornness, his rough carriage and silence. She loved him. She feared him. She did not dare to risk losing him. Above all, she longed to be in Toby's arms, to ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... have passed; the gale has blown itself out; we are not more than three hundred and fifty miles off Valparaiso; and the Elsinore, this time due to me and my own stubbornness, is rolling in the wind and heading nowhere in a light breeze at the rate of ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... few years from psychasthenic depression with doubts and obsessions to psychasthenic deliriums with stubbornness and negativism, then to asthenic insanity with irremediable and complete want of power. Is it necessary to say that we made a mistake in our diagnostic and that from the first demential psychosis should have been recognized? I am not convinced of this: ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... being thinner, more tender, than on his back. But do not whip him much—just enough to frighten him; it is not because we want to hurt the horse that we whip him—we only do it to frighten vice and stubbornness out of him. But whatever you do, do quickly, sharply, and with a good deal of fire, but always without anger. If you are going to frighten him at all, you must do it at once. Never go into a pitched battle with your horse, and whip him until ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... braver than this, which the modern historian well compares with brilliant actions of the Romans and the Swiss. The Persians thoroughly deserved to be termed (as they are termed by AEschylus), a "valiant-minded people;" they had boldness, elan, dash, and considerable tenacity and stubbornness; no nation of Asia or Africa was able to stand against them; if they found their masters in the Greeks, it was owing, as the Greeks themselves tell us, to the superiority of Hellenic arms, equipment, and, above all, of Hellenic discipline, which together rendered ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... from this conviction. Now he even doubted the power of the diamonds and rubies to win her, having seen that in her eyes which had brought all his dreams crumbling to choking dust. Pain had laid the devil of fury in him and aroused the imp of stubbornness. He would wait and watch. He was safe to keep them both in the harbor until the arrival of Father McQueen, in June; and perhaps, by that time, he would see some way of winning the girl. Should the necklace of diamonds and rubies fail to impress the girl, then he might bribe John Darling ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... tenaciousness about the loose-jointed, high-shouldered figure, and, above all, the audacity of the careless Irish-American smile. That smile, she felt, trailed like a flippant and fluttering tail to the kite of his racial solemnity and stubbornness of purpose, enabling it to rise higher even while seeming to weigh ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... numbers and to the deadly accuracy of our carbines, gave way. He then advanced in the direction of Brandy Station. The farther we advanced the stronger grew the ever-accumulating force of the enemy, who disputed every inch of ground with great stubbornness. On arriving near the Station we found the enemy in strong force, with artillery posted on the surrounding hills. We saw clearly that a third cavalry fight was destined to be fought on this historic field, and we began to make preparations for the onset. It was my fortune to lead the advance ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... out of their places to listen, the older ones with hands cupped to their ears. Now they settled back with disappointed faces, some of them shaking their heads in depreciation of such stubbornness. ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... manufactured into lace, has been found to be the best and most enduring animal to depend upon when such journey's are made. She will patiently toil up the steep gorges with a heavy load on her back, and will drop in her very tracks before she shows any stubbornness or want of courage. Sheep are also used at times to carry bags of borax to market near the plains, where they are shorn of their fleece, and return to the mountains laden with salt. The culminating point of the range, and the highest peak in the world, is Mount Everest, a little more than ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... was obliged to leave it, I still fixed my residence in the country. The Coterie insisted this was from a motive of pure obstinacy, and that I was weary even to death of my retirement; but that, eaten up with pride, I chose rather to become a victim of my stubbornness than to recover from it and return to Paris. The letter to D'Alembert breathed a gentleness of mind which every one perceived not to be affected. Had I been dissatisfied with my retreat, my style and manner would have borne evident marks of my ill-humor. This reigned in all the ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... very well what this recommendation was, but with a certain stubbornness and sense of what was due to himself, he let his father proceed with the not very welcome task of ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... elegance. So their institutions were the fewest and simplest under which men have ever governed themselves. It is therefore no theoretical attachment to democracy that has helped the Boers to resist the English; it is merely the wish to be left alone, and a stubbornness of will that made independence seem more desirable the ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... by the strong lenses of her glasses, I saw the challenge of stubbornness. I felt myself growing wild with a desire to break through the unwholesome mystery which had entangled me, and overcome by any means the silence of this woman. She had arisen. She was within my reach. And I believe that I put my hands upon her, catching her two round ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... neck and kissed me," which put Bunyan on his guard, as he had ever known him for "a close opposer of the ways of God," he adopted the tone of one who had Bunyan's interest at heart, and begged him as a friend to yield a little from his stubbornness. His brother-in- law, he said, was very loath to send him to gaol. All he had to do was only to promise that he would not call people together, and he should be set at liberty and might go back to his home. Such meetings were plainly unlawful and must be stopped. Bunyan had better follow his ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... it could. Of course I had my trade to fall back on, but I am afraid that is all the use I thought of putting it to. The love of change belongs to youth, and I meant to take a hand in things as they came along. I had a pair of strong hands, and stubbornness enough to do for two; also a strong belief that in a free country, free from the dominion of custom, of caste, as well as of men, things would somehow come right in the end, and a man get shaken into the corner where he belonged if he took a hand in the game. I think I was right ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... having more salt than he could use during the remainder of his days, did not tend toward an abatement of this war he waged against nature's ultimate design. He himself would analyse that as a species of stubbornness, an egotistic desire to see how good an interference he could establish, but he gave body and brain and soul to his meddling with a fire ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... no business reason at all. Except for Mother's counsel not to sell, which was based upon sentiment and nothing else, and my own stubbornness, I had no reason at all. Yet I was, if anything, ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... unsatisfied thirst for revenge parching his soul. David Allen died, cursing Bernard Heaton and lawyer Grey; hating the lawyer who had won the case even more than the man who was to gain by the winning. Yet if cursing were to be done, David should rather have cursed his own stubbornness ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... I have laid out some new streets; and when they are opened, and the trees felled, and they are all built up, will they not make a fine town? Well, Duke is a liberal-hearted fellow, with all his stubbornness. Yes, yes; I must have at least four deputies, besides ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the summit of the western hills Tarzan became aware that his plan to enter A-lur upon the back of a gryf was likely doomed to failure, since the stubbornness of the great beast was increasing momentarily, doubtless due to the fact that its huge belly was crying out for food. The ape-man wondered if the Tor-o-dons had any means of picketing their beasts for the night, but as he did not know ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... king—but it was a failure, he only succeeded in being the female saint. He was not instant in season, but out of season. He could not be persuaded to do a thing while it could do any good—he was iron, he was adamant in his stubbornness then—but as soon as the thing had reached a point where it would be positively harmful to do it, do it he would, and nothing could stop him. He did not do it because it would be harmful, but because he hoped it was not yet too late to achieve by it the good which it would have done ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which his discourse had been drawn; and as this performance, in its present shape, is not to be found, we believe, in any of the books devoted to such purposes, it is but fair to conclude that the old man—not unwilling, in his profession, to employ every engine for the removal of all stubbornness from the hearts of those he addressed—sometimes invoked Poetry to smile upon his devotions, and wing his aspirations for the desired flight. It was sung by the congregation, in like manner with the former—the preacher reading two lines at a time, after having first gone through ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... as her courage, and at last she died with the devoted heroism which so well became her mother's daughter. But what we now look on as virtues, were vices in the eyes of the republicans, who were her judges. Her constancy was stubbornness, and her courage was insolence. Her innocent mirth was called licentiousness, and the royal splendour which she had been taught to maintain, was looked upon as iniquitous extravagance. Nor was this, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... is that inhuman and brutal law, xxi. 18, 19, 20, 21, which authorizes parents, the father and the mother, to bring their own children to have them stoned to death for what it pleased them to call stubbornness.—But priests have always been fond of preaching up Deuteronomy, for Deuteronomy preaches up tythes; and it is from this book, xxv. 4, they have taken the phrase, and applied it to tything, that "thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... him," said Walsingham at length. "Obdurate lad, thou wilt regret thy stubbornness ere long. There are other means of dealing with such spirits than gentleness. We will return ere long, and if thou art still of the same mind, thou shalt taste them." And he withdrew, leaving Francis to ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... willing to receive instruction, and discourage not your masters by your stubbornness or aversion. Remember, the interest is your own, and if you be wise, it will be for your own good; spend the Sabbath in learning to read, and in teaching your young ones, instead of rambling abroad from place to place; a few years ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... respect?" he asked her, and she heard in his voice that note of stubbornness which she had heard on that night that seemed so long ago—the night before ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... real danger; he believed that Layson knew about the still and that the bitter enmity resulting from the fight which had so nearly proved his death might prompt him to betrayal of the secret; but with the stubbornness of the mountaineer he clung doggedly to his illegal apparatus in the mountain-cave, kept doggedly at the illegal work he did with it. It was characteristic of the man, his forbears and his breed ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... on Bob's collar and from time to time he shook him vigorously, whether with the idea of shaking the stubbornness out of him or merely to indicate that he held the whip hand, Betty ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... said, closing the book, "we are here in the caves tonight because of the stubbornness of Humbolt and Schroeder and all the others. Had they thought only of their own welfare, had they conceded defeat and gone into the migratory way of life, we would be sitting beside grass campfires somewhere to the south tonight, our way of life containing no plans or aspirations ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... usefulness to man. Its skin, especially that of the boar, from its extreme closeness of texture, when tanned, is employed for the seats of saddles, to cover powder, shot, and drinking-flasks; and the hair, according to its colour, flexibility, and stubbornness, is manufactured into tooth, nail, and hairbrushes,—others into hat, clothes, and shoe-brushes; while the longer and finer qualities are made into long and short brooms and painters' brushes; and a still more rigid description, under the name of "bristles," are used ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... handed my resignation to the school-board; these men came to ask me that I reconsider. The board, so I had heard, was going to accept my decision and let it go at that. According to this committee the board did not represent the majority of the citizens in town. They argued for some time against my stubbornness. At last, fretting under the delay, I put it bluntly. "I have nothing to reconsider, gentlemen. The matter does no longer rest with me. If, as I hear, the board is going to accept my resignation, that settles the affair for me. It must of necessity suit me or I should ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... August. In normal times this would have been the beginning of the great "winter season" in our trade. As it was, the deadlock continued. The stubbornness of the men, far from showing signs of wilting under the strain of so many weeks of enforced idleness and suffering, seemed to be gathering strength, while our own people, the ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... asked, and though his voice quivered still, it was no longer from tenderness. He hated stubbornness, and, most of all, he hated it in the woman who was going to be his wife. A life of continual contradiction, he felt, would be intolerable. A strong will, which he had always admired in himself, became a positive failing in Gabriella. A woman's strength lay, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... wear at will The rugged mood.—My Lord of Coventry, Lay my command upon the Courts below That bail be not accepted for the prisoners Under the warrant of the Star Chamber. 85 The people shall not find the stubbornness Of Parliament a cheap or easy method Of dealing with their rightful sovereign: And doubt not this, my Lord of Coventry, We will find time and place for fit rebuke.— ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... enterprise were reduced to glowing embers about the beginning of the nineteenth century; but let it be recognised that the same fire always smouldered and that it is now spreading anew with a sympathetic stubbornness. When Motley says, in his "History of the United Netherlands," that the Dutch Republic was "sea-born and sea-sustained," we have to apply this, in the first place, to its most important town, Amsterdam, and if ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt
... froti. Stroll promeni. Strong forta. Stronghold fortikajxo. Strophe strofo. Structure strukturo. Struggle barakti. Strut paradi. Strut (a stay) subtenajxo. Strychnine striknino. Stubborn obstinega. Stubbornness obstinegeco. Stucco stukajxo. Stud butono. Student studento. Studio studcxambro. Studious lernema. Study lerni, studi. Stuff (material) sxtofo. Stuff plenigi. Stumble faleti. Stump trunkrestajxo. Stun duonesvenigi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... a sabre fight, both sides seemed bent on using that arm. In the centre the Confederates maintained their position with much stubbornness, and for a time seemed to have recovered their former spirit, but at last they began to give way on both flanks, and as these receded, Merritt and Custer went at the wavering ranks in a charge along the whole front. The result was a general smash-up of the entire Confederate ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... bayonets had captured double its share of the first camp taken from the amazed, unbreakfasted enemy, and who again and again, hour by hour, by the half-mile and mile, had splendidly helped to drive him—while he hammered back with a deadly stubbornness all but a match for their fury. Through forests, across clearings, over streams and bogs and into and out of ravines and thickets they had swept, seizing transiently a whole field battery, permanently hundreds of prisoners, and covering the strife's broad wake with even ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... the indifference of the lukewarm and the narrow-minded stubbornness of the ultras. The former could not be brought to act or even to keep silence. If they were asked to exert themselves in some definite way for the common good, with the inconsistency characteristic of weak people they regarded any such suggestion as a malicious ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... strongly opposes any extensive and systematic use of phonics. Reiteration of views, and even the customary proofs of success by trial, may avail nothing. But reiteration may lead to derogatory remarks, when each becomes impressed with the stubbornness ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... a shoving people, like their cousins the English. Their fault in this particular lies in a morbid pride, with a stubbornness that is the result of a limited experience, and which is too apt to induce them to set up their own provincial notions, as the standard, and to throw them backward into the intrenchments, of self-esteem. This ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... cannon. This was the crisis of the siege; and had a hurricane occurred, as was expected, the fleet would have been driven off, and the army probably captured. But no storm came, and the English, with characteristic stubbornness, repaired their damaged works, and erected others. On the 9th they renewed their fire, having twelve guns, and the Spaniards but nine. The English increased the strength of their batteries, while the Spanish guns were reduced to two by the 16th; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various |
