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More "Provocation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and that the satisfaction derived from the faithfulness and honesty of perhaps thirty is hardly sufficient to atone for the anxiety and distrust with which one regards the remaining ninety, who lie by habit and steal on the least provocation, who take infinite pains to be lazy and shirk, who tell tales of others, of which themselves are the true subjects, and from whom all the artifices of the lawyer cannot draw a fair statement of fact, even when it is obviously ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... capture Birchill to hand him over to the police, and Birchill shot him. I believe that Birchill fired both shots—that he had two revolvers. But whatever took place, a dangerous criminal like Birchill would not require much provocation to silence a man who interrupted him while he was on business bent, and a man, moreover, against whom he nursed a bitter grudge. In this case it is possible there was no provocation at all. Sir Horace Fewbanks may have simply heard a ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... humbly entreat my friend with the dirty shirt not to break the sconce of the respectable gentleman whom I have in my eye, with that shillelah of his—though I must admit that he is labouring under strong and just provocation." "For mercy's sake, my dear sir!" he would exclaim to a third—"don't push my respected friend the justice into yonder puddle—the one which lies so convenient on your right hand there; though, to be sure, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... Thus, if any one be caught stealing, which is commonly done in the night, the proprietor of the goods may put the thief instantly to death; and if any one should enquire of him after the deceased, it is sufficient to acquit him, if he only informs them of the provocation he had to kill him. But so severe a punishment is seldom inflicted, unless the articles that are stolen be reckoned very valuable; such as breast-plates and plaited hair. If only cloth, or even hogs, be stolen, and the thief escape, upon his being afterward discovered, if he promise to return ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... galleries, to have been about it at all seasons and not merely to have scampered through it as the central incident in a half-day's excursion. It is, indeed, properly a place for restful enjoyment rather than for hurried sightseeing; though a hurried glimpse may well prove a provocation to further visits and more ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold
... Here and there was a lonely farm, called a bor built either of wood, or of sods, or of pieces of lava, looking like a poor beggar by the wayside. These ruinous huts seemed to solicit charity from passers-by; and on very small provocation we should have given alms for the relief of the poor inmates. In this country there were no roads and paths, and the poor vegetation, however slow, would soon efface ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... tutelary, who also made an anachronistic onset, with his repartees and his retorts, before there was anything to fire at, takes what I give by way of subsequent provocation with a good humor which would make a convert of me if he could afford .01659265 ... of a grain of logic. He instantly sent me his photograph for the asking, and another letter in proof. The Thor-hammerer does ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... opportunity neglected where he might sandwich in a prayer. He prayed when he arose in the morning, he prayed before he ate, he prayed when he had finished eating, and before he went to bed at night he prayed again. In between he often found excuses to pray even when the provocation seemed far-fetched to my worldly eyes—now that he was about to die I felt positive that I should witness a perfect orgy of prayer—if one may allude with such a simile to ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... swamp hole; but that was by no means the worst that had happened to him. While held more than belly-deep in the sticky mud he had been attacked by the only kind of bear in all the Rockies that, unless under great provocation, attacks anything bigger ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... attractions, or in consequence of them for anything I know, she was one of the merriest young women in the world, always ready to bubble over and break out into clear laughter on the slightest provocation. And provocation had not been wanting during the last two days which she had spent with her cousin. As usual she had brought sunshine with her, and the old doctor had half forgotten his numerous complaints and grievances for the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... truer than her mother's experience; not only that the wounded man's eyes became brighter under the provocation of her presence, but it was evident that his naturally exuberant spirits were a part of his vital strength, and were absolutely essential to his quick recovery. Encouraged by Falkner's grave and practical assistance, which she could ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... said, Mrs. Bellmont felt that her time and person belonged solely to her. She was under her in every sense of the word. What an opportunity to indulge her vixen nature! No matter what occurred to ruffle her, or from what source provocation came, real or fancied, a few blows on Nig seemed to relieve her of ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... tried by a Court Martial and declared incapable of serving his Majesty again. I had expected death, and his powerful friends did their utmost to procure a sentence, but the Admiral was a just though a rigid man, and well knew the character of my accuser,—the provocation was taken into consideration, and the services I had rendered during eleven years in storm and battle. I was dismissed. Mr. Elliott, the planter, offered me a home. I had saved considerable prize money. I ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... over the whole, or a considerable part of the people, in this case the people have a right to resist and defend themselves from injury: but it must be with this caution, that they only defend themselves, but do not attack their prince: they may repair the damages received, but must not for any provocation exceed the bounds of due reverence and respect. They may repulse the present attempt, but must not revenge past violences: for it is natural for us to defend life and limb, but that an inferior should punish a superior, is against nature. The mischief which is designed ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... that hour. Isn't that a good story? I can SEE our friend and his pupils now. . . . Poor fellow! He seems to have a hard time of it with his wife. She had no interest whatever in her children; and was such a fury, that, being dressed to go out to dinner, she would sometimes, on no other provocation than a pin out of its place or some such thing, fall upon a little maid she had, beat her till she couldn't stand, then tumble into hysterics, and be carried to bed. He suffered martyrdom with her; and seems to have been ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... bickerings between the sides sprang up at the slightest provocation. Even a dispute over the ownership of a hog resulted in another killing. Old Randall grew more bitter as time went on, what with Rosanna the mother of an illegitimate child and Jonse, even though he lived with her under his father's ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... began to drawl a sort of apology, when the player stopped suddenly and shot an oath at him. The deacon staggered under the shock of it. His whiskers seemed to lift a bit like the hair of a cat under provocation. Then he tried to speak, but only stuttered helplessly a moment as if his tongue were oscillating between silence and profanity, and was finally pulled down by his wife, who had laid hold of his coat tails. If it had been any other man than Deacon Hospur it would have gone badly with the musician ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... sure, Joel had some unpleasant scenes to pass through. As nothing is ever lost sight of in a small country village, the story of how he came to be living with Mr. Bellows was not forgotten. At school, occasionally, one of the boys would, on some slight provocation, point at him and call him 'Bellows's nigger,' or make faces and cry 'charity boy,' 'town's poor.' Now, fortunately, Joel had a happy, joyous nature—somewhat fiery and irascible, but still joyous—else he might have become morbidly miserable. As ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... regretted, that after having seen us employed in getting what we wanted, in doing which every person was completely employed, and not the most distant appearance of insult, or any sort of provocation had been offered them, they could not have desisted from hostility until some kind of offence had been offered, a circumstance which, during the whole time, was most particularly guarded against in those ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... passionate and partial complexion of his letters has given me, were I disposed to make use of them; because, I conceive it to be an abuse, if not an insult to trouble Congress with any thing merely personal, though I have provocation sufficient to justify me in the eyes of the world, and am by no means ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... Thee, full fount and flood; My heart calls Thine, as deep to deep: Dost Thou forget Thy sweat and pain, They provocation on the Cross? 20 Heart-pierced for me, vouchsafe to keep The purchase of Thy lavished Blood: The gain is Thine, Lord, if I gain; Or if I lose, Thine ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... the northern shore of Lake Michigan and into Green Bay. The Menomonie, or Wild-rice Indians, one of the western branches of the Algonquin family, wished to dissuade them from going further. They told of ferocious tribes, {173} who would put them to death without provocation, and of frightful monsters (alligators) which would devour them and their canoes. The voyagers thanked them and pushed on, up Fox River and across ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... cause to hang its head and blush. Laws, as cruel in themselves as they were unconstitutional and unjust, have in many places been enacted against our poor unfriended and unoffending brethren; laws, (without a shadow of provocation on our part,) at whose bare recital the very savage draws him up for fear of the contagion,—looks noble, and prides himself because he bears not the name ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... of modern progress was revolution. By a series of violent shocks the nations in succession have struggled to shake off the Past, to reverse the action of Time and the verdict of success, and to rescue the world from the reign of the dead. They have been due less to provocation by actual wrong than to the attraction of ideal right, and the claims that inspired them were universal and detached. Progress has imposed increasing sacrifices on society, on behalf of those who ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... and kick me, and bite me into the bargain, the cursed savage? and ar'n't you got him ag'in as good as ever? And besides, didn't that etarnal old Bruce fob me off with a beast good for nothing, and talk big to me besides? and warn't that all fa'r provocation? An didn't you yourself sw'ar ag'in shaking paws with me, and treat me as if I war no gentleman? 'Tarnal death to me, cut me loose, or I'll haunt you, when I'm a ghost, I will, 'tarnal ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... an estate of 25,000 koku, as well as holding the position of junior minister of State. It is extremely unlikely that a man in such a position would have resorted to such a desperate act without great provocation or ample sanction. The question is, was the shogun himself privy to the deed? It is recorded that there was found on Masayasu's person a document expressing deep gratitude for the favours he had received at the hands of the shogun, and declaring that only by taking the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... rendered ungovernable by the firing of the gun, made a noise in the thicket. The fawn heard, and started to run away. The provocation was too great for our young hunter, and he sent a charge of buck-shot after it. ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... rats, asking them to go away, they will go. I received my information from one who had tried the experiment, or known it to be tried, with great success. Standing ready always to write a letter on the slightest provocation, you may be sure I did not neglect so good an opportunity. The letter acknowledged their skill and sagacity, applauded their valor and their perseverance, but stated, that, in the present scarcity of labor, the resident family were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... had been a vicious youth, and Ankarstrom himself a boy. They were much of an age. Gustavus had put upon his young companion an infamous insult, which had been answered by a blow. His youth and the admitted provocation alone had saved Ankarstrom from the dread consequence of striking a Prince of the Royal Blood. But they had not saved him from the vindictiveness of Gustavus. He had kept his lust of vengeance warm, and very patiently had he watched and waited for his opportunity ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... "Consider the provocation," answered Ravenswood—"consider the ruin and death procured and caused by his hard-hearted cruelty—an ancient house destroyed, an affectionate father murdered! Why, in our old Scottish days, he that sat quiet under such ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... of the remarriage of Hindoo widows, and a supposed intention to coerce the natives into Christianity, were operating to foment dissatisfaction, while recent acts of insubordination and symptoms of mutiny had been inadequately repressed; but the immediate visible provocation to mutiny among the Bengal troops was the use of cartridges said to be treated with a preparation of the fat of pigs and cows, the use of which was abhorrent, on religious grounds, both to Hindoos and Mohammedans. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... complete amnestic gaps for the stuporous periods. He shows the characteristic hysterical make-up. He is morbidly suggestible and suspicious. He is markedly egotistical; becomes easily irritated at the least provocation. Is extremely hypochondriacal and shows a marked tendency to exaggeration of actual ills. Constantly laments his fate of being compelled to stay in a place of this sort, which is a thousand times worse than a prison. Is certain that his trial was crooked ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... respect of his female patients: big or little, excited or not excited, there was not one of them this bicipital baby-face could not pin by the wrists, and twist her helpless into a strong-room, or handcuff her unaided in a moment; and she did it, too, on slight provocation. Nurse Hannah seldom came into Alfred's part of the house; but when she did meet him, she generally gave him a kind look in passing; and he had resolved to speak to her, and try if he could touch her conscience, or move her pity. He saw what she was at, but was too ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... renders me delightfully insensible to one fruitful source of provocation among inanimate things. I am so dull as to regard all distinctions between "rights" and "lefts" as invidious; but I have witnessed the agonized struggles of many a victim of fractious boots, and been thankful that "I am not as other men are," in ability to comprehend the difference between ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... of pigeon, which nested freely in the cell-like openings. Reptiles, too, were abundant, but all ready enough to make for their holes in the rifts of the rock, the lizards glancing out of sight in a moment, the snakes slowly and resentfully, as if ready to strike at the intruders at the slightest provocation, but no ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... which would, if read, throw a jealous guardian of orthodoxy into fierce activity. One passage in which Boehme boldly attacks the popular doctrine of predestination and asserts that the writers and scribes who teach it are "masterbuilders of Lies" will be sufficient illustration of the theological provocation: "This present world doth dare to say that God hath decreed or concluded it so in His predestinate purpose and counsel that some men should be saved and some should be damned, as if hell and malice and evil ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... took the life of that ill-fated and unoffending man, there is no doubt; you have, yourself, confessed it. It was a foul, a barbarous, a wicked act. I care not for what may have been the particular circumstances attending it; he may have provoked you by words; but no provocation of that nature could justify your drawing the gun upon him. Your counsel urged that you were a gentleman, a member of the British aristocracy, and therefore deserved consideration. I confess that I was much surprised to hear such a doctrine fall from his lips. In my opinion, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... that he always has been. Teddy can stir up more trouble, and with less provocation, than anyone I ever knew. But, you had something you wished to say to me, did ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... and long-suffering under difficulties and provocation. Ted Curtis, whose grandfather was George William, did, on the occasion of his seventeenth unnecessary arrest by German guards, express his opinion of his last captor in what he thought was such pure Americanese as to be safely beyond German understanding. But ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... that which you do not possess yourself. It is your duty to set a good example, not wait for others to accomplish what you have not done yourself. So begin right now with love. Cast away all unkind thoughts and never allow another to enter your mind, no matter what the provocation might be. I admit that the Apeman of today is no better, in fact, in many respects is much inferior to the Apeman who lived over four thousand years ago, but that is because he took the wrong road ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... your face, to go in a procession to a frugal breakfast served on tin plates in a dining-room mustier than a cellar, to be marched to your work, to be watched by a guard while you work, to know that the guard has a loaded revolver and is ready to draw it on slight provocation, to march to meals under awe of the revolver, to march to bed while the man with the revolver walks behind you, to be locked in and barred in and double-locked in again, to have a piece of candle that will burn two hours, to ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... here briefly chronicled is of interest from the fact that it immediately followed the success of the insurrection in England and the execution of Charles I. The provocation was the same in the two nations; the result highly different. In both cases it was a revolt against the tyranny of the court and the attempt to establish absolutism. But the difference in results lay ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... gaiety, the sensitiveness of New Orleans comes from the Creole. He was Latin enough to be a good deal of a gambler, to love beautiful women, and on slight provocation to ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... paroled the officers and men whom he had captured,—fifty-six men, all told. This fact is mentioned to show that the Georgia militia had not then begun those acts of retaliation which have attracted the notice of historians. They had had, as we know, abundant provocation; but after the horrible crimes perpetrated by Brown reached their ears, they threw off all restraint. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and the men who acted with Elijah Clarke thought that the best way to preserve the lives of themselves and their families was ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... old Dietrich turn to bay, and did deeds which have blackened his name for ever. Heaven forgive him! for surely he had provocation enough ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... more provocation from my Mongol, and my earnest prayer is that I may be able to stand it all, and not get soured in temper and feeling against the Mongols. I must have patience. Some knowledge of camel's flesh also would help me not a little. As it stands, I feel an ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... apply the maxims of natural justice to the solution of difficult questions, we find that some cases may be supposed, and actually happen, where oppositions take place, and are lawful, prior to any provocation, or act of injustice; that where the safety and preservation of numbers are mutually inconsistent, one party may employ his right of defence, before the other has begun an attack. And when we join with such examples, the instances of mistake, and misunderstanding, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... had great reluctance against admitting the spiritual theory. I was simply passive; but two circumstances seemed to me to militate against the theories I have mentioned: (1.) The table we used for communicating was a little gimcrack French affair, the top of which spun round on the slightest provocation, and no force whatever, not even a philosopher's, applied to the surface would do more than spin the top round; but when the table turned, it turned bodily, legs and all. (2.) As to that ponderously difficult theory of unconscious cerebration communicated by involuntary muscular action, whenever ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... perverting others from her ranks from the plainest guilt of schism. It is not merely that the nobleness and tenderness of his nature make his tone so unlike that of many of those who have taken the same step with himself. It is not that every provocation—and how many they have been!—every misunderstanding—and they have been all but universal; every unworthy charge or insinuation—down to those of Professor Kingsley, failed to embitter his feelings ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... evening through its various streets. It was a surprise to him as well, for he had not expected to find such a settled community. He had imagined that all such towns in the north were wild and almost lawless places, abounding in desperate characters, ready to shoot on the slightest provocation. But here all was order, and it was little different from one of the many small conventional towns in Eastern Canada. There were several up-to-date stores, a large post office, bank, churches, and comfortable dwelling ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... a prosperous reign and a peaceful death as the reward of his singular merits. In the vigor of his age and military power, he seldom engaged in war till he was justified by a previous and adequate provocation: the victorious sultan was disarmed by submission; and in the observance of treaties, his word was inviolate and sacred. [12] The Hungarians were commonly the aggressors; he was provoked by the revolt of Scanderbeg; and the perfidious ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... finished, Mr Hargrave replied, "I have before given you my answer. I believe the marquis to be a just man. If he finds I have the right to continue in the farm, he would not wish to dispossess me. In regard to Dick, the provocation he received by having his dog killed would excuse any thoughtless words he might have uttered. So I cannot offer to give up my rights for fear of the consequences, and I will never believe that Lord Elverston would act ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... rested. If he recognized Peter Moore, he gave no indication of it. He studied Peter's countenance with the look of one whose interest may be distracted on the slightest provocation. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... commanded his servants not to fire, nor approach nearer, without his orders. The persons, said he, to the assailants, whom you have so cruelly used, are Englishmen of condition. I will protect them. Be the provocation what it will, you must know that your attempt upon them is a criminal one; and if my friend last come up, who is a very skilful surgeon, shall pronounce them in danger, you shall find ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... stigmatized Knowles, the author of it, as "an admiral without conduct, an engineer without knowledge, an officer without resolution, and a man without veracity." It can scarcely be wondered, if, after such provocation, the party injured was not deterred by menaces, or diverted by proposals of agreement, from seeking such reparation as the law would afford him. This reparation the law did not fail to give; and Smollett was ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... the fight that was blazoned constantly before his eyes with ever increasing strength of accusation. To think that he, Penfield Butler, grandson of the owner of Bannerhall, had permitted himself, in a moment of passion, no matter what the provocation, to grind his country's flag into the slush under his heels; the very flag given by his grandfather to the school of which he was himself a member. How should he ever square himself with Colonel Richard Butler? How should he ever make it right with Miss ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... for weeks in New York and did not sail. Only last night I received your letter written in May, with the four copies of the Sartor, which by a strange oversight have been lying weeks, probably months, in the Custom-House. On such provocation I can sit ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... indiscretion peculiar to himself; for I heard it in three different companies, before I knew any thing of it from herself; and when I did, it was so repeated, as you, my dear, would hardly have censured her for it, the provocation considered." ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... but will easily understand if only he will reflect in what manner that King and his subjects have always conducted themselves towards the English nation in that tract of America ... Whenever they have opportunity, though without the least reason of justice, and with no provocation of injury, they are incessantly killing, murdering, nay butchering in cold blood, our countrymen there, as they think fit, seizing their goods and fortunes, destroying their plantations and houses, capturing any of their vessels they may meet on those seas, and treating their crews ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... the orators or the mob demanding his military services, caught sight of him with a sudden recollection of his own passionate threat. There had been nothing in Mordaunt's words which would in our times have justified a challenge; but in that day duels were fought upon the slightest provocation. Lord Ulswater therefore rode up at once to a gentleman with whom he had some intimate acquaintance, and briefly saying that he had been insulted both as an officer and gentleman by Mr. Mordaunt, requested his friend to call upon that gentleman ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... princely Uncle! you are too much moved;— I grant it was a gross offence, and grossly Left without fitting punishment: but still This fury doth exceed the provocation, Or any provocation: if we are wronged, We will ask justice; if it be denied, We'll take it; but may do all this in calmness— Deep Vengeance is the daughter of deep Silence. 140 I have yet scarce a third part of your years, I ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... commit fresh crimes to obtain satisfaction. These crimes necessitate further acts of vengeance, and the curse is thus transmitted from generation to generation. The word is also used for a man's evil genius, which drives him to sin without any provocation; a man so driven is sometimes called Alastor. The epithet is applied to Zeus and the Erinyes as the deities of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... sir," and curtsied with an air of perfect deference as she advanced towards him: she was not the woman to misbehave towards her betters, and fly in the face of the catechism, without severe provocation. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... however, the ranks of the ministerial majority were unbroken; and that any statesman would venture to brave such a majority was thought impossible. No prince of the Hanoverian line had ever, under any provocation, ventured to appeal from the representative body to the constituent body. The ministers, therefore, notwithstanding the sullen looks and muttered words of displeasure with which their suggestions were received ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... circumstances, where any other young girl might have grown languid and sorrowful, Sybil became excitable and violent. She had always had the fiery temper of her race, but it had very seldom been kindled by a breath of provocation. Now, however, it frequently broke out without the slightest apparent cause. No one in the house could account for this accession of ill-temper—not her anxious father, nor Miss Tabitha Winterose, the housekeeper, ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... the streets here, occasionally, which could not be seen in an American city. For instance, a week or two since, I was passing a quiet-looking, elderly gentleman, when, all of a sudden, without any apparent provocation, he uplifted his stick, and struck a black-gowned boy a smart blow on the shoulders. The boy looked at him wofully and resentfully, but said nothing, nor can I imagine why the thing was done. In Tythebarne Street to-day ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are numerous in the lower reaches of the rivers, are not hunted or attacked, save on provocation, by any of the peoples of Borneo except the Malays.[52] Occasionally a bather is seized by one of them while in the water or standing on a log floating in deep water; and more rarely a person is dragged out of a small boat, while drifting quietly on deep ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... themselves. At first they thought she was angry when these outbreaks took place, but Bovey, who could partially understand her, gathered that she was far from offended, but given over to the national habit of delivering eloquent and theatrical monologues on the slightest provocation. She had no lodgers at the present moment; a Frenchman had left the day before, and the prospect was in every way favorable, to the comfort ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... still stood on his guard, the feeling in his breast being—in spite of the terrible provocation he had received—that he had done wrong in striking his colonel's guest, and he kept cool and clear-headed, resolved not ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... A provocation like this was sufficient to call down pagan vengeance upon his head; he was accordingly seized, severely tortured, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... the want of which was, in his more sober moments, a check upon his bad temper, began to inflame his malignity, and he ventured upon several occasions to show his spleen, by contradicting Tyrrel more flatly than good manners permitted upon so short an acquaintance, and without any provocation. Tyrrel saw his ill humour and despised it, as that of an overgrown schoolboy, whom it was not worth his while to answer according to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... journey. Of you I shall require a little attention, certain patience, exact obedience. It will be necessary that you be before the walls of Le Mans in three days. Invest them, my lords, keep up your communications, and wait for the French King. Give no battle, offer no provocation, let hunger do your affair. I know where the King of England is, and shall be with you before him.' He went on to be more precise, but I omit the details. It was difficult for them to go wrong, but if the truth is to ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... injustice manifest in the land, where the prince, unfaithful to his duty, seizes his innocent subjects, and sells them for slaves? Are no moral evils produced among those communities, which make war upon other communities for the sake of plunder, and without any previous provocation or offence? Does no crime attach to those, who accuse others falsely, or who multiply and divide crimes for the sake of the profit of the punishment, and who for the same reason continue the use of barbarous and absurd ordeals as a test ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... him to yield; but he was so desperate that he wounded them all, and when his arrows were expended he gave one of them so violent a blow with his bow on the head-piece that it stunned him, on which provocation he killed the Indian with his lance. While Soto wintered in Apalache, he used every exertion to obtain intelligence respecting the country towards the west, in order to prepare for extending his discoveries ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... Serbia and Belgium, had been able to adopt no other course than to take up arms in defense of the rights of nations. Russia, standing closely united and admirably unanimous in her enthusiasm against an enemy which had offered provocation, did not remain isolated, because she was immediately supported by France and Great Britain and, soon ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... I will go to Algiers to give in my resignation and smooth matters with the Government. We shall not be in very good odour over this affair. We have kept the peace so long in this quarter of the country that deliberate action on our part will take a lot of explaining. They will admit provocation but will blame our mode of retaliation. They may blame!" he laughed and shrugged. "I shall be called hasty, ill-advised. The Governor will haul me over the coals unmercifully—you know him, that fat old Faidherbe? He ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... man," said Gregory. "And that's the final fact. I know Karen; she couldn't have done this unless she loved him. The provocation wasn't extreme enough otherwise. She wouldn't, from sheer generosity, disgrace herself to free me, especially since she knew that I considered that that would be to disgrace me, too. No; her guardian's story has all the marks of truth on it. She loves the man and she had planned to meet him. ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... precept of the Gospel and not of the Koran. Yet it is a sad fact that the nominal Christians of this dark land are not much better in this respect than their Moslem neighbors. The Greeks, Maronites and Papal Greeks beat their wives on the slightest provocation. In the more enlightened towns and cities this custom is "going out of fashion," though still often resorted to in fits of passion. Sometimes the male relatives of the wife retaliate in case a husband beats her. In the village of Schwire, in Lebanon, ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... whisky flowed too freely; on the other hand, it has been asserted that the message was an astute political play for the thunder of patriotic applause. More seriously, Cleveland has been charged by one set of critics with bluffing, and by another with recklessly running the risk of war on a trivial provocation. The charge of bluffing comes nearer the fact, for President Cleveland probably had never a moment's doubt that the forces making for peace between the two nations would be victorious. If he may be said to have thrown ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... you mean that they took hold of him violently, without any provocation? They must have ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... abroad habitually with a bank-note comfortably lodged among the other papers in his pocketbook. For a year I lived a gay and glorious life in some of the freest society in London; at the end of that time, my tradesmen, without any provocation on my part, sent in their bills. I found myself in the very absurd position of having no money to pay them, and told them all so with the frankness which is one of the best sides of my character. They received my ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... tear his heart out!" he roared as he wrenched at the latch. And the next instant the shores of Snare Lake echoed to the wild weird sound of the wolf-cry—the call of MacNair to his clan! Other calls and other summons might be ignored upon provocation, but when the terrible wolf-cry shattered the silence of the forest MacNair's ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... his way of life and his character, it is believed that he had had the insolence to approach her with the language of gallantry; that he had been rejected with merited indignation; and that he ever afterward regarded her noble disdain as a provocation which it should be the chief object of his life to revenge. In fact, on one occasion he did not scruple to avow his resentment at the way in which, as he said, she had treated him; though he did not ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... dunce I am! Thai brave and unfortunate Athos was wounded right on that shoulder I ran against head foremost, like a ram. The only thing that surprizes me is that he didn't strike me dead on the spot; he had provocation enough, for I must have hurt him savagely. As to Porthos—oh! as to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... his old neighbour, Riles. He stood for a long time as one dazed by the discovery, but gradually out of the confusion a horrible fear took shape in his mind. Allan had shot this man, with whom they had an appointment at this spot; had shot him down, as far as could be shown, without excuse or provocation, before he had so much as entered the door. The body proved to be unarmed, and from its position had evidently fallen into the building ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... firmament of glory?—wouldst thou receive the ten-talent recompense? Then be not weary. Gird on thine armour for fresh conquests. Be gaining daily some new victory over sin. Deny thyself. Be a willing cross-bearer for thy Lord's sake. Do good to all men as thou hast opportunity; be patient under provocation, "slow to wrath," resigned in trial. Let the world take knowledge of thee that thou art wearing Christ's livery, and bearing Christ's spirit, and sharing Christ's cross. And when the reaping time comes, He who has promised that ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... of the two households started farming. It soon became apparent that they would not get along as peacefully as the old people had done, for they began quarrelling without the slightest provocation. ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... averted a civil war. In his relations with the Huns, among whom the authority of Meha had passed to his son, Lao Chang, he strove to preserve the peace, giving that chief one of his daughters in marriage, and showing moderation in face of much provocation. When war was forced upon him by their raids he did everything he could to mitigate its terrors, but the ill success of his troops in their encounters with the Tartars broke his confidence, and he died prematurely after a reign of twenty-three years, which was ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the company with a selection of his less offensive stories, and found ready applause. The gayety was loud and forced. Every one attempted to keep it at fever-heat. Jest followed jest with increasing rapidity. Laughter rang out on the smallest provocation. It was a competition in hilarity. And the gayest of all were ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... mongrel breed, and idle vagabond nature, are fattened for food. They are supposed to be descended from the wolf, and retain something of his savage but cowardly temper, howling rather than barking, showing their teeth and snarling on the slightest provocation, but sneaking away on the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... string next day, the immediate provocation to the subject being a visit from Keziah Solmes the old keeper's wife—you remember her connection Keziah; she who remonstrated with her husband about the use of fire-arms, and nearly saved Adrian Torrens's eyesight?—who ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of his final one—as far as we are informed—with General Carascosa, fought in England, in 1823, these single combats were invariably with foreigners, with whom the general seems to have been very unenduring. Not that provocation was wanting on the part of the French, more than sufficient to rouse the ire of the meekest. The insolence of Napoleon's victorious legions exceeded all bounds; nor was it the less irritating for being often unintentional,—the result of a habit of gasconading, and of a settled conviction ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel. Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the man in the schoolboy. When he first went to school at Harrow, the boys, knowing that sisters had been responsible for his education, were prepared to take it out of him. But as French was ready to fight at the slightest provocation, and equally ready to swear eternal friendship when the fight was done, he quickly won his ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... justice of the world is awakened, such as these will go on, without admonition, and without provocation, to every extremity. Those who have made the exhibition of the fourteenth of July are capable of every evil. They do not commit crimes for their designs; but they form designs that they may commit crimes. It is not their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... by the Treaty of Shimonoseki, all but absolutely annexing the country. After the Boxer revolt Admiral Alexieff, who was governor of the Russian possessions in the Far East, embarked on a dangerous policy of provocation towards Japan. He had an ill-informed contempt for the hardy islanders. He underrated their power of resistance, and felt sure that the mere fact that the Russian fleet outnumbered theirs would secure the command of the ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... from external aggression or provocation of his neighbours, and from entering into external relations without ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... draught of a letter which Lord Lovat had written to the President, in order to excuse himself at the expense of his son. "Good God!" exclaimed the young man, "how can he use me so? I will go at once to the President, and put the saddle on the right horse." In spite of this provocation, he did not, however, reveal his father's treachery; whilst Lord Lovat was balancing between hopes and fears, and irresolute which side to choose, the Master at last entreated, with tears in his eyes, that "he might no longer ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... himself in a line between Imbrie and the woman. Out of the tail of his eye he saw Clare at the door of her tent, anxiously watching. He counted on the fact that Imbrie would not shoot while she was looking on without strong provocation. They were all down on the stony beach. Stonor kept edging closer to ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... strength. The citizens of the villages in its path fled precipitously along the roads to Brussels. At intersections all kinds of vehicles bearing household effects, together with live stock, blocked the way to safety. The uhlan had become a terror, but not without some provocation. Tirlemont was bombarded, reduced, and evacuated by the Belgian troops. The latter made a vigorous defensive immediately before Louvain, but their weakness in artillery and numbers could not withstand the overwhelming superiority of the Germans. They were thrust back from the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... iniquity, there is now in prison an unhappy woman, infinitely your superior in the advantages of birth, sense, and education, whom you have, even without provocation, persecuted to ruin and distraction, after having illegally and inhumanly kidnapped her only child, and exposed him to a violent death in a foreign land. Ah, caitiff! if you were to forego all the comforts of life, distribute your means among the poor, and do the severest penance ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... It has been on my conscience all these days and I ought to have done penance before. I've been putting it off partly because I'm so ashamed of my indiscretion. Que voulez-vous, my dear chap? My provocation was great. I heard you had been painting Miss Rooth, so that I couldn't restrain my curiosity. I simply went into that corner and struck out there—a trifle wildly no doubt. I dragged the young lady to the light—your sister turned pale as she saw me. It ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... a dog.'' There was a roar, and Mr. Hoyt, though evidently saddened, kept his temper. He did not, like the great and good Arnold of Rugby, under similar provocation, knock the offender down ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... potential venture of his own in fair linen. The gods kindly hid the future from his eyes, so that he might enjoy the comic vexation her lively sallies caused to Doctor Bartolo in the play, unknowing that she would be the innocent cause of a more serious provocation to himself, in downright earnest. He thought of this, himself, after ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... gradually to adopt their view. The rejection of his terms left him free to adopt the line of policy that he had sketched to Grenville in the previous December. He had not to wait long for an opportunity, but in the opinion of Pitt's friends at least the first provocation came from Addington. Unable to strengthen his ministry by any accession from Pitt and his followers, he had turned to the "old opposition," the whigs who, under the leadership of Fox, had consistently advocated a pacific ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... boys and girls stripped in the basement of a church and performed coitus on the velvet chairs which stood behind the pulpit; and how he and a younger boy, who camped out together, played with each other's genitals. F., a boy of 11, was highly nervous, subject to timidity and tears on the slightest provocation, often morose, and under treatment for kidney trouble. His penis was erect whenever I saw him undress. He told me that a partially idiotic man taught F. and his companion how to masturbate. The man invited the boys to his tent and there pumped his organ until "some ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... overturning sedan chairs, rolling women downhill in barrels, and compelling men to dance jigs, under the stimulus of repeated pricks from a circle of sword points, until the victims fell fainting from exhaustion. Duels were frequent, on the slightest provocation. Highwaymen abounded both in the city and without, and, unless one went well armed, it was often dangerous to travel any distance ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... which had now culminated in the disasters of the Black Week. Flame only shows the brighter for a sombre background. And Poppy, during this ill-starred period, had been as a flame to her admirers and associates—a fitful, prankish flame, full of provocation and bedevilment, the light of it inciting to all manner of wild doings and, in the end, not infrequently scorching those pretty shrewdly who were over-bold in warming themselves at the heat of it. For fires of the sort lighted by Poppy ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... legally or sentimentally, no man can be exonerated for killing a woman. No matter how little the provocation, legally or sentimentally, any woman may kill almost any man, and the jury will render a verdict of Not Guilty. She has only to say that he ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... add of the character of the Maid of Orleans. She was simple amid triumph and splendor; unselfish, when she might have had whatever she had asked; humane and gentle, even on the battlefield; patient in the midst of the greatest provocation; brave in the midst of suffering; firm in faith and hope when all beside were cast down; blameless and holy in her life, when all ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... increases its sensibility. The secretion is retained, and accumulates, often becoming hardened. In this manner irritation is set up, which occasions uncomfortable feelings, and attracts the hands to the part. Owing to the great degree of excitement due to irritation, but a slight provocation is necessary to arouse voluptuous sensations, and then the terrible secret is revealed. The child readily discovers how to reproduce the same, and is not slow to commit a frequent repetition of the act; and ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... there ought to be no fat to ooze out." Quite true, there ought not to be, but as skins are usually dressed with arsenical soap, the fat, instead of being dried up, is beautifully conserved, ready to run out at the slightest provocation, or be drawn out by the capillary attraction of the threads used in sewing up—another hard knock ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... dishes, cups and saucers, yea, even the pudding basons, not as so much china and delf, but as troublesome imps, possessed with an insane desire to dash themselves madly on the kitchen floor upon the least provocation. Every woman knows what a slippery thing to hold is a baby in its tub. I am in a position to pronounce that wet plates and dishes are far more difficult to keep hold of. They have a way of leaping out of your fingers, which must be felt to be believed. After my first ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... of himself, while pretending the contrary. There was an atmosphere of high obstinate effort and heroical foreign-ness about the story which stimulated something secret in him that seldom responded to the provocation of a book; more easily would this secret something respond to a calm evening or a distant prospect, or the silence of early morning when by chance he looked ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the same breath we blame the folly or fanaticism it led to. And the visibly degrading effects of environment should make us tender toward the erring, even while, for their own sakes and the sake of others, we continue to blame the sin. Society cannot afford to overlook sin because it sees provocation for it. There is always provocation, there are always causes outside the sinner's heart. But there is also always a cause within the heart, an openness to temptation, and acquiescence in the evil impulse, which ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... she was always conspicuous by the brilliancy of her wit, which needed but little provocation to break forth in exuberant sallies, that drew around her a knot of listeners, and made her the central attraction of the hour. Rarely did she enter a company in which she ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... was met by Colonel Turner, to whom I had written, enclosing a note of introduction to him. With him were Mr. Roche, one of the local magistrates, and Mr. Richard Stacpoole, a gentleman of position and estate near Ennis, about whom, through no provocation of his, a great deal has been said and written of late years. Mr. Stacpoole at once insisted that I should let him take me out to stay at his house at Edenvale, which is, so to speak, at the gates of Ennis. Certainly the fame of Irish hospitality is well-founded! Meanwhile ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... was under a strong sense of obligation, which he felt bound to fulfil. It is impossible not to admire the chivalrous and intrepid spirit with which he undertook singlehanded to justify the conduct of his countrymen before the American people, and to persuade them that England had provocation for her treatment of Ireland. Once convinced that his cause was righteous, he never flinched. He believed that false views of the Irish question prevailed in America, and that he could set them right. He did not altogether underrate the magnitude of the enterprise. "I go like an Arab of the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... of Florida; and although, ever since the arrangement above referred to, the Indians have manifested a desire to remain at peace with the whites, the presence of a people who may at any time and upon any real or fancied provocation be driven to acts of hostility is a source of constant anxiety and alarm to the inhabitants ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... that worthy himself, quietly withdrawing his pipe from his mouth. This insolence flung the fiery little mate into a mighty rage; but Beauty said nothing, puffing away with all the tranquillity imaginable. Here it must be remembered that, never mind what may be the provocation, no prudent officer ever dreams of entering a ship's forecastle on a hostile visit. If he wants to see anybody who happens to be there, and refuses to come up, why he must wait patiently until the sailor ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... were landed in Boston. Fourteen men-of-war were anchored before the town, with the cannon of their broad-sides loaded and primed, ready, at the slightest provocation to lay the whole town in ashes. Protected by this terrible menace, two British regiments paraded the streets, with their muskets charged, with gleaming sabres and bayonets, with formidable artillery ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... began without sufficient provocation to write verse. The Bibliotaph thought that if the matter were taken promptly in hand the man could be saved. Accordingly, when next he gave this friend a book he wrote upon a fly-leaf: 'To a Poet who is nothing if not original—and who is not original!' And the injured ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... to offer. We have dealt with their arguments and positions rather than with their motives and characters. If, in pursuing this course, we have often spoken strongly, we merely beg the reader to consider whether we have not also spoken justly. We have certainly not spoken without provocation. For even these men—the very lights and ornaments of abolitionism—have seldom condescended to argue the great question of Liberty and Slavery with us as with equals. On the contrary, they habitually address ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... contemporaries prevented from success, has been abusing me, and, what is worse, the defenceless innocent above mentioned, in the 'Satirist' for one year and some months. I am utterly unconscious of having given him any provocation; indeed, I am guiltless of having heard his name, till coupled with the 'Satirist'. He has therefore no reason to complain, and I dare say that, like Sir Fretful Plagiary, he is rather 'pleased' than otherwise. I have now mentioned all who have done me the honour to notice me and mine, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... glass (as Iago still plied him with drink and encouraging songs), and Cassio's tongue ran over in praise of the Lady Desdemona, whom he again and again toasted, affirming that she was a most exquisite lady. Until at last the enemy which he put into his mouth stole away his brains; and upon some provocation given him by a fellow whom Iago had set on, swords were drawn, and Montano, a worthy officer, who interfered to appease the dispute, was wounded in the scuffle. The riot now began to be general, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the murmurs of waters and of leaves, soft sighs rising from all things, the freshness, the warmth, and the mysterious awakening of April and May, is the vast diffusion of sex murmuring, in whispers, their proposals of voluptuousness, till the soul stammers in answer to the giddy provocation. The ideal no longer knows what it ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Learned World, whether, in my last year's Predictions, I gave him the least provocation for such unworthy treatment. Philosophers have differed in all Ages; but the discreetest among them, have always differed as became Philosophers. Scurrility and Passion in a Controversy among Scholars, is just so much of nothing to the purpose; and, at best, a ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... of the Pale began to feel the general glow of an outraged people, too long submissive under every species of provocation. The Lords Justices having summoned them to attend in Dublin on the 8th of December, they met at Swords, at the safe distance of seven miles, and sent by letter their reasons for not trusting themselves in the capital. To the allegations ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Alice, pleadingly; "she was a good woman, excepting on that one point, and you must own that she had some provocation. Let me ask you a question, Uncle Ike. How far should promises made to the dead ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... of apprehension chasing down his spine. Savage, devastating desire mingled with ill-concealed rage at his coldness. This beautiful animal could turn like a flash and rend him limb from limb—and would on the slightest provocation. ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... remain within their houses and close the windows, so that it will be impossible to allege that there has been any provocation; ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... everything else is bound by the frost of winter, the chilly blood of these grapes is allowed to flow forth. It is not insultingly trodden down by the feet, nor is any foul admixture suffered to pollute it; its stream of gem-like clearness is drawn forth from it by a noble provocation. It seems to shed tears of joy, and delights the eye by its beauty as much as the palate by its flavour. Collect this wine as speedily as possible, pay a sufficient price for it, and hand it over to the Cartarii who ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... a decent pretence, and without provocation, was declared against Holland, with a view of annexing the Low Countries ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... from Mahayana orthodoxy. Buddhism became national and militaristic; the abbots of great monasteries became important feudal chieftains, whose monks constituted an army which was ready to fight on the slightest provocation. Sieges of monasteries and battles with monks are of constant ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... carrying them off without their own consent, and according to no rules whatever, except those of absolute violence. I wish you would look into this and inform me, and see that the making soldiers of negroes is done according to the rules you are acting upon, so that unnecessary provocation and irritation be avoided. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... was provocation on Christian's part, but, as she told herself afterwards, desperate measures were necessary, or they would both have burst ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... means "moderate," "commonplace"; instances means what we mean by it today, "examples," "illustrations." (Line 18 as a whole gives us a vivid sense of the justice's readiness to speak sapiently, after the manner of justices, and to trot out his trite illustrations on the slightest provocation.) The word pantaloon in line 20 is interesting. The patron saint of Venice was St. Pantaleon (the term is from Greek, means "all-lion," and possibly refers to the lion of St. Mark's Cathedral). Pantaloon came therefore to signify (1) a Venetian, (2) a garment worn by Venetians and consisting ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Jane, you know my married sister, and I were talking about you. She was extremely distressed. I assured her that you must be very far away or very deeply buried somewhere not to have given a sign of life under this provocation." ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... stranger. "You have been too hasty, Paco, and we expose ourselves to blame by not detaining you to answer for your attempt on yonder soldier's life, and for the death of his horse. But you had some provocation, and I, for one, am willing to take the risk. Begone, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... to himself. He was a tall, bent old man, whose hair was snow white, but whose face was fresh and rosy. His eyes were a boy's eyes, large, blue and merry, and his mouth had never got over a youthful trick of smiling at any provocation—and, oft-times, at no ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... written (Wis. 14:11): "The creatures of God are turned to an abomination; and a temptation to the souls of men." But a temptation usually denotes a provocation to sin. Since therefore creatures were made by God alone, as was established in the First Part (Q. 44, A. 1), it seems that God is a cause of sin, by provoking man ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... a zebra, slain the previous day, were impartially and unsavorily combined; but the one-time Baltimore belle had long since submerged in the stern battle for existence, an estheticism which formerly revolted at much slighter provocation. ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and the men dishonest. I love that social mob of buccaneers with decorations of all sorts of orders, all titled, and all entirely unknown at their embassies, except to the spies. They are always dragging in the subject of honor, quoting the list of their ancestors on the slightest provocation, and telling the story of their life at every opportunity, braggarts, liars, sharpers, dangerous as their cards, false as their names, brave because they have to be, like the assassins who can not pluck their victims ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... school children and tends to make the foreign children more delinquent and anti-social than they would otherwise be. A very recent case sums up the situation. A gang of five Polish boys "beat up" a messenger boy, apparently without provocation. A Juvenile Protective officer visited the home of one of these young thugs for the purpose of talking with the mother and getting such information as would aid in keeping the boy ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... should not pity or pardon those who have yielded to great temptation, or perchance great provocation. Besides, it is right that our sympathy should be kept ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... prepared for considerable provocation for enjoyable laughter, and from the appearance of their mirthful faces leaving the hall at the conclusion of the lecture but few were disappointed, and it is not too much to say that seldom has so large ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in the East had been the rule of Christian love,—that Sepoys and other subjects had known the reigning power only as patriarchal kindness,—and so, without excuse, a highly civilized, justly and tenderly treated people, suddenly, and without provocation, became rebellious devils, and rebellious only because they were devils. In the hour of horror-struck indignation, was not Punch too blood-thirsty, vindictive, unjust, and oblivious to the truth of history, that the insurgents are poor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... driving back the Greek patrols, which retired at their approach, and occupied some of the strategic positions aimed at without encountering any resistance. So far the pacific demonstration lived up to its name. Both sides conformed to their respective orders, which were to avoid all provocation, and on no account to fire first. But for all that the situation teemed with the elements of an explosion. Admiral Dartige, on landing, had noted the faces of the people: sullen and defiant, they faithfully ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... tide. I have even placed our summer home on the Long Island coast in an agent's hands, and am deeply grieved that you should have thrown up a position, promising at least self-support, upon such slight provocation." ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... he protested. "The young fellow behaved like a cub, but no one offered him any provocation. I should think by this time he is probably heartily ashamed of himself. May I come and see ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... those people, without exception, acknowledge a supreme Being, but they never on any account address their prayers to him, from their fixt belief that God, whom they call the Great Spirit, is so good, that he cannot do evil, whatever provocation he may have. They believe the existence of two Great Spirits, a good and a bad. They do not, as I have said, invoke the Good Spirit; but they pray to the bad, in order to avert from their persons and possessions the ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... you now, and the sooner you're out of my sight the better for you! But stop a minute," he added, as if on after reflection. "As you were present when I disrated Leigh—on the ground mainly of your false statements as to his having assaulted you without any provocation on your part, which has now been proved to have been false—it is only right that you should also be present at the restoration of the lad to his former ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... reluctantly, and to those which occur through the dispensation of the All-wise, they will more easily be trained to submit with a good grace, than to any gratuitous sufferings devised for them by fallible man. To raise hopes on purpose to produce disappointment, to give provocation merely to exercise the temper, and, in short, to inflict pain of any kind, merely as a training for patience and fortitude—this is a kind of discipline which man should not presume to attempt. If such trials prove ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... Nooke, as its name will immediately suggest to those who know their London, is a tea-shop in Bond Street, conducted by distressed gentlewomen. In London, when a gentlewoman becomes distressed—which she seems to do on the slightest provocation—she collects about her two or three other distressed gentlewomen, forming a quorum, and starts a tea-shop in the West-End, which she calls Ye Oak Leaf, Ye Olde Willow-Pattern, Ye Linden-Tree, or Ye Snug Harbour, according to personal taste. There, dressed in ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... of the Egyptians and the misery of the Soudanese reached their greatest extreme in the seventh decade of the present century. From such a situation there seemed to be no issue other than by force of arms. The Arab tribes lacked no provocation. Yet they were destitute of two moral forces essential to all rebellions. The first was the knowledge that better things existed. The second was a spirit of combination. General Gordon showed them the first. The Mahdi provided ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... either Pride, Interest, or Ill-nature. [A Man who [1]] differs from another in Opinion, sets himself above him in his own Judgment, and in several Particulars pretends to be the wiser Person. This is a great Provocation to the proud Man, and gives a very keen Edge to what he calls his Zeal. And that this is the Case very often, we may observe from the Behaviour of some of the most zealous for Orthodoxy, who have often great ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... a red waistcoat, and opened the door with authority, as if ready to close it again on the smallest provocation, did not frighten Nino at all, though he eyed him suspiciously enough, and after ascertaining his business departed to announce him to the count. Meanwhile, Nino, who was very much excited at the idea of being under ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... the display of attachment or reverence for them, is quite unknown. Like the beast of the forest, they are no sooner old enough to care for themselves, than they cease even to remember, by whose care they have become so; and the slightest provocation will produce a quarrel with a father, as readily as with a stranger. The unwritten law of the Indian, about which so many writers have dreamed, enacts no higher penalty for parricide, than for any other homicide; and a command to honor his father and mother because ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... more furious propensity to ill. It must have been this, I suppose, that stirred in my soul that tempest of impatience with which I listened to the civilities of my unhappy victim; I declare at least, before God, no man morally sane could have been guilty of that crime upon so pitiful a provocation; and that I struck in no more reasonable spirit than that in which a sick child may break a plaything. But I had voluntarily stripped myself of all those balancing instincts, by which even the worst of us continues to walk with some degree of steadiness among temptations; and in my case, to be tempted, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... our ancestors had an opinion very different: they fined and imprisoned their members; on great provocation, they disabled them for ever; and this power of pronouncing perpetual disability is ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... without a trace of coquetry; nevertheless, the dominie assured himself that Mr. Perrowne had not a ghost of a chance in that quarter. She was pleased with the generous way in which he referred to his companion pedestrian, in spite of the provocation which she knew the lawyer had given his friend. The adventures of the past night, the fresh air of the morning, the rural scenery and his delightful companionship, made the schoolmaster eloquent; yet his sense of propriety ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... little scandalized at the idea of your calling the book "word-painting." My dearest Susie, it is the chief provocation of my life to be called a "word-painter" instead of a thinker. I hope you haven't filled your book with descriptions. I thought it was the thoughts ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... case," said Claudius, "the provocation is sufficient. Let us send flowers immediately." And he took his ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... self-mortification which must ensue from altercation. I dreaded, as I have always dreaded beyond what I can tell, the chaos and wreck which, with me, follows subjugation by anger, and I held to my resolve under all provocation. It was very difficult, but how many times I have blessed myself for adhesion to it. Instead of going home undone with excitement, and trembling with fear of dismissal, I have walked out of my dungeon having had to bite my lips till the blood came, but still ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... and then I am angry at myself, a well-nourished person, for allowing even a single precious hour of life to be spoil: by anything so indifferent. That is the worst of being fed enough, and clothed enough, and warmed enough, and of having everything you can reasonably desire—on the least provocation you are made uncomfortable and unhappy by such abstract discomforts as being shut out from a nearer approach to your neighbour's soul; which is on the face of it foolish, the probability being that ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... independent life. They occupied different sections of the house even, and the lady saw to it that her husband's apartments were the coldest in winter and the hottest in summer. This arrangement had been held to, ever since the day that Mike thrashed Judy. It had not been without some provocation, it is true; for though very small, Mrs. Cassidy had a valiant spirit, and had many and varied ways of exasperating her husband's inflammable temper. But Lawyer Ed had appealed to Father Tracy, and that muscular shepherd of his flock had come down upon Willow Lane and thrashed Mike thoroughly and ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... Sherman," he greeted, "glad to see you." Then his brow knit in a kind of puzzled provocation. "What's that Vigilante ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... pick up women in the street?' 'Dr. J. I never knew that he was.' Qu. 'How is he as to his eye-sight?' 'Dr. J. He does not see me now, nor I do not [sic] see him. I do not believe he could be capable of assaulting anybody in the street without great provocation.' 'EDMUND BURKE, ESQ. I have known him between three and four years; he is an ingenious man, a man of remarkable humanity—a thorough good-natured man.' 'DAVID GARRICK, ESQ. I never knew a man of a more active benevolence.... ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... other landing had taken place. There they met quite a number of others who came down from the woods, where they had been signaling to and answering calls from those across the stream. Then followed a wrangle, with the same prospect of conflict that occurred at no great time before. The provocation in the latter instance was much greater than in the former, for the fugitives had slipped through the hands of the Iroquois in the most exasperating manner. But there seemed, also, to be the identical level-headed ones, who were backed by an authority sufficient to compel the fiery warriors to keep ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... in his own language which we know him to have read in, and can prove him to have been influenced by, we come back to Montaigne's Essays, as by far the most important and the most potential for suggestion and provocation. ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... this Murphy had been taken ill. Nobody appeared to know what was the matter with him, except that he was restless, refused his food, and looked wrong in his coat. The very spirit there was in him misled others: he would hunt birds under the smallest provocation; rabbits were not animals to be given up so long as there was breath in the body; that finest of games, working to the hand, was to be played to the last day, for was it not the jolliest of fun for both, and did not his master laugh loudly ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... up his troops in battle array. Don Fadrique, wary lest some treachery should be intended, halted among some plantations of olives, retained Boabdil by his side, and signified his wish that Aben Comixa would advance with his squadron and offer battle to the old king. The provocation was given, but El Zagal maintained his position. He threw out some light parties, however, which skirmished with the Abencerrages of Aben Comixa, after which he caused his trumpets to sound a recall, and retired into the city, mortified, it is said, that the Christian cavaliers ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... her to make some remark when she had read Evadne's letter. Almost anything she could have said must have given him some further food for provocation, and there is nothing more gratifying to an angry man than fresh fuel for his wrath. However, silence sometimes fans the flame as effectually as words, and it did so on this occasion, for, having waited till he could contain himself no longer, he burst out so suddenly that Mrs. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the pleasantest sights that big, sunny kitchen had seen for many a day, and the only thing that appeared mysterious about it was that the two workers acted strangely like conspirators. If they laughed—as they did on the slightest provocation—it was very soft and at once smothered. Jessie went often to the door leading into the hall, and listened; and if there came a knock on the floor, she snatched off her apron, hastily wiped her hands, rolled down her sleeves, asked Betty if there was any flour on her, and then hurried ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... and color range of the adornments and artifacts. I venture that these items will prove popular among you who can well afford such rare treasures. However, subtlety in acquiring them is suggested. While common clamor for Public ownership is under control, overt provocation is not recommended. Here is ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... only stooped down and closed her sister's pretty mouth with a kiss. Her tongue was impatient to speak for the father, and grandmother, and the friends, so dear to her; but she possessed great discretion, and also a large share of that rarest of all womanly graces, the power under provocation, of "putting on ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... same Howe shrilling forth the very blasts of persecution which he had denounced. Provocation he had—bitter, violent provocation. But he had yielded place unto wrath; his egoism, his worship of success, were getting the better ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... the agent is free from perturbation [Greek: atarachos], is not impelled by passion, but guided by reason; is angry when he ought, as he ought, with whom, and as long as, he ought: taking right measure of all the circumstances. Not to be angry on the proper provocation, is folly, insensibility, slavish submission. Of those given to excess in anger, some are quick, impetuous, and soon appeased; others are sulky, repressing and perpetuating their resentment. It is not easy to ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... the thing had to be done. The reader will perhaps forgive me for touching shyly on the next two or three minutes, which still recur on the smallest provocation and play bogey with my dreams. To balance on the edge of night, quaking, gripping a frozen rope; to climb, and feel the pit of one's stomach slipping like a bucket in a fathomless well—I suppose the intolerable pains in my head spurred me to the attempt—these ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from the original planned economy of a work occupying more than a score of years; but Mr. Ruskin is more than ordinarily susceptible to vicissitude. It is part of his idiosyncrasy to start impulsively with an ill-digested project, and to run off the lines of his argument upon the slightest provocation and at the earliest opportunity. So that in his case time and his own temper have combined to exaggerate the vibration of his book. His manner of progression is very much what Mr. Assheton Smith's huntsman used to denominate 'zedding.' He cannot ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... human infant. As to one curious utterance in the jay repertoire, I could not quite make up my mind whether it was a real call to arms, or intended as a joke on the neighborhood. When a bird, without visible provocation, suddenly burst out with this loud two-note call, instantly every feathered individual was on the alert,—sprang to arms, as it were. Blue jays joined in, robins hurried to the tops of the tallest trees and added their excited notes, ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... Germany and Austria upon the independence of Serbia and Belgium, had been able to adopt no other course than to take up arms in defense of the rights of nations. Russia, standing closely united and admirably unanimous in her enthusiasm against an enemy which had offered provocation, did not remain isolated, because she was immediately supported by France and Great Britain ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... high indignation from the little refection, which Sir Henry Lee had in his good-humour offered, and withdrawn under the circumstances of provocation which we have detailed, the good old knight, scarce recovered from his fit of passion, partook of it with his daughter and guest, and shortly after, recollecting some silvan task, (for, though to little efficient purpose, he still ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... her mother was displeased, endeavoured to change the course of her thoughts, by begging M. de Brisac to go on with what he was reading from the French papers. This was a fresh provocation to Mrs. Somers, who forgot that Emilie had not read the words on the slip of paper which had been torn; and consequently could not know all Mrs. Somers' impatience for his departure. M. de Brisac read, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... Union Schoolhouse of Germantown, now Germantown Academy, he was a justice of the peace and a provincial commissioner in 1765. Being a Friend, he took no part in the struggle for independence, although his provocation ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... expense of others, but for everybody, are naturally dreaded and therefore hated by the Have-and-Holders, who keep always in reserve two sure weapons against them. The first is a persecution effected by the provocation, organization, and arming of that herd instinct which makes men abhor all departures from custom, and, by the most cruel punishments and the wildest calumnies, force eccentric people to behave and profess exactly as other people do. The second is by ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... pleasant sense of relief thrilled softly through him. What blessed safety-valve was this through which his jangled nerves might find some outlet. The provocation was so gross, the insult so unprovoked, that he could have none of those qualms which take the edge off a man's mettle. He finished sealing the bottle upon which he was occupied, and he addressed it and placed it carefully ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... traveller should bear in mind the fact that it is impossible to confine the pleasures and privileges of travel to entirely reputable persons, and should hence keep upon the safe side by making no chance acquaintances, whatever the provocation may be. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... these outbreaks took place, but Bovey, who could partially understand her, gathered that she was far from offended, but given over to the national habit of delivering eloquent and theatrical monologues on the slightest provocation. She had no lodgers at the present moment; a Frenchman had left the day before, and the prospect was in every way favorable, to the ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... smacked of scenic effect, and women were apt to get up scenes—hysterics, attitudes, and the like—upon trivial provocation, He wanted to get the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... doubt, Jenny," said John, who was accustomed to use that appellation to her as a provocation, when he wished what he called an enlivening scene; but Mrs. Wilson put a damper on his hopes by a remark to his mother, and the habitual respect of both ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... is said, "Which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them;" that is, although I had chosen them for my spouse, and married myself unto them with an everlasting covenant of mercy, and entailed heaven unto them, yet they have broken my covenant. This was a great provocation. Thus, "When thou wast in thy blood, and no eye pitied thee, to have compassion upon thee, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live: Yea, I said unto thee, Live." It is twice repeated. As if God should ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... persuaded to keep troops permanently stationed in the Kyber. I feel little doubt that such a course would tend rather to cause trouble than to keep order. Small bodies of troops would be a constant provocation to attack; large bodies would ...
— Indian Frontier Policy • General Sir John Ayde
... anger, fear, violence and vehemence against her bad neighbor? One at last begins to conceive those insane whirls, continual mad suspicions, mad procedures, which have given Friedrich such vexation, surprise and provocation in the years past. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... reached a crisis when Philip laid claim to the county of Melgueil, which the Bishop of Maguelonne held in fief from the holy see. Boniface provoked Philip by a chiding bull, and added to the provocation by sending to the King, as negotiator in their differences, Bernard de Saisset, whom the Pope, in spite of the King, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... lavish in their compliments; but Tom, who felt that he had been deserted in the hour of need, did not receive these very graciously, and there is no saying how far he might have proceeded in rebuking his followers (for the Brown family is pugnacious under provocation) had not the major's voice been heard in the distance, shouting, "Hallo! look out! a buffalo! where are you, Tom ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... strong-minded part of the house consisted of his wife and four daughters. Gen. Ben Butler would have sent these young women to Ship Island, five times of a day. They were very bad-mannered and always sat apart at one end of the cloth, talking against the "Yankees." As there was no direct provocation to do so, this boldness was gratuitous, and detracted rather than added to my estimate of the heroism of Southern women. I have known them to burst into the office, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... "mebbe" about throw um white squaw. One had to be on the lookout or "swift like eagle" she would jump from under one at the slightest provocation. But we trained her to carry the mail, and though there was no banditry in that section, we had to be on our guard with money coming in. No man would ever grab the mail sack from Lakota's back. That little outlaw would paw him ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... knew the language imperfectly, read little, and misrepresented the gossip which she heard, either from carelessness or misunderstanding. When she censures Fichte, who she says had received no provocation from Nicolai, for helping Schlegel to write a dull book against him when he was too old to reply, she must have been ignorant of the fact, that Nicolai lived and wrote many years after the publication; and that, whether provoked or not, it is far ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... while I don't deny being full of tricks as a boy, they weh not dirty, not low, and while father always taking Emmet's paht against me drove me to recklessness sometimes, I nevah did anything underhand or disgraceful. She knows what provocation I had, and exactly what ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... was brought up on whippings by a—stepmother. But do you feel that way toward me? You look like a man who might strike a woman under certain provocation, perhaps; but not like one who would hit a little girl like me. If you won't look so cross, I'll tell you why ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... lie, very much of it, at least, at their doors, who drove the king to these necessities and distresses, by calling in an army of his own subjects whom he had not injured, but had complied with them in everything, to make war upon him without any provocation. ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... Rivers. Will you warn your stepsister, not under any provocation whatever, to speak the ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... Besides, haven't I given you cause to-night, before your friends in there? If I was in the wrong there, so much the greater my offence. Come—will you take up the quarrel as it is? Or must I give new provocation?" ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... subject, much was said which was not true. When he had retired from the scuffle on that night, Harry had certainly not dreamed that any serious damage had been done to the man who had certainly been altogether to blame in his provocation of the quarrel. Had he kept his temper and feelings completely under control, and knocked down Captain Scarborough only in self-defence; had he not allowed himself to be roused to wrath by treatment which could not but give rise to wrath in a young man's bosom, no doubt, when his foe lay ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... is advanced far beyond orations, and wears all the aspect of civil war. For can one imagine that the whole nation is converted at once, and in some measure without provocation from the King, who, far from enforcing the prerogative like Charles the First, Cancelled the despotism obtained for his grandfather by the Chancellor Maupeou, has exercised no tyranny, and has shown a disposition to let the constitution be amended. It ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... victories, put their garrisons into Locri, Crotona, and Thurii. The Romans were already masters of Central Italy. Only the Greek cities on the south remained for them to conquer. It was high time for Tarentum to bestir itself. It was from the side of Tarentum that the immediate provocation came. The Tarentines were listening to a play in the theater as ten Roman ships came into the harbor. Under a sudden impulse of wrath, a mob attacked them, and destroyed five of them. Even then the Romans were in ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... scoffs at morality as the tinsel of sin. Its disciples are those who rail and snarl at everything that is noble and good, to whom a joke is an assault and battery, a laugh is an insult to outraged dignity, and the provocation of a smile is like passing an electric current through the facial ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... no further provocation, and with great dexterity he crowded his fists into Shunks's eyes, deposited his head in Shunks's stomach, and was making a meritorious effort to climb upon Shunks's shoulders, when a lordly embodiment ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... with him into another room where he had something to show her, and there, within a few minutes, he cut her throat from ear to ear. He soon came down, told what he had done, and made no attempt to escape. They had always been on good terms; no provocation, no motive whatever for the act was shown or suspected. When questioned, he replied only,—"I loved her, no one could tell how much I loved her." He had been drinking cider during the morning, but his cool and collected manner, both before and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... will recognize the so-called German drama. The olla podrida thus cooked up, was denounced, by the best critics in Germany, as the mere cramps of weakness, and orgasms of a sickly imagination on the part of the author, and the lowest provocation of torpid feeling on that of the readers. The old blunder, however, concerning the irregularity and wildness of Shakespeare, in which the German did but echo the French, who again were but the echoes of our own critics, was still in vogue, and Shakespeare was ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... made it a little difficult for a stranger to believe that he could actually be the most popular person in the county; especially as it was not hard to discover that his temper could easily become peppery upon provocation. If, however, the stranger chanced to provide the worthy baronet with even the smallest opening of exhibiting his extraordinary kindness of heart—were it only by getting wet in a shower or mislaying a walking stick, ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... my advice," I said, "and you shall have it, openly and fairly. In such a case as you describe, where a man has led out at me repeatedly and with provocation, as I gather from what you say, though I myself do not play bridge, I should lead my whole hand at him. I repeat, I do not play bridge. But in the circumstances, I should think it the only thing ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... a little; I feel like talking, and I promise not to be disagreeable. Always wear white; it becomes you. Never forget that beauty needs appropriate surroundings. Another thing, ma belle cousine, this little trick you have of blushing on the slightest provocation spoils your whole appearance. Your complexion should always retain its healthy ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... very much disturbed; she must have jumped overboard. But what a wild young woman to do that upon such little provocation, for how should she know that he was about to run ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... no doubt thought he had sufficient provocation. Perhaps we should not be too hard on ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... of the resumption, which I join with Lovelace in advising. You can but see how your demand will work. To demand, is not to litigate. But be your resolution what it will, do not by any means repeat to them, that you will not assert your right. If they go on to give you provocation, you may have sufficient reason to change your mind: and let them expect that you will change it. They have not the generosity to treat you the better for disclaiming the power they know you have. That, I think, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... are united in demanding, it is imperative that our Navy should be put and kept in the highest state of efficiency, and should be made to answer to our growing needs. So far from being in any way a provocation to war, an adequate and highly trained navy is the best guaranty against war, the cheapest and most effective peace insurance. The cost of building and maintaining such a navy represents the very lightest premium for insuring peace which ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the path in the direction of the hotel, which was hidden from view by the shrubbery. Then the clock struck twelve and a few minutes later the church bells began to ring, as they do half a dozen times a day in Italy on small provocation. Still San Miniato went on with ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... Hester had been so meek at the time, Sylvia, who knew how passing and transitory was her own anger, thought that all was forgotten; while Hester believed that the words, which she herself could not have uttered except under deep provocation, meant much more than they did, and admired and wondered at Sylvia for having so entirely conquered ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... have the same teaching in the fourth verse of Psalm 4, which comforts saints and strengthens them against the temptation and provocation to anger and impatience which they must experience in the world. "Be ye angry," David says, "and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still." That is, although according to the nature of flesh and blood you fret because you ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... nor our soldiers shall give you the least offence." It was true, they went on to say, that a rich city like London offered a tempting bait for poor hungry soldiers, but the officers would protect it with their last drop of blood from the soldiery provided no provocation were offered by the citizens themselves. Their men valued their own high character above any wealth, and the citizens would act like fellow subjects and brethren by using their influence with parliament on their behalf. On the other hand, "if after ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... then, in the first place, be a provocation to us to be more free in making use of this water. There are many, now-a-days, that are for inventing of waters, to drink for the health of the body; and to allure those that are ill to buy, they will praise their waters beyond their worth. Yea, and if they be helpful to one person ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Was the woman thus beset thus holding herself aloft and with her child upon one arm in a state of sickening anxiety? Hardly! She but encircled the supporting branch the closer, and laughed aloud. She even poked one bare foot down at the leaping beast, and waved her leg in provocation. At the same time there was no doubt that she was beset. Furthermore she was hungry, and so she raised her voice, and sent out through the forest a strange call, a quavering minor wail, but something to be heard at a great distance. There was no delay in the response, for ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... had never quite accepted it in my unreasoning heart. And in the depths of me the battle between love and reason and the dark forces of jealous unreason and suspicion had smouldered, to break out afresh on the least provocation. ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... dogs stand around was an education. He bullied them, and there was always one or more of them fresh-marked with his fangs. But he was more than a bully. He wasn't afraid of anything that walked on four legs; and I've seen him march, single-handed, into a strange team, without any provocation whatever, and put the kibosh on the whole outfit. Did I say he could eat? I caught him eating the whip once. That's straight. He started in at the lash, and when I caught him he was down to the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... sensitive spinster is repeatedly astonished at finding her lover transformed into a fiend, without other provocation than this. He accuses her of being "a heartless coquette," of having "led him on,"—whatever that may mean,—and he does not care to have her for his sister, or ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... alarmed: this plebeian operator is not in the catalogue of your successors. How the lady was the aggressor is not known; 'tis only conjectured that French politeness and French interestedness could never have gone such lengths without mighty provocation. The first instance of the toothdrawer's un-gentle behaviour was on hearing it said that Lady Harrington was to have her four girls drawn by Liotard; which was wondered at, as his price is so great—"Oh!" ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Coudert are rapidly becoming experts, having studied the language in school, and also on the long voyage out. There are also a group of resident Englishmen and a pilgrim from Norway, but at several tables are Americans who know no Spanish and are mad at the Spaniards on that provocation ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... other end of the room, and she unfastened the bolt impatiently. "Oh, walk right in, Cap'n Crowe!" she was presently heard to exclaim; but there was a note of embarrassment in her tone, and a look of provocation on her face, as the big shipmaster lumbered after her into the sitting-room. Captain Shaw had taken the large chair, and the newcomer was but poorly accommodated on a smaller one with a cane seat. The walls of ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... for causing grievous hurt against Ramani Babu and his servants. When the case came on for hearing before a Deputy Magistrate at Ghoria, all the accused pleaded "not guilty." They could not deny the fact that he had been beaten within an inch of his life, but alleged provocation on his part, inasmuch as he had fomented a rebellion among the ryots. Jadu Babu was not idle. He provided the complainant with first-rate legal advice and paid all the expenses of adducing witnesses. Emboldened ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... friends and neighbors of Mr. Crawford. They were so prejudiced by sympathy for Miss Lloyd, and indignation at the unknown criminal, that they couldn't give unbiased judgment. But we will yet see justice done. If Miss Lloyd is innocent, we can prove it. But remember the provocation she was under. Remember the opportunity she had, to visit her uncle alone in his office, after every one else in the house was asleep. Remember that she had a motive—a strong motive—and no ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... might assuredly enjoy that hope that is laid up for us in heaven: God has promised it, and that to our Saviour for us. Had he promised it to us, we might yet have feared, for that with our faults we give a cause of continual provocation to him. But since he hath promised it to Christ, it must assuredly come to us by him, because Christ, to whom it is promised, never gave occasion of provocation to him to take it back. And that it was promised to Christ, it is evident, because it was promised before the world ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... pantry, going on dreadfully. We couldn't make out the words but Diana says she knows they were swearing by the sound of them. I can't believe that of Mr. Blair, for he is always so quiet and meek; but at least he had great provocation, for Marilla, when that poor man came to the door, red as a beet, with perspiration streaming down his face, he had on one of his wife's big gingham aprons. 'I can't get this durned thing off,' he said, 'for the strings are tied in a hard knot and I can't bust 'em, so you'll have to excuse ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... force—one of a squadron then lying in our waters and covering the transaction—and has been disabled from service, with the loss of a number of men killed and wounded. This enormity was not only without provocation or justifiable cause, but was committed with the avowed purpose of taking by force from a ship of war of the United States a part of her crew; and that no circumstance might be wanting to mark its character, it had been previously ascertained ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... for getting the tongues. I hold frequent conferences with Antonio Lobo, the peasant who keeps our orchard at head-quarters, and have daily talks with our Portuguese chamber-maid, and can find fault with her, not to say scold, in good set terms. The awkward creature gives me abundant provocation for scolding, and for not forgetting your advice about ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... the sound beating which they had it in contemplation to inflict upon me; and, at the same time, I groaned under the necessity of keeping to myself that stream of abuse which was ready to flow against them upon the smallest provocation. ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... the Moorish conquest in the latter year, and it became the scene of repeated incursions by various tribes—Touaregs, Foulbes, Roumas. Under the hands of a thousand tyrants the inhabitants were robbed, ill-treated, and killed on the least provocation. To avoid being pillaged in the open street, and seeing their houses despoiled, they adopted a new manner of living. They transformed their garments and dwellings, and ceasing to be Timbuctoo the Great, they became Timbuctoo the Mysterious. By these means the town acquired a tumble-down ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... hostage, in the hands of Murkertach. While the latter was absent, on his expedition to Insi-Gall, Kellachan fell upon the Deisi and Ossorians, and inflicted severe chastisement upon them-alleging, as his provocation, that they had given hostages to Murkertach, and acknowledged him as Roydamna of all Erin, in contempt of the co-equal rights of Cashel. When Murkertach returned from his Scotch expedition, and heard what had occurred, and on what pretext Kellachan had acted, he assembled at Aileach ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... a gingersnap before we start down," she said. So the box was opened and passed. Roberta gathered the reins in one hand, clucked to the horse, and put her gingersnap into her mouth for the first bite. But she never got it, for without the slightest provocation the "beastie" gave a sudden spring forward, flopped his long tail over the reins, and started at a gallop down the road. Betty clung to the dashboard with one hand and tried to pluck off the obstructing tail with the other. Roberta, with the gingersnap ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... braced himself and said: "The bare facts are true. But I have lived stainlessly in the fear of God and in the service of humanity for thirty years. I have sought absolution for a moment of mad anger under awful provocation in unremitting prayer and in trying to save the souls and raise the fortunes of my fellow-men. Is that all ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... or two cads, with whom I am at war; but the rest are a festive, jovial crew, who tolerate their master when he lets them have their own way, and growl when he doesn't; who work when they are so disposed, and drop idle with the least provocation; who lead me many a weary dance through the lobbies after the gas is out, and now and then come and make themselves agreeable in my rooms ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... of conscience had finally visited Maison—a devil in the flesh. For all the violent passions were aflame in Sanderson's face, repressed but needing only provocation to ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... obliged to hurry home on account of it. The conspirators were treated with the utmost severity and were tortured and killed. There are many ugly stories about the way that Peter behaved in regard to his enemies, although it is true that they had given him ample provocation, and it is said that when he was under the influence of drink he put to death a number of conspirators ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... by law to impose an obedience to them, as upon her children; and this he proposed to do in "Eight Books of the Law of Ecclesiastical Polity;" intending therein to shew such arguments as should force an assent from all men, if reason, delivered in sweet language, and void of any provocation, were able to do it: and, that he might prevent all prejudice, he wrote before it a large Preface, or Epistle to the Dissenting Brethren, wherein there were such bowels of love, and such a commixture ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... trying they are," declared Alora, with a sigh. "Father and I are wholly uncongenial and we fight on the slightest provocation. This morning our trouble was over money. I wanted a little to take with me, for my purse hasn't a lira in it; but, no! not a centisimo would he give up. He insisted that if I was to be your guest you ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... grotesquenesses to a writer of paragraphs and chapters that have found a certain favor in the eyes of even some of the very decentest people in the land—and this grateful remembrance of mine ought to be worth its face, seeing that Bret broke our long friendship a year ago without any cause or provocation that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of envy makes it so familiar, that it escapes our notice; nor do we often reflect upon its turpitude or malignity, till we happen to feel its influence. When he that has given no provocation to malice, but by attempting to excel, finds himself pursued by multitudes whom he never saw, with all the implacability of personal resentment; when he perceives clamour and malice let loose upon him as a publick enemy, and incited by every stratagem of defamation; when he hears ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... importance which it will hold in history; not merely because of the stamp which he attempted to place upon the peace, but because the two earlier phases are in truth expressive of his whole-hearted devotion to the cause of peace. The tenacity with which he held to neutrality in the face of intense provocation resulted less from his appreciation of the pacific sentiments of the nation, or a desire to assure its economic prosperity, than it did from his instinctive abhorrence of war. When finally forced into war, he based his action upon the hope of securing a new international order which would ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... plates and dishes, cups and saucers, yea, even the pudding basons, not as so much china and delf, but as troublesome imps, possessed with an insane desire to dash themselves madly on the kitchen floor upon the least provocation. Every woman knows what a slippery thing to hold is a baby in its tub. I am in a position to pronounce that wet plates and dishes are far more difficult to keep hold of. They have a way of leaping out of your fingers, which must be felt to be believed. After my first week in my kitchen ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... be added the intrigues and personal rivalry of the conquered in their relations with the conqueror. Conspiracies were hatched, insurrections soon broke out in nearly every part of Gaul, in the heart even of the peoplets most subject to Roman dominion. Every movement of the kind was for Caesar a provocation, a temptation, almost an obligation to conquest. He accepted them and profited by them, with that promptitude in resolution, boldness and address in execution, and cool indifference as to the means employed, which were characteristic ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... were training a host of incomparable seamen destined to harry the commerce of England under the new-born Stars and Stripes, and now, in 1775, on the brink of actual war, Parliament flung a final provocation and aroused the furious enmity of the fishermen who thronged the Grand Bank. Lord North proposed to forbid the colonies to export fish to those foreign markets in which every seacoast village was vitally concerned, and he also contemplated driving the fishing fleets from their haunts ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... bethink you, you know naught of this man your father desires you to wed. Is it not possible that he, too, may love—or may learn to love you, on provocation? You are very fair, madonna. Yours is a beauty that may draw a man to Heaven or unclose the gates of Hell, at will; indeed, even I, in my poor dreams, have seen your face as bright and glorious as is the lighted space above the altar when Christ's blood and body are shared among His worshippers. ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... whose face reddened. The mask was being at last hurled off. What self-control, indeed, had the family before maintained, when they were so armed with displeasure concerning the United States! He would not have credited it. It was at least illuminating, if blinding. For what could be the excuse, provocation? Nothing that he had ever heard of. The two peoples had been so separate and distinct. The words of Anderson rushed into his mind. "The Germans can hate people they've never known, never seen. They hate on principle and ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... lords, it is apparent, that neither obedience nor fidelity can be expected from men upon whom all the ties of morality, and all the sanctions of law have lost their influence; they will mutiny without fear, and desert without scruple, and like wild beasts, will, upon the least provocation, turn upon those by whom ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... leathern mantle of elk or buffalo skin, frequently with a cloak over it, on which the hoofs of horses were strung, makes an almost impervious cuirass. Their love for music, general lively dispositions, except from provocation, but determination in avenging insult or ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... words Wiggins seemed to endure a keener anguish, and his face bore upon it the same pallid horror which she had seen there before upon a similar provocation. He stared at her for a few moments, and then bowing down, he leaned his head upon his hand and looked at the floor in silence. At last, he raised his head and looked at her with a ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... Johnson's Rasselas, whose faith in it dwindled, when he perceived that the professional philosopher, who preached superiority to all human frailties and weaknesses, succumbed to them at the first provocation. ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... structure of whalebone, of silk, and of cane, that it becomes a very microcosm of modern industry—is necessarily a man of peace. A half-crown cane may be applied to an offender's head on a very moderate provocation; but a six-and-twenty shilling silk is a possession too precious to be adventured in the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... contest with great enthusiasm, and also industriously pursued her vocal studies, but for her was exceptionally subdued and inclined to be cross on the smallest provocation. She had become so engrossed in political meetings that "Dora" Eweword, who was continually at Clay's since the retreat of Ernest, one day remonstrated with her. She had made a political meeting the excuse for declining to go rowing with ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... consideration of man; and to them it seemed barbarous to set them fighting, even if the animals had belligerent instincts, though they never displayed them in their domesticated condition unless under strong provocation. Some of the gentlemen regarded the exhibition as but little better than a prize-fight; though they all attended the occasion, for the more sensitive ones thought it would be impolite to decline the invitation, especially as the exhibition was got ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... the disposition be spoiled. Hence the relief and exhilaration of an outbreak that often clears the psychic atmosphere like a thunderstorm, and gives the "peace that passeth understanding" so often dilated on by our correspondents. Rather than the abject fear of making enemies whatever the provocation, I would praise those whose best title of honor is the kind of enemies they make. Better even an occasional nose dented by a fist, a broken bone, a rapier-scarred face, or even sometimes the sacrifice of the life of one of our best academic youth than stagnation, general cynicism and ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... sir, or damme, I'll give you my butt!' at the same time clubbing his fusee, and drawing it back as if to give the blow, I fully expected it, but he contented himself with the threat. I observed to him that I was in his power, and disposed to submit to it, though not proof against every provocation. * * * There were several British officers present, when a Serjeant-Major came to take an account of us, and particularly a list of such of us as were officers. This Serjeant, though not uncivil, had all that animated, degage impudence of air, which belongs to a self complacent, non-commissioned ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... landed in Boston. Fourteen men-of-war were anchored before the town, with the cannon of their broad-sides loaded and primed, ready, at the slightest provocation to lay the whole town in ashes. Protected by this terrible menace, two British regiments paraded the streets, with their muskets charged, with gleaming sabres and bayonets, with formidable artillery prepared to vomit forth the most horrible ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... more dear to a united people than life itself. Rightly will any nation jealously defy him who dares advance to plunder its possessions. And it is well that men do not wish to surrender it upon slight provocation. That has been a good diplomacy that sought to protect the nation by war. By the extension of political unity peoples gain moral and physical strength. Thrift becomes more common and moral courage greater when a people strike forward with common aims. And in proportion as the nation as ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... of Archibald Dein, burgess of Irvine, had been slandered by her sister-in-law, Janet Lyal, the spouse of John Dein, brother of Archibald, and by John Dein himself, as guilty of some act of theft. Upon this provocation Margaret Barclay raised an action of slander before the church court, which prosecution, after some procedure, the kirk-session discharged by directing a reconciliation between the parties. Nevertheless, although ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... that perilous domestic circle. It is hardly fair even to complain of it for yielding a poisonous oil, when these two virtuous plants—to say nothing of the peach and the almond—will under sufficient chemical provocation do the same thing. Two drops of nicotine will, indeed, kill a rabbit; but so, it is said, will two drops of solanine. Great are the resources of chemistry, and a well-regulated scientific mind can detect something deadly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... that is hardly fair. You know I am no duellist. I merely fight when I am compelled to, and never without just provocation. For instance, I had a delightful passage-at-arms last night, but it was no fault of mine. I was coming across the Sillon when a pretty girl came towards me with a leisurely step that seemed to say: ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... served with me here that I have for many years advocated, as an essential attribute of State sovereignty, the right of a State to secede from the Union. Therefore, if I had not believed there was justifiable cause, if I had thought that Mississippi was acting without sufficient provocation, or without an existing necessity, I should still, under my theory of the government, because of my allegiance to the State of which I am a citizen, have been bound by her action. I, however, may be permitted to say that I do think she has justifiable cause, and I approve of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... Giles Taunton, the armorer He was a swarthy ruffian, who hid, beneath the guise of a jovial bonhomie, a cruel and unfeeling nature. He was ever ready to cuff and beat the boys, on the smallest provocation. ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... just resentment? Is he not to defend his sister, when her character has been basely and treacherously ruined? Is he to see her stretched on her death-bed, by your villainy, and not to avenge her? By heavens, if, under the circumstances of the provocation which you gave him, and his whole family, he would be as mean and cowardly a poltroon as I find ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... whispered to her. "Do not revile this innocent girl; she suffers quite as much as you do,—perhaps even more, for she was betrothed to him years ago." My grief for Noemi, and my resentment against Antoine made me imprudent; I spoke unjustly, but the provocation was great. "You take her part!" she cried, repelling me indignantly. "Innocent— she innocent? Bah! She must have known he was married, for why else did he not marry her? Do you think me a child to be fooled by such a tale?" "No," answered I sternly, looking away from her ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... barometer being sensitive. He can see that a vivid sensibility and vigilance really radiate outwards through all the ramifications of machinery and even of materialism. He can see that the American uses his great practical powers upon very small provocation; but he can also see that there is a kind of sense of honour, like that of a duellist, in his readiness to be provoked. Indeed, there is some parallel between the American man of action, however vulgar his aims, and the old feudal idea of the gentleman with ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... happening to knit his brows from impatience of this folly, one of the physiognomists instantly said, "The internal force of the lion, which the gentleman possesses, has been aroused by some external provocation, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... shiver of apprehension chasing down his spine. Savage, devastating desire mingled with ill-concealed rage at his coldness. This beautiful animal could turn like a flash and rend him limb from limb—and would on the slightest provocation. ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... on as a mere trivial, harmless, modish ornament and gewgaw is quite another! We have Mr. Rand's word for it that it was so worn. Gentlemen, the prisoner, armed, indeed, as has been proved, was absolutely innocent of even the remotest intent to use under any provocation beneath high heaven the pistols—oiled, primed, and duelling type—with which, by chance or for the merest whim of ornament, he had decked his person upon this eventful night. Mr. Rand tells us so, and doubtless he ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... Government has little or nothing to do with it. This state of things must be attributed entirely to the social ostracism, to the contempt felt by a "superior" for an "inferior" race, a contempt deeply rooted in some members of the Anglo-Indian society and displayed at the least provocation. This question of racial "superiority" and "inferiority" plays a more important part than is generally believed, even in England. Nevertheless, the natives (Mussulmans included) do not deserve contempt, and so the gulf between the rulers and the ruled widens with every year, and long ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... comic as the humour might seize the beholder. As gay as any of the cicadas that keep the summer's jubilee in the sunny tree-tops, he sings songs that have nothing in common with psalms, and he needs little provocation to dance. French has become an awkward language to him, but his tongue is nimble enough both in Languedocian and Latin. When he hears that the evening soup is ready, he hurries the pig home, flourishes his stick above ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... me delightfully insensible to one fruitful source of provocation among inanimate things. I am so dull as to regard all distinctions between "rights" and "lefts" as invidious; but I have witnessed the agonized struggles of many a victim of fractious boots, and been thankful that "I am not as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... nineteen years of age, sent an insulting present (p. 109) to Henry of a tun of tennis-balls, with a message full of contempt and scorn,[84] implying that a racket-court was a more fit place for him than a battle-field. It is well observed, that such an act of wilful provocation must have convinced both parties of the hopelessness of any attempts towards a pacific arrangement; and, since the negociations were carried on to the very last, some discredit has thence been attempted to be thrown on the story altogether. But it ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... my mind was assured again, did they break to me what they had learned of the fate of Leatherhead. Two days after I was imprisoned it had been destroyed, with every soul in it, by a Martian. He had swept it out of existence, as it seemed, without any provocation, as a boy might crush an ant hill, in the mere ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... there is a possible variety of the case that might alter its complexion. If the crime had been committed many years before, and under circumstances which precluded all fear that the same temptation or the same provocation should arise again, most reflecting people would think it the better course to leave the criminal to his conscience. Often in such denunciations it is certain that human impertinence, and the spirit which sustains the habit of gossip, and mere incontinence of secrets, and vulgar craving for being ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... approaching horseman, he immediately raised himself on his fore feet and uttered a wild prolonged roar. Martin, who wished to entice the beast on to solid ground, where he could grapple with him better than in the midst of this unknown morass, and also, by way of provocation, cracked his long whip loudly. Maddened still more by this exasperating sound, the wild beast arose from his resting-place and rushed upon the horseman, who immediately turned his horse and fled out of the swamp, enticing after ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... ter hear none o' yer views on religion," Kennedy interrupted gruffly. An apology often augments the sense of injury. In this instance it also annulled the provocation, for his own admission put Bedell hopelessly in the wrong. "Ez a friend I war argufyin' with ye agin' yer waste o' time with that old fool fiddle. Ye hev got wife an' children, an' yit not so well off in this world's gear ez me, a single man. I misdoubts ef ye hev hunted ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... fancied, at times, that he discovered a shade of coquetry under this treatment; and this provocation, vague as it was, coming from this beautiful, cold, and inscrutable creature, seemed to him a game fearfully mysterious, that at once attracted and ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
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