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More "Pugnacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the expression of everything, is a perfect example of the conservation of energy. It is very difficult to come to the end of him. Add to this unimaginative, practical, tenacious moderation an inherent spirit of competition—not to say pugnacity—so strong that it will often show through the coating of his "Live and let live," half-surly, half-good-humored manner; add a peculiar, ironic, "don't care" sort of humor; an underground but inveterate humaneness, and an ashamed idealism—and you get some notion of the pudding of English character. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... dared ride into this camp of thieving assassins shows what risks he could force himself to run when he thought it necessary. He was not physically a very brave man; he had no pugnacity and no adventurous love of danger for its own sake; but when he was resolved on an enterprise, he ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... astrologer in Chaldaea; where Abraham, says Berosus (Josephus, Ant. I. 7, Sec. 2, and II. 9, Sec. 2) was "skilful in the celestial science." He notices the Akarana-Zaman (endless Time) of the Guebres, and the working dual, Hormuzd and Ahriman. He brands the God of the Hebrews with pugnacity and cruelty. He has heard of the beautiful creations of Greek fancy which, not attributing a moral nature to the deity, included Theology in Physics; and which, like Professor Tyndall, seemed to consider all matter everywhere alive. We have adopted ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... on the Natural History of Bees, avers that the moth called the Sphynx atropos invades and plunders with impunity a hive containing thousands of bees, notwithstanding the watchfulness, pugnacity, and formidable weapons of those insects. To account for this phenomenon, he states that the queen bee has the faculty of emitting a certain sound which instantly strikes the bees motionless; and he conjectures that this burglarious moth, being endowed with the same property, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... hostile, but not one that would account for all his actions. Perhaps the best analysis would begin by showing him as half the aboriginal Westerner and half the Washington politician. In many ways he was very Western. He had a Westerner's pugnacity, and at the same time a Westerner's geniality and capacity for comradeship with men. He had to the last a Westerner's private tastes—especially a taste for gambling—and a Westerner's readiness to fight duels. Above all, from the time that ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... exactly the same rules. The males are almost always the wooers; and they alone are armed with special weapons for fighting with their rivals. They are generally stronger and larger than the females, and are endowed with the requisite qualities of courage and pugnacity. They are provided, either exclusively or in a much higher degree than the females, with organs for vocal or instrumental music, and with odoriferous glands. They are ornamented with infinitely diversified appendages and with the most brilliant ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... feel any profound interest as to his future. He has compared himself to a dog,—but, on behalf of that faithful and valued companion of man, we protest against the similitude. He has the kind of pugnacity which prompts a cur or a puppy to attack a Newfoundland or a mastiff. He has not the fidelity and many other good qualities of the canine race. At any rate, he has become a mischievous dog,—and a dull dog,—and will soon be a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... deep. The woman's quietism and piety passed on to his different nature undiminished; but whereas in her it was a native sentiment, in him it was only an implanted dogma. Nature and the child's pugnacity at times revolted. A cad from the Potterrow once struck him in the mouth; he struck back, the pair fought it out in the back stable lane towards the Meadows, and Archie returned with a considerable decline in the number of his front ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with cruel and ignorant criticisms, the great composers would, no doubt, have been amiable in their public relations, as they appear to have been almost invariably toward their friends. Wagner's pugnacity and frequent ill-temper, for instance, arose simply from the fact that, while he was toiling night and day to compose immortal master-works, his contemporaries not only refused to contribute enough for his daily bread, but assailed him on all sides with malicious ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... gracious—had in fact rarely seen her shy or dry, her marked thin-lipped smile, intense without brightness and as prompt to act as the scrape of a safety-match; the protrusion of her rather remarkably long chin, which in her case represented invitation and urbanity, and not, as in most others, pugnacity and defiance; the penetration of her voice to a distance, the general encouragement and approval of her manner, were all elements with which intercourse had made him familiar, but which he noted today almost as if ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... highest qualities in the reciter. Even in Pulci, accordingly, we find no parody, strictly speaking, of chivalry, nearly humour of his paladins at times approaches it. By their side stands the ideal of pugnacity—the droll and jovial Morgante—who masters whole armies with his bellclapper, and who is himself thrown into relief by contrast with the grotesque and most interesting monster Margutte. Yet Pulci lays no special stress on these two rough and vigorous characters, and his story, long after they ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the Evangelical school, but in the heat of its controversial warfare. His heart, when he was a boy, was set on entering the army; and one of his most characteristic points through life, shown in many very different forms, was his pugnacity, his keen perception of ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... enough to arrest his progress in that way. Then he tried to seize him by the neck, but a few strong blows with his fore feet made that a difficult and dangerous task, and so Sam had to let go. This seemed to interest the calf, and so from being the one attacked he became the aggressor. The pugnacity of the calf, and the lively way in which he butted his opponent, caused great amusement to the onlookers. Sam could not stand this, and so he threw himself desperately on the animal, and hugging him around his neck, ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... and dangerous talking too; but here was plainly a man to be humoured; he looked round him with a suffused face and the eye of a cock, and a little white plume on his forehead increased his appearance of pugnacity. ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... a senior colleague. And with all its sufficiency, his philosophy seems too Fabian in its counsels; it is always withdrawing, passing by on the other side, avoiding battle—so that as a preparation for the uttermost ordeal it will often prove inferior to the reckless pugnacity of a narrow zealot. ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... point,—he won his cases. But this did not make him any more popular with the press. When we remember that Billingsgate was an important part of the literary equipment of the critic of Cooper's time, we need not be surprised that Cooper's pugnacity evoked such sweet disinterestedness as Park Benjamin indulged in when he called Cooper "a superlative dolt, and a common mark of scorn and contempt of every ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... of strong conviction. He is too good a partisan to admit that there may be another side to the question which might be worth considering. With magnificent ruthlessness he plunges ahead, and with a truly old Norse pugnacity he stands in the thick of the fight, rejoicing in battle. Only combat arouses his Titanic energy and calls all his ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... a strange bond between the big yellow man and this little green bird. The bird did not suspect it, but the man knew. The pluck, the pugnacity and the individuality of the feathered comrade had been an object lesson to the man, at a time when he had been on the point of ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... these. David Culross had been in the penitentiary twenty years. Now, with that worm-eaten heart, he came out into liberty and looked about him for the habiliments with which he had formerly clothed himself,—for hope, self-respect, courage, pugnacity, and industry. ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... the words were inscribed: "Be just and fear not"; and Eloquent, who was brought up to look upon justice as the first of political virtues, used to wonder wistfully whether such fearlessness could be achieved by one whose face at present showed none of those characteristics of force, strength, and pugnacity manifested in the portraits of the great commoner. But he found comfort in the reflection that "Dada," mirror of all the virtues, was yet quite mild and almost insignificant in appearance; a small, stout, dapper, very clean-looking little tradesman, with trim ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... her husband's poems as if they were so many bombs, hurled in the face of the enemy, her public. There was nothing like the pugnacity of the Kiddy in these ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... beneath my eyes, lay a clenched fist of fearful dimensions, that in color and protuberances bore a good deal of resemblance to a freshly unearthed Jerusalem artichoke. Its sinews seemed to be cracking with tension, and the whole knob was so expressive of intense pugnacity that my eyes involuntarily sought its owner's face. I had unconsciously taken my seat directly opposite a man whose stature was nearly double that of the compact, bustling sputtering, and sturdy little ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... species, occasionally found on the Atlantic coast of North America. It is a species remarkable for its pugnacity during the mating season; in size and appearance it is about like the Upland Plover, with the exception of the "ruff" which adorns the neck and breast ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... their being killed by ill treatment was so unequivocal that the verdict would certainly have been one of wilful murder had the prejudice of the coroner's jury been on the other side, their tormentors were gratuitously declared to be blameless. There was only one virtue, pugnacity: only one vice, pacifism. That is an essential condition of war; but the Government had not the courage to legislate accordingly; and its law was ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... profound mistake. It seemed to me that the average Chinaman, even if he is miserably poor, is happier than the average Englishman, and is happier because the nation is built upon a more humane and civilized outlook than our own. Restlessness and pugnacity not only cause obvious evils, but fill our lives with discontent, incapacitate us for the enjoyment of beauty, and make us almost incapable of the contemplative virtues. In this respect we have grown rapidly worse during the last hundred years. I do not deny ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... the breeding season, are taken by decoying them into nets or snares by tame or wild birds of the opposite sex; in fact, advantage was wont to be taken of the pugnacity or devotion of the Ruffes when "hilling," by previously setting springes or nets on their battle-ground, into which said snares they danced, when courting or fighting (see ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... as I read the note left by an orderly in uniform notifying me that I was expected to report at the quarters of the commanding-general the next day at ten o'clock. Conscious of my innocence of treason or any other crime against the Government or society, my pugnacity was roused by this summons. Before the hour set for my appearance at the military headquarters, I was ready for martyrdom or any thing else except Alcatraz. I didn't like that. The island was too small, and too foggy and windy, for my taste. I thought it best to obey ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... had apparently begun to recover from his astonishment, had changed his ankus from one hand to the other, and was in the act of drawing his kris, when Peter yelled at him again and made so fierce a thrust with his spear that all the little fellow's pugnacity died out, or, as it were, passed away in a ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... honest friends of mine—and true friends I know they are—who nevertheless by their fiery pugnacity in my behalf do put me in fearful hazard of a broken nose, or even a total overthrow upon the pavement and the loss of the treasure which I guard.—I pray you, gentlemen, let this fault be amended. Is it decent, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... petticoat and flung it defiantly in the air. Who had cut away the signal—McDonald or the detective? We had planned to investigate the nameless lake that afternoon, Tish being like Colonel Roosevelt in her thirst for information, as well as in the grim pugnacity that is her dominant characteristic; but at the last minute ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of things; to observe what thoughts and passions have occupied men's minds, what opinions and manners they are of. In this view it becomes of no mean importance to notice and record the strangest ignorance, the most putid fables, impertinent, trifling, ridiculous disputes, and more ridiculous pugnacity in the defence and retention of the subjects disputed." (Publisher's preface to the reader in Lightfoot's ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... combat, battle, engagement, struggle, encounter, fray, affray, melee, scrimmage (Colloq.); pugnacity, belligerence. Associated words: militant, combative, combativeness, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... to talk; yet every now and then, as some jolt of the carriage made George open his eyes, he saw the broad-shouldered figure beside him, sitting in the same attitude, erect and tireless, the same half-peevish pugnacity giving expression ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... psychologist, in one of his brilliant essays published in The Popular Science Monthly for October, 1910, tells us that history is a bath of blood; we inherit the war-like type; our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow; showing the irrationality and horror of war does not prevent it; but a moral equivalent can be found by enlisting an army to toil and suffer pain in doing the hard and routine work of the world. It is doubtful, however, if the "gilded youths" ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... put up by a dozen frats, and landing the bunch in a crowd that it had never heard of two weeks before, is as bad as trying to herd a bunch of whales into a fishpond with nothing but hot air for gads. It took diplomacy, pugnacity and psychological moments, I tell you; and it took more: it took ingenuity and inventiveness and cheek and second sight and cool heads in time of trouble and long heads on the job, from daybreak to daybreak. I'd rather ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... conversation strayed into politics, and then Mr. Grey, an eager politician, would throw back his head, and talk with more sparkle and rapidity, flashing occasionally into grim humour which seemed to throw light on the innate strength and pugnacity of the peasant and Puritan breed from which he sprang. Nothing could be more unlike the inspired philosopher, the mystic surrounded by an adoring school, whom Robert had been picturing to himself in his walk up to the house, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Teddy, who had considerable pugnacity in his makeup, although not really what you would call ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... We may classify the instinctive modes of behaviour and their accompanying modes of instinctive experience under as many heads as may be convenient for our purposes of interpretation, and label them instincts of self-preservation, of pugnacity, of acquisition, the reproductive instincts, the parental instincts, and so forth. An instinct, in this sense of the term (for example the parental instinct), may be described as a specialised part of the primary tissue of experience differentiated in relation to some definite ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... that time, the slight wound in the latter's arm where the vein had been opened had practically healed. Dirty Dan continued to improve, passed the danger-mark, and began the upward climb to his old vigor and pugnacity. Port Agnew, stirred to discussion over the affray, forgot it within three days, and on the following Monday morning Donald returned to the woods. The Laird of Tyee carried his worries to the Lord in prayer, and Nan Brent frequently ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... Pathan would demean himself by being servant to a man of no account, they will more readily respect you, although you are neither Sikh nor yet Pathan but are supposed to be a Punjabi Mussulman. Therefore, sahib, you must take a middle course between peace and pugnacity, pretending on the one hand to restrain my quarrelsomeness, yet on the other depending for safety on my readiness to take offense—as a man who is accustomed to a ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... not content to listen. Diana's impressions of the country-side, which presently caught her ear, evidently roused her pugnacity. She threw herself on all the girl's rose-colored appreciations with a scorn hardly disguised. All the "locals," according to her, were stupid or snobbish—bores, in fact, of the first water. And to Diana's discomfort and amazement, Oliver Marsham joined in. He showed ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said Nancy, recovering some of her natural pugnacity; "for we are all tarred with the same stick, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... the synagogue, if they did not share my ardent affection for him, they all, with one exception, liked him. The exception was a middle-aged little Talmudist with a tough little beard who held everybody in terror by his violent temper and pugnacity. He was a pious man, but his piety never manifested itself with such genuine fervor as when he exposed the impiety of others. He was forever picking quarrels, forever challenging people to debate with him, forever offering to show that their interpretation of this passage or that was all wrong. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... (1699), which spread his fame through Europe. After receiving various preferments, including the Boyle lectureship and the Keepership of the Royal Library, he was, in 1700, appointed Master of Trinity, and afterwards was, largely owing to his own pugnacity and rapacity, which were almost equal to his learning, involved in a succession of litigations and controversies. These lasted for 20 years, and led to the temporary loss of his academic preferments and honours. In 1717, however, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... fellow. The more he drank, up to a certain point, the steadier he got on his legs, and the more necessary it seemed for him to fight somebody. The tide of his pugnacity that night took a ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... while his wedge-shaped beak and cruel spurs are ever ready to support his defiant crow. It is no wonder that the breed is not plentiful—first, on account of the few eggs laid by the hen; and, secondly, from the incurable pugnacity of the chicks. Half fledged broods may be found blind as bats from fighting, and only waiting for the least glimmer of sight to be at it again. Without doubt, the flesh of game fowls is every way superior to that of every chicken ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... all; seeing that in the musings of the great minds of all ages, we have oftenest the pure gold of devotion, mingled, though it may sometimes be, with the adhesive dross of superstition. He also warns us of the danger of mistaking pugnacity for piety, and earnestly urges that, at every moment of our lives, we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ from other men, but in what we agree. Ruskin considers this to be the correct spirit in which to approach ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... characterized by the following tendencies: Fear, anger, sympathy, affection, play, imitation, curiosity, acquisitiveness, constructiveness, self-assertion (leadership), self-abasement, rivalry, envy, jealousy, pugnacity, clannishness, the hunting and predatory instincts, the migratory instinct, love of adventure and the unknown, superstition, the sex instincts, which express themselves in sex-love, vanity, coquetry, modesty; and, closely allied with these, the love of nature and of solitude, and the ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... to proceed, sir?" he said. "It is very interesting, indeed. You were talking about the pugnacity ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Swiss or Belgian giants. The general physiognomy was good, mostly high-featured, often commanding, sometimes remarkable for massive beauty of the Jovian type, and almost invariably distinguished by a fearless, open-eyed frankness, in some instances running into arrogance and pugnacity. I remember one or two elderly men, in particular, whose faces would help an artist to idealize a Lacedaemonian general, or a baron of the Middle Ages. In dress somewhat careless, and wearing usually ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... considerable canvassing of the matter, "Freckles" had received a majority vote. Freckles had long ceased to impress the observer as a pathetic object. He was an energetic, pin-feathery creature, noted equally for his appetite and his pugnacity. Dorothy who had not hesitated to bestride Farmer Cole's boar, and was absolutely fearless as far as Hobo was concerned, retreated panic-stricken before Freckles' advances. For owing to reasons not apparent, Freckles found an irresistible temptation ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... Hunger, Fear and Rage). In time, it may become possible, by physiological means, to alter the whole emotional nature of a population. It will then depend upon the passions of the rulers how this power is used. Success will come to the State which discovers how to promote pugnacity to the extent required for external war, but not to the extent which would lead to domestic dissensions. There is no method by which it can be insured that rulers shall desire the good of mankind, and therefore ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... Pugnacity and determination were revealed in the short thick-set figure of John Adams; the round bald head, the firm mouth, the set eyes of the Braintree patriot, gave the idea that he was grimly and terribly in earnest. Square-headed old Roger Sherman was another ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... contest, tug of war. naval engagement, naumachia[obs3], sea fight. duel, duello[It]; single combat, monomachy[obs3], satisfaction, passage d'armes[Fr], passage of arms, affair of honor; triangular duel; hostile meeting, digladiation[obs3]; deeds of arms, feats of arms; appeal to arms &c. (warfare) 722. pugnacity; combativeness &c. adj.; bone of contention &c. 713. V. contend; contest, strive, struggle, scramble, wrestle; spar, square; exchange blows, exchange fisticuffs; fib|!, justle[obs3], tussle, tilt, box, stave, fence; skirmish; pickeer[obs3]; fight &c. (war) 722; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... processes in the young; but when I see how quickly and completely the condition of a patient may be changed, and all cloudy, depressed conditions of the brain removed,—how easily I can produce a state of insanity, idiocy, or pugnacity, and as quickly remove it entirely,—I cannot doubt that a little perseverance in cultivating the nobler qualities until they become by habit a second nature will change even the most depraved, if the process be begun in childhood or youth and steadily ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... hypnotism we find the promise of a possibility of superseding old inherent instincts by new suggestions, grafting upon or replacing the inherited fixed ideas. Very much indeed of what we call moral education, he said, is such an artificial modification and perversion of instinct; pugnacity is trained into courageous self-sacrifice, and suppressed sexuality into religious emotion. And the great difference between man and monkey is in the larynx, he continued,—in the incapacity to frame delicately different ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... Antwerp. Locke or Dugald Stewart, indeed, had they been cognizant of the tailor's triumph, might have illustrated the principle on which he succeeded—as to ourselves, we can only conjecture it. Our own opinion is, that they were both animated with a congenial spirit. Biddy was the very pink of pugnacity, and could throw in a body blow, or plant a facer, with singular energy and science. Her prowess hitherto had, we confess, been displayed only within the limited range of domestic life; but should she ever ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... were not restored in the palace of Meneptah. The unrest that precedes a national crisis had developed into irritability and pugnacity. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... least like his father when he came racing home from school, hair tousled, books dangling from a strap. Tommy would raid the pantry with unthinking zest, invite other boys in to look at the Westerns on TV, and trade black eyes for marbles with a healthy pugnacity. ...
— The Calm Man • Frank Belknap Long
... more complex original tendencies such as sucking, chewing, sitting up, and gurgling. Among the more general unlearned responses of children are fear, anger, pugnacity, envy, jealousy, curiosity, constructiveness, love of festivities, ceremonies and ordeals, sociability and shyness, secretiveness, etc. Thorndike, who quotes this list at length, has sought to give definiteness to its descriptions by clearly defining ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... but a German shipping millionaire from Bremen—was coming down, with an "expert." Hang the expert! Falloden, who was to deal with the business, promised himself not to be intimidated by him, or his like; and amid his general distress and depression, his natural pugnacity took pleasure in the thought of wrestling ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... assertive when threatened. He will fight to the last gasp to keep what he really does not want very much, if only he supposes that his enemy wishes to take a bit of it. It was in that spirit of pugnacity that he stretched a large muscular hand over the whole map of Australia, and defied his foes to touch it. Before the great struggle it would have been quite possible to think of colonising schemes in the southern hemisphere without seriously contemplating the danger ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... dinner abstractedly, and responded only in monosyllables to her sweet attempts at conversation. The fact was that the day had been a perplexing one; he was engaged in one of his big fights, a scheme that aroused all his pugnacity and taxed all his resources. He would win—of course; he would smash everybody, but he would win. When he was in this mood Carmen felt that she was like a daisy in the path of a cyclone. In the first year of their marriage he used to consult her about all his schemes, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... him. Then there had come to be that famous war between Great Britain and the republic of Patagonia, and Hugh Stanbury had been sent out as a special correspondent by the editor and proprietor of the Daily Record. His letters had been much read, and had called up a great deal of newspaper pugnacity. He had made important statements which had been flatly denied, and found to be utterly false; which again had been warmly reasserted and proved to be most remarkably true to the letter. In this way the correspondence, and he as its author, became so much talked about that, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... English literature. Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam concentrated into an immortal poignancy all the dark and drifting hedonism of our time. Of the literary splendour of that work it would be merely banal to speak; in few other of the books of men has there been anything so combining the gay pugnacity of an epigram with the vague sadness of a song. But of its philosophical, ethical, and religious influence which has been almost as great as its brilliancy, I should like to say a word, and that word, I confess, one of uncompromising hostility. There ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... but the energetic, the self-asserting, the aggressive. Nor will mere passive strength of will prevent subjection; for how often do we see a spirit, whose only prominent characteristic is a restless and tireless pugnacity, hold in complete subserviency those who are far superior in actual strength of mind, purely through the apathy of the latter, and their indisposition to live in a state of constant effort! It is because this petty domineering temper is found much oftener in women than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... constituted, the sphere of morality, destined, who knows how soon, to include the whole of mankind in one beneficent alliance, began with what Professor McDougal has called "the replacement of individual by collective pugnacity." The first clear stage in this progress is the tribe or clan, the smallest organised community, sometimes no larger than the self-contained village or camp, which can still be found in the wild parts of the earth. Tribe against tribe is the formula ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... feeling. Their aspect thus becomes the recognised expression for the feeling which really accompanies it. So in hand-to-hand fighting: the intention and passion which each imputes to the other is what he himself feels; but the imputation is probably just, since pugnacity is a remarkably contagious and monotonous passion. It is awakened by the slightest hostile suggestion and is greatly intensified by example and emulation; those we fight against and those we fight with arouse it concurrently and the universal ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... His mind was in a mingled condition of amazement and satisfaction at his escape, triumph at the success of his plan, and indignation at the cowardly wickedness of the savages. A rollicking species of mad pugnacity took possession of him, and the consequence was, that the sounds which issued from his leathern throat ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... up their lodgings, and not with weapons to fight; so I like better that entry of truth which cometh peaceably with chalk to mark up those minds which are capable to lodge and harbour it, than that which cometh with pugnacity and contention. ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... a change began to come over Jim. He left his younger brothers in unhectored peace. He had not much to say, but ever he watched Andy from the corner of a jealous eye, and listened for him to speak. All his pugnacity was engaged in what seemed to be a profitless struggle with the speech of the grammar. "I will larn it yet," he repeated over and over. And even while the words were in his mouth, if he had had less obstinacy in his make-up, he would have yielded himself to despair. ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... The popular idea of the Mina, Mr. Crooke remarks, [268] is quite in accordance with his historical character; his niggardliness is shown in the saying, 'The Meo will not give his daughter in marriage till he gets a mortar full of silver'; his pugnacity is expressed in, 'The Meo's son begins to avenge his feuds when he is twelve years old'; and his toughness in, 'Never be sure that a Meo is dead till you see the third-day ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Senator Fields of New York quietly left his seat and came to me. He was a most devoted servant of Tammany, but was what was known in those days as a War Democrat. His native pugnacity caused him to feel that the struggle must be fought out, whereas Democrats of a more philosophic sort, like Allaben, known in those days as "Copperheads,'' sought peace at any price. Therefore it was that, while Senator Allaben was pouring out with the deepest ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... natural pugnacity was always easily aroused, returned the compliment with the most evident sincerity; but the Borzoi, having flung down the gage of battle and asserted her dignity, retired gracefully from the contest, ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... physical strength, and still agile and lithe for his age; but his hair was an ugly straw colour and his clean-shorn, pale face lacked any sort of distinction save an indication of moral purpose, character, and pugnacity. It was a face well suited to his own requirements, for he could disguise it easily; but it was not a face calculated to charm or challenge any woman—a ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... the faintest hint of any speculation, and the figures flowed from him by the page. A lively imagination and a ready though inaccurate memory supplied his data; he delivered himself with an inimitable heat that made him seem the picture of pugnacity; lavished contradiction; had a form of words, with or without significance, for every form of criticism; and the looker-on alternately smiled at his simplicity and fervour, or was amazed by his unexpected shrewdness. He was ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... all-soothing medium of a mint-julep, transpose himself from a mass of passion and bad English into a child of perfect equanimity? If not, perhaps you have witnessed in our halls of Congress the sudden transition through which some of our Carolina members pass from a state of stupidity to a state of pugnacity? (We refer only to those members who do their own "stumping," and as a natural consequence, get into Congress through abuse of the North, bad whiskey, and a profusion of promises to dissolve the Union.) ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... William Cobbett, who signed himself Peter Porcupine, adopting for his literary alias a nickname bestowed by his enemies. This remarkable writer, who, like Paine, figured in the political conflicts of two nations, must have come into the world bristling with pugnacity. A more thorough game-cock never crowed in the pit. He had been a private in the English army, came to the United States about 1790, and taught French to Americans, and English to Frenchmen, (to Talleyrand among others,) until 1794, when the dogmatic Dr. Priestley arrived ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... thread of connection may be established between the second and third proverbs. The latter, like the former, commends peacefulness and condemns pugnacity. Men talk of 'glory' as the warrior's meed, and the so-called Christian world has not got beyond the semi-barbarous stage which regards 'honour' as mainly secured by fighting. But this ancient proverb-maker had learned ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... justice which he really deserved, there was in him as much of love for Elise as his nature was capable of harbouring for any one outside himself. He looked upon her as his own, and he was defending this idea of possession with the same pugnacity that he would protect his dollars from a thief. Morrison had been forced to the conclusion that Elise was lost to him. Hitherto Firmstone had been an impersonal obstacle in his path. Now—The eyes narrowed ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... an unlucky aptitude for saying the wrong word or keeping silence when speech was demanded. With the men of his acquaintance he could relieve his sense of awkwardness and deficiency by becoming aggressive; in fact, he had a reputation for cantankerousness, for pugnacity, which kept most of his equals in some awe of him, and to perceive this was one solace amid many discontents. Nicely dressed and well-spoken and good-looking women above the class of domestic servants he worshipped from afar, and only in vivacious moments pictured ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... own window, was Mr. Philip Bommaney, recently self-entitled the 'Solitary of Gable Inn.' He was eight-and-twenty years of age or thereabouts, a broad-shouldered, deep-chested, manly-looking fellow, with curling brown hair, and a face expressive of pugnacity, good-humour, and many capacities. He was a little weary now, after a long day of satisfactory work. He watched the mounting shadows, and listened to the weird gamut of the wind among the telegraph lines, until the outer voices made his own dull room seem homely. One ruddy tongue ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... she pleased Cedric Bloxam quite so well. She insisted upon his standing for the county. Bloxam demurred at first, and, as usual, in the end Lady Mary had her own way. He threw himself into the fight with all the pugnacity of his disposition, and, while his blood was up, revelled in the fray. He could speak to the farmers in a blunt homely way, which suited them; and they brought him in as one of the Conservative Members ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... fury. The portion of the Town Guard on duty the previous night had just settled down to slumber when they were obliged to jump out of "bed" and betake themselves in hot haste to their posts. But the Boers were only joking; they retired after an out-of-range demonstration of pugnacity. The citizen soldiers went back to "bed," but ere their winks had totalled forty they were again roused by the sacred goose-cackie of the hooters and again running to their trenches. The scenes in the streets were pretty similar to the pictures of the day before. We waited six hours, in ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... dirge," mumbled this provoking individual, with something about the form of his cheek that being taken by Rachel for a derisive smile, made her exclaim vehemently, "You do not mean to undervalue an action like that in comparison with mere animal pugnacity in an advance." ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be absurd, however, to paint Keats as a man without vitality, without pugnacity, without merriment. His brother declared that "John was the very soul of manliness and courage, and as much like the Holy Ghost as Johnny Keats"—the Johnny Keats who had allowed himself to be "snuffed out by an article." As ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... is, not how he'll look, but how he'll behave. He's a delightful child, of course, but there is a strain of unbridled pugnacity in him that breaks out at times in a really alarming fashion. You may have forgotten the affair of the ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... rising from his knees with an air of reckless pugnacity] I ain't afraid of you. With your Louisa! Louisa! Miss Straker is good enough for you, ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... two or three honest friends of mine—and true friends, I know, they are—who, nevertheless, by their fiery pugnacity in my behalf, do put me in fearful hazard of a broken nose or even a total overthrow upon the pavement, and the loss of the treasure which I guard. I pray you, gentlemen, let this fault be amended. Is it decent, think ...
— A Rill From the Town Pump (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... me. I am a peaceable man, Captain Lingard, but when put to it, I could fight as well as any of them flat-nosed chaps we have to make shift with, instead of a proper crew of decent Christians. Fighting!" he went on with unexpected pugnacity of tone, "Fighting! If anybody comes to fight me, he will find ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... trying to humiliate me," said D'Artagnan, in whom his native pugnacity began to speak louder than his peaceful resolutions. "I come from Gascony, it is true; and since you know it, there is no need to tell you that Gascons are not very patient, so that when they have asked pardon once, even for a folly, they think they have done at least as much again as ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... and had a good time, being more hampered by the curiosity of the unattached fish than by the pugnacity of those under our immediate attention. So we killed three, and by preconcerted signal warned the watchers on the lofty points ashore of our success. As speedily as possible off came four boats from the shore stations, and hooked on to two of our fish, while we were ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... disregarded refinements of speech. The word culture, for instance, is marked by him [c-]ul'ture, while in the latest edition it appears as [c-][)u]lt'[u]re (k[)u]lt'y[u:]r). He had a few antipathies, as to the tsh sound then fashionable in such words as tumult, and with a certain native pugnacity he attacked the orthoepists who at that time had elaborated their system more than had the orthographists; he did not believe that nice shades of sound could be represented to the eye by characters, and he appears to have been ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... now chanced at a week-end to see him board the Manchester express at Euston would have been able to predict from his appearance that he would leave the train at Knype. He was an undersized man, with a combative and suspicious face. He regarded the world with crafty pugnacity from beneath frowning eyebrows. His expression said: "Woe betide the being who tries to get the better of me!" His expression said: "Keep off!" His expression said: "I am that I am. Take me or leave me, but preferably leave me. I loathe fuss, pretence, flourishes—any ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... thousand pities if the coming of Peace had deprived us of anything so cheerfully stimulating as the tales of "SAPPER" (CYRIL MCNEILE). His Bull-Dog Drummond (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) shows all the old breathless invention as active as ever, while the pugnacity—to give it no stronger term—is wholly unrestrained, even by what might seem the unpromising atmosphere of Godalming in 1919. It would, of course, be utterly beyond my scope to give in barest outline any list of the wild and whirling events that begin when Captain Hugh Drummond selects ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... walls for the Bridal city of Science, in which no man will care to identify the particular stones he lays, rather than complying farther with the existing picturesque, but wasteful, practice of every knight to throw up a feudal tower of his own opinions, tenable only by the most active pugnacity, and pierced rather with arrow-slits from which to annoy his neighbours, than windows to admit light ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... rest,—what is the business of "the rest" to be? Naturally, according to the existing state of things, one supposes they are to belong to some of the gentlemanly professions; to be soldiers, lawyers, doctors, or clergymen. But alas, I shall not want any soldiers of special skill or pugnacity. All my boys will be soldiers. So far from wanting any lawyers, of the kind that live by talking, I shall have the strongest possible objection to their appearance in the country. For doctors, I shall always entertain a profound respect; but when I get my athletic education fairly established, ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... love and war connected that not only is individual pugnacity greatly increased at the period of sexual maturity, when animals acquire or develop horns, fangs, claws, spurs, and weapons of offense and defense, but a new spirit of organization arises which makes teams possible or more permanent. Football, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... down the upper scaffolding of the steadily rising walls, or down below on the ground in front of his men, his hands behind his back, his face screwed into a quizzical expression, his whole body bearing a look of bristling content and pugnacity which was too delicious for words. Since things were going especially well he could not say much, but still he could look his contentiousness, and did. Even now he would occasionally manage to pick a quarrel with some lusty mason or other, which resulted in the customary ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... once more, and immediately Dandy, in order to gratify his master, gave him a pretty smart blow upon the end of his nose. He hoped this would satisfy the grumbler, and bring the sport to a happy termination. As usual, the blow excited the pugnacity of Master Archy; and setting the rules of the art at defiance, he rushed upon his companion with all the impetuosity of ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... For though it certainly is amusing to hear of a kingdom no bigger than Stirlingshire with the half of Perthshire, standing erect and maintaining perpetual war with all the rest of Scotland, a little nucleus of pugnacity, sixty miles by twenty-four, rather more than a match for the lazy lubber, nine hundred miles long, that dandled it in its arms; yet, as the trick was done, we cease to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... The baiting of Jews, the hunting of Albigenses and Waldenses, the stoning of Quakers and ducking of Methodists, the murdering of Mormons and the massacring of Armenians, express much rather that aboriginal human neophobia, that pugnacity of which we all share the vestiges, and that inborn hatred of the alien and of eccentric and non-conforming men as aliens, than they express the positive piety of the various perpetrators. Piety ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... card played, fell back beaten, every vestige of optimistic pugnacity gone from his face. Edgington laid his hand on ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... of ornament and of merchandise, and stimulate in them the worst conditions of pugnacity, bigotry, and rapine. That is the broad geographical and political relation of races. Next, you must consider ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... from his own rather folded and subtilised countenance, her little lithe figure, when he and most of the Forsytes were tall. And he would dwell on the origin of species, and debate whether she might be Danish or Celtic. Celtic, he thought, from her pugnacity, and her taste in fillets and djibbahs. It was not too much to say that he preferred her to the Age with which she was surrounded, youthful though, for the greater part, it was. She took, however, too much interest in his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... for long years of persecution at the hands of Europeans. "It is a fact that all our more pernicious weeds, like our vermin, are of Old-World origin," says.John Burroughs. "...Perhaps the most notable thing about them, when compared with our native species, is their persistence, not to say pugnacity. They fight for the soil; they plant colonies here and there, and will not be rooted out. Our native weeds are for the most part shy and harmless, and retreat before civilization.... We have hardly a weed ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... references; if they were all left, such was the man's temper, they would not represent one hundredth part of what he suffered, for he was never given to complaint. But indeed he had met this ugly trifle, as he met every thwart circumstance of life, with a certain pleasure of pugnacity; and suffered it not to check him, whether in the exercise of his profession ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... haut-de-chausses, trousses, gregues, culottes, pantalons, &c. These wandering people had other reasons for preferring the short and close-fitting garments to those which were long and full, and these were their innate pugnacity, which forced them ever to be under arms, their habit of dwelling in forests and thickets, their love of the chase, and their custom of ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... that time that Belfast's devotion—and also his pugnacity—secured universal respect. He spent every moment of his spare time in Jimmy's cabin. He tended him, talked to him; was as gentle as a woman, as tenderly gay as an old philanthropist, as sentimentally ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... jest. There could not be a better spirit in which to face the long delays and the bitter disappointments of the war. Two outstanding features in their character are, to my mind, practically universal, whatever form they happen to take. An inherent pugnacity, and a whole-hearted belief in and love of their county, which amounts to something more than clannishness. They know everything about every one in Northumberland, and with others they do not trouble themselves much. They do not talk about ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... invited all hands down to their boat for a dance, and by flaring torches to the notes of accordion and fiddle, the evening would pass in rude and harmless jollity, unless too many tin cups or gourds of fiery liquor excited the always ready pugnacity of the men. They were ready to brag of their valor, and to put their boasts to the test. They were "half horse, half alligator," according to their own favorite expression, equally prepared with knife or pistol, fist, or the trained ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... the 'Society for Constitutional Information,' of which Major Cartwright—afterwards the revered, but rather tiresome, patriarch of the Radicals—was called the 'father.' Horne Tooke (as he was now named), by these and other exhibitions of boundless pugnacity, became a leader among the middle-class Whigs, who found their main support among London citizens, such as Beckford, Troutbeck and Oliver; supported them in his later days; and after the American war, preferred Pitt, as an advocate of parliamentary reform, to Fox, the favourite ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... should have failed to give adequate support to our allies. The cause is not selfishness but ignorance and want of imagination; and what have we done to tap the sources of an intelligent patriotism? We are being saved not by the reasoned conviction of the populace, but by its native pugnacity and bull-dog courage. This is not the place to go into details about English studies; but can anyone doubt that they could be made the basis of a far better education than we now give in our schools? We have especially to remember that there is a real danger of the ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... part of the day's hunt; lay down side by side under one blanket, with the upturned canoe partially covering them; dreamed at first of Okematan, gazing in wonder at their load, and, afterwards, of being knocked head over heels by an enormous grey goose whose persistent pugnacity was only equalled by its strange incapacity ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... Zealand a line on the map, and left it an Archipelago, a feat which many generations of her colonists will value above the shaping of sentences. The feature of his experiences which most strikes the reader now, is the extraordinary courage and pugnacity of the natives. They took the Endeavour for a gigantic white-winged sea-bird, and her pinnace for a young bird. They thought the sailors gods, and the discharge of their muskets divine thunderbolts. Yet, when Cook and a boat's crew landed, a defiant war-chief at once threatened ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... "Yes, yes, my pugnacity costs me very dear sometimes. But to our story. As soon as Bartja had opened his eyes, Gyges sent me off to Sardis to fetch a good physician and an easy travelling-carriage. That ride won't so soon be imitated. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... wrong in trying to humiliate me," said D'Artagnan, in whom his native pugnacity began to speak louder than his peaceful resolutions. "I come from Gascony, it is true; and since you know it, there is no need to tell you that Gascons are not very patient, so that when they have asked pardon once, even for a folly, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... struggles with the leaders of the Rebellion and admired his courage during the war, when, as Governor of Tennessee, he reorganized that state upon a loyal basis. The defect of his character was his unreasoning pugnacity. He early became involved in wordy warfare with Sumner, Wade, Stevens and others. In his high position he could have disregarded criticism, but this was not the habit of Johnson. When assailed he fought, and could be ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the steadily rising walls, or down below on the ground in front of his men, his hands behind his back, his face screwed into a quizzical expression, his whole body bearing a look of bristling content and pugnacity which was too delicious for words. Since things were going especially well he could not say much, but still he could look his contentiousness, and did. Even now he would occasionally manage to pick a quarrel with some lusty mason or other, which resulted in the customary descent ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... a boy. He was densely packed with pugnacity. He lived for ever on the extreme slope of a fight, down which he slid at a word, a nod, a wink, into strenuous and bloodthirsty warfare. He was never seen without a black eye, a bruised lip, or something wrong with his ear. He ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... synagogue, if they did not share my ardent affection for him, they all, with one exception, liked him. The exception was a middle-aged little Talmudist with a tough little beard who held everybody in terror by his violent temper and pugnacity. He was a pious man, but his piety never manifested itself with such genuine fervor as when he exposed the impiety of others. He was forever picking quarrels, forever challenging people to debate with him, forever offering to show that their interpretation of this passage or that was all wrong. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... myself when overcome by wine—had once or twice a pretty difficult trial, but on my making an apology, I always found Johnson behave to me with the most friendly gentleness. In fact, Johnson was not severe, but he was pugnacious, and this pugnacity and roughness he displayed most conspicuously in conversation. He could not brook appearing to be worsted in argument, even when, to show the force and dexterity of his talents, he had taken the wrong side. When, therefore, he perceived that his opponent gained ground, he had recourse ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... had been driven in and men were pouring through; of how there he made such pandemonium with his whistle that men tumbled back and ran about blindly seeking for guidance; of how in the long run his pugnacity mastered him, so that he engaged in combat with an unknown figure and the two rolled into what had once been a fountain. I would hymn Peter Paterson, who across tracts of darkness engaged Old Bill in a conversation which would ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... those who, twenty years ago, feared that Roosevelt's projects were inspired by innate pugnacity which he could not outgrow. Now, in this year of his death, I recognize that he was right, and I believe that there is no one, on whom the lesson of the Atrocious War has not been lost, who does not believe in his gospel of military training, both for its value ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... its real leaders are not the merely intelligent, educated, and good, but the energetic, the self-asserting, the aggressive. Nor will mere passive strength of will prevent subjection; for how often do we see a spirit, whose only prominent characteristic is a restless and tireless pugnacity, hold in complete subserviency those who are far superior in actual strength of mind, purely through the apathy of the latter, and their indisposition to live in a state of constant effort! It ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... creeds. He has the healthful intolerance of strong conviction. He is too good a partisan to admit that there may be another side to the question which might be worth considering. With magnificent ruthlessness he plunges ahead, and with a truly old Norse pugnacity he stands in the thick of the fight, rejoicing in battle. Only combat arouses his Titanic energy and calls all his splendid faculties ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... this continual and pretty accompaniment to life was deep. The woman's quietism and piety passed on to his different nature undiminished; but whereas in her it was a native sentiment, in him it was only an implanted dogma. Nature and the child's pugnacity at times revolted. A cad from the Potterrow once struck him in the mouth; he struck back, the pair fought it out in the back stable lane towards the Meadows, and Archie returned with a considerable decline in the number of ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... importance; but for one reason or other they do not derive from the schools that had dominated this epoch as such. Thus Thompson, the author of The City of Dreadful Night, was a fine poet; but his pessimism combined with a close pugnacity does not follow any of the large but loose lines of the Swinburnian age. But he was a great person—he knew how to be democratic in the dark. Thus Coventry Patmore was a much greater person. He was bursting with ideas, like Browning—and truer ideas as a rule. He ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... precedents was unrivaled, for it began in 1833 with the first reformed Parliament, and it seemed as fresh for those remote days as for last month. He enjoyed combat for its own sake, not so much from any inborn pugnacity, for he was not disputatious in ordinary conversation, as because it called out his fighting force and stimulated his whole nature. "I am never nervous in reply," he once said, "though I am sometimes nervous in opening a debate." And although ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... have illustrated the principle on which he succeeded; as to ourselves, we can only conjecture it. Our own opinion is that they were both animated with a congenial spirit. Biddy was the very pink of pugnacity, and could throw in a body-blow or plant a facer with singular energy and science. Her prowess hitherto had, we confess, been displayed only within the limited range of domestic life; but should she ever find it necessary to exercise it upon a larger scale, there was ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... should produce another Milton than another Shakespeare. He said reading poetry was the next to the greatest pleasure he had in life—the greatest was little children. These refined and amiable tastes are not what the common world would attribute to Bright, who is better known for determination and pugnacity. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... spiritual world is a matter of life and death to multitudes of folk to-day. There could hardly be a more alluring time in which to make the Holy Spirit real to the world. For the supreme moral asset in any man's life is not his aggressiveness nor his pugnacity, but his capacity to be inspired—to be inspired by great books, great music, by love and friendship; to be inspired by great faiths, great hopes, great ideals; to be inspired supremely by the ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... "Pet" hereafter. Terms being settled and agreement signed, the lawyers fell to at the linked sweetness of deducing title. The abstract of the Yordas title was nearly as big as the parish Bible, so in and out had their dealings been, and so intricate their pugnacity. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... second character, his success was not remarkable, the principal results being a spear-thrust in the head, and being generally told to read his books and leave men alone. Yet he is always doing good "lillah," that is to say, gratis and for Allah's sake: his pugnacity and bluntness—the prerogatives of the "peaceful"—gave him some authority over the Amir, and he has often been employed on political missions amongst the different chiefs. Nor has his ardour for propagandism been thoroughly gratified. He commenced ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... Tartar judge extorted rich presents from both of the appellants and settled the question by leaving it entirely unsettled, ordering them both to go home. They separated like two boys who have been found quarreling, and who have both been soundly whipped for their pugnacity. In the autumn of the year 1303 an assembly of the Russian princes was convened at Pereiaslavle, to which congress the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... point I have been agreeing. In differing from them, however, I wish to proceed with the utmost caution and diffidence. The smallness of my own acquaintance with the disciplines of natural science is ever before my mind, and I am fearful of doing these disciplines an injustice. The ability and pugnacity of the partisans of natural science make them formidable persons to contradict. The tone of tentative inquiry, which befits a being of dim faculties and bounded knowledge, is the tone I would wish to take and not to depart from. At present it seems to me, that those who are for ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... of Tilsit the British troops which had once been so anxiously expected by the Czar landed in the island of Ruegen. The struggle in which they were intended to take their part was over. Sweden alone remained in arms; and even the Quixotic pugnacity of King Gustavus was unable to save Stralsund from a speedy capitulation. But the troops of Great Britain were not destined to return without striking a blow. The negotiations between Napoleon and Alexander had scarcely begun, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... that famous war between Great Britain and the republic of Patagonia, and Hugh Stanbury had been sent out as a special correspondent by the editor and proprietor of the Daily Record. His letters had been much read, and had called up a great deal of newspaper pugnacity. He had made important statements which had been flatly denied, and found to be utterly false; which again had been warmly reasserted and proved to be most remarkably true to the letter. In this way the correspondence, and he as its author, became so much talked about that, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... we see that mere instinctive curiosity, pugnacity, and honor may make life on a purely naturalistic basis seem worth living from day to day to men who have cast away all metaphysics in order to get rid of hypochondria, but who are resolved to owe nothing as yet to religion ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... into politics, and then Mr. Grey, an eager politician, would throw back his head, and talk with more sparkle and rapidity, flashing occasionally into grim humour which seemed to throw light on the innate strength and pugnacity of the peasant and Puritan breed from which he sprang. Nothing could be more unlike the inspired philosopher, the mystic surrounded by an adoring school, whom Robert had been picturing to himself in his walk up to the house, through the soft ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... danger passed into a jest. There could not be a better spirit in which to face the long delays and the bitter disappointments of the war. Two outstanding features in their character are, to my mind, practically universal, whatever form they happen to take. An inherent pugnacity, and a whole-hearted belief in and love of their county, which amounts to something more than clannishness. They know everything about every one in Northumberland, and with others they do not trouble themselves much. They do not talk about it like the Scots, ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... spirited face, so different from his own rather folded and subtilised countenance, her little lithe figure, when he and most of the Forsytes were tall. And he would dwell on the origin of species, and debate whether she might be Danish or Celtic. Celtic, he thought, from her pugnacity, and her taste in fillets and djibbahs. It was not too much to say that he preferred her to the Age with which she was surrounded, youthful though, for the greater part, it was. She took, however, too much interest in his teeth, for he still had some of those natural ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... strife rushing on like a meteor. He raised the waxed end of his pipe, and with an authoritative motion of his head at the same time, pointed out the case to a man in a donkey-cart, who looked behind, saw pugnacity upon wheels, and manoeuvred a docile and wonderfully pretty-stepping little donkey in such a manner that the cabman was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Berosus (Josephus, Ant. I. 7, 2, and II. 9, 2) was skilful in the celestial science. He notices the Akrana-Zamn (endless Time) of the Guebres, and the working dual, Hormuzd and Ahriman. He brands the God of the Hebrews with pugnacity and cruelty. He has heard of the beautiful creations of Greek fancy which, not attributing a moral nature to the deity, included Theology in Physics; and which, like Professor Tyndall, seemed to consider all matter ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... poem is a feature which puts it with a few others apart from the bulk of Chesterton's poems. Even as bellicosity and orthodoxy are two of the brightest threads which run through the whole texture of his work, so Poems of Pugnacity (as Ella Wheeler Wilcox would say) and religious verses constitute the largest part of the poetic works of G.K.C. His first book of verses—after Greybeards at Play—The Wild Knight contained a bloodthirsty poem about the Battle of Gibeon, written ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... upon, insomuch that he became a confirmed grievance-monger and hunter-up of abuses. The magnates of the county began to look coldly upon him, and even, in some instances, to array themselves in open opposition to him. This only tended still further to arouse the native pugnacity of his disposition, and his attacks upon local abuses and those who upheld them became more and more violent. Now, in all this there can be no doubt that Mr. Gourlay was from first to last chiefly actuated by genuine philanthropy. He certainly had ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... blarneyfests put up by a dozen frats, and landing the bunch in a crowd that it had never heard of two weeks before, is as bad as trying to herd a bunch of whales into a fishpond with nothing but hot air for gads. It took diplomacy, pugnacity and psychological moments, I tell you; and it took more: it took ingenuity and inventiveness and cheek and second sight and cool heads in time of trouble and long heads on the job, from daybreak to daybreak. ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... expression of everything, is a perfect example of the conservation of energy. It is very difficult to come to the end of him. Add to this unimaginative, practical, tenacious moderation an inherent spirit of competition—not to say pugnacity—so strong that it will often show through the coating of his "Live and let live," half-surly, half-good-humored manner; add a peculiar, ironic, "don't care" sort of humor; an underground but inveterate humaneness, and an ashamed idealism—and you get some notion of the pudding ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... displayed in compassing the destruction of the unsuspecting porker was only equalled, when he was caught flagrante delicto, by the ingenuity of his excuses. According to the Confederate private, the most inoffensive animals, in the districts through which the armies marched, developed a strange pugnacity, and if bullet and bayonet were used against them, it ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... minds, what opinions and manners they are of. In this view it becomes of no mean importance to notice and record the strangest ignorance, the most putid fables, impertinent, trifling, ridiculous disputes, and more ridiculous pugnacity in the defence and retention of the subjects disputed." (Publisher's preface to the reader in ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... as we know there is no reason why in the future these creatures should not increase in size and terrestrial capacity. In the past we have the evidence of the fossil Paradoxides that creatures of this kind may at least attain a length of six feet, and, considering their intense pugnacity, a crab of such dimensions would be as formidable a creature as one could well imagine. And their amphibious capacity would give them an advantage against us such as at present is only to be found in the case of the alligator or crocodile. If we imagine a shark ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... time that Belfast's devotion—and also his pugnacity—secured universal respect. He spent every moment of his spare time in Jimmy's cabin. He tended him, talked to him; was as gentle as a woman, as tenderly gay as an old philanthropist, as sentimentally careful of his nigger as a model slave-owner. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... fighting," said the advocate for such wholesale pugnacity, "since it calls for quite as much courage sometimes to face one woman as it does to face three men. But what I mean that you should do with her is to up and at her. Put the downright question like ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... previously, and had denuded all the wealthy and charitable families of their plate and jewels. Indeed Verronax shrank from the treasure of the Church being thus applied. Columba might indeed weep for him exultingly as a martyr, but, as he well knew, martyrs do not begin as murderers, and passion, pugnacity, and national hatred had been uppermost with him. It was the hap of war, and he was ready to take it patiently, and prepare himself for death as a brave Christian man, but not a hero or a martyr; and there was little hope either that ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... found on the Atlantic coast of North America. It is a species remarkable for its pugnacity during the mating season; in size and appearance it is about like the Upland Plover, with the exception of the "ruff" which adorns the neck and breast of ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... hands of Europeans. "It is a fact that all our more pernicious weeds, like our vermin, are of Old-World origin," says.John Burroughs. "...Perhaps the most notable thing about them, when compared with our native species, is their persistence, not to say pugnacity. They fight for the soil; they plant colonies here and there, and will not be rooted out. Our native weeds are for the most part shy and harmless, and retreat before civilization.... We have hardly a weed ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... generally, except the tendency to greater pugnacity shown by the male towards other males, and the greater solicitude for the young shown generally by the female form, but not always; the psychic differences between the two sex forms are not great. Between the male and female pointer as puppies, there is as little difference in mental activity ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... said the trumpet-major. It was easy enough on the night of the arrival, in the midst of excitement, when blood was warm, for Anne to be resolute in her avoidance of Bob Loveday. But in the morning determination is apt to grow invertebrate; rules of pugnacity are less easily acted up to, and a feeling of live and let live takes possession of the gentle soul. Anne had not meant even to sit down to the same breakfast-table with Bob; but when the rest were assembled, and had got some way through the substantial repast which ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... who was brought up to look upon justice as the first of political virtues, used to wonder wistfully whether such fearlessness could be achieved by one whose face at present showed none of those characteristics of force, strength, and pugnacity manifested in the portraits of the great commoner. But he found comfort in the reflection that "Dada," mirror of all the virtues, was yet quite mild and almost insignificant in appearance; a small, stout, dapper, very clean-looking little tradesman, with trim white whiskers, a bald head, and a round, ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... Ownership Shyness Love Constructiveness Secretiveness Curiosity Love of approbation The ambitious impulses: Imitation, Emulation, Pride, Ambition, Pugnacity ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... not restored in the palace of Meneptah. The unrest that precedes a national crisis had developed into irritability and pugnacity. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... readily and well. And knowing that no Pathan would demean himself by being servant to a man of no account, they will more readily respect you, although you are neither Sikh nor yet Pathan but are supposed to be a Punjabi Mussulman. Therefore, sahib, you must take a middle course between peace and pugnacity, pretending on the one hand to restrain my quarrelsomeness, yet on the other depending for safety on my readiness to take offense—as a man who is accustomed to ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... almost always the wooers; and they alone are armed with special weapons for fighting with their rivals. They are generally stronger and larger than the females, and are endowed with the requisite qualities of courage and pugnacity. They are provided, either exclusively or in a much higher degree than the females, with organs for vocal or instrumental music, and with odoriferous glands. They are ornamented with infinitely diversified ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... they thought of arming themselves with like weapons, and sought a mechanical agreement upon questions about which no one ever has known, or probably ever can know, anything at all. This was where Luther's pugnacity betrayed him; so that little by little he seems to lose spiritual beauty, as the monk, all fire and intensity, is transformed into the "plump doctor," and again into the bird of ill ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... signed himself Peter Porcupine, adopting for his literary alias a nickname bestowed by his enemies. This remarkable writer, who, like Paine, figured in the political conflicts of two nations, must have come into the world bristling with pugnacity. A more thorough game-cock never crowed in the pit. He had been a private in the English army, came to the United States about 1790, and taught French to Americans, and English to Frenchmen, (to Talleyrand among others,) until 1794, when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... them methods of ornament and of merchandise, and stimulate in them the worst conditions of pugnacity, bigotry, and rapine. That is the broad geographical and political relation of races. Next, you must consider the ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... it was not until the time of St. Columba, late in the sixth century, that a law was passed ordering them to remain in their homes—a fact which alone speaks volumes both for the vigour and the undying pugnacity of the race. ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... represent one hundredth part of what he suffered, for he was never given to complaint. But indeed he had met this ugly trifle, as he met every thwart circumstance of life, with a certain pleasure of pugnacity; and suffered it not to check him, whether in the exercise of his profession or the pursuit ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... No one could draw the people as he could, when it came to that; the sight of him inspired them with a cheerful faith, and gave them endurance, and a fearless pugnacity. And he was so skilled, too, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... his Observations on the Natural History of Bees, avers that the moth called the Sphynx atropos invades and plunders with impunity a hive containing thousands of bees, notwithstanding the watchfulness, pugnacity, and formidable weapons of those insects. To account for this phenomenon, he states that the queen bee has the faculty of emitting a certain sound which instantly strikes the bees motionless; and he conjectures that this burglarious moth, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... school. They talk of the emasculation of the staff as a future danger. They do not seem to talk of their natural reluctance to cede important posts to women, but this must, of course, strengthen their pugnacity and in ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... not with him, Mr. Pugnacity? Come, be quiet,' she added, 'and don't glare. I'll take you too. You know that to my mind now Malevsky's—ugh!' She shook ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... gave origin to those which have been respectively called by us chausses, haut-de-chausses, trousses, gregues, culottes, pantalons, &c. These wandering people had other reasons for preferring the short and close-fitting garments to those which were long and full, and these were their innate pugnacity, which forced them ever to be under arms, their habit of dwelling in forests and thickets, their love of the chase, and their custom of ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... of the General; and when, upon one or two occasions, he had quarrelled with Peter or Dirk, those gentlemen had displayed so much pugnacity that Dinny had prudently resolved to quarrel with them no more. He, however, made up for this by pouring out his virulence upon Coffee and Chicory, the dogs having been too much for him; and the Zulu boys bore it all in silence, but evidently meant to remember Dinny's behaviour when ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... clenched fist of fearful dimensions, that in color and protuberances bore a good deal of resemblance to a freshly unearthed Jerusalem artichoke. Its sinews seemed to be cracking with tension, and the whole knob was so expressive of intense pugnacity that my eyes involuntarily sought its owner's face. I had unconsciously taken my seat directly opposite a man whose stature was nearly double that of the compact, bustling sputtering, and sturdy little fellows who were bawling on every side of us, and whose skinny lips, instead of joining in ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... surroundings,—the hillocky, sloping pastures, and the shadowy solemnity of the forest. Moreover, he perceived, in his dim way, a kind of mastery in this heavy-booted, homespun-clad, tobacco-chewing, grave-eyed man from the backwoods, and for a long time he felt none of his usual pugnacity. But by and by the craving for freedom began to stir in his breast, and the blood of his hill-roving ancestors thrilled toward the wild pastures. The glances which, from time to time, he cast upon the backwoodsman at the other end of the rope became wary, calculating, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... all the highest qualities in the reciter. Even in Pulci, accordingly, we find no parody, strictly speaking, of chivalry, nearly humour of his paladins at times approaches it. By their side stands the ideal of pugnacity—the droll and jovial Morgante—who masters whole armies with his bellclapper, and who is himself thrown into relief by contrast with the grotesque and most interesting monster Margutte. Yet Pulci lays no special stress on these two rough and ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... predominance over woman in size, strength, courage, pugnacity, and even energy was acquired in primeval times, and that these advantages have been subsequently augmented chiefly through the contests between men for women. Even man's intellectual vigour and inventiveness are probably due ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... am so glad to see you,' replied Job Trotter, gradually releasing Mr. Weller, as the first symptoms of his pugnacity disappeared. 'Oh, Mr. Walker, this ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... battle, engagement, struggle, encounter, fray, affray, melee, scrimmage (Colloq.); pugnacity, belligerence. Associated words: militant, combative, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... in reference to your former letter that I fully admit that with birds the fighting of the males co-operates with their charms; and I remember quoting Bartlett that gaudy colouring in the males is almost invariably concomitant with pugnacity. But, thank Heaven, what little more I can do in science will be confined to observation on simple points. However much I may have blundered, I have done my best, and that is my ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... the war, Horne became a member of the 'Society for Constitutional Information,' of which Major Cartwright—afterwards the revered, but rather tiresome, patriarch of the Radicals—was called the 'father.' Horne Tooke (as he was now named), by these and other exhibitions of boundless pugnacity, became a leader among the middle-class Whigs, who found their main support among London citizens, such as Beckford, Troutbeck and Oliver; supported them in his later days; and after the American war, preferred Pitt, as an advocate of parliamentary reform, to Fox, the favourite of the aristocratic ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... than the hypothesis of the being of one. Zeal for my master led me to write the book in the days of my youth, but some one stole the copy; and therefore I had no choice whether it should be published or not; the motive, however, of writing, was not the ambition of an elder man, but the pugnacity of a young one. This you do not seem to see, Socrates; though in other respects, as I was saying, your notion ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... ideas of pugnacity, and conceived myself bound to indulge them on the first head and shoulders I should meet. This spirit brought me at once into the thick of the fight, and, before I was well aware of my proximity, I found myself ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... "Shokoe Hill," which overlooked the classic valley of "Butchertown," through the midst of which ran "Shokoe Creek." The boys of this region, from generation to generation, had been renowned for exceeding pugnacity. Between them and the city boys constantly-recurring quarrels were so bitter that sometimes men were drawn in through sympathy with their boys. The law seemed powerless to put an end to ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... Flaherty; as they collided he rushed in and dealt each of them a powerful poke. However, Messrs. Hicks and Flaherty were sizeable persons and while, individually, they were no match for the tremendous Gibney, nevertheless what they lacked in horsepower they made up in pugnacity—and the salt sea seldom breeds a craven. Captain Scraggs thrust a frightened face up through the engine-room hatch, but at sight of the battle royal taking place on the deck aft, his blood turned to water and he thought only of escape. To ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... have been a thousand pities if the coming of Peace had deprived us of anything so cheerfully stimulating as the tales of "SAPPER" (CYRIL MCNEILE). His Bull-Dog Drummond (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) shows all the old breathless invention as active as ever, while the pugnacity—to give it no stronger term—is wholly unrestrained, even by what might seem the unpromising atmosphere of Godalming in 1919. It would, of course, be utterly beyond my scope to give in barest outline any list of the wild and whirling events that begin when Captain ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... in the way of Charles Hadley as he made to follow. There was some pugnacity on her fair face. "It's mighty kind of Mr. Hadley ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... say not!" breathed Teddy, who had considerable pugnacity in his makeup, although not really what you would call ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... down to their boat for a dance, and by flaring torches to the notes of accordion and fiddle, the evening would pass in rude and harmless jollity, unless too many tin cups or gourds of fiery liquor excited the always ready pugnacity of the men. They were ready to brag of their valor, and to put their boasts to the test. They were "half horse, half alligator," according to their own favorite expression, equally prepared with knife or pistol, fist, or the trained thumb that gouged out an antagonist's eye, unless ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... is less than meets the eye. The House of Commons is a Representative Assembly; the rhetoricians and fencers represent the unreason and the pugnacity of the partisans. A country has the politicians it deserves. I have heard the most ignorant girls rage against Mr. Gladstone; damsels in their teens who knew nothing of life or its problems, nor could have studied any question for ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... savage pugnacity one cannot fail to see the secret love of the writer for the uncouth power of his sound-hearted and sound-limbed compatriots. This same love explains the contempt in which Thoma holds the sentimental depiction of parlor peasants which is so often met with in family magazines. He knows no glossing-over, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... begun to recover from his astonishment, had changed his ankus from one hand to the other, and was in the act of drawing his kris, when Peter yelled at him again and made so fierce a thrust with his spear that all the little fellow's pugnacity died out, or, as it were, passed away in ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... ugly-tempered fellow. The more he drank, up to a certain point, the steadier he got on his legs, and the more necessary it seemed for him to fight somebody. The tide of his pugnacity that night took a straight set toward ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... lost my tulip. Undoubtedly, some day or other Gryphus will attack me in a manner painful to my self-respect, or to my love, or even threaten my personal safety. I don't know how it is, but since my imprisonment I feel a strange and almost irresistible pugnacity. Well, I shall get at the throat of that old ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Fear Repulsion Disgust Curiosity Wonder Self-assertion Positive Self-feeling (Elation) Self-abasement Negative Self-feeling (Subjection) Gregariousness Emotion unnamed Acquisition Love of Possession Construction Emotion unnamed Pugnacity Anger Reproductive Instinct Emotion ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... proprietor. Diligence and energy rather than brilliancy distinguished the young Jules in his college career. When his college life ended, he went up to Paris and studied for the Bar. MacMahon's kick roused his pugnacity. He went home, took down an old musket, and joined the insurgents, leading an attack upon some barracks where the fighting was severe. The Revolution having ended in a constitutional monarchy, he went into a lawyer's office, and ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... naumachia[obs3], sea fight. duel, duello[It]; single combat, monomachy[obs3], satisfaction, passage d'armes[Fr], passage of arms, affair of honor; triangular duel; hostile meeting, digladiation[obs3]; deeds of arms, feats of arms; appeal to arms &c. (warfare) 722. pugnacity; combativeness &c. adj.; bone of contention &c. 713. V. contend; contest, strive, struggle, scramble, wrestle; spar, square; exchange blows, exchange fisticuffs; fib|!, justle[obs3], tussle, tilt, box, stave, fence; skirmish; pickeer[obs3]; fight &c. (war) 722; wrangle &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... settled. Scarcely less curious is the case of Mr. Wallace's Malayan orioles, two species of which exactly copy two pugnacious honey-suckers in every detail of plumage and coloration. As the honey-suckers are avoided by birds of prey, owing to their surprising strength and pugnacity, the orioles gain immunity from attack by their close resemblance to the protected species. When Dr. Sclater, the distinguished ornithologist, was examining Mr. Forbes's collections from Timorlaut, even his experienced eye was so taken in by another of these deceptive bird-mimicries that he classified ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... anybody wants to fight me. I am a peaceable man, Captain Lingard, but when put to it, I could fight as well as any of them flat-nosed chaps we have to make shift with, instead of a proper crew of decent Christians. Fighting!" he went on with unexpected pugnacity of tone, "Fighting! If anybody comes to fight me, he will find me all ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... high-featured, often commanding, sometimes remarkable for massive beauty of the Jovian type, and almost invariably distinguished by a fearless, open-eyed frankness, in some instances running into arrogance and pugnacity. I remember one or two elderly men, in particular, whose faces would help an artist to idealize a Lacedaemonian general, or a baron of the Middle Ages. In dress somewhat careless, and wearing usually the last fashion but one, they struck me as less tidy than the same class when I saw it four ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... Culross had been in the penitentiary twenty years. Now, with that worm-eaten heart, he came out into liberty and looked about him for the habiliments with which he had formerly clothed himself,—for hope, self-respect, courage, pugnacity, and industry. ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... upturned canoe partially covering them; dreamed at first of Okematan, gazing in wonder at their load, and, afterwards, of being knocked head over heels by an enormous grey goose whose persistent pugnacity was only equalled by its strange incapacity ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... he could say nothing; the other passengers were in an ecstasy of anticipation; the man himself, a formidable antagonist if he became nasty, waited for the reply with a non-committal expression which might conceal pugnacity and might genuinely have resulted from not hearing and desiring ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... need not be discussed from the logical or historical point of view. They are the utterances of a man made unscrupulous by his desperate circumstances, fighting with boundless pugnacity, ready to strike any blow, fair or foul, so long as it will vex his enemies, and help to sell the Register. His pugnacity alienated all his friends. Not only did Whigs and Tories agree in condemning him, but the Utilitarians hated and despised him, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... fear are feelings that depend upon conditions that seem to be fairly evenly distributed all over the world, and where the virtue of courage in the form of pugnacity is comparatively lacking, as amongst the bulk of the population of India, other forms thereof are met with, such as that wonderful contempt of a painful death by burning which was so often displayed by the widows of that country in following their ancient custom of suttee. The average white ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... much about the pugnacity of the clergy, I would not have it supposed that the Tory laity were slack or backward in political activity. To verbal abuse one soon became case-hardened; but one had also to encounter physical ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... strange bond between the big yellow man and this little green bird. The bird did not suspect it, but the man knew. The pluck, the pugnacity and the individuality of the feathered comrade had been an object lesson to the man, at a time when he had been on the point of ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... we feel any profound interest as to his future. He has compared himself to a dog,—but, on behalf of that faithful and valued companion of man, we protest against the similitude. He has the kind of pugnacity which prompts a cur or a puppy to attack a Newfoundland or a mastiff. He has not the fidelity and many other good qualities of the canine race. At any rate, he has become a mischievous dog,—and a dull dog,—and will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... thought. But Parson John did not perceive this, for Welby listened to that gentleman's eulogies on the Ideal school without troubling himself to contradict them. He had grown too indolent to be combative in conversation, and only as a critic betrayed such pugnacity as remained to him by ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... such processes in the young; but when I see how quickly and completely the condition of a patient may be changed, and all cloudy, depressed conditions of the brain removed,—how easily I can produce a state of insanity, idiocy, or pugnacity, and as quickly remove it entirely,—I cannot doubt that a little perseverance in cultivating the nobler qualities until they become by habit a second nature will change even the most depraved, if the process be begun in childhood or youth and steadily maintained, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... in the lean lithe figure; but it was always brute strength. There was no moral strength whatever in the restless fidgeting—the savage winding and unwinding of his left foot around the saber scabbard, or the attitude, leaning forward over the table, of petulant pugnacity. And the cruel voice was as weak as the hand was strong with which he rapped on ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... began to come over Jim. He left his younger brothers in unhectored peace. He had not much to say, but ever he watched Andy from the corner of a jealous eye, and listened for him to speak. All his pugnacity was engaged in what seemed to be a profitless struggle with the speech of the grammar. "I will larn it yet," he repeated over and over. And even while the words were in his mouth, if he had had less obstinacy in his make-up, he would ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... sort take a mean advantage of them. Sellers belonged to the latter class. When Annette, meek, penitent, with all her claws sheathed, came to him and grovelled, he forgave her with a repulsive magnanimity which in a less subdued mood would have stung her to renewed pugnacity. As it was, she allowed herself to be forgiven, and retired with a dismal conviction that from now on he would be ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... amount of rage-inspired courage, and he in turn commences a vigorous assault upon somebody, probably his late assailant; this worthy, having become a little cooler, has mysteriously lost his late pugnacity, and now likewise retreats without once attempting to raise his own stick in self-defence. The lower and commercial class Persians are pretty quarrelsome among themselves, but they quarrel chiefly with their tongues; when they fight ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... earth. Well might the clash of arms in the Wilderness of these mighty giants cause the civilized world to watch and wonder. Lee stood like a lion in the path—his capital behind him, his army at bay—while Grant, with equal pugnacity, sought to crush him by sheer force of ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... become in many duller and blunter, like the pilot in the absence of a storm. And no doubt it is from having noticed this that legislators try to excite in states ambition and emulation among their townsmen, and stir up and increase their courage and pugnacity against enemies by the sound of trumpets and flutes. For it is not only in poems, as Plato says, that he that is inspired by the Muses, and as it were possessed by them, will laugh to shame the plodding artist, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... affectionate interview with Macrae, who had just arrived with a great convoy of needfuls from Silverfold, and who undertook to bring up and guard the two boys from any further impertinences that might excite Master Grove's pugnacity. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was a very good man at the head of his own dinner-table, and the party went off pleasantly in spite of sundry attempts at clerical pugnacity made by Mr. Groschut. Every man and every beast has his own weapon. The wolf fights with his tooth, the bull with his horn, and Mr. Groschut always fought with his bishop,—so taught by inner instinct. The bishop, according to Mr. Groschut, was inclined to think that this and that ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... unheard of that people should rely, if not on 'circumcision on the eighth day,' on an outward rite which seems to connect them with a visible Church. Strict orthodoxy takes the place among us which Pharisaism held in Paul's mind before he was a Christian, and it is easier to prove our zeal by pugnacity against heretics, than by fervour of devotion. The modern analogue of Paul's, 'touching the righteousness which is in the law blameless,' is 'I have done my best, I have lived a decent life. My religion is to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of her husband's poems as if they were so many bombs, hurled in the face of the enemy, her public. There was nothing like the pugnacity of the Kiddy in these years ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... filled me with that inconsequent respect which the silk pyjamas had engendered in Raffles. But the great face that greeted us with a shrewd and rather scornful geniality impressed me yet more powerfully. In its massive features and its craggy contour it displayed the frank pugnacity of the pugilist rather than the low cunning of the traditional usurer; and the nose in particular, while of far healthier appearance than when I had seen it first and last, was both dominant and menacing in its immensity. It was a comfort ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... The pugnacity of the swordfish has become a byword. Without any special effort on my part, numerous instances of their attacks upon vessels have in the last ten years found their way into ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... was brought up not only in the straitest traditions of the Evangelical school, but in the heat of its controversial warfare. His heart, when he was a boy, was set on entering the army; and one of his most characteristic points through life, shown in many very different forms, was his pugnacity, his keen perception of ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... which he really deserved, there was in him as much of love for Elise as his nature was capable of harbouring for any one outside himself. He looked upon her as his own, and he was defending this idea of possession with the same pugnacity that he would protect his dollars from a thief. Morrison had been forced to the conclusion that Elise was lost to him. Hitherto Firmstone had been an impersonal obstacle in his path. Now—The eyes narrowed to a slit, the venomous lips were compressed. Morrison was a beast. Only ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... incompatible. An Arctic environment is incompatible with improvident habits in its denizens; but whether the inhabitants of such a region shall unite with their thrift the peacefulness of the Eskimo or the pugnacity of the Norseman is, so far as the climate is concerned, an accident. Evolutionists should not forget that we all have five fingers not because four or six would not do just as well, but merely because the first vertebrate above ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... two or three honest friends of mine—and true friends I know they are—who nevertheless by their fiery pugnacity in my behalf do put me in fearful hazard of a broken nose, or even a total overthrow upon the pavement and the loss of the treasure which I guard.—I pray you, gentlemen, let this fault be amended. Is it decent, think you, to get tipsy with zeal for temperance and take up the honorable cause ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not, in the character of Arthur Meighen, he has a draw upon other men. Any public task that he has in hand looks like a load that challenges other men to help him lift. A really intelligent camera would show in his face a mixture of wholesome pugnacity, concentration of thought and feminine tenderness. He feels like a big intellectual boy who unless mother looks after him will get indigestion or neurasthenia. Sometimes men pity their leaders. Meighen, with his intensity and his thought before action looks such a ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... most hill stations both species occur. The note of the ashy drongo differs considerably from that of the king-crow: otherwise the habits of the two species are very similar. Take thirty-three per cent. off the pugnacity of the king-crow and you will arrive at a fair estimate of that of the ashy drongo. The latter looks like a king-crow with an unusually long tail, a king-crow of which the black plumage has worn grey like an ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... results of the Revolutions of 1848-49; and it is impossible to guess what would have happened to him if he had survived to witness the Second of December. Never was there such a case, at least among Englishmen, of timorous pugnacity and plucky pessimism. But it would be by no means difficult to parallel the temperament in France; and, indeed, the comparative frequency of it there, may be thought to be no small cause of the political and military ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... and of treachery most of all—a man of many faults perhaps, but of no really bad or disgusting ones. Concerning Smollett's personality we know least of all the four. It was certainly disfigured by an almost savage pugnacity of temper; by a strange indifference to what ought to be at the lowest the conduct of a gentleman, and by a most repulsive inclination—perhaps natural, but developed by training—to the merely foul and nasty. But he seems to have been brave, charitable though not in the most ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... another term as President—which every other historian and biographer from Hildreth to Sydney Howard Gay has pronounced, and which has become a stock historical convention; holds Jackson's campaign ending at New Orleans an imbecile undertaking redeemed only by an act of instinctive pugnacity at the end; gives Scott and Jacob Brown the honor they have never before received in fair measure; and in many other points redistributes praise and blame with entire independence, and with curious effect on many popular ideas. His views on the Hartford Convention of 1814 are part of the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... listener. Lord Fontenoy ceased to talk; yet every now and then, as some jolt of the carriage made George open his eyes, he saw the broad-shouldered figure beside him, sitting in the same attitude, erect and tireless, the same half-peevish pugnacity giving ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the I.W.W., of the Japanese, or of pacifists. All this goes on often under naive rationalization about justice and patriotism, but it is pure and innate lust to run something down and hurt it"); (10) anger, pugnacity; (11) revolt at confinement, at being limited in liberty of action and choice; (12) revulsion; (13) leadership and mastery; (14) subordination, submission; (15) display, vanity, ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... and association can make war more and more unlikely. We can create a greater knowledge of and sympathy with other nations. We can to considerable extent train out pugnacity, quick temper, resentfulness, and train in sensitiveness to suffering, sympathy, breadth of view. All such moral progress helps in the war against war. We can encourage the interchange of professors and scientists between countries, increase the ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... noble affair, and thought of my own pusillanimous rendering—for verily I had been low enough, from rumors of Firm's pugnacity, to attribute these little defects of line to some fisticuffs with some miner—I looked at Firm's nose through the tears in my eyes, and had a great mind not to go away at all. For what is the noblest ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... them was compound in its nature, and altogether hideous! His mind was in a mingled condition of amazement and satisfaction at his escape, triumph at the success of his plan, and indignation at the cowardly wickedness of the savages. A rollicking species of mad pugnacity took possession of him, and the consequence was, that the sounds which issued from his ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... general creed of the Celtic nations respecting elves. If the Irish elves are anywise distinguished from those of Britain, it seems to be by their disposition to divide into factions and fight among themselves—a pugnacity characteristic of the Green Isle. The Welsh fairies, according to John Lewis, barrister-at-law, agree in the same general attributes with those of Ireland and Britain. We must not omit the creed of the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... you two young uns for the lock-up," he said curtly. The struggling crowd had lashed his pugnacity and ensanguined his temper. As an additional indignity, the saloon had been burned, and he had not had a drink for an hour. "I'll run you in for wearing boys' clothes; have you ever heard the penalty for that, miss? And I'll run in this ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... in fact rarely seen her shy or dry, her marked thin-lipped smile, intense without brightness and as prompt to act as the scrape of a safety-match; the protrusion of her rather remarkably long chin, which in her case represented invitation and urbanity, and not, as in most others, pugnacity and defiance; the penetration of her voice to a distance, the general encouragement and approval of her manner, were all elements with which intercourse had made him familiar, but which he noted today almost as if she had been a new acquaintance. This first ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... style—say Hawkesworth's. He found New Zealand a line on the map, and left it an Archipelago, a feat which many generations of her colonists will value above the shaping of sentences. The feature of his experiences which most strikes the reader now, is the extraordinary courage and pugnacity of the natives. They took the Endeavour for a gigantic white-winged sea-bird, and her pinnace for a young bird. They thought the sailors gods, and the discharge of their muskets divine thunderbolts. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... How could it be otherwise, when the survivors of one successful massacre after another are the beings from whose loins we and all our contemporary races spring? Man is once for all a fighting animal; centuries of peaceful history could not breed the battle-instinct out of us; and our pugnacity is the virtue least in need of reinforcement by reflection, least in need of ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... gained since the days of Cock-Mondays and Cock-Fridays, when he was staked down to be killed by 'cock-sticks' or was whipped to his death by blindfolded carters. He leads the life of a friar; he is tended carefully as any babe; he is permitted to indulge his pugnacity, which it would be harsh to restrain, and at worst he dies fighting like a gentleman. A Tenerifan would shudder at the horror of our fashionable sport, where ruffians gouge or blind the pigeon with a pin, squeeze it to torture, wrench out its tail, and thrust ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... his inborn pugnacity would only have amused itself with the situation. He was a rebel and a litigant by nature. Smooth ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the same inches, but the angler was the elder, and a man of more powerful build and massive frame than his younger opponent. His blue eyes and full, broad face spoke a pugnacity not less pronounced than the keeper's own finer features indicated; and thus these two, destined for long years to bulk largely each upon the life of the other, stood eye to eye for the first time. Will's temper was nearly ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... investing their capital in foreign speculations, should become so entangled with the interests of another country as to render them less jealous than they ought to be of the honor of their own, and less ready to rise in its defence, when wronged or insulted. But, assuredly, a want of pugnacity is not the evil to be dreaded among nations—still less between two, whom the orator had just represented as inspired by a "natural enmity" against each other. He ought rather, upon this assumption, to ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... one morning found him standing over a large ship letter directed to the governess, with somewhat the expression of distrustful pugnacity with which a dog walks round ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... beginning to imbibe the pugnacity of an English landlord, "that when you have got everything, you ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... in continental harbors; but, base as that deed was, it proves nothing and was due to another cause. It is not easy to determine whether this deed was a well-considered measure of French diplomacy, intended to arouse the pugnacity of the United States, or a temporary shift to fill empty coffers. In either case it was not intended to have a direct bearing on irregular diplomatic negotiations between England and Holland. The circumstances were a direct result of ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... He reserved his pugnacity for quarrels undertaken on public grounds, and fought out with the world looking on as umpire. In the lists of criticism and of debate it cannot be denied that, as a young man, he sometimes deserved the praise which Dr. Johnson pronounced upon a good ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... the more complex original tendencies such as sucking, chewing, sitting up, and gurgling. Among the more general unlearned responses of children are fear, anger, pugnacity, envy, jealousy, curiosity, constructiveness, love of festivities, ceremonies and ordeals, sociability and shyness, secretiveness, etc. Thorndike, who quotes this list at length, has sought to give definiteness to its descriptions by clearly defining and distinguishing the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... with fists, and thought that manliness required him to be determined and unflinching. But this, in my experience of him, was not his ordinary manner, which was calm and companionable, without rudeness of any kind, unless some difference occurred to provoke his pugnacity. I have witnessed instances of his care to avoid wounding feelings needlessly. He never kept back his opinions which, on some points, were shallow and even absurd; and when his antagonist was as persistently positive as himself, he was apt to be over vehement in contradiction. ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... “blue-eyed sailor,” is found almost everywhere—in pond and stream. It is remarkable for building a nest, almost like that of a bird, attached to the stem of a reed or some other aquatic plant, which the male fish defends with great pugnacity “against all comers.” It may be said to occupy a place among our fishes, analogous to that of the kingfisher among our birds, as being decked with brighter colours than any other kind; especially is this the case in time of excitement, as when defending the nest. It then darts ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... less profitable to criticise the other two tales in detail because they represent variations on the theme in two directions; and variations that were not, upon the whole, improvements. The Chimes is a monument of Dickens's honourable quality of pugnacity. He could not admire anything, even peace, without wanting to be warlike about it. That was all as it ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... organizing perfectly the emotion of the whole group. There is, after all, just one human activity left in which whole populations accomplish the union sacre. It occurs in those middle phases of a war when fear, pugnacity, and hatred have secured complete dominion of the spirit, either to crush every other instinct or to enlist it, and ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... persistent persecutions of his comrades cannot be authoritatively said. One officer attributed much of the pugnacity which Smith exhibited early in his course to the injudicious letters sent him by his friends. In some of these he was advised to 'fight for the honor of his race,' and others urged him to brook no insult at the hands of the white cadets. The menial duties which the 'plebes' are ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... reached the foot of the stairs. Forgetting his wounded paw, and all a-quiver with the fine courage of his race, Joey galloped up the companion and disappeared. Elsie was much distressed by her four-footed friend's useless pugnacity. ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... which sparrows do not eat and which used to be extensively consumed by other birds, are now greatly on the increase, probably the only creatures, at present, enjoying the domestication of the sparrow in this country.... I have also to remark that the sparrows here betray much less pugnacity than in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... in the crepuscle, makes it a pharos, and without laud, for its agglutination and amenity, it is a most delectable commorance; and whoever lives in it will find that the neighbours have none of the truculence and immanity, the torvity, the spinosity, the putidness, the pugnacity, nor the fugacity observable in other parts of the town. Their propinquity and consanguinity occasions jucundity and pudicity, from which and the redolence of the place they are remarkable ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... element of poetry and pretty human perversity in the thing, I shall not hesitate to maintain here that this cult of the future is not only a weakness but a cowardice of the age. It is the peculiar evil of this epoch that even its pugnacity is fundamentally frightened; and the Jingo is contemptible not because he is impudent, but because he is timid. The reason why modern armaments do not inflame the imagination like the arms and emblazonments of the Crusades is a reason ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... Guraora in Gurgaon on the Rohtak border. The popular idea of the Mina, Mr. Crooke remarks, [268] is quite in accordance with his historical character; his niggardliness is shown in the saying, 'The Meo will not give his daughter in marriage till he gets a mortar full of silver'; his pugnacity is expressed in, 'The Meo's son begins to avenge his feuds when he is twelve years old'; and his toughness in, 'Never be sure that a Meo is dead till you see ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... these clean and cutting elements; but they have encouraged many other things which serve to balance them. The Irish peasant has these qualities which are somewhat peculiar to Ireland, a strange purity and a strange pugnacity. But the Irish peasant also has qualities which are common to all peasants, and his nation has qualities that are common to all healthy nations. I mean chiefly the things that most of us absorb in childhood; especially the sense of the supernatural and ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the dusk of the evening. She had a presentiment of what was to happen. They both appeared at the appointed place wrapped up in the same gloomy silence, and threw off their coats. Their eyes flaming with the bloodthirsty light of pugnacity, they were about to begin their contest when Clara burst through the garden door. Sobbing, she screamed, "You savage, terrible men! Cut me down before you attack each other; for how can I live when my lover ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... establishing a truce with solemn guarantee, and bringing themselves into direct connexion each with the god of the other under his appropriate local surname. The pacific communion so fostered, and the increased assurance of intercourse, as Greece gradually emerged from the turbulence and pugnacity of the heroic age, operated especially in extending the range of this ancient habit: the village festivals became town festivals, largely frequented by the citizens of other towns, and sometimes with special invitations sent round to attract ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... condescension, Cicero never could be got to look with favor upon them. Yours is a mischievous profession, the members of which are always seeking the demolition of useful sciences.' This the parson said in so angry a tone that it excited the pugnacity of the doctor, who was scrupulous of his profession, and declared he would not stand ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... commanded him to desist. Barney, whose spirit revolted at such a cause, threw his match-stick at the captain, with such force that the iron point stuck in the door of the round-house. This, in a youth not seventeen, urged well for the pugnacity of the man. At the end of this cruise, he volunteered on board the schooner Wasp, in which he soon had a brush with the Roebuck and another frigate, and with the aid of some galleys in which he had a command, the enemy was forced to retreat, with more loss ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... much terrified to stir an inch from him, he had not only found himself perfectly safe, but had been much praised for his valour, he had been so much pleased with himself that he quite wished for another occasion of displaying his bravery; and, what with use, and what with the increasing spirit of pugnacity, he was as sincere as Ralf Percy in abusing the French for never coming to a pitched battle. Perhaps, indeed, Malcolm spoke even more eagerly than Ralf, in his own surprise and gratification at finding himself no coward, and his fear lest Percy should ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... individual, with something about the form of his cheek that being taken by Rachel for a derisive smile, made her exclaim vehemently, "You do not mean to undervalue an action like that in comparison with mere animal pugnacity in an advance." ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
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