"Exacting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... awash in a beam—on Bay-of-Biscay "snorer," hove-to for a week off Cape Agul—has, while the clumsy brigantine rolled the masts loose in her, all but dismasted in a typhoon come astray from the China Sea, fed on moldy bread, and even moldier pork, with a fretful child to nurse, and an exacting mother to be pleased! Jane Emmett laughed at it. Bill had been there before her, and had done more on his way, and worse Bengal did not frighten her. Nor did the knowledge, when she reached it, that Bill was very likely still some hundreds of miles ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... intellect had marched forward gigantically: the world is grown exacting, disputatious, critical, and such men as Horace Walpole and Brinsley Sheridan appear; the characteristics of wit which adorned that age being well diluted by the feebler talents of Selwyn ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... either for fireworks or jokes, or even for displays of scholarship or intellectual gymnastics. In his opinion, religious establishments were kept up to advance religion and morals. And both he and his wife wrought zealously in the humble but exacting field of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and of a most exacting kind. And yet in the end it simplifies things. It is to war what rules are to bridge—something to lead by! Frequently I was armed with passes to visit, for instance, certain batteries. My escort was generally a member of the Headquarters' ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Graham returned to the bridge in triumph so far as the possession of a very wet cap was concerned, but rather low in his mind at having had to pay the exacting bargee a shilling out of his somewhat scanty store of pocket-money, he found John Seton lingering about ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... avidity for the marvellous, displayed by the multitude, and even by his own disciples. Death, moreover, in a few days would restore him his divine liberty, and release him from the fatal necessities of a position which each day became more exacting, and more ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... the Moro was to Leonardo that he showed himself to other artists and men of letters. In the poet's words, he was the magnet who drew men of genius (virtuosi) from all parts of the world to Milan. He might be an exacting and critical master, he was certainly never satisfied with any work short of the best—even Leonardo, we have seen, did not always find him easy to please—but once he discovered a man who was excellent in any branch ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... continually for fresh footholds by which to climb higher still. Of Shelley it has been said that he was a poet for poets: so Darwin was a naturalist for naturalists. It is when his writings are used in the critical and more exacting spirit with which we test the outfit for our own enterprise that we learn their full value and strength. Whether we glance back and compare his performance with the efforts of his predecessors, or look forward along the course which modern research is disclosing, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... point where forbearance toward the insolent French minister was no longer required by the most exacting courtesy. His official communications, and public and private acts, were becoming too offensive to be longer tolerated by the government, without virtually abdicating authority and acknowledging its utter incompetency. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Won't he be watching every mail? I don't know much about it, to be sure; but I fancied lovers were such uneasy, exacting creatures!" ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... notions of comfort of the twelfth century were not exacting. Water to wash away the dust of travel was brought to the door, and was followed by a substantial meal on roasted kid and thin cakes of bread. Sigbert came up with permission for the women to attend ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Wilson was giving his whole thought and effort to the solution of exacting domestic tasks, the European war broke upon him and thus turned his attention and study to the age-long and complicated political struggle ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... aristocracy to their end. They heard their hereditary poets and story-tellers, and they took to horse and died fighting against Elizabeth or against Cromwell; and when an English-speaking aristocracy had their place, it listened to no poetry indeed, but it felt about it in the popular mind an exacting and ancient tribunal, and began a play that had for spectators men and women that loved the high wasteful virtues. I do not think that their own mixed blood or the habit of their time need take all, or nearly all, credit ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... contrary, Seneca says (De Clementia ii, 4) that "the opposite of clemency is cruelty, which is nothing else but hardness of heart in exacting punishment." ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... motive forces which enabled them to work their bellows. In practical affairs those who were under the necessity of labouring were driven, under the then machinery of social life, to the humaner and less exacting kinds of butchery, such as the Arts, Education, the practice of Religions and Medicine, and the paid representation of their fellow-creatures. Those not so driven occupied themselves in observing and complaining ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... brows incredulously. "Do you mean to say you give in to her at every turn? She can be fairly exacting, ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... strength, the Republicans held the presidency from 1869 to 1885. The three Presidents elected in this period, Grant, Hayes, and Garfield, had certain striking characteristics in common. They were all of origin humble enough to please the most exacting Jacksonian Democrat. They had been generals in the union army. Grant, next to Lincoln, was regarded as the savior of the Constitution. Hayes and Garfield, though lesser lights in the military firmament, had honorable records duly appreciated by veterans of the war, now thoroughly ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... laborers into their net, and are dead to the call of those whom they are, unconsciously in most cases, defrauding. Nay! they even struggle to wring from them the largest possible amount of work for the smallest possible pay! Day by day they grow more exacting as they grow wealthier; day by day the laboring orders sink into more harassing and hopeless conditions. Had the functions of Government in our own country and in England been those only of protection to persons and property; had not the general and local authorities ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... his rhetorical tastes, and his avarice, by holding courts, to which he summoned the Germans for the settlement of all their disputes, while a bar of Roman advocates attended to argue the cases before the tribunal of Varus, who did not omit the opportunity of exacting court fees and accepting bribes. Varus trusted implicitly to the respect which the Germans pretended to pay to his abilities as a judge, and to the interest which they affected to take in the forensic eloquence ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... with God? Have they the all-inclusive view of His glorious Trinity, His personal presence, His revealed will, His exacting requirements, His omnipotent grace, His redeeming love, His mediatorial kingdom, His everlasting Covenant? Have they the view that will keep them steadfast, progressive, and enthusiastic in His service? They, who have an abiding acquaintance with God, ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... to bed exacting a promise that I should call him at two o'clock. But I let the hour go by, and another, and yet another, until the stars were paling in the east when I got up, stiff in every joint, to meet Gifford as he came up the gulch. He was haggard ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... Therefore, to please all people, one by one, I hold it best to let that pains alone. Only thus much: he was a poor man's friend, And help'd the widow often in the end. The King would ever grant what he did crave, For well he knew Will no exacting knave; But wish'd the King to do good deeds great store, Which caus'd the court to love ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... in the House of Lords, not brilliant, but sound and of a dignified respectability. He had also written two pamphlets. Emily had an enormous respect for intellect, and frequently, it must be admitted, for the thing which passed for it. She was not exacting. ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and a wanderer on the face of the earth. For many years he lived the life of a pirate or viking; exacting tribute from other ships or sacking them if they would not pay tribute; for this occupation in the days of Frithiof was considered wholly respectable. It was followed again and again by the brave ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... change in the way in which this nuptial period is spent. For many weeks previous to marriage the bride's existence is a long drawn-out period of nervous tension. Instead of enjoying mental and physical rest and repose, every moment of the time is crowded with exacting incidents, which, ordinarily, would wreck the nervous system of a robust individual. If this exciting preparatory experience ended in a period of rest and recuperation, it might not prove physically disastrous, instead of which, however, we know that the bride is subjected to a series of ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... Louisbourg, where they sold them for arms and ammunition, the French pretending that they maintained this traffic from motives of pure compassion, in order to prevent the massacre of the English captives, whom, however, they did not set at liberty without exacting an exorbitant ransom. As these skulking parties of Indians were generally directed and headed by French commanders, repeated complaints were made to the governor of Louisbourg, who still answered, that his jurisdiction did not extend over the Indians, and that their French conductors were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... by turn, full of womanly passion dashed with coquetry, now sparkling with the sprightliest wit, now charged with the most reckless tenderness, implying a relationship which should satisfy the most exacting of ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... of selecting valentines in company with a small boy, a lengthy one. James Mandeville's taste was exacting. At first the comic ones caught his eye, and he was with difficulty induced to consider more worthy specimens of art; then he bestowed his favor upon an elaborate white satin heart, a combination sachet ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... Devil—the organizer of the Cave—the man who manipulates the Government for the profit of his accomplices. When they require money the Province calls a loan; it is members of the Cave who negociate it, exacting a secret commission which is itself a fortune. The loan is expended," he went on, marking each step of his narration by appropriate gestures of his right forefinger, as one who is expounding a science, "on salaries to the Cave supporters, who are appointed to ingenious ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... original order. He supplies fewer explanatory words and sentences. But, on the other hand, Mr. Gibb's work, unlike Mr. Jones's, has no merits of style—it is all on a dead level of prose. Thus it sins against one of the laws of paraphrase: that the writer, in relieving himself of the exacting duties of translator, must present the story in a more literary and more truly adequate medium. Mr. Gibb's is one of the ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... And even exacting, discontented Lulu was well enough pleased with her mamma's choice for her till, upon leaving the table and running out for a moment into the street to see if the carriages were in sight, she came upon a girl about her own age, who was to be of the company, very gayly apparelled in thin ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... stocks require that the vineyard soil be treated differently, especially at planting time. Vulpina stocks require that the soil be much more deeply plowed than for Viniferas on their own roots, since Vulpinas are deep-rooted and are exacting in the depth of root-run required. Those who have had most experience with resistant stocks maintain that all American grapes require rather deeper plowing than European grapes on ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... came forth from the bath, he put on a magnificent suit woven of gold, adorned with jewels and jacinths, and he put the royal crown upon his head, seated himself upon the throne of his kingdom, and performed the affairs of the people, deciding equitably between the strong and the weak, and exacting for the poor man his due from the emeer; wherefore the people loved him exceedingly. Thus he continued to do for the space of a whole year; and after every short period, his family of the sea visited him; so his life was pleasant, and his eye was cheerful: ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... "Guy Mannering," was performed in private, but "Le Loup Garou" made a marked public success. Her "Faust," a later work, met with a like favourable reception, although "Masaniello" and "William Tell" had already taught the Paris public to be exacting. "Esmeralda" was another successful work, but "Notre Dame," written to a libretto of Victor Hugo's own arrangement, proved a failure. Mlle. Bertin won further musical fame by her string quartettes ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... picture and selling it privately, but devoting himself almost entirely to the studio he had opened, when he ceased exhibiting. He was an admirable teacher and his list of pupils was always full. He was an exacting master and would take none but students who showed marked ability. As a preliminary picture had to be presented to him for examination, and at least three out of four of the canvases sufficed to ensure their authors' ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... Rhododendron, or Rose Bay. Asia Minor, 1763. This is the commonest species in cultivation, and although originally a native of the district by the Black or Pontic Sea, is now naturalised in many parts of Europe. It is the hardiest and least exacting of the large flowered species, and is generally employed as a stock on which to graft the less hardy kinds. Flowers, in the typical species, pale purplish-violet and spotted. There is a great number of varieties, including white, pink, ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... good in taking notice of Frederica, and I am grateful for it as a mark of your friendship; but as I cannot have any doubt of the warmth of your affection, I am far from exacting so heavy a sacrifice. She is a stupid girl, and has nothing to recommend her. I would not, therefore, on my account, have you encumber one moment of your precious time by sending for her to Edward Street, especially as every visit is so much ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... mother appeared when she was ushered out to the feast, and the full glory of the table burst upon her. Her delight in the cake was fully enough to satisfy the most exacting mind. She admired and admired it on every side, protesting that she shouldn't have supposed Polly could possibly have baked it as good in the old stove; and then she cut it, and gave a piece to every child, with a little posy on top. Wasn't it good, ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... to be the blaid; but the venerable inscription dates from the time of the splendor of the national game, degenerated at present, as all things degenerate. It had been placed there to preserve the tradition of the "rebot", a more difficult game, exacting more agility and strength, and which has been perpetuated only in ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... Barbara's interests and my own might be well served by a journey to London. No news had come from my lord, and I was eager to see him and bring him over to my side; the disposition of the King was also a matter of moment and of uncertainty; would he still seek to gain for M. de Perrencourt what that exacting gentleman required, or would he now abandon the struggle in which his instruments had twice failed him? His Majesty should now be returning from Dover, and I made up my mind to go to Court and learn from him the worst ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... honest labour. In the period of private war the most obvious alternative to working is fighting, or hiring servants to fight; the sword is mightier than the spade. If we add that an expedition into a foreign country offers the additional advantages of escape from your exacting creditors, and your still more exacting king, we have something very like the economics of the Invasion of Anywhere in early feudal times. Had the leaders of these invasions, or rather their clerkly secretaries, written the plain tale ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... pains required from them than they expected to find, towards their arrival at any tolerable degree of perfection. Having considered this art as purely a mechanical one, they are surprised at the discovery of its exacting thought and reflection, for which their ideas of it had not prepared them. A man who has not sufficient share of genius to attempt the vanquishing these difficulties, of which, in his false conception of things, ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... "is not so exacting as you seem to think, Master Ernest—the only difference that her presence here should make amongst you is that you have two mothers instead ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Educated at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. Was admitted to the bar and practiced law in Chicago for twelve years, when he gave up this profession and came to New York to become a stock-broker. Although Mr. O'Hara has followed this exacting occupation for the past ten years, it has not prevented him from writing and publishing several volumes of poetry, largely classic in theme, and handled with an adequate and beautiful art. "The Poems of Sappho", 1907, built upon the authentic fragments, are acknowledged to ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... so dizzy and confused that I was compelled to ask my friends to direct me home. (This was around Easter, 1899.) I was then taken to a doctor, who at once requested me to stop working, and to take a complete rest, but not for the stomach, as he prescribed a severe and exacting master to stimulate the tired and overworked stomach to renewed life, and so give the nerves plenty of pure food, as they were in need of same. I then, after getting a ravenous hunger, weakened myself still more and became worse. ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... trunk cabin, an ample cockpit at the stern, a little cooking galley, a powerful motor, complete fittings and everything that the most exacting motor boat ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... demure tenderness of a maiden blushing at her first involuntary avowal. There was shrinking in it, but it was the shrinking of a frightened woman, not of an abashed girl; and when I strove to follow her, the gesture with which she waved me back had that in it which would have alarmed a more exacting lover. Had I mistaken my darling's feelings? Was her heart still cold, her affection unwon? Or—thought insupportable!—had she secretly yielded to another what she had ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... She was being dressed as she read it, and the maidens who attended her found no cause to suspect that anything in the letter had excited her ladyship. Her ladyship was not often excited, though she was vigilant in exacting from them their utmost cares. She read her letter, however, very carefully, and as she sat beneath the toilet implements of her maidens, thought deeply of the tidings which had been brought to her. She was angry with no one;—she was thankful ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... him to endure privation. But seven survived when the launch reached an island in Waally's part of the group, so often mentioned. There they fell into the hands of that turbulent and warlike chief. Waally made the seamen his slaves, treating them reasonably well, but exacting of them the closest attention to his interests. Brown, as a ship-carpenter, soon became a favourite, and was employed in fashioning craft that it was thought might be useful in carrying out the ambitious ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... contented to give her only such a slight tincture as might be acquired by perusal of the two folio volumes of Nisbet. Rose was indeed the very apple of her father's eye. Her constant liveliness, her attention to all those little observances most gratifying to those who would never think of exacting them, her beauty, in which he recalled the features of his beloved wife, her unfeigned piety, and the noble generosity of her disposition, would have justified the affection of the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... that at the village on the shore below they could obtain a boat to carry them across the lake. Fulvia, for lack of a passport, dared not set foot on Austrian soil; but the Swiss authorities were less exacting and Odo had hopes of crossing the border without difficulty. They set out again presently, descending through the grey dusk of the olives till the path became too steep for riding; then Odo lifted Fulvia from the saddle and led the two horses after her. Here and there, between the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... driven her from him for ever, and in the midst of his dismal triumph, the greatest he had won, there came an almost incontrollable impulse to curse the Church, to curse religion itself, for exacting such savage cruelty from mortal man. At last he crawled half dead out of the water, and staggered to his den. "I am safe here," he groaned; "she will never come near me again; unmanly, ungrateful wretch that I ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... it not been for Betty. Many an hour she spent in the dim room, when the summer was calling to her on every breeze to come out in its sunshine and be glad in its cheer. Many a game of checkers she played with the exacting invalids, when she longed to be riding over the country on Lad. And she read aloud by the single ray of light admitted through the shutters, and told stories ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... practice of what they believe to be wrong, they become desperate and reckless of the degree of wrong. I have formerly heard of a master who accounted for his practicing much severity upon his slaves, and exacting from them an unusual degree of labor, by saying that the thing (slavery) was altogether wrong, and therefore it was well to make the greatest possible advantage out of it. This agitation occasions some slaveholders to hang more loosely on their country. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... utterly incapable of a humorous expression himself. Swett was ready with Lincoln to give and take in storyland, as was Lamon, and either of them, and sometimes all of them, often dropped in upon Lincoln and gave him an hour's diversion from his exacting cares. They knew that he needed it and they sought him for the purpose of diverting him from what they ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... for the change which had come over her. From the time he arrived from Taloona she had always shown kindliness and gentleness towards him, even when, during the early days of his convalescence, he had been impatient and exacting. Nor could he find a reason for the change in the brief profession he had made of his love for her. Had that been the cause she would, he argued, have shown it the morning after; but she had met him then with the same light-hearted raillery with ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... little when done, but the neglect of which would soon throw a household into confusion. It was "Christie, come here," and "Christie, go there," and "Christie, do this and that," from morning till night, till she was too weary even to sleep when night came. Her sisters did not mean to be exacting. Indeed, they meant to be very kind and forbearing, and praised and petted her till she was ready to forget her weariness, as well as their unmindfulness of it. She did try very hard to be gentle, and patient, ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... he was 'to be taken on at a salary of—a week.' Let us avoid pecuniary chatter, and merely say that the sum, while he was on trial, was not likely to tempt many young men into the career of journalism. Yet 'the work will be very exacting, and almost preclude the possibility of my doing anything else.' Now, as four leader notes, or, say, six, can be written in an hour, it is difficult to see the necessity for this fatigue. Probably there were ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... a deep slumber, and I took my place to watch by him during the night. Mr. Worthing persuaded his parents to seek a few hours rest, as they were worn out with fatigue and anxiety; and exacting from me a promise that I would summon them if the least change for the worse should take place, they retired, and I was left to watch alone by my friend. All I could do was to watch and wait, as the hours passed ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... demand for potash the Tomato closely resembles the Potato, and of the two the former is the more exacting. So quickly does this crop exhaust the soil, that in small houses it is usual to take out the earth to a depth of fifteen or eighteen inches every second or third year, and replace it with virgin loam. Others grow the Tomatoes alternately in the bed and in pots, but this is only ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... length of their march, and averse to further exertion,[197] that the town of Vacca was not above a mile distant, and that it became them to bear patiently the toil that remained, with the hope of exacting revenge for their countrymen, the bravest and most unfortunate of men. He likewise generously promised them the whole of the plunder. Their courage being thus revived, he ordered them to resume their march, the cavalry maintaining an extended ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... Alwynn became more exacting. Ruth was visibly recovering from what Mrs. Alwynn called "her bereavement." She could smile again without an effort; she took long walks with Mr. Alwynn, and later in the spring paid a visit to her uncle, Lord Polesworth. It was after this visit that Mrs. Alwynn became more ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... economical administration requires some arrangement for marketing the product. During the latter part of the course the school should be able to turn out first-class work. The familiarity with trade standards the pupils obtain through practice on garments which must meet the exacting demands of the buying public has a distinct educational value. The Manhattan Trade School for Girls in New York City and other successful schools in the country operate on this basis. There is reason to believe that there would be little difficulty in making arrangements ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... permit governments to control their movements, they should not be too exacting in their demands on them when trouble comes. The Rev. Dr. ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... Avignon. Here for the seventy years of the so-called "Babylonish Captivity," the Popes continued to reside, too completely subject to the influence of the French monarchs to dream of resuming their tone of defiance, but scarcely less exacting than before of homage from other rulers. In fact, the burden of the pecuniary exactions of the Popes rather grew than diminished with the change from Rome to Avignon, and with the institution of rival claimants to the tiara, each requiring an equal sum to support the pomp of his court, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... manner which set all Christian charity at defiance. He told himself plainly that he had no desire to forgive Lord Trowbridge,—that life in this world, as it is constituted, would not be compatible with such forgiveness,—that he would not, indeed, desire to injure Lord Trowbridge otherwise than by exacting such penalty as would force him and such as he to restrain their tyranny; but that to forgive him, till he should have been so forced, would be weak and injurious to the community. As to that, he had quite made up his mind, in ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... in order she looked about it, not ill content. It would be an exacting guest, surely, who could not be comfortable here—and there are many guest-rooms of elaborate appointments where guests are not wholly comfortable. This room was large and square and airy, with its four windows facing ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... doubt," continued that excellent adviser, "that in Canada, where the demand for a high standard of efficiency is less exacting, and where openings are more plentiful, the young man will do ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... been as patient as could be wished for above an hour, and being quite overpowered by the heat of the crowded tent, I made a hasty retreat, after having distributed needles to all the females, and exacting kooniks from all the prettiest in return. A general outcry was now made for Dunn, a most quiet North countryman, to exhibit also; but he, having seen the liberties which had been taken with my nose, very prudently made his retreat, anticipating ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... conversation with the former, but she met him coldly and shortly, and with each attempt he fell back baffled. He might have persevered but for the consciousness that Gilda's eyes were upon them, for she had been growing very exacting since the engagement had been formally declared. But just before the ladies rose he found an opportunity to say, 'Mabel—Mrs. Ashburn—am I unfortunate enough to have displeased ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... remark. The general held similar views. He considered snow in winter proper; sultriness in summer legitimate; frosts in the autumn the same, and rains in spring not objectionable. He was not an exacting man. And I call to mind now that he always admired thunder. You remember, child, your father ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... government and the devotion of our people. Here was a gigantic project in which success was staked not on reliance in the efficiency of a man, or an hierarchy of men, or, primarily, on a system. Here was a bold reliance on faith in a people. Most exacting duties were laid with perfect confidence on the officials of every locality in the nation, from the governors of states to the registrars of elections, and upon private citizens of every condition, from men foremost in the industrial and political life ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... if they were not preferred. He would start out on enterprises with the greatest amount of dash, and then carry them through in the most sluggish manner. He both spent money most unsparingly and showed a thoroughly sordid spirit in exacting it. He was alike irritated and pleased both at those who flattered him and at those who spoke their own minds. Many who were guilty of great crimes he neglected to punish and many who had done no wrong he ruthlessly slaughtered. Among his associates he made some the ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... saw Arthur more and more like his father, in the new earnestness of his thoughts and hopes, and watched Fanny gentle, and loving, mindful of others, clinging to Graeme, and trusting and honouring her entirely,—a Fanny as different as could well be imagined from the vain, exacting little housekeeper, who had so often excited her indignation, a year ago, she repeated again and again. "It is coming ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... her public officials ("squeeze" it is called over here) is one of the most deep-rooted cancers with which she has to contend. Officers have been paid small salaries and have been allowed to make up for the meagreness of their stipends by exacting all sorts of fees and tips. Before the coming parliament is very old, however, it will {97} doubtless undertake to do away with the fee and "squeeze" system, stop grafting, and put all the more important offices on a strict salary basis. Under the ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... the policy of the police to conceal from him, wins. It may seem to many a reader a matter of no great importance if a man should miss a safe-burglary for his paper; but reporting is a business, a very exacting one at that, and if he will stop a moment and think what it is he instinctively looks at first in his morning paper, even if he has schooled himself not to read it through, he will see it differently. The fact is that it is all a great human drama in which these things are the acts ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... at this point retired from the Foreign Office, which was assigned to Lord Lansdowne, and assumed in conjunction with the premiership the less exacting post of ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... battle. When men, working together, successfully attain to a high standard of orderliness, deportment and response, each to the other, they develop the cohesive strength which will carry them through any great crisis. For this reason mainly, military life is far more exacting than civil life. But the services hold that what is best for the many can be achieved without cramping the personal life or blighting individuality and initiative. Within the frame of our system, we can achieve obedience and discipline without ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... effect upon the crew of the Bounty. A stay of twenty-three weeks at the island sufficed to subvert discipline and to persuade some of Bligh's sailors that life in Tahiti was far preferable to service in the King's Navy under the rule of a severe and exacting commander. ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... with halos and wings, with such inconsistencies as the "Doge praying" in a picture of the marriage of St. Catherine, with the mystic marriage itself. Raphael's grace of line and suave space-filling shapes are mainly what we think of; the rest we call convention. We are become literal and exacting, addicted to the pedantry of the prescriptive, if not of ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... employed in "The Outcry" offices disliked Miss Devine. They were all competent girls, trained in the exacting methods of modern business, and they had to make good every day in the week, had to get through with a great deal of work or lose their position. O'Mally's private secretary was a mystery to them. Her exemptions and ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Dressed in an old suit of soft grey serge, somewhat too large for him, and wearing a grey felt hat with the brim pulled down over his eyes, he felt that he was not easily to be identified with his every-day self—the David Amber whose exacting yet conservative "correctness" had become a by-word ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... other conditions," said Cavalier, addressing himself to M. de Villars, and not seeming to see that anyone else was present, "for which we have fought. If I were alone, sir, I should give myself up, bound hand and foot, with entire confidence in your good faith, demanding no assurances and exacting no conditions; but I stand here to defend the interests of my brethren and friends who trust me; and what is more, things have gone so far that we must either die weapon in hand, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sheepman's year are the lambing- and shearing-seasons. The first begins early in March, when the little mesquite-trees are of a feathery greenness and the brown gramma and mesquite grass are beginning to freshen, and lasts about six weeks. It is an exacting time for the conscientious proprietor. He says good-by to his cottage, and goes off to camp with a small army of Mexicans, who, proof against the toils of the day, make night crazy with singing, dancing, and uncontrollable hilarity. He is as much concerned about the weather as a sailor or one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... by her mien and beauty; nor one whose nails were not of the right shape; nor one the lobe of whose ear was at all too large and red; nor one who, even if her nails and ears were right, was at the same time a ninny, unable to make spirited answers. These requirements may not seem too exacting to refined contemporaries whose own ability to fall in love has been held in suspense for lack of indispensable details; but fewer perhaps may follow him in his contentment that his wife should be in a temper which would dispose her to fly ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... almost beyond endurance. Before entering upon this engagement she had formed but an imperfect notion of what would be demanded of her. To begin with, Mrs. Tubbs belonged to the order of women who are by nature slave-drivers; though it was her interest to secure Clara for a permanency, she began by exacting from the girl as much labour as could possibly be included in their agreement. The hours were insufferably long; by nine o'clock each evening Clara was so outworn that with difficulty she remained standing, yet not until midnight was she released. The unchanging ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... went off in high spirits with Bob later in the day, Nesta exacting many promises that should Aunt Dorothy by some miracle appear before she was expected, Mrs. Orban would send for ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... Sylvia, her eyes stern, her mouth smiling. A maternal instinct which dominated her had awakened suddenly in the older woman's heart. She adored the girl to such an extent that the adoration fairly pained her. Rose herself might easily have found this exacting affection, this constant watchfulness, irritating, but she found it sweet. She could scarcely remember her mother, but the memory had always been as one of lost love. Now she seemed to have found it again. She fairly coquetted with this older woman who loved her, and whom she ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... suppose you give up your lodgings when you go to Wexford; yet that will be inconvenient too: yet I wish again you were under a necessity of rambling the country until Michaelmas, faith. No, let them keep the shelves, with a pox; yet they are exacting people about those four weeks; or Mrs. Brent may have the shelves, if she please. I am obliged to your Dean for his kind offer of lending me money. Will that be enough to say? A hundred people would lend me money, or to any man who has not the reputation of a squanderer. O, faith, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... of his men that it would be useless to strain his authority, and so he gave way, though with sore reluctance, only exacting a solemn oath from the whole company that they would keep their hands off the cattle of Helios. When each in turn had taken the oath they landed on the shore of a sheltered bay, and encamped by a fair spring ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... exacting renewed assurances of secrecy from both men, waited impatiently in the private bar of the Waterman's Arms while they put off from the stairs ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... body advised him to the land's ruin, he was not bound to follow the advice and afterwards endeavor to shift the burden from his own neck upon the people, who however excuse themselves although in our judgment they are not all entirely innocent. The cause of this war we conceive to have been the exacting of the contribution, (for which the Director said he had the order of the Managers,) and his own ungovernable passions, which showed themselves principally in private. But there are friends whom this business intimately concerns, and as they ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... other, easily. "But you perceive, further, that the fact of our not exacting subscriptions from the poorer members of our association makes it all the more necessary that we should have voluntary gifts from the richer. And as regards a surplus of wealth, of what use is that to any one? Am I not granted as much money as one need reasonably want? And ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... of the mythological or superstitious features they possess, of a number of the choicest of these old lays that turn essentially upon the strength or the weakness, the constancy or the inconstancy, the rapture or the sorrow of earthly love. Love in the ballads is nearly always masterful, imperious, exacting; nearly always its reward is death and dule, and not life and happiness. But as it spurns all obstacles, it meets its fate unflinchingly. No sacrifices are too great, no penance too dire, no shame or sin too black to turn aside for an instant the rush of this ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... a good deal surprised at this, but feeling that if she were to wait for the clearing up of the mystery she would infallibly be late in reaching the shop of the exacting Stickle and Screw, she swept lightly past the seaman with a short laugh, ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... to grow too narrow and self-sufficient in his nature for such spiritual cannibalism, even had his wife been a weak, neutral character, with no decided and persistent individuality of her own. He was not slow in exacting outward and mechanical service, but he had no time to "bother" with her thoughts, feelings, and opinions; nor did he think it worth while, to any extent, to lead her to reflect only his feelings and opinions. Neither she nor any one else was very essential ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... as popular, but, don't you see, it will never become as—er—exacting on the fellows that play it. You can play golf without having to go into training ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... his poem the exploits of Castor and Pollux. Such digressions were not unusual with the poets on similar occasions, and one might suppose an ordinary mortal might have been content to share the praises of the sons of Leda. But vanity is exacting; and as Scopas sat at his festal board among his courtiers and sycophants, he grudged every verse that did not rehearse his own praises. When Simonides approached to receive the promised reward Scopas bestowed but ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... she would shield him and save him, if that were possible. He would love her always—Billy Louise could not conceive of Ward transferring his affections to another less exacting woman—and he would be grateful for her friendship. She could build long, lovely scenes where friendliness was put to the front bravely, while love hid behind the mask and only peeped out through the eyes now and then. She did not, of course, plan all this ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... village at some distance from the Chateau Norbelle, the inhabitants of which were required to furnish it with provisions. The Castellane, by paying just prices, and preventing his men from treating the peasants in the cruel and exacting manner to which they were accustomed, had gained their good-will. Prompt intelligence of the proceedings of the French army was always brought to him, and he was thus informed that a large treasure ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... like Shaloor myself rather the best. But go ahead," said the exacting guest. And with a glance around at us that said, "Don't let me bore ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... healthful instruction. The stimulus given may be too strong for the best activity of those who receive it. They whose sensitive natures are most deeply affected by such an example may, under its influence, unconsciously form an ideal of intellectual attainments too exacting, and therefore to them a source of ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... for acts merely of rapine. They felt authorized to levy contributions of this sort, whenever an occasion served, viewing property thus acquired as (to use their own expression) the "only rent which they received for their lands;" and if when detected in secretly exacting them, their blood paid the penalty, they were sure to retaliate with tenfold fury, on the first favorable opportunity. The murder of these two Indians by Hughes and Lowther was soon followed by acts of retribution, which ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the touch upon imagination of strangeness and an unaccustomed grace, to subdue it and make it pardon an outrage to its temples and altars, and its happy reading of the heavens, the earth too: earth foremost, we ought perhaps to say. It is an exacting heathen, best understood by a glance at what will appease it: beautiful, however, as everybody has proved; and shall it be decried in a world where beauty is not overcommon, though it would slaughter ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I cannot see that it would have done me much good; it certainly would not have increased my popularity among your exacting sex. You are the first man to whom I have dared acknowledge I know Latin. Lady Langdon was kind enough to give me elaborate warnings and instructions before she launched me into society. Among other things, she constantly reiterated, ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and water, baked on a gridiron—it would leave too long a fast afterwards. Denis Donohoe had been brought up to practise caution in these matters, to subject his stomach to a rigorous discipline, for life on the verge of a bog is an exacting business. Instead of obeying the impulse to eat Denis Donohoe blew warm breaths into his purple hands, beat his arms about his body to deaden the bitter cold, whistled, took some steps of an odd dance along the road, and went on talking to the donkey as if he were making pleasant conversation to ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... Harold. Your chief virtue along this line is your ability to get the philosophical high spots of every-day gossip. But don't stop there, my able young advocate. Do you realize that your father has had no dinner and that this exacting bevy of girls is going to force me to suffer the pangs of hunger until I have ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... important branches of the British Civil Service, may be trusted to display in his handling of the British civilian the tact and sympathy required to sustain him in the performance of arduous duties which are bound to become more complex and exacting as our system of government departs further from the old patriarchal type. Our task in India must grow more and more difficult, and will demand more than ever the best men that we can give to its accomplishment. The ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... Here, at the end of December 1581, she was put on trial for the murder of her first husband. In prison she seems to have borne herself bravely, arraying her beautiful person in delicate attire, entertaining visitors, exacting from her friends the honours due to a duchess, and sustaining the frequent examinations to which she was submitted with a bold, proud front. In the middle of the month of July her constancy was sorely tried by the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... us austere and exacting; unsparing in condemnation, and unrelenting in her demands on those she loves. Many of her letters are in a strain of exhortation that rises into rebuke. The impression at first is unpleasant. We are tempted to ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... his life, struck the passages most calculated to offend. What hand would dare restore them? The few stanzas that remain still suggest the outline of dark and painful thoughts, which is filled up in the more elaborate, and, in many respects, most exquisite, poem of "Resignation." Virtue exacting all sacrifices, and giving no reward—Belief which denies enjoyment, and has no bliss save its own illusions; such is the sombre lesson of the melancholy poet—the more impressive because so far it is truth—deep and everlasting truth—but only, to a Christian, a part of truth. Resignation, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... thoughts during every waking hour. He had assayed her and appraised her a hundred times and from every possible angle, and each time he decided that Florry was possessed of more than sufficient charm, good looks, sweetness and intelligence to suit the most exacting. Matt wasn't ultra-exacting and she suited him, and the fact that she was the sole heir to millions was the least of the sailor's considerations as he dropped his nickel down the slot. Neither did the identity ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... Jack and perhaps one maid-of-all-work will be perfectly respectable and dignified; the experience will do you good, and I have no doubt you will enjoy it. It will not only be a great economy in a pecuniary way, but society is very exacting, and a large house entails heavy social burdens which you will escape while living in a cottage. This will give you plenty of time to improve your taste in art, which is indispensable at present. There will be great economy, too, in the matter of furniture. A ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... which the East India Company sent out. Afterwards, when they found their servants had refused to execute these covenants, they not only very severely reprehended even a moment's delay in their execution, and threatened the exacting the most strict and rigorous performance of them, but they sent a commission to enforce the observance of them more strongly; and that commission had it specially in charge never to receive presents. They never sent out a person to India without recognizing the grievance, and without ordering ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of exacting rules for the proper deportment, in the carrying out of these duties to which ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... found me. Kyllikki is unchanged—and you, I see, are much as I had thought you would be. Proud and exacting as ever, though not perhaps in quite the same way. And well it is so, for if you had seemed otherwise I should have ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... fades and the shadows deepen, all the petty and exacting details vanish; everything trivial disappears, and I see things as they are, in great, strong masses; the buttons are lost, but the garment remains; the garment is lost, but the sitter remains; the ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... mysteries of the kitchen which generally brings no satisfaction when gratified, and which often admonishes a man not only to eat what is set before him without any questions for conscience sake, but also for the sake of the more delicate and exacting sensibilities of the stomach. I must confess my first visit to this, the greatest pork- pie factory in the world, savored a little of the anxiety to know the worst, instead of the best, in regard to the ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... truth of this must be evident to any one who looks about him. If human thought, ordained by an omniscient Creator, had been intended to be what it has become, altogether different from mechanical thoughts and resignation, so exacting, inquiring, agitated, tormented, would the world which was created to receive the beings which we now are, have been this unpleasant little dwelling place for poor fools, this salad plot, this rocky wooded and spherical kitchen garden where ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... a satisfactory manner over a field so immense our lawfully ambitious aim was, as we realized at the outset, not possible to any two men who are primarily engaged, as we are, in other work of an exacting nature. Therefore, to render feasible the execution of our undertaking, we decided to invite the collaboration of many scholars and specialists, each of whom could, out of the fullness of information, speak with authority on some particular ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... this, because I don't care to forfeit your esteem, and heaven knows, I may want it in the days to come. I believe I am the best friend in the world—and bad anything else. No one perfectly pleases me, not even you: you are too studious of character, and, like myself, exacting of perfection in one or two points. But now hear what I have done, and approve it if you think fit. I have flirted—abominable word!—I am compelled to use the language of the Misses—yes, I have flirted with my cousin Algy. I do it too well, I know—by nature! and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a dupe of M. Ferrand's; he said he was hard and exacting, but he thought him the most honest man in the world. I passed these five months in tears, in continual agony. With care, I had concealed my situation from all eyes, but I could hope to do so no longer. The future was for me most dreadful; M. Ferrand had declared he would not ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... evident in one thing. Its duty will consist in conforming, in every instance, to your will. All the powers of this being are to be devoted to your happiness; but there is one relation between you, which enables you to confer, while exacting, pleasure. .... This relation is sexual. Your slave is a woman; and the bond, which transfers her property and person ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... a smart and somewhat exacting officer. He used to rig the smoke-sail some twelve feet high, across the mizzen-mast, and make the young gentlemen just caught, and the boys of the ship, lay out upon it, in order that they might practice furling after a safe method. At first, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... trouble, surely. And why should you take trouble? Here am I, content to receive things childishly as they fall out, and I never take trouble! I come down here, for instance, and I find a mighty potentate exacting homage. Very well! I say 'Mighty potentate, here IS my homage! It's easier to give it than to withhold it. Here it is. If you have anything of an agreeable nature to show me, I shall be happy to see it; if you have anything of an agreeable nature to give me, I ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... for instance, that it was wrong in Mr. Sinclair, at a moment when the act of separating from Osborne might have touched, the feelings of his daughter into that softness which lightens and relieves the heart, abruptly to suppress emotions so natural, by exacting a proof of obedience too severe and oppressive to the heart of one who loved as Jane did. She knew it was her duty to obey him the moment he expressed his wish; but he was bound by no duty to demand such an unnecessary proof of her obedience. The immediate consequences, ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... program, merely drew her wrap closer about her shoulders and sat more erect. At the end of the concerto the applause was generous enough to satisfy the most exacting virtuoso. Diotti unquestionably had scored the greatest triumph of his career. But the lady in the box had remained silent and ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... paid him a visit, with a list in his hand. Since the night of the skating party, his acquaintances had not seen much of Dove; for he had been in close attendance on the pretty little American, who made no scruple of exacting his services. Now, after some preamble, it came out that he wished to include Maurice in a list of mutual friends, who were clubbing to give a ball—a "Bachelors' Ball," Dove called it, since the gentlemen were to pay for the tickets, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... herself felt, and nobly she discharged it; neglecting nothing in her power for the relief and enjoyment of the invalid who, though often fretful, exacting, and unreasonable, was yet nearest and dearest to her of all earthly creatures. The young girl's loving patience seemed never to fail, and her heart was continually going up in earnest, silent petitions that her beloved parent might be made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light; ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... the young man ventured timidly to observe, "it seems to me that art, however exacting it may be, cannot take entire possession of the woman. What would she do with her affections, with the craving for love, for self-sacrifice, which is in her, far more than in man, the motive ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... bell, which is likely to leave all the other booths deserted, while a crowd elbows around the fishmonger. He above all others commands the greatest flow of billingsgate, and is especially notorious for his arrogant treatment of his customers, and for exacting the uttermost farthing. The "Fish" and the "Myrtles" can be sure of a brisk trade on days when all the other booth keepers around ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... merry jest," says his old biographer, "I have heard him tell, too long to be here noted." To the last, Burleigh was somewhat jocose; and some of his sportive sayings have been recorded by Bacon. They show much more shrewdness than generosity, and are, indeed, neatly expressed reasons for exacting money rigorously, and for keeping it carefully. It must, however, be acknowledged that he was rigorous and careful for the public advantage as well as for his own. To extol his moral character as Dr. Nares has extolled it is absurd. It would be equally absurd to represent ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... receive the forces that were at Apamia, where he procured a reconciliation between Bassus and Marcus, and the legions which were at difference with him; so he raised the siege of Apamia, and took upon him the command of the army, and went about exacting tribute of the cities, and demanding their money to such a degree as they ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... that he should feel a sympathy for any subject he was called upon to design, but also that his genius should be left unfettered and untrammelled in his method of treatment. Hence it was that he found it impossible to co-operate with so exacting an employer of artistic labour as Charles Dickens. The latter argued, with some show of reason, that knowing what he intended to describe, he was the fittest and most competent person to explain how his meaning should be pictorially carried out. This sort ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the people running in the Row, and so down to Hyde Park Corner, and in among the chaises and the phaetons, where there was enough cheering and waving of hats and handkerchiefs to please the most exacting of successful generals. I rode up to my Lord March, and finding there was a minute yet to run I went up the Row a distance and back again amidst more huzzaing, Pollux prancing and quivering, and frothing his bit, but ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... complications into which men and women might get. Often Bessie stayed for luncheon, a dainty affair served on a little table which the maid brought out and set between them. Sometimes Bessie had with her the baby girl, but oftener not, for she became exacting ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... liked to have called upon the kind old Captain; but Forster was unconscionably exacting,—there was no ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... still "largely a useless, uneasy factor, vouchsafing her very little more peace than it does those in her immediate surcharged vicinity." Her circumstances tend to make of her "a curious anomalous hybrid; a cross between a magnificent, rather unmannerly boy, and a spoiled, exacting demi-mondaine, who sincerely loves in this world herself alone." She has not yet learnt that woman's supreme work in the world can only be attained through the voluntary acceptance of the restraints of marriage. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... get them both in one; a collaboration would really be better. Then you work from the known situation in Europe and in America in 1492, and decide on the immediate effects. And from that, you have to carry it along, step by step, down to the present. It would be a lot of hard and very exacting work, but the result would be worth it." He took a sip from his glass and added: "Remember, you don't have to prove that the world today would be the way you set it up. All you have to do is make sure that nobody else would be able to prove that ...
— Crossroads of Destiny • Henry Beam Piper
... unmoved the tiny groping hands about her in the night, the soft beatings of the little heart against her arm, the round downy head that would nestle on her neck to be rocked asleep; she could not resist that exquisite delight of miserable, exacting, feminine nature,—the knowledge that one thing in the world loved her better than anybody else. Sorry am I to betray this weakness of Aunt 'Viny's,—sorry to know how many strong-minded, intellectual, highly educated and refined women will object to this ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... was married. His wife was young and charming, and devotedly fond of him. But she was of a rather jealous and exacting disposition, and she had been much spoilt in her youth at her own home. She was sweet and loving, however, which makes up for a good deal, and always ready to take part in any scheme for the good of their people, provided it did not separate ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... week of exacting office work and all but endless drill, Dick had the rare good fortune to find himself with ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... discord between the legislative statutes of the various States on the subject of divorce. While in the middle and a portion of the Eastern and Southern States, the conditions legally imposed, before a dissolution of marriage can be judicially obtained, are wholesomely exacting and in accord with the strict Scriptural standard, in certain of the Eastern, Southern and Western States the most trifling alleged causes of disagreement or "incompatibility" are sufficient to secure the law's disseverance of the marriage tie. ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... however, that is endued with intelligence, while levying such contributions, takes care to levy them upon those that are wicked and punishable among his own subjects and among the subjects of other kingdoms, and refrains from molesting the good. Compare the conduct of Warren Hastings in exacting a heavy tribute, when his own treasury was empty, from Cheyt Singh, whose unfriendliness for the British power was a ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the falsehood of the first principle of the prisoner's defence, that sovereignty, wherever it exists in India, implies in its nature and essence a power of exacting anything from the subject, and disposing of his person and property, we now come to his second assertion, that he was the true, full, and perfect representative of that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... duties are more exacting than private. No woman will be found to believe it. It may be often difficult to estimate the heavy stake ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... of the naturalist attached to the Golofkin embassy, Dr. Redovsky, who had remained in the East animated by the same scientific enthusiasm as that of his colleague, the good Langsdorff; parted some time since from his too exacting master. Rezanov had written Concha many letters during his detention in Sitka, and left them with Baranhov to send at the first opportunity. The Chief-Manager, deeply interested in the romance of the mighty Chamberlain with whom he alone dared to take a liberty, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... speck in the distance, as he did. I felt a satisfaction in noting Dawn watch his splendid strokes, and Miss Grosvenor's animated conversation with him and enthusiastically expressed admiration of his rowing. She was not so exacting in the matter of detail as Dawn, and red hair did not prevent her from enjoying the company of a splendid specimen of the opposite sex when she had the rare good fortune ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... continue from editors and readers. There was a time when life bubbled with short stories; they were always coming to the surface of my mind, and it is no deliberate change of will that has thus restricted my production. It is rather, I think, a diversion of attention to more sustained and more exacting forms. It was my friend Mr. C.L. Hind who set that spring going. He urged me to write short stories for the Pall Mall Budget, and persuaded me by his simple and buoyant conviction that I could do what he desired. There existed at the time only the little ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... to every invitation. The truth was that Mrs. Krauss, after two or three social efforts, culminating in a large dinner-party to her German neighbours, had collapsed with one of her worst attacks, and between nursing her relative and housekeeping for Herr Krauss (who was shamelessly greedy and exacting), Sophy had not a moment to spare, and the Madras boy turned away all callers—including Miss Leigh's friends—with his mechanical parrot cry, "Missis ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... solid little body, rather stouter than was necessary for beauty; her hair was black, her complexion brown, her eyes prominent and always moving; lively, active, and if one once yielded to her whims, exacting beyond measure; but until then buxom and soft, and inclined to pet and spoil whoever, for the moment, had arrested her volatile fancy. Just as we make her acquaintance this happy individual was a certain Maitre Quennebert, a notary of Saint Denis, and the comedy played between ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Zoritch, if I remember rightly. He was in despair. My grandmother, who was always very severe upon the extravagance of young men, took pity, however, upon Chaplitsky. She gave him three cards telling him to play them one after the other, at the same time exacting from him a solemn promise that he would never play at cards again as long as he lived. Chaplitsky then went to his victorious opponent, and they began a fresh game. On the first card he staked fifty ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... Foster, at the end of some extended remarks, "I'm not at all mean or exacting. My father only pays Mrs. Myers three dollars a week, and all she agreed to give was board. I can't expect her to be any kind of an aunt, too, and let me go a-fishing. I'll take it all off her hands, and ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... be as exacting as that with people," Maxwell returned, "you are going to disappoint yourself frightfully; and if you insist, you will make them hate you. People can't share your happiness any more than they can share your misery; it's as much as they can ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... made optimistic by the nature of their own doings. They are writers, schemers, reformers; they are usually of strongly altruistic character, and the performance of any duty or set task brings to them the approval of an exacting conscience; and they believe that all mankind can be brought to labour in their own spirit. The world would be a much happier place if their state of mind could be made universal. But the great mass of ...
— Progress and History • Various
... off-handed a manner arranged the destinies of six of his fellow-creatures, without even the formality of consulting them in the matter, rendered me exceedingly uneasy; such a proceeding seeming to indicate a headstrong, overbearing, exacting character, with which it would be exceedingly difficult to deal. Of course, so far as Dumaresq was concerned, the arrangement was not so objectionable; he would probably be quite willing to work his passage to the next port. But with us who were English it was quite another matter. The worst that ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... contrast to Mahler. He has always the air of a heedless and discontented child. Tall and slim, rather elegant and supercilious, he seems to be of a more refined race than most other German artists of to-day. Scornful, blase with success, and very exacting, his bearing towards other musicians has nothing of Mahler's winning modesty. He is not less nervous than Mahler, and while he is conducting the orchestra he seems to indulge in a frenzied dance which follows the smallest details of his music—music that is as agitated as limpid water into which ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... South?"—but, though they were as numerous as dandelions in June, these places were by no means patronized so widely by "the best people." Small shops, of course, carrying a single line of goods and supplying their particular products to an exacting and discriminating class, held their own even against the established reputation of Brandywine & Plummer's. O'Connell's linen store, Twitlow's china store, Mrs. Tonk's doll store, and Green & Brady's store for notions—all these were situated in Broad Street hardly a stone's throw from the Second ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... never do, dear Charlie, and it is very true you do twice our work and more, because we don't pour down such a torrent as you do when we spend; you must take care of yourself, we will not be so exacting in future, but cool ourselves first by a mutual gamahuche between ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... to Monsieur Duchemin. From the first he met few of any sort and none at all whom a lively and exacting distrust reckoned a likely factor in his affairs. It was a wild, bold land he traversed, and thinly peopled; at pains to avoid the larger towns, he sought by choice the loneliest paths that looped its quiet hills; such as passed the time of day with him were few and for the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... dealt thus generously by me but for a special reason: so tell me thy case and thy secret thought; belike thou hast some wish to whose winning I may help thee." Thereupon he laid his hand in hers and, after exacting an oath of secrecy, told her the whole story of his passion for the Princess and his condition by reason thereof. The old woman shook her head and said, "True; but O my son, the wise say, in the current adage, 'An thou wouldest be obeyed, abstain from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... pathos too exacting, and his delineation of the passions sensational and overwrought. He produced in his earlier career Alcibiades and Don Carlos, and, later, The Orphan, and The Soldier's Fortune. But the piece by which his fame was secured is Venice Preserved, which, based ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Campbell, that he had taken his solemn promise not to mention that circumstance," replied Rashleigh: "his reason for exacting such an engagement you may guess from what I have hinted—he wished to get back to his own country, undelayed and unembarrassed by any of the judicial inquiries which he would have been under the necessity of attending, had the fact of his being present at the robbery taken air while he ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott |
