"Overbearing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... known that at this very time the minister was incensed against this prelate, whose haughtiness was so overbearing, and whose impertinent ebullitions were so frequent as to have involved him in two very disagreeable affairs at Bordeaux. Four years before, the Duc d'Epernon, then governor of Guyenne, followed by all his train and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... industrious freeman must toil as well as the servant. But 'tis to bear with the master's caprice when he censures unjustly, Or when, at variance with self, he orders now this, now the other; Bear with the petulance, too, of the mistress, easily angered, And with the rude, overbearing ways of unmannerly children. All this is hard to endure, and yet to go on with thy duties Quickly, without delay, nor thyself grow sullen and stubborn. Yet thou appearest ill fitted for this, since already so deeply Stung by the father's jests: whereas there is nothing more common ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... insolent and overbearing attitude towards Steele, see his correspondence in Ibid., part ii. Magruder wanted Indian Territory attached to the District of Texas [p. 295] and was much disgusted that Gano's brigade was beyond his reach; inasmuch as Smith himself had placed it in Indian Territory ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... and no apology is admitted for any departure from the dignity of character, however natural or impressive. The beauty of the heroine, and the valour of the hero, must be alike resistless; and the moving spring, through the whole action, is the overbearing passion of love. Their language and manners are as peculiar to themselves, as their prowess and susceptibility. The pastoral Arcadian does not differ more widely from an ordinary rustic, than these lofty persons do from the princes and kings of this world. Neither is any circumstance of national ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... known the Germans at home—even years back—has been conscious of a certain strain in the Teutonic character which has had a like bearing in the German national life. How shall I describe it? It is a certain want of tact, unperceptiveness—a kind of overbearing simplicity of mind. Whether it be in the train or the hotel or the private house, the German does not always seem to see the personal situation. Whether you prefer to talk or remain silent, whether you wish the window open or shut, whether you desire to partake ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... Eliot (1864), Lives of Walter S. Landor (1868), and Charles Dickens (1871-4). He also left the first vol. of a Life of Swift. F., who was a man of great decision and force of character, concealed an unusually tender heart under a somewhat overbearing manner. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... companions and returned to Jerusalem, much to the mortification of his cousin Barnabas and the grief of Paul, since we have a right to infer that this brilliant young man was appalled by the dangers of the journey, or had more sympathy with his brethren at Jerusalem than with the liberal yet overbearing spirit of Paul. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... many enemies, Marquis," he resumed, "for his manners are overbearing and exacting; but you have many friends, and among them all you will find none more devoted than myself, humble though my position may be. Many ladies of high rank take a great interest in you. Only a day or two ago some persons were speaking of you in the presence ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... terrible antagonist; for she united the tongue of a woman to the logical faculty of a man, and it was impossible to get the better of her. Her faults were the faults of youth, as she was occasionally vain, saucy or overbearing, and always self-conscious. It was this last trait that Lowell referred to when he represented her as saying that since her earliest years she had "lived cheek by jowl with the Infinite Soul." Much youthful vanity, however, can be ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... and cruel only to their enemies, while those who had won their confidence could as safely rely upon them as upon the members of any other nation. The Andorobbo would much rather have dealings with the Wa-Kikuyu than with the Masai, because the former were much more peaceable and less overbearing than the latter. Our direct route to the Kenia lay through Kikuyu, whilst the route through Lykipia would have taken at least six days longer on account of the detour we should have to make around ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... souls were stirred by the statement of the city fathers was one, a bell-founder named Wolf, a man of evil passions and overbearing disposition, whose heart was firmly set on achieving success. In those days, let it be said, the casting of a bell was a solemn, and even a religious, performance, attended by elaborate ceremonies and benedictions. On the day which Wolf had appointed ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... challenged with a syllable—the ineffable disdain and haughtiness in which she sat before him—the cold inflexible resolve with which her every feature seemed to bear him down, and put him by—these, he had no resource against; and he left her, with her whole overbearing beauty ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... me if I had seen such and such a picture, talked of artists, and praised this and that man very fittingly, but with a certain timidity—a timidity that lured me back to my normally overbearing frame of mind. In such matters I was used to hearing my own voice. I could talk a man down, and, with a feeling of the unfitness of things, I talked Churchill down. The position, even then, struck me ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... deportment" of the British. But before they sent off the document they revised it and struck out these pleasant phrases. Not many days after the first conference Mr. Adams notes that the tone of the English Commissioners was even "more peremptory, and their language more overbearing, than at the former conferences." A little farther on he remarks that "the British note is overbearing and insulting in its tone, like the two former ones." ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... keep his discovery to himself. It was an expensive luxury, but he determined to indulge in it, and months or years later perhaps he would allow the skipper to learn what he had lost by his overbearing brutality. Somewhat soothed by this ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... then, of miracles, considered as possible occurrences, is not reason, but something which on other great subjects is continually found on the opposite side to reason, resisting and counteracting it; that powerful overbearing sense of the actual and the real, which when it is opposed by reason is apt to make reason seem like the creator of mere ideal theories; which gives to arguments implying a different condition of things from one which is familiar to present experience ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... disreputable. Adventurers flocked in from all sides and, were they but entertaining, immediately became bright satellites revolving round the sun of Wilhelmine's magnificence. Of course, these personages were not welcomed by the older stars—the Sittmanns and company; but the favourite waxed more overbearing, more autocratic each day, and she permitted ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Gaud had not yet left off mourning for her father; but Yann did not find any of the stuffs they placed before them good enough. He was not a little overbearing with the shopman; he, who formerly never would have set his foot inside a shop, wanted to manage everything himself, even to the very fashion of the dress. He wished it adorned with broad beads of velvet, so that it would be very fine, ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... addressed) stepped forward and looked at Mr. Washburn's card, saying something in an undertone to Rigault, which caused him instantly to change his manner toward me (I don't know which was worse, his overbearing or his ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... Sardus," said one, "how can you look at it in that light? Lucifer was surely in the wrong. And then, how haughty and overbearing he was." ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... have a care, Tread lightly, lest you rouse a sleeping bear: Religious, moral, generous, and humane He was, but self-sufficient, rude, and vain; Ill-bred and overbearing in dispute, A scholar and a Christian—yet a brute. Would you know all his wisdom and his folly, His actions, sayings, mirth, and melancholy? Boswell and Thrale, retailers of his wit, Will tell you how he wrote, and ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... Irish home life is Mrs. Martin—an exceedingly interesting character—-a, steadfast, self-reliant woman who through the exercise of common sense averts a domestic tragedy and brings harmony into a troubled household. No less an unusual creation, however, is James—"Mrs. Martin's Man." Intolerant, overbearing but yet possessed of a certain romantic attractiveness, he is one of the most ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... recording as of general interest. Most of them were paid, a few received. In the autumn of 1846, Margaret Fuller, sent from Emerson, called at Cheyne Row, and recorded her impression of the master as "in a very sweet humour, full of wit and pathos, without being overbearing," adding that she was "carried away by the rich flow of his discourse"; and that "the hearty noble earnestness of his personal bearing brought back the charm of his writing before she wearied of it." A later visitor, Miss Martineau, his old helper ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... the first accusation there was generally a counter-charge from the Committees, accusing the Board's officers of being insulting and overbearing to them. One of the most noteworthy cases of this kind occurred at Ennistymon. Captain Wynne, the Board of Works' inspector, writes a long complaint about the treatment he had received from the members of the Committee there; it being, amongst other things, he says, proposed that he should be kicked ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... its duties and requirements. Though he had, with an ill grace, apologized for his conduct, he seemed to feel no compunction on account of it; but, on the contrary, he every moment grew more overbearing and insolent. He could not speak to his companions in a gentlemanly manner, as they had been accustomed to be addressed. He was course, rude, and vulgar; and the members, who had received him among them in the best spirit possible, began to ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... marked out, judges appointed, betts** offered, but no crossing or jostling allowed; a plain proof they depended on winning from the excellence of their Horses alone. But though a curricle and pair was then the fashion, there lived at that time a strange mad kind of fellow, haughty and overbearing, determined that no body should do anything like himself, who always drove three; and though the recital of this circumstance may be considered as trivial, or little to the purpose, we shall find something in the story worth our attention, ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... the nursery, the counter, and the lap of unrestrained indulgence at home: and if most of them at least, by their impotency as officers, in all important functions at sea, by their boyish and overweening conceit of their gold lace, by their overbearing manner toward the seamen, and by their peculiar aptitude to construe the merest trivialities of manner into set affronts against their dignity; if by all this they sometimes contract the ill-will of the seamen; and if, in a thousand ways, the seamen cannot but betray it—how ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... fury against the overbearing arrogance of these younger gods. Athene bears their rage with equanimity, addresses them in the language of kindness, even of veneration, till these so indomitable beings are unable to withstand the charm of her mild eloquence. They ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... there. By her looks he knew that she was a king's daughter and one who had been favored by the gods. He wanted her for his wife. But my mother hated this harsh and overbearing king, and she would not wed with him. Often he came storming around the shepherd's hut, and at last my mother had to take refuge from him in a temple. There she became the priestess ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... Priscilla and Hugh. Priscilla was at first decided, indeed, but mild in the expression of her decision. To this, and to one or two other missives couched in terms of increasing decision, Hugh answered with manly, self-asserting, overbearing arguments. The house was theirs till Christmas; between this and then he would think about it. He could very well afford to keep the house on till next Midsummer, and then they might see what had best be done. There was plenty of money, and Priscilla need not put herself into a flutter. In answer ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... politicians, shyster lawyers, political gangsters, flocked to the spoil. In 1851 the lawlessness of mere physical violence had come to a head. By 1855 and 1856 there was added to a recrudescence of this disorder a lawlessness of graft, of corruption, both political and financial, and the overbearing arrogance of a self-made aristocracy. These conditions combined to bring about a second crisis in the precarious ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... 'Sir George was the girl's fancy-man, then?' Pomeroy said, in the harsh overbearing tone he ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... husband and son when they returned. It was quite apparent to the meanest capacity that there was a rivalry between the two timepieces; for, being both rather good timekeepers, they invariably struck the hours at the same time, but the new clock struck with such a loud overbearing ring that the old one was quite overpowered. The latter had the advantage, however, of getting the first two strokes before the other began, besides which it prefaced its remarks every hour with a mysterious hissing and whirring ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... Hump Doane in the overbearing tone of an inquisitor, "we don't owe ye no explanations as ter which ner whether. We've gathered tergether, as we hev full right ter do, because you Harpers seems hell bent on forcin' warfare down our throats—an' we aims ter carcumvent ye." He paused, ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... may promote or prejudice them.. There is an Evil which has prevailed from Generation to Generation, which grey Hairs and tyrannical Custom continue to support; I hope your Spectatorial Authority will give a seasonable Check to the Spread of the Infection; I mean old Mens overbearing the strongest Sense of their Juniors by the mere Force of Seniority; so that for a young Man in the Bloom of Life and Vigour of Age to give a reasonable Contradiction to his Elders, is esteemed an unpardonable Insolence, and regarded as a reversing the Decrees ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the features that gave signs of frightful periodical pain, the immense energy, the gigantic egotism, the ravenous vanity, the fanaticism amounting to frenzy, the dominating power, the dictatorial temper, the indifference to suffering (whether his own or other people's), the overbearing suppression of opposing opinions, the determination to control everybody's interest, everybody's work—I thought all this was written in the Kaiser's masterful face. Then came stories. One of my friends ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... on the Epistle to Augustus," he wrote to him with mock humility—"I will confess to you how much satisfaction the groundless part of it, that which relates to myself, gave me." When Dr. Jortin very properly spoke of Warburton with less of subserviency than the overbearing bishop desired, Hurd at once came forward to fight for Warburton in print, in a satirical treatise on "The Delicacy of Friendship," which highly delighted his patron, who at once wrote to Dr. Lowth, stating him to be "a man of very superior talents, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... blasphemous man." She had not distinctly seen the face of the visitor at the shop; but something in the impatient, querulous tone, in the hasty, haughty step, and the proud lifting of the regal head, reminded her painfully of him whose overbearing insolence had so unwontedly stirred the ire of Aaron Hunt's genial and generally equable nature. While she pondered this inexplicable coincidence, voices startled her from the next room, whence the sound ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... with his death the prosecution of the undertaking, so far as the sovereigns of Castile were concerned, would cease, from want of a suitable person to take charge of it; and notwithstanding this might be done without suspicion of the king's being privy to it,—for inasmuch as the admiral was overbearing and puffed up by his success, they could easily bring it about, that his own indiscretion should appear the occasion of his death,—yet the king, as he was a prince greatly fearing God, not only forbade this, but even showed the, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... clear justice, every worker arose, walked out of the shop with Jake Klein, and stayed out till the company made overtures of peace. This adventure, widely related on the East Side, serves to show the latent fire, kindled by the accumulation of small overbearing oppressions, which smolders in many ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... the action of the government from day to day,—almost from hour to hour. He was well fitted to secure the sympathy and admiration of his countrymen, for his virtues and his failings were alike English. He was often inconsistent, he was generally intractable and overbearing, and he was always pompous and affected to a degree which, Macaulay has remarked, seems scarcely compatible with true greatness. Of the last quality evidence is furnished in the stilted style of his letters, and in the fact recorded ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... moment when that Power was working to extend the twenty years' truce concluded by Hungary with the Sultan. The French envoy promised secretly his adhesion to the Turks; and the latter, delighted at the intervention of the French, became so overbearing towards the Imperial Crown that that Power was reduced to ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... of these proceedings. The governor was as overbearing as ever, the Burgesses were overawed, the plans for reform were set aside, the Indian war was mismanaged. He must have been disgusted that the Burgesses were too cowardly to vote down a resolution requesting the governor not to resign. ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... "slugging," so overbearing and ruthlessly unfair was the Fordham charge that, at the end of five minutes, Gridley was forced to make a safety, losing ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... stared at them incredulously, and it seemed to me that there was something almost pathetic about the old man's position. Grim and overbearing as he was, he stood alone, and for the first time I think he to some extent realized it. Still, it was evident that he could not bring himself to believe that they would go so far as to ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... woe, but it was also the woe of the entire friendly world. Every architect knew and said that the profession of architecture would be ruined for years. Then the India Office woke George up. The attitude of the India Office was overbearing. It implied that it had been marvellously original and virtuous in submitting the affair of its barracks to even a limited competition, when it might just as easily have awarded the job to any architect whom it happened to know, or whom ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... a wealthy farmer who had three sons. The oldest was a selfish overbearing fellow. The second was a weak chap who always did everything his brother suggested. The youngest whose name was Janko was not as bright and clever as his brothers but he was honest and, moreover, ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... overbearing and uncontrollable, misanthropy, excessive dogmatism, a singular pleasure in giving others pain, were among his personal faults or misfortunes. He abused his companions and servants; he never forgave his sister for marrying a tradesman; he could attract with winning ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Warsaw or in camp at the front. The other noticeable characteristic is the friendly terms he is on with his officers. The Prussian soldiers rarely seem to like their officers, and it is not to be wondered at, as they treat their men in a very harsh, overbearing way. On duty the Russian discipline is strict, but off duty an officer may be heard addressing one of his men as "little pigeon" or "comrade" and other terms of endearment, and the soldier, on the other hand, ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... whose Life we are now about to write, was a student in the garden with those named above; and he was not only powerful in person, and proud and fearless in spirit, but also by nature so overbearing and choleric, that he was for ever tyrannizing over all the others both with words and deeds. His chief profession was sculpture, yet he worked with great delicacy in terra-cotta, in a very good and beautiful manner. But not being able to endure that any one should surpass him, he would ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... his way to Dry Harbor and take ship to England. I could imagine the rage of Sir Richard when his emissary should return and report the total failure of his scheme. 'Twould sort with his violent and overbearing character to make Vetch a scapegoat (a man in the wrong must ever have someone to kick); and I wondered to what new villainy Cyrus ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... and clever, but vain, overbearing, suspicious, and jealous. Byron hated Palmerston, but liked Peel, and thought that the whole world ought to be constantly employed in admiring ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... day for speculation—this particular one; the dead leaves were scurrying up the street as people ran for a train; a gusty wind was carrying all before it for the time being, like an overbearing debater. The trees shook and groaned, recoiled and shuddered, like human creatures in the blast; in their agitation dropping hosts of leaves that immediately slipped under covert, or else joined their ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... numerous literary works are "The Rambler," "Rasselas," "The Lives of the English Poets," and his edition of Shakespeare. In person, Johnson was heavy and awkward; he was the victim of scrofula in his youth, and of dropsy in his old age. In manner, he was boorish and overbearing; but his great powers and his wisdom caused his company to be sought by many eminent men of his ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... to free his mind. He answered instantly: "Gilli of Trondhjem is a low-minded man who has gained great wealth, and is so greedy for property that he would give the nails off his hands and the tongue out of his head to get it. He is an overbearing churl." ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... inferior to any other as illustrating the quaintly blended life of Iceland; and of the highest kind as regards the conception of the hero—a not ungenerous Strength, guided by no intellectual greatness and by hardly any overmastering passion, marred by an unsocial and overbearing temper, and so hardly needing the ill luck, which yet gives poetical finish and dramatic force to the story, to cast itself utterly away. For in stories, as in other games, play without luck is fatiguing and ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... launched in London he was agreeable in company, as well as forcible and amusing. Wilberforce speaks of his "unruffled good-humour." Sir Robert Inglis, a good observer with ample opportunity of forming a judgment, pronounced that he conversed and did not dictate, and that he was loud but never overbearing. As far back as the year 1826 Crabb Robinson gave a very favourable account of his demeanour in society, which deserves credence as the testimony of one who liked his share of talk, and was not willing to be put in the background for anybody. ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... felt that it was to the latter that they owed their safety. But now it was different: his black face and the company he was in made him seem one of the people, so that his appearance caused no surprise, and he was able to ride on perfectly unnoticed by the common folk and the many armed, overbearing, mounted and pacing ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... allow freedom to others; on the contrary, no man would more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought; but it is the impulse of a mind accustomed to follow out its own impulse as the hawk its prey, and which knows not how to stop in the chase. Carlyle, indeed, is arrogant and overbearing, but in his arrogance there is no littleness or self-love: it is the heroic arrogance of some old Scandinavian conqueror,—it is his nature and the untamable impulse that has given him power to crush the dragons. You do not love him, perhaps, nor revere, and perhaps, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... in the gallant Colonel being under the supper table, a thing only too common, but not in the house of a solitary lady who had only lately quitted the carousers. Half the dependants on the estate were complaining of the guest's swaggering overbearing treatment of themselves, or of his insolence to their wives or daughters; and Betty lived in a dreadful unnamed terror lest he should offer some impertinence to her father which the veteran's honour might not brook. However, there was something in the old soldier's ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... arrogant, or overbearing, or rude to domestics or employees. His commands are requests, and all services, no matter how humble the servant, are received with thanks, as if they were favors. We might say the same with still greater emphasis of the true lady. There is no surer sign of vulgarity than a needless assumption ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... the traditions of Wimborne, for she taught and encouraged learning in every way. Her rule was sane and wise. Her biographer says of her, "She was careful always not to teach others what she herself did not practise. Neither conceit nor overbearing found any place in her disposition; but she was gentle and kind to everyone without exception. She was beautiful as an angel and her conversation was charming. Her intellect was renowned, and she was able in counsel. She was catholic in faith, most patient in hope, ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney
... or friend, rather than as a minister; while on his part he never presumed on any liberties, and seemed simply to obey the orders of his sovereign,—orders which he himself suggested, with infinite tact and politeness; unlike Stein and Bismarck, who were overbearing and rude even in the presence of the sovereign and court. Metternich had better manners and more self-control. Indeed, he was the model of a gentleman wherever he went. He was the hardest worked man in the empire; and he worked from the stimulus of what he conceived to be his duty, and for ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... puffs himself up in the way that many of our Junkers or patricians do; no, it's something else altogether different. In a word, it strikes me, by my troth, as if he held intercourse with higher spirits, as if he belonged, in fact, to another world. Conrad is a wild overbearing fellow, and yet there is something confoundedly distinguished about him as well; it doesn't agree with the cooper's apron somehow. And he always acts as if nobody but he had to give orders, and as if the others must obey him. In the short time that he has been here he has got so far that when ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Battle of Lewes, Henry III. galloped up, attended by a body-guard of overbearing horsemen, and levied large sums of money to assist him in the struggle. After the battle he returned, a weary ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... before him, had gathered a little more of the good things of life than had the majority, but he was in no sense a dictator, except as personality won obedience. In the old days a chief was often relegated to the ranks for failure in war, and always for an overbearing attitude toward the commoners. Such arrogant fellows were kicked out of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... If he were bitter or scornful, he was certainly not petulant. No one has written with more justice or coolness; the temper is hot but it is the heat of a conscious and collected indignation. If he wrote or spoke in a manner somewhat overbearing, it was not because of ambition, since he was now long past his youth and his mind had become settled in a fairly complacent acceptance of his position. If he had pride, and he undoubtedly had, it was nowhere obtruded for personal aggrandizement, but rather by way of emphasizing the dignity of citizenship, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... the black and white pebbles, they are found equal in number, and the accused, therefore, by the decision of Pallas, is acquitted. He breaks out into joyful thanksgiving, while the Furies on the other hand declaim against the overbearing arrogance of these younger gods, who take such liberties with those of Titanic race. Pallas bears their rage with equanimity, addresses them in the language of kindness, and even of veneration; and these so indomitable beings are unable to withstand the charms ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... upon it, they show at the bottom of their souls pride and vain-glory in their very condition of masterdom. They fancy themselves more generous and noble-hearted than the plain freemen, who labor for subsistence. They look down on the simplicity of Yankee manners, because they have no habits of overbearing like theirs, and cannot treat negroes like dogs. It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very source of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice; for what can be more false and heartless than this doctrine, which makes ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... saw Charing Cross, Cicely came to hate this proud, avaricious and overbearing man, who hid a savage nature under a cloak of virtue, and whilst serving his own ends, mouthed great words about God and the King. Still, she who was schooled in adversity, learned to hide her heart, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... nabobs these corrective agencies are too often wanting, and though it is hard to believe that a sophisticated uncle, a soldier grandfather and various other relatives would have allowed a conceited and overbearing young boor to wreck his mother's life by separating her from a former sweetheart, it cannot be said that such cases have not existed or that the picture is altogether overdrawn. But we do not like George Minafer, and his final ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... has illustrated before all the people the horrible character of slavery toward the slave, in hunting him down in a free state, and tearing him away from wife and children, thus setting its claims higher than marriage or parental claims. It has revealed the arrogant and overbearing spirit of the slave states toward the free states; despising their principles—shocking their feelings of humanity, not only by bringing before them the abominations of slavery, but by attempting to make them parties to the crime. ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... windward side of the island he threw the schooner up into the wind, and ordered the large boat to be hoisted out and put in the water. Gascoyne issued his commands in a quick, loud voice, and Ole shook his head as if he felt that this overbearing manner proved what he had expected; namely, that when the pirate got aboard his own vessel, he would come out in ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... Nehemiah, scornfully. Book and scholar and it might be fiddle too, so indulgent had the prospect of success made him, would by tomorrow be on the return route to the cross-roads. He even ventured to differ with the overbearing miller. ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... sight: the handsome young man on one side, overbearing confidence in his look, with his youthful form, full of grace and suppleness; and opposite him that long figure, half naked—for his blue shirt was furled up from his sinewy arm, and his broad, scarred breast was ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... arose. The unsettled state of the country from recent wars, and, above all, the overbearing deportment of the Moors, so completely frightened my attendants that they declared they would relinquish every claim to reward rather than proceed a step farther eastward. Indeed the danger they incurred of being seized by the Moors and sold into ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... ashamed of the words he had spoken to his guest; and he took Siegfried into his own chamber, and told him all; and he asked him what answer they should send on the morrow to the overbearing North-kings. ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... tears under my eyelids as the editor concluded his eulogy. Under that gruff and even overbearing exterior must beat a warm and tender heart. You can't go by appearances, I always say, and I felt I would never again be hurt by whatever hasty words he chose ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... themselves or range riders whose living depended on the business, and during the past two years a band of rustlers had operated so boldly as to have wiped out the profits of some of the ranchers. Most of them disliked Buck extremely for his overbearing ways. But they did not usually tell him so. On this particular subject, too, they joined hand ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... Clinton, the site of Hamilton College. This was done at the special request of Senator Conkling, and on my way I passed a day with him at Utica, taking a long drive through the adjacent country. Never was he more charming. The bitter and sarcastic mood seemed to have dropped off him; the overbearing manner had left no traces; he was full of delightful reminiscences and it was a ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... Basilio, in a bad humor. "You always receive me with the same complaints." The youth was not overbearing, but as he was at times scolded by Capitan Tiago, he liked in his turn to chide those ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... weakest must go to the wall". He did not explain the evolution of man's opposition to this law. The ordinary evolutionist hypothesis, that the tribe would prosper most whose members were least self-seeking, is contradicted by all history. The overbearing, "grabbing," aristocratic, individualistic, unscrupulous races beat the others out of the field. Mr. Huxley, indeed, alleged that the "influence of the cosmic process in the evolution of society is the greater the more rudimentary its civilisation. Social ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... Mark said, "We will now run for our horses, for we cannot hold our own here, for the overbearing ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... answered by the statement that Nelson publicly thanked him for his skill and gallantry at Copenhagen, and by the heroism which he showed in the most remarkable boat voyage in history. He may have been the most tyrannical and overbearing naval officer that ever entered the service, but he was not the man to hide ...
— The Beginning Of The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... me, said: "You have so exaggerated in their praise, and amplified with such extravagance, that we might fancy them an antidote to the poison of poverty and a key to the store-house of Providence; yet they are a proud, self-conceited, fastidious, and overbearing set, insatiate after wealth and property, and ambitious of rank and dignity; who exchange not a word but to express insolence, or deign a look but to show contempt. Men of science they call beggars, and the indigent they reproach for their ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Uncle Silas's place, Aunt Polly—all the farmers live about a mile apart down there—and Brace Dunlap is a long sight richer than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of niggers. He's a widower, thirty-six years old, without any children, and is proud of his money and overbearing, and everybody is a little afraid of him. I judge he thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the asking, and it must have set him back a good deal when he found he couldn't get Benny. Why, Benny's only half ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had set down a heavy suitcase and was apparently trying to persuade its white owner to pay his small fee for carrying it. The white man, keen-faced, overbearing, immaculately dressed, cursed the porter in venomous Low Malay and picked up the suitcase himself. As he turned to board the train, leaving the fee unpaid, the porter trotted beside him with outstretched ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Little People All conspired against the Strong Man, All conspired to murder Kwasind, Yes, to rid the world of Kwasind, The audacious, overbearing, Heartless, haughty, ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... you are to see at supper, if you will do us the favour of your company, was naturally impetuous, decisive, and overbearing. He entered into life with those ardent expectations by which young men are commonly deluded: in his friendships, warm to excess; and equally violent in his dislikes. He was on the brink of marriage with a young lady, when one of those friends, for whose honour he ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... do not know us; but somehow Pedro is my best, in fact, my only friend. We were brought up in the same village, and are just like brothers. He is a good sort of fellow, but is abominably vain and self-conceited; then he is deucedly overbearing. He has no delicacy for his friend's feelings, and, in fact, has a thousand failings that no one else but I could tolerate. True, we have now and then a pretty rough time of it. The two gashes on his left cheek are mementoes of my regard, and I confess I have two ugly marks, one ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... under the scaly bark of the tree—if allowed to be scaly—or in some other hiding-place, spins a cocoon, and in about three weeks comes out a moth, and is ready to help destroy other apples. This insect probably constitutes one of Nature's methods of preventing trees from overbearing; but like some people we know, it so exaggerates its mission as to become an insufferable nuisance. The remedies recommended are that trees should be scraped free of all scales in the spring, and ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... nothing. I accepted every service, every sweet, loving token, every delicate act of devotion, as something to which I was entitled,—as my right. Forty-four years old, a life with one idea, a narrow, selfish, overbearing nature, ministered to by such a creature, noble, lovely, true, with eighteen years ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... strong delusion, and that the object of which he is in pursuit is but a phantom. Then mark the path in which that phantom leads: it has turned him from being a blasphemer, persecutor, and an insolent, overbearing man (1 Tim. 1), into one of liveliest affections, most tender sympathies, a lowly servant of all; it has given him a joy that no wave of trouble can quench, a song that dungeons cannot silence, a transparent truthfulness which permits a lie nowhere; and ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... is no great favorite of mine," said Lady Clanmorne; "I think him overbearing and selfish, and I should not like at all to ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... a sailor's vague knowledge of the procedure of courts of law; but that knowledge and considerable hearsay had convinced him that law was lagging, exacting, and overbearing. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... to Madrid. Printing was begun in 1837, and when copies were ready Borrow advertised them and arranged for their distribution. He himself set out with his servant, Antonio Buchini, a Greek of Constantinople, who had served an infinity of masters, and once been a cook to the overbearing General Cordova, and answered the General's sword with a pistol. They travelled to Salamanca, Valladolid, Leon, Astorga, Villafranca, Lugo, Coruna, to Santiago, Vigo, and again to Coruna, to Ferrol, Oviedo, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... sister of irreproachable life and demeanour (the book had been an indiscretion, long since bitterly repented of), should be singled out for these humiliating exercises. There were other nuns of her acquaintance, proud, haughty and overbearing (her foot slipped here as a reminder against the sin of hasty judgments, and she felt that it was a small and niggling Justice that counted offences at such a crisis), and—and thinking too much of their holiness, to whom this mortification, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... man is capable; by tickling the cupidity of one man and flattering the ambitions of another; by intimidating the weak, and groveling before the strong; by every species of fawning sycophancy on the one hand, and brutal overbearing bullying on ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... succeeded by a dish of meat, and that by a dish of vegetables. He ate all that was placed before him, emptied his bottle of wine, called for a glass of rum, and smoked his cigarette with his cup of coffee. As he became refreshed, he became overbearing; and patronised the company at the Daybreak in certain small talk at which he assisted, as if his condition ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... disciples, and prevailed upon the minister to entertain him as a mosahib, or aide-de-camp. He soon became a favourite with Aga Meer, and formed a liaison with a dancing-girl, named Beeba Jan. His conduct towards her soon became too violent and overbearing, and she sought shelter with the Khasmahal, or chief consort, of the minister, who promised her protection, and detained her in her apartments. Eesa Meean appealed to the minister, and demanded her surrender. The minister told ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... for. Angry debates arose in Parliament when the question of religion was touched. The proposals made by the Presbyterians might well provoke the anger of those who saw in them the subordination of ecclesiastical tradition to the tenets of a party which had been overbearing in their hour of triumph, and were ready now, by a cunning appeal for peace, to make their austere and unattractive ritual trample over the cherished customs of the Church. The fact that ritual, rather than doctrine, was concerned, made the fight only the more real, and the passions on either ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... discipline is generally slack and ineffective, the staff of warders, from ill-judged economy, too weak to supervise or control. The officers themselves are of inferior stamp, drunken, untrustworthy, overbearing, much given to "trafficking" with the prisoners, accepting bribes to assist escape, quick to misuse and oppress their charges. Crime of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... stare at us through the barbed-wire fence as if we were caged animals, but no insults were offered us. Rather, the women showed us kindness and passed us sweetmeats and strange food through the fence until an officer came and stopped them with overbearing words. Then, presently, ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... withdrew the last vail that concealed the utter rottenness of all that claimed popular obedience, under the names of religion, and authority, sufficed, though scarcely needed, to complete the discredit of the French monarchy; and, ascending his throne, surrounded by a dissolute clergy, an overbearing aristocracy, and a discontented and impoverished people, the robed Louis the Sixteenth seemed but the calf of atonement of the Scriptures decked for sacrifice, and doomed to expiate a century of court gayeties and crimes in which he had ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... seemed strangely aware of his own superior gifts and was often so overbearing that he made enemies. The story is told of a quarrel he had with a young man named Torrigiano, in whose company he was copying some frescoes in a church in Florence. Stung by some tormenting words of Michelangelo, Torrigiano retaliated with a blow of the fist, ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... Chancellor. Lord Anglesey warmly defended Lord Cloncurry as a magistrate and a man, and appealed to his known loyalty and respect for the King as a proof that he would never have done anything derogatory to his own situation. The Duke's letter he described to have been overbearing and insolent, Lord Anglesey's[22] temperate, but firm. Lord Anglesey declares that these were all the grounds of offence he had given. Five weeks elapsed, during which he heard nothing from the Duke, and at the end of that time he received his letter ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... there, after which he would ride to meet the girl who was waiting for him. This would give him time enough to get away safely. It was no business of his whether or not Doble was taken. He was an overbearing brute, anyhow. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale's jaw. "Aye, he was dismasted off Japan," said the old Gay-Head Indian ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... page of studies, I strolled along the bank of the river; and while sketching some men breaking stones an incident happened which first aroused me to the fact that the lot of the sketching artist is not always a happy one. A fiend in human shape—an overbearing overseer—came up at the moment, and roundly abused the poor labourers for taking the "base Saxon's" coin. Inciting them to believe that I was a special informer from London, he laughed on my declaring that I was merely a novice, and informed me that I ought to be "dhrounded." ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... natives by the possession of fire-arms, they became overbearing, treated the timid Aleutians in the most cruel manner, and would perhaps have quite exterminated them, had not the Emperor Paul interposed. By his order, in 1797, a Russian-American mercantile company was established, which was to supersede the trading societies hitherto existing, and possess ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... Moby Gore, the huge and overbearing first mate of the pirates on his daily mission of inspection and prisoner baiting. Quirl crept further into his corner. It would be fatal to his plan for him to attract the attention of this petty tyrant. It was hard enough to keep away from him—to crush ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... up the fault of the expedition, from its inception in the Cabinet throughout all the antecedent steps of consultation and preparation. Pitt's impetuosity doubtless acted as a spur to laggards, but it was accompanied by a tendency to overbearing insolence that not infrequently browbeats cautious wisdom. When applied to a man like Hawke, strong in natural temper and in conscious mastery of his profession, the tone characteristic of Pitt provokes an equally resolute self-assertion, as far removed from subjection as it is from ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... a fortnight ago, where I met Croker—not overbearing, and rather agreeable, though without having said much that was peculiarly interesting. Two things struck me. He said he dined and passed the evening tete-a-tete with the Duke of Wellington (then Sir Arthur Wellesley) before his departure ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Joshua Reynolds, 'Johnson did not trouble himself with much circumlocution, but opposed directly and abruptly his antagonist. He fought with all sorts of weapons—ludicrous comparisons and similies; if all failed, with rudeness and overbearing. He thought it necessary never to be worsted in argument. He had one virtue which I hold one of the most difficult to practise. After the heat of contest was over, if he had been informed that his antagonist resented his rudeness, he was the first to seek after a reconciliation.... That he was not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... rivals as a slight put upon themselves, and professing principles which were thus summed up by one of their leaders: "Lower Canada must be English at the expense, if necessary, of not being British." Elsewhere Lord Durham confesses the overbearing character of Anglo-Saxon manners, especially offensive to a proud and sensitive people, who showed their resentment, not by active reprisal, but by a strange and silent reserve. The same confession might still be made concerning a section of English-speaking Canadians, who seem to consider it a personal ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... wife in the family of production," interrupted Mr. Duncan. "Nothing is to be gained by that quarrel. I admit the husband has been overbearing, offensive, brutal, perhaps; but the wife has been slovenly, inefficient, shallow. Neither has yet been brought to realize how hopeless is the case of one without the other. And I don't think they will learn that by quarreling. What they need is not hard words, but mutual ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... reader of Bunyan's works will notice the difference between the trial of Faithful in the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and that of the prisoners brought to the bar as traitors in the 'Holy War.' The judge and jury are particularly overbearing to Faithful, much more so than to the Diabolonians. Still there is one very strong feature in which they all agree. The prisoners are all brought to their trial, not that their guilt or innocence might be proved, but in order to their condemnation and execution. All are brought ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... they had unhorsed the 20 Russians. The whole 30 men were on the ground rolling in the sawdust, the Japs rolling over and under the Russians, twisting their legs and arms in an unknown manner, and making them yell for help like a mastiff that has trifled in an overbearing manner with a little bulldog, until the bulldog got mad and began the chewing act on the mastiff's ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... his enemies' land He spared the poor from ravage of fire with powerful hand; Whenever he encountered a warrior overbearing, He broke his burgs and slew him with dire revenge unsparing." Gudrun ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... the letter impetuously on the table. "Read it, Talleyrand," he said, carelessly. "It is always instructive to see how small these men are in adversity, and how overbearing in prosperity. And such men desire to be sovereign ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... people had no right to appear in the business at all, appealed to the General Assembly. And so the people had next to petition that venerable court in behalf of what they deemed their imperilled rights; while the Gaelic congregation, under the full impression that their overbearing English neighbours were treating them "as if they had no souls," got up a counter petition, virtually to the effect that the parish might be either cut in two, and the half of it given to their minister, or that he might be at least made second minister ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... madam; but I prefer to take his word." Stanton's tone of overbearing finality made Nancy clench her hands with rage. She turned ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Illuminati, 815-l. Templars' trowel has triangular plates arranged in the form of a cross, 816-m. Templars united with Rose Croix Adepts and formed a Mystic Sect, 821-m. Templars, when rich, became insolent and overbearing, 820-u. Temple an abridged image of the world, furniture, symbolism, 410. Temple built by Wisdom has at its portal Jachin and Boaz, 860-m. Temple built painfully slowly, destroyed very quickly, 320-m. Temple gates opened but once a ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... quick pulse and the energy of youth had left her no time for melancholy, and not much for thought. If at rare intervals she had felt herself lonely, if she had been tempted to think that the brother in whom were centred her hopes, her affections, and her family pride was hard and selfish, rude and overbearing, she had told herself that all men were so; that all men rode rough-shod over their women. And that being so, who had a better right to hector it than the last of the McMurroughs, heir of the Wicklow kings, who in days far past had dealt on equal terms with Richard Plantagenet, ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... discussions ex cathedra in a sharp tone, and ordering his companions to help him to dishes, as thus: 'Sergeant-Major, p'tatoes!' 'Oates, beef!' 'Hurry up with those beans!' To be monosyllabic, rude to his superiors and equals, and overbearing to his inferiors in rank, this fledgling soldier—our comrade of a few days since, and presently the subordinate of most of us, through standing still while we went ahead—used to think the perfection and essence of the military system. And then that smug-faced, smooth-tongued, dirty-looking ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... such an emergency, omitted the usual form of calling a council of war with his officers. It can only be accounted for by the fact of a want of harmonious feeling between himself and one of his junior officers—Ensign Ronan, a high-spirited and somewhat overbearing, but ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... the frowns of anger. When they lose their temper they forget themselves; often enough they have just cause of complaint; but when they scold they always put themselves in the wrong. We should each adopt the tone which befits our sex; a soft-hearted husband may make an overbearing wife, but a man, unless he is a perfect monster, will sooner or later yield to his wife's gentleness, and ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... help of foreign men and money to reimpose a feudal tyranny on a prosperous and free commonwealth. For this is the aspect in which the Ghibelines must have presented themselves to a Florentine burgher of the year 1300. No doubt the doings of the Black party would have taught him that overbearing and tyrannical ways, turbulence and swagger were not the monopoly of one side, and that the freedom and peace of Florence must, in any case, soon be things of the past. All the foundations of the earth must have seemed to him to be out of course, and we can well imagine that his thought ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... should have had the misfortune to have her affairs entrusted to Ministers and officials who were childishly incompetent and ludicrously vindictive. Men of meagre mental calibre, who hold office under the Crown or anywhere else, are invariably fussy, pompous, overbearing, and stifling with conceit. This condition of things was in full swing during the Napoleonic regime and captivity, and that is the period we are concerned about. There does not appear to have been a single man of genius in Europe but ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... the few continuing to give milk upon turnips and straw, and made the best of their scanty supply for the use of the household. There was no hardship in her present life. She had plenty of wholesome food to eat, and she lay warm at night. The old farmer, who was rather overbearing with his men, was kind to her because he liked her; and the guidwife was a sonsy (well conditioned) dame, who, when she scolded, never meant anything ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... a fantastic baroque desert. Venus was a riot of colors, all in a minor key: muted greens and reds, an overbearing gray, a strange, ghostly blue. The sky, or rather the cloud layer, dominated the atmosphere with its weird pinkness. It was a silent world—a ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... considering at how early an age they are entrapped into subscription, they all deserve our sincere sympathy and very ample allowance, as long as they are pleading for the rights of conscience: only when they become overbearing, dictatorial, proud of their chains, and desirous of ejecting others, does it seem right to press them with the topic of inconsistency. There in, besides, in the ministry of the Established Church a sprinkling of original minds, who cannot be included in either of the two great divisions; and ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... has fine passages, but is as unreal as Jane Eyre. It shares with many of Wordsworth's narrative poems the defect of being written to illustrate an abstract moral theory, so that the overbearing thesis is continually thrusting the poetry to the wall. Applied to the drama, such predestination makes all the personages puppets and disenables them for being characters. Wordsworth seems to have felt this when he published The Borderers in 1842, and says in a note that it was 'at first ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... self-assurance. I observed that all the other officers bowed politely at the end of each, no one questioning any of his statements. Even Captain Collyer let him run on without differing from him in the slightest degree. I took a dislike to him from the first from his overbearing manner at times. Still he was certainly amusing, and everybody present laughed very much at his jokes. He talked incessantly, and did not scruple to interrupt anybody speaking. Among his stories was an account he gave of his own prowess, when a lieutenant ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... would have been more quickly forgotten but for the overbearing attitude of Japanese settlers towards the Korean people, and of Japanese Ministers towards the Korean Government. Officially they advanced claims so unjust that they aroused the protest of other foreigners. The attitude of the Japanese settlers ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... and Vigdis] Hrapp was the son of Sumarlid, and was called Fight-Hrapp. He was Scotch on his father's side, and his mother's kin came from Sodor, where he was brought up. He was a very big, strong man, and one not willing to give in even in face of some odds; and for the reason that was most overbearing, and would never make good what he had misdone, he had had to fly from West-over-the-sea, and had bought the land on which he afterwards lived. His wife was named Vigdis, and was Hallstein's daughter; and their son was named Sumarlid. ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... and never softened by that alternation of social intercourse, at a common table at which in the army, all the officers of the regiment meet daily, and from which they rise with a feeling, not only that insulting and overbearing command upon duty would be a violation of an implied pledge of kindness, but injury to themselves, as diminishing in the gloom that would spread over their next meeting, the common stock of enjoyment. The condition of our naval service is, in some respects, improved since Erskine ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... like this. Dame Anna's husband was a poor gentleman who had a little plot of land in the neighbourhood of the castle, which was the occasion of an eternal squabble between him and the lord of the manor. One day, Hetfalusy—you know how overbearing these great gentlemen are!—suddenly fell upon this poor gentleman as he was walking on this little plot of land of his and gave him a sound drubbing. The result was a great lawsuit. Hetfalusy questioned Dudoky's gentility, and the latter could not make good his claim to be regarded ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... volume, namely, the Alsace-Lorraine Question and the Eastern Question. Those disputes have dragged on without any attempt at settlement by the Great Powers. The Zabern incident inflamed public opinion in Alsace-Lorraine, and illustrated the overbearing demeanour of the German military caste; while the insidious attempts of Austria in 1913 to incite Bulgaria against Servia marked out the Hapsburg Empire as the chief enemy of the Slav peoples of the Balkan Peninsula after the collapse of Turkish ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... and could understand the great aversion which his nephew felt towards him. He looked like a gentleman and like a man of talent, nor was there anything of meanness in his face; neither was he ill-looking, in the usual acceptation of the word; but one could see that he was solemn, austere, and overbearing; that he would be incapable of any light enjoyment, and unforgiving towards all offences. I took him to be a man who, being old himself, could never remember that he had been young, and who, therefore, hated the levities of youth. To ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... the palace. The king knew not whether to choose victory or defeat for his favorite. Victory would increase the influence and the renown of one strongly attached to him, and would thus enable him more successfully to resist the encroachments of the Duke of Guise. Defeat would weaken the overbearing power of the Leaguers, and enable Henry III. more securely to retain his position by the balance of the two rival parties. Joyeuse, ardent and inexperienced, and despising the feeble band he was to encounter, was eager to display his prowess. He pressed eagerly to assail the ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... old ways, and for over sixty years from the first comer there was a stream of hardy men pouring in, with their families and their belongings, simple yeomen, great and warwise chieftains, rich landowners, who had left their land "for the overbearing of King Harold," as the "Landnamabok" (7) has it. "There also we shall escape the troubling of kings and scoundrels", says the "Vatsdaelasaga". So much of the best blood left Norway that the king tried to stay the leak by fines and ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... returned with deep hatred, by the suspicious Leopold. The discord between them was fanned by the secret and politic arts of Philip of France, one of the most sagacious monarchs of the time, who, dreading the fiery and overbearing character of Richard, considering him as his natural rival, and feeling offended, moreover, at the dictatorial manner in which he, a vassal of France for his Continental domains, conducted himself ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Austen as well as being among her heroes and heroines. She mocks them—Darcy especially—no less than she admires. She loves to let her wit play about the egoism of social caste. She is quite merciless in deriding, it when it becomes overbearing, as in Lady Catherine de Bourgh, or when it produces flunkeyish reactions, as in Mr. Collins. But I fancy she liked a modest measure of it. Most people do. Jane Austen, in writing so much about the sense of family and position, chose as her theme ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... one who never failed to fasten on each word that was said, and by constant questioning, to learn every detail of the life on the green island which lay before them. This sailor was a Scotsman, named Alexander Selkirk or Selcraig. He was of an impatient, overbearing temper, and no favorite with his captain, who was not wise enough to discern the good sense and honesty which lay hidden under his rough and uncourteous manner. Thus it chanced that the Scotch Sailor was often in trouble and disgrace, and resenting bitterly a harshness he did not ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... there was a reminiscence of beauty. Her dimples had turned traitor to youth and gossiped of coming age. Women are the first to show the contempt with which wealth regards poverty, the first to turn with resentment upon former friends who have been left in the race for riches, the first to feel the overbearing spirit that money stirs; but this woman had not lost ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... Rasta's build, very foppish and precise in his dress, with a smooth oval face like a girl's, and rather fine straight black eyebrows. He spoke perfect German, and had the best kind of manners, neither pert nor overbearing. He had a pleasant trick, too, of appealing all round the table for confirmation, and so bringing everybody into the talk. Not that he spoke a great deal, but all he said was good sense, and he had a smiling way of saying it. Once or twice he ran counter ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... enjoined to gather it equally [3]—the measure of an omer for each one every day, because this food should not come in too small a quantity, lest the weaker might not be able to get their share, by reason of the overbearing of the strong in collecting it. However, these strong men, when they had gathered more than the measure appointed for them, had no more than others, but only tired themselves more in gathering it, for they ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Carlyles. Mr. C. came to see me at once, and appointed an evening to be passed at their house. That first time, I was delighted with him. He was in a very sweet humour,—full of wit and pathos, without being overbearing or oppressive. I was quite carried away with the rich flow of his discourse, and the hearty, noble earnestness of his personal being brought back the charm which once was upon his writing, before I wearied of it. I admired his Scotch, his way of singing his great full sentences, ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... share Vivian's fear, but he was a trifle overbearing in his judgment of those about ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... that Philip, the Prince of Spain, was a main cause of this change in Elizabeth's fortunes. He was not an amiable man, being, on the contrary, proud, overbearing, and gloomy; but he and the Spanish lords who came over with him, assuredly did discountenance the idea of doing any violence to the Princess. It may have been mere prudence, but we will hope it was manhood and honour. The Queen had been ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... part of the screen, is the tomb of his half-brother, that William de Valence to whom we referred in connection with his own son Aymer and Henry's son, Edmund Crouchback. De Valence was a Frenchman, and not only as a foreigner, but from his haughty overbearing character, was very unpopular in England. Yet his friend and cousin Edward I., unheeding the popular voice, caused this beautiful and costly tomb to be made for his remains. It was originally covered with that rare and excellent enamel work which was then made at ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith |
