"Pugnacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... independent, and pugnacious, could not long submit to a measure of defense which was, in the final sense, an abject surrender to brute force. New England, which bore the brunt of the embargo, was first to rebel against it. Sailors marched through the streets clamoring for bread or loaded their vessels ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... But hardened back whene'er the morning's raw; With no objection to true Liberty, Except that it would make the nations free. How well the imperial dandy prates of peace! How fain, if Greeks would be his slaves, free Greece! How nobly gave he back the Poles their Diet, Then told pugnacious Poland to be quiet! How kindly would he send the mild Ukraine, With all her pleasant Pulks,[318] to lecture Spain! How royally show off in proud Madrid 450 His goodly person, from the South long hid! A blessing cheaply purchased, the world knows, By having Muscovites for friends or ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... one side; while his large mouth, and great white teeth, looked absolutely sharkish when he laughed. In a word, no one, after getting a fair look at him, would ever think of improving the shape of his nose, wanting in symmetry as it was. Notwithstanding his pugnacious looks, however, Jermin had a heart as big as a bullock's; that you ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... so pugnacious an animal, that even the quakers, who in all other things seem effectually to have subdued this part of their animal nature, carry on controversy, whenever they engage in it, tooth and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... mobility for this Fair Maid of Perth; and I believe that, in consequence of the excitement they evinced on the occasion, the match was postponed for nearly two years. The boy who particularised himself for his pugnacious prowess has since become a preacher in the open fields, and a zealous supporter of the miraculously ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... of a material character except in countries whose resources were still much in excess of their population? The war had seemed to me to show that mankind was too combative an animal ever to recognize that the good of all was the good of one. The coarse-fibred, pugnacious, and self-seeking would, I had become sure, always carry too many guns for the refined ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... I have said, with a fine forehead and rather heavy features; but his eyes had that odd drooping of the skin above the lids which often comes with advancing years, and the fall of his heavy mouth at the corners gave him an expression of pugnacious resolution. He talked to Montgomery in a tone too low ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... whereupon the priest became noisy. Afterward he reported the affair to his consul at Bangkok, with the embellishing statement that not only himself, but his religion, had been grossly insulted. The consul, one Monsieur Aubaret, a peppery and pugnacious Frenchman, immediately made a demand upon his Majesty for the removal ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... females having become the more eager in courtship, the males remaining comparatively passive, but apparently selecting the more attractive females, as we may infer from the results. Certain hen birds have thus been rendered more highly coloured or otherwise ornamented, as well as more powerful and pugnacious than the cocks; these characters being transmitted ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... future opium-eater, was a weak and sickly child. His first years were spent in solitude, and when his elder brother, William, a real boy, came home, the young author followed in humility mingled with terror the diversions of that ingenious and pugnacious "son of eternal racket." De Quincey's mother was a woman of strong character and emotions, as well as excellent mind, but she was excessively formal, and she seems to have inspired more awe than affection in her children, to whom she was for all that deeply devoted. Her notions ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... hours, and then, after lunch, went out together into the town. Each felt that he was now more closely bound to the other than ever. The Dean was thoroughly pleased that it should be so. He intended his son-in-law to be the Marquis, and being sanguine as well as pugnacious looked forward to seeing that time himself. Such a man as the Marquis would probably die early, whereas he himself was full of health. There was nothing he would not do to make Lord George's life pleasant, if only Lord George would ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... may," returned John Skyd, "and if so, fighting will be more to my taste than farming—not that I'm constitutionally pugnacious, but I fear that my brothers and I shall turn out to be rather ignorant cultivators of ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... and, try as he would, he could not dispel them. He would fix his mind and eyes on Miss Wilson's face, who was now sitting at her desk, and even as he looked at her the face of Brick Simpson, impudent and pugnacious, would arise before him. It was of no use. He felt sick and sore and tired and worthless. There was nothing to be done but flunk. And when, after an age of waiting, the papers were collected, his went in a blank, save ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... condemned to a perpetual atmosphere of smoke and sound. It is pleasant to look back on difficulties, when overcome—the best illustration of which is Columbus's egg; for, after convincing the sceptic, there can be no manner of doubt that he swallowed the yelk and white, leaving the shell to the pugnacious disputant. In the same way we look with a pleasing kind of pity on the quandaries of those whom we shall call—with no belief whatever in the pre-Adamite ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... and Tierney had a passage of arms in the House. That pugnacious Irishman had thrust himself to the fore during the secession of Fox and other prominent Whigs from the House, and had to bear many reproaches for his officiousness. He also nagged at Pitt at every opportunity, until, on his opposing a motion of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... and weather-stained to one uniform and consistent drab. Round his neck he always wore a voluminous cravat of unstarched muslin fastened in front with an old-fashioned pearl brooch, above which protruded the two spiked points of a very stiff and pugnacious-looking collar. A strong alpaca umbrella, unfashionably corpulent, was his constant companion. Mr. Madgin's whiskers were shaved off in an exact line with the end of his nose. His eyebrows were very white and bushy, and could serve on occasion as a screen ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... years, and to regain it more than once afterwards. Until 1873 he and his rival, Mr. Fox, were considered inevitable members of almost any combination. Native affairs were in the forefront during that period. Mr. Fox, the most impulsive, pugnacious, and controversial of politicians, usually headed the peace party; Sir Edward Stafford, much more easy going in ordinary politics, was usually identified with those who held that peace could only be ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... his own reputation; for the report that he kept a mysterious and pugnacious statue on the premises would not increase his custom. He must silence it, if possible. "I'm afraid it is, sir—in a ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... spread on Roger's cheekbones. In spite of his apparent demureness he had a pugnacious spirit ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... combining a flowing movement with condensation, and free from the tricks and charlatanries of diction. He is not so popular as he would be if he made more noise about his words and thoughts, and called the attention of the public to every felicity of his style or reflection by a pugnacious manner, and a strained expression. Though possessing a singularly rich and suggestive fancy, and a wide variety of information, his use of ornament and allusion is characterized by a taste, an appropriateness, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... than human nature, they are offshoots of the great struggle for existence, which, as we moderns have had the felicity to discover, gives rise to the survival of the tough and the domination of the pugnacious—the annihilation of the tender and ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... in the air which made the Rockabie boys more pugnacious and their threats more dire. Possibly they may have felt more deeply stung by the contempt of Aleck, who strode carelessly along the rough stone pier, whistling softly, with his hands in his pockets, till he reached the slope and began to ascend towards ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... least they are defended—at least they are armed for conflict and victory. There seems to be a good deal of doubt as to how far this is true of the nation which has hitherto been known as the pre-eminently pugnacious one. Where France and Germany and Russia count by hundreds, England counts by tens; and it is only, strictly speaking, on the good old principle that one Englishman can buffet a dozen foreigners that a very hopeful view of an Anglo-continental collision can be maintained. This good old principle ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... carrying, half hustling Riley and McQuirk up its rear steps. The eyes and faces of each bore the bruises and cuts of sanguinary and assiduous conflict. Yet they whooped with strange joy, and directed upon the police the feeble remnants of their pugnacious madness. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... doodle." This want of deference to the sex, which I must say is an exception to the general behaviour of men there and in other parts of the Union I visited, did not fail to call forth animadversion; the remarks at one time being so pointed, that I began to feel uneasy lest the pugnacious spirit might be aroused in him, which leads so often in ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... things that are said and shown and put out and published, something—light in your darkness—a writer for you, something for you. Nobody can have a greater contempt for artists and writers and poets and philosophers than I, oh! a squalid crew they are, mean, jealous, pugnacious, disgraceful in love, disgraceful—but out of it all comes the greatest serenest thing, the mind of the world, Literature. Nasty little midges, yes,—but fireflies—carrying ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the profligate. We see a multitude seated around a cockpit intent on a cock-fight; but the cocks are quails, not barnyard fowls. Here, too, is a smaller and more exclusive circle stooping over a pair of crickets engaged in deadly combat. Insects of other sorts or pugnacious birds are sometimes substituted; and it might be supposed that the people must be warlike in their disposition, to enjoy such spectacles. The fact is, they are fond of fighting by proxy. What attracts them [Page 11] most, however, is the chance of ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... that brawls were frequent in that village, and some Luthers were involved in them. Now follows the Catholic deduction, plausible, reasonable, appealing, just like the "assumption" of Mary: "Out of the gnarly wood of this relationship, consisting mostly of powerful, pugnacious farmers, assertive of ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... who will condemn others to death for crimes that they themselves do not repute so much as faults. I have, in my youth, seen a man of good rank with one hand present to the people verses that excelled both in wit and debauchery, and with the other, at the same time, the most ripe and pugnacious theological reformation that the world has been treated withal these many years. And so men proceed; we let the laws and precepts follow their way; ourselves keep another course, not only from debauchery of manners, but ofttimes by judgment and contrary opinion. Do but hear a philosophical lecture; ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... secure. Indeed, for the next ten years he had everything his own way. Then suddenly an ex-keeper of a drygoods store in Maine crossed his path. This was William Deering, a character quite as energetic, forceful, and pugnacious as was McCormick himself. Though McCormick had made and sold thousands of his selfbinders, farmers were already showing signs of discontent. The wire proved a continual annoyance. It mingled with the straw ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... pugnacious-looking man on the left put in the first comment. "Would it not be a saving of time to provoke violence, in one way or another, and thus form a pretext for disposing of the ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... Wallace, moving up to him, 'is physically impossible. Don't be so pugnacious. We leave you the front of the box, and when we appear in your territory our mouths are closed. But in our own domain we claim the rights of ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... complexion had a patch of purplish bloom spreading itself over the cheek bones which told of constant tavern lounging. A pair of hawk's eyes gleamed from under bushy beetling brows; wide loose lips and a truculent, pugnacious lower jaw completed ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... 'Passon's' face, and for a moment he had some difficulty to control an outbreak of laughter, but recollecting the possibly demoralising effect it might have on the more youthful members of the community, if he, the spiritual director of the parish, were reported to have laughed at the pugnacious conduct of the valiant Kitty Spruce, he controlled himself, and assumed ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... by the bye), his father, Captain Michael, died, and three years later the oldest son, Oliver, decided to send Peter to his uncle Lord Aylmer to be trained for the service. Is it far-fetched to assume that Oliver found his small brother something of a handful? If Peter was one-quarter as pugnacious and foolhardy at twelve as he was at forty, there is small wonder that a young man burdened with the cares of a large estate and an orphaned family would be not unwilling to get rid of him,—or at least of the responsibility of him. ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... Thomas Borrow, was a patriotic, pugnacious, but God-fearing Cornishman, born at an old homestead known as Trethinnick, in the parish of St. Cleer, in which his forbears had been settled well back in the seventeenth century, probably earlier. To quote Dr. Knapp: "They feared God, ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... should be withheld from all violent excitement, hunting with dogs, riding or being ridden by cows in heat, driving in herd rapidly through narrow gateways, causing to jump ditches or fences, subjecting to blows with the horns of pugnacious cattle, driving on icy or otherwise slippery ground, carrying in railroad cars, kicking by vicious attendants, and fastening or throwing down for operations. The diet should be good, not of a kind to fatten, but with a generous quantity of nitrogenous constituents which ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... Tresslyn, he was going to the dogs as rapidly and as accurately as possible. He took to drink, and drink took him to cards. The efforts of Simmy Dodge and other friends, including the despised Percy Wintermill, were of no avail. He developed a pugnacious capacity for resenting advice. It was easy to see what was behind the big boy's behaviour: simple despair. He counted himself among the failures. In due time he lost his position in Wall Street and became a complaining dependent upon his mother's ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... a great, what you call him—Coolie? Pug? Yes, he was a Scottish Coolie. The other was a little wee dog; a Pugnacious Dog, I ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... saw-pit; or to strip to their shirts, to mangle each other, were sanguinary duels, which could only have fermented in the disorders of the times, amid that wanton pampered indolence which made them so petulant and pugnacious. Against this evil his Majesty published a voluminous edict, which exhibits many proofs that it was the labour of his own hand, for the same dignity, the same eloquence, the same felicity of illustration, embellish the state-papers;[B] ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... preferred to hunt the pugnacious woodchuck. He bore a special grudge against this clover-eater, beyond the usual hostility that boys feel for any wild animal. One day on his way to school a woodchuck crossed the road before him, and John gave chase. The woodchuck scrambled ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... still more pugnacious. "Going to learn more lies about us, I suppose, that they may teach them to school-children? I was turning over some of their school-books in a shop yesterday. Perfectly abominable! It's monstrous what they teach the children ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... table next mine, carefully placed his manuscript upon a chair, and sat down upon it. He was soon lost in a prolonged contemplation of the limited bill of fare posted on the wall, a study which resulted in his ordering, through a hustling, pugnacious-looking waiter, a bowl ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... and undoubtedly we were all more or less experiencing the cumulative effects of the constant mild doses we had inhaled. Laughing-gas acts in a different manner upon persons of different temperaments: some will keep laughing, moderately or immoderately; others will become irritable, angry, or even pugnacious; whilst others again will ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... to town by Bishop Laval and shut up in the Hotel-Dieu, she being considered under a spell, cast on her by a miller whom she had rejected when he popped the question: the diabolical suitor was jailed as a punishment. Champlain relates how a pugnacious parson was dealt with by a pugnacious clergyman of a different persuasion respecting some knotty controversial points. The arguments, however irresistible they may have been, Champlain observes, were not edifying either to the savages or to the French: ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... As a man Jonson, pugnacious, capricious, ill-mannered, sometimes surly, intemperate in drink and in other respects, is an object for only very qualified admiration; and as a writer he cannot properly be said to possess that indefinable ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... inflammable material, than if young men were brought up in the staid and frugal habits of those who are constrained to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow? * * * Is not intemperance more social, more inflammatory, more pugnacious where a fancied superiority of gentlemanly character is felt in consequence of exemption from severe manual labor? Is there ever stabbing where there is ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... poker, and casting a glance first at his hopeful son, and then at his hoping wife, replied that Jake was an ignorant, pugnacious, good-for-nothing scamp, and never would come to anything, unless to a ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... descending close to them, strove to bear them away with their beaks. Each time we fired, the shock appeared to drive the gulls at a distance from us, as a discharge of heavy artillery might cause a regiment of soldiers to swerve backwards; but, as soon as the powder cleared away, these pugnacious birds returned to the vicinity of the rock, screaming loudly; and some of them were audacious enough to pounce upon our caps, and wreak their vengeance by giving us one or two hearty pecks. The cockswain, working like a telegraph with his swinging oar, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... was a great deal younger than either Tommy or Tuppence had pictured him. The girl put him down as thirty-five. He was of middle height, and squarely built to match his jaw. His face was pugnacious but pleasant. No one could have mistaken him for anything but an American, though he spoke with ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... an optimist. The blood of Ireland had made him pugnacious. And Mack Nolan had a way with him. Wherefore, Casey Ryan once more came larruping down the grade to Camp Cajon and turned in there with a dogged purpose in his eyes and with his jaw set stubbornly. History has it that whenever Casey Ryan gets that look ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... are certainly a most pugnacious people; their whole history proves it. Witness their incessant wars with the English in the olden time, and their internal feuds, highland and lowland, clan with clan, family with family, Saxon with Gael. In my time, the school-boys, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... have place In any soul? Plato affirms ideas; But Aristotle, with his pugnacious race, As idle figments ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... called for the intervention of the president of the room; who bawled out, "Silence, gentlemen; do have silence for the Body Snatcher!" which popular song began as Pen left the Back Kitchen. He flattered himself that he had commanded his temper perfectly. He rather wished that Huxter had been pugnacious. He would have liked to fight him or somebody. He went home. The day's work, the dinner, the play, the whisky-and-water, the quarrel,—nothing soothed him. He slept no better than ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... could think of nothing which befitted the occasion; all her glib eloquence was temporarily asphyxiated. Mr. Clemm stammered and looked about for some hole in which to conceal himself. He, too, seemed far different from the pugnacious, self-confident dictator who reigned ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... traditions,' 'making the command of God of no effect,' and so forth. While his sermon rolled along, Dora stood nervously tying her bonnet strings, or buttoning her gloves. Her heart was full of a passionate scorn. Beside the bookseller's muscular figure and pugnacious head she saw with her mind's eye the spare forms and careworn faces of the young priests at St. Damian's. Outraged by this loud-voiced assurance, she called to mind the gentleness, the suavity, the delicate consideration for women ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Churchmen established themselves with not a little glamour and romance round two institutions, Christ Church for the first fifty years, and after that round the old College of Philadelphia. The Reverend William Smith, a pugnacious and eloquent Scotchman, led them in many a gallant onset against the "haughty tribe" of Quakers, and he even suffered imprisonment in the cause. He had a country seat on the Schuylkill and was in his way a fine character, devoted ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... the East dice, and that pugnacious little bird the cock, have been and are the chief instruments employed to produce a sensation—to agitate their minds and to ruin their fortunes. The Chinese have in all times, we suppose, had cards—hence the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... but in a moment they were out again, darting this way and that, now high up in the trees, now down to the ground, the blackbird always close behind; and no little bird flying from a hawk could have exhibited a greater terror than that pert chaffinch—that vivacious and most pugnacious little cock bantam. At last they went quite away, and were lost to sight. By and by the blackbird returned alone, and, going once more to his place near the second bird, he settled down comfortably to finish his ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... with discretion. The Captain was the general referee in all those abortive quarrels, which, at a place of this kind, are so apt to occur at night, and to be quietly settled in the morning; and occasionally adopted a quarrel himself, by way of taking down any guest who was unusually pugnacious. This occupation procured Captain MacTurk a good deal of respect at the Well; for he was precisely that sort of person who is ready to fight with any one,—whom no one can find an apology for declining ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... men who were cowards; men that I liked and trusted but who, from weakness of nerves or other physical causes—perhaps from prenatal influences—were easily frightened and always constitutionally timid. The Colonel was a very pugnacious man: he professed himself to be a lover of peace—and so did the Kaiser—but really he enjoyed the gaudium certaminis, ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... could meet Crews and Jordan and Saxon. They're very dissimilar, but they've got something like the unifying motive of a monastery, and they're willing to serve and to plod and to be patient. I fight with Saxon because he's a pacifist, but like all pacifists he's a very pugnacious person, and he can get frightfully angry, but it's pitiful to see him when he's been angry, because he's so sorry afterwards. I'm not a pacifist, but I haven't a tenth of his pluck. He'd endure anything, that man. Crews and Jordan are younger than he, and very brainy. ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... This is imperative and without exception; consequently, no evening disturbance is to be anticipated from that source. It was found that there are over two thousand pulquerias in the capital. The effect of this special stimulant, however, is not to make those who indulge freely in it pugnacious or noisy. It acts more like a powerful narcotic, and puts those who are overcome with it to sleep, having, in fact, many of the properties of opium. The gilded bar-rooms where the upper classes seek refreshment, who, by the way, ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... interruptions or to be vexed by them. If they happen to get on the hands or fingers, they submit to be restored to the gate; but go to the formicary on the mango-tree half a dozen yards away and offer a friendly finger, and you will find dozens of pugnacious individuals ready to defend their home. Do they recognise that they are but pilgrims of the fence, enjoying certain rights on sufferance, that it is a path of peace on which belligerents must not intrude, a neutral tract under the custody of the law of nations, which ants, as well ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... was eager to cut the knot of political difficulty with the sword. Everyone was mad to fight; only a few optimists, statesmen mostly, still relying on the sedative processes of diplomacy, had any hopes of averting war. A race reputed peace-loving, but most pugnacious when roused, was stirred now to its very depths. British hearts beat high throughout the length and breadth of the land, proudly mindful of their former prowess and manfully hopeful of ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... that if I had made ever so slight a stand at the outset, I should have escaped further molestation, but I was not pugnacious by nature, and never made the experiment; partly, probably, from a theory on which I had been reared, that all violence was vulgar, but chiefly from a tendency, unnatural in one of my age and sex, to find a sentimental satisfaction in ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... believe that the boy could bait his own hook, but sometimes crowned with the delight of bringing home a whole basketful of yellow perch and goggle-eyes. Of nobler sport with game fish, like the vaulting salmon and the merry, pugnacious trout, as yet the boy had only dreamed. But he had heard that there were such fish in the streams that flowed down from the mountains around Lake George, and he was at the happy age when he could believe ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... largely on the help of Allchin. Allchin, though pig-headed and pugnacious, had a fair knowledge of the business, to which he had been bred, and of business matters in general always talked shrewdly. Unable, whatever his own straits, to deal penuriously with my one, Will had thought out a liberal arrangement, whereby ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... counterpart of the Golden Crowned Thrush (soon to delight the eyes of the readers of BIRDS), though it is altogether a more conspicuous bird, both on account of its brilliant plumage and greater activity, the males being, during the season of nesting, very pugnacious, continually chasing one another about the woods. It lives near the ground, making its artfully concealed nest among the low herbage and feeding in the undergrowth, the male singing from some old log or low bush, his song recalling that ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... always an unmixed blessing to its victims. It is apt to be incompatible with tolerance, with the practice of live-and-let-live, which alone can make the world endurable for its less pugnacious and energetic inhabitants. It is difficult for art or the contemplative outlook to exist in an atmosphere of bustling practical philanthropy, as difficult as it would be to write a book in the middle of a spring cleaning. The ideals ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... will call you to one of these important diplomatic places, where you will be in danger of suffering the inconvenience yourself, if the present system continue." Mr. Blount was pacified. And the measure which I think would have been beaten by a pugnacious opposition in either House of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... arms and expanded chest of the bluffer mean no more than the high-arched back of a cat. Stroke "Tom" soothingly, and he stops bristling. Stroke the human bluffer tactfully with persuasion, and he will not act pugnacious for long. ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... whose astonishingly spiral locks surely constituted better authority for a name than any possible application of baptismal water—was, by right of reputed might, dictator of the Vine Street Primary. Curly was alleged to be of pugnacious disposition, and had not been bred to appreciation of the Golden Rule. He had the outward bearing of one who has reason for confidence in his personal prowess. He was popularly believed to have fought many fights and fierce,—just when and where his admirers seemed not to consider important,—and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... appointed for the palaver, one of the most pugnacious of the Mountain-men got leave to open ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... less keen, it is both morning and afternoon. The arrangement is so mysterious that it must be providential. Herr Schenk, the head master, was away giving my babies their daily lessons, and his assistant, a youth in spectacles but yet of pugnacious aspect, was sitting in the master's desk, exercising a pretty turn for sarcasm in his running comments on the reading. A more complete waste of breath and brilliancy can hardly be imagined. He is not yet, however, married, and marriage is a great chastener. The children all stood up when I came in, ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... mixed descendants, by whom it is, or was, inhabited. I say every one advisedly, for although the public which studies such works is usually select, that which will take an interest in them, if the character of a learned and pugnacious personage is concerned, is very wide indeed. Not to mince matters, I may as well explain what ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... garden and perch upon the heads and hands of the family. After a while it would venture upon an oak and carry on a very voluble conversation with its fellows who also patronised the tree. It soon grew as impudent and pugnacious and ravenous as most sparrows. It was always hungry and talkative. Though it had the freedom of the neighbourhood, it came down daily before sunset and roosted on a perch in its cage, the door of which was left open for its convenience. It was let out the first thing ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... man retreat would have seemed inevitable, though disastrous. Once again it was French v. The Impossible. A member of his staff relates how, sweeping the horizon with his glass, while riderless horses from the guns galloped past, he muttered, squaring the pugnacious jaw, "They are over here to stop us from Bloemfontein and they are there to stop us from Kimberley—we have got to break through." In an instant his decision was taken. He would attempt the impossible—a direct cavalry charge in the teeth of ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... blows, for they fell on the bare foreheads of the Arabs; but the objects of the American's wrath merely skulked away; and the others, convinced by the only arguments which they understood, followed in pursuit of victims who might be less pugnacious. ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... saw of this dogmatic dreamer, this erratic man of action, the more she liked him, the more she found really admirable in him. But mixed with her admiration was an alert and pugnacious fear, so big was he, so powerful, so violently hostile to all the principles involved in her belief that the whole wide world of action should in justice lie as much open to woman to choose from ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... a sort of little private room for him, and talked with him at such hours of the forenoon and the late evening as the student was off duty. He found comfort in the student's fretful strength, which expressed itself in the pugnacious frown of his hot-looking young face, where a bright sorrel mustache was beginning to blaze ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Dorgs are pugnacious critters. I had one that set on every fellow of its kind he came across, and took such an affectionate grab of his foe, that nothing would divide them ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... summer and the winter. "The unusual and interesting fact demonstrated here with a certainty that cannot be doubted is," he concludes, "that the unseasonably hot days of spring and autumn are the pugnacious ones, even though the actual heat be much less than for summer. We might infer from this that conditions of heat, up to a certain extent, are vitalizing, while, at the same time, irritating, but above that limit, heat is so devitalizing in its effects as ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... punctual to their appointment, for the clock had just struck ten when Dr. Mortimer was shown up, followed by the young baronet. The latter was a small, alert, dark-eyed man about thirty years of age, very sturdily built, with thick black eyebrows and a strong, pugnacious face. He wore a ruddy-tinted tweed suit and had the weather-beaten appearance of one who has spent most of his time in the open air, and yet there was something in his steady eye and the quiet assurance of his bearing ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... skirts of bright, showy longcloth suggest the parrot or the cockatoo. The ornaments are large gold earrings and necklaces of beads or coral. I could not but remark the difference of tone. There was none of the extreme 'bumptiousness' and pugnacious impudence of twenty years ago; indeed, the beach-boys, nowhere a promising class, were rather civil than otherwise. Not a single allusion to the contrast of 'white niggahs and black gen'lemen.' Nor did ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... her bantering smile, but, in the pause that followed, stepped to the bookcase where she had been standing, gingerly picked up a soft bit of linen and lace from the floor and dropped it into her lap. Then he faced her in an attitude of pugnacious irritation. For a brief moment his silence fell ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... that set out from the rancher's that morning after the fight. First went the police, each man on his little box-like jumper with its steel-shod runners drawn by a hardy half-bred broncho. Next came Rory in a dog-sled cariole, with his several pugnacious canine friends made fast by moose-skin collars. They would have tried the patience of Job. They fought with each other on the slightest pretext from sheer love of fighting, and knew not the rules of Queensberry. If one of them happened to get down in one of their periodical little outbreaks, ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... I know quite well that the little girl of the curly black hair, red ribbons, and blue sailor dress was a very audacious, pugnacious little person, and I wonder that you were willing to help her through the tangle of fractions as you did so cleverly. I well remember thinking you a very wonderful scholar, but you were so much older than I that I admit not thinking about you very much. It was like that ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... I could make the Church and the ministry more Christ-like, and more powerful for good, what a blessing it would be. What a world of work wants doing, both in the church and in the world. Save me from an impatient, pugnacious, disagreeable spirit. Perhaps I see the needs of others more than I feel my own. Perhaps I am in danger of being more eager for reform in others, than for a thoroughly Christian spirit ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... was not a man in England who could have driven her against her will. She had a fortune of her own. Enoch Lovatt treated her with the respect due to an equal who had more than once proved herself capable of insisting on independence and equal rights in the most pugnacious manner. ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... knocking at the back door, it was opened by the farmer himself. Mr. Fenwick had called to inquire whether his friend had secured for him,—as half promised,—the possession of a certain brother of Bone'm's, who was supposed to be of a very pugnacious disposition in the ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... that he was a favorite with all. Not the less beloved was he for having a highly pugnacious spirit, which, when roused, was one of the most picturesque exhibitions—off the stage—I ever saw. One of the transports of that marvelous actor, Edmund Kean—whom, by the way, he idolized—was its nearest resemblance; and the two were not very dissimilar in face and figure. ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... looking like yuh was—well, kinda cornered. And he was—Flora, he did say something, or do something! He didn't act right to yuh. I could tell. Didn't he? Yuh needn't be afraid to tell me, Girlie. I give him a thrashing for it. What was it? I want to know." He did not realize how pugnacious was his pose, but he was leaning toward her with his face quite close, and his eyes were blue points of intensity. His hands, doubled and pressing hard on the table, ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... various objects has had singular effects on some persons. A boar's head was a favorite dish at the table of great people in Marshal d'Albret's time; yet he used to faint at the sight of one. It is not uncommon to meet with persons who faint at the sight of blood. One of the most inveterately pugnacious of Dr. Butts's college-mates confessed that he had this infirmity. Stranger and far more awkward than this is the case mentioned in an ancient collection, where the subject of the antipathy fainted at the sight of any object of a red color. There are ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... having powerful grasping claws and long, curved, sharp beaks. They assemble together in groups and small flocks, and they have a very loud bawling note, which can be heard at a great distance, and serves to collect a number together in time of danger. They are very plentiful and very pugnacious, frequently driving away crows, and even hawks, which perch on a tree where a few of them are assembled. They are all of rather dull and obscure colours. Now in the same countries there is a group of orioles, forming the genus Mimeta, much weaker birds, which ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... that fight gratuitously, or attack other animals without cause. If a fight occurs, look for the motive. The wild creatures know that peace promotes happiness and long life. Now, of all wild quadrupeds, it is probable that the African baboons are pound for pound the most pugnacious, and the quickest on the draw. The old male baboon in his prime will fight anything that threatens his troop, literally at the drop of a hat. But there is method in his madness. He and his wives and children dwell on the ground in lands literally reeking with fangs and claws. He has to confront the ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... which reasons, when the scrub first lined up against the 'Varsity, the alarum of battle that rode on Stover's pugnacious front was equaled by the intensity ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... himself in numberless hand-to-hand engagements with his fellow-scholars, and has gained the reputation of being, for a youngster of his inches, tremendously heavy about the fist. On this particular evening the school has been dismissed barely five minutes before the pugnacious little rascal contrives to get into an altercation with a lad several years his senior. As to the precise nature, of the casus belli, history and tradition are alike silent. The pair adjourn to a secluded part of the playground ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... she was, and so were one or two of the men, so she was able to have a good laugh with us behind the scenes when she'd done anything particularly outrageous. And she really enjoyed herself. You see, she's in the position of poor relation in a rather pugnacious family, and her life has been largely spent in smoothing over other people's quarrels. You can imagine the welcome relief of being able to go about saying and doing perfectly exasperating things to a whole houseful of women—and all in the ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... am greeted with the pensive, almost pathetic note of the wood pewee. The pewees are the true flycatchers, and are easily identified. They are very characteristic birds, have strong family traits and pugnacious dispositions. They are the least attractive or elegant birds of our fields or forests. Sharp-shouldered, big-headed, short-legged, of no particular color, of little elegance in flight or movement, with a disagreeable flirt ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... figure up, for while not a pugnacious man, he knows how to defend himself. As to his bravery who can question it after his ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... child's shoe lay on the floor, and a woman's linsey dress dangled from a hook against the wall. I crept forward, my heart pounding madly, until I could gain sight of his face. He was a big fellow, not more than thirty, with sandy hair and beard, and a pugnacious jaw, his coarse hickory shirt slashed into ribbons, a bullet wound in the center of his forehead, and one arm broken by a vicious blow. His calloused hands yet gripped the haft of an axe, just as he ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... opened by the birds, I entertained hopes of being able to procure an egg, but after digging several pits three feet in depth, with no more efficient implements than my hands, I had to give up the work from sheer exhaustion. This bird is apparently very pugnacious at times, as I frequently saw them chasing each other along the ground, running with great swiftness, and uttering their cry more loudly than usual, stopping short suddenly and again starting off in pursuit. The cry consists of one or two shrill notes, uttered at intervals ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... inseparably associated as peculiarly characterising them. Thus, in vulgar apprehension, the Frenchman dances, the German smokes, the Spaniard serenades; and on all hands it is agreed that the Irishman fights. Naturally bellicose, his practice is pugnacious: antagonism is his salient and distinctive quality. Born in a squabble, he dies in a shindy: in his cradle he squeals a challenge; his latest groan is a sound of defiance. Pike and pistol are manifest in his well-developed bump of combativeness; his name is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... cordiality and Cicely's evident woe at his departure could not quite atone for the lack of a word and a glance of friendly good-bye from Phebe. One's liking is not altogether a matter of free will. In spite of himself, Gifford Barrett liked the blunt, outspoken, pugnacious Phebe far better than the girls whose honeyed words and ways he had found ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... of the excitement of a fight with Indians, for which when in England, eighteen months before, he had longed; and his fingers tightened upon his gun as he said, 'All right, papa, let them come.' Hubert's face grew a little paler, for he was not naturally of so plucky or pugnacious a disposition as his brother. However, he only said, 'Well, papa, if they do come, we shall ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... of the large mushroom type and indecipherable age. And in the midst of this antique and generally untidy gear, the youngest and liveliest face imaginable, under snow-white hair: black eyes full of Irish fun, a pugnacious and humorous mouth, and the general look of one so steeped in the rich, earthy stuff of life that she might have stepped out of a novel of Fielding's or a page ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... interval matters had progressed much in the same way as we have already described, only that the natives had become a little more exacting in their demands while engaged in barter, and were, on the whole, rather more pugnacious and less easily pleased. There had been a threatening of hostilities once or twice, but, owing to Karlsefin's pacific policy, no open ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... a long oval, with pessimistic, brooding eyes—eyes that saw everything except the small modicum of good which is in all human things, and to this they were persistently blind. Taking into consideration the small, set mouth, it was eminently a pugnacious face—a face that might easily degenerate to the coarseness of passion in the trough of a losing fight. But, fortunately, Luke's lines were cast upon the great waters, and he who fights the sea must learn to conquer, not by passionate effort, but by consistent, cool resolve. Those who worked ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... of my mother, frequently invited me to spend Saturday at Pinkie. She was a very ladylike person, in delicate health, and with cold manners. Sir Archibald was stout, loud, passionate, and devoted to hunting. I amused myself in the grounds, a good deal afraid of a turkey-cock, who was pugnacious and defiant. ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... themselves now with the male sex form, and then with the female. In the insect and fish worlds, where the female forms are generally larger and stronger than the male, the female is generally more pugnacious and predatory than the male. Among birds-of-prey, where also the female form is larger and stronger than the male, the psychic differences seem very small. Among eagles and other allied forms, which are strictly monogamous, the affection of the female for the ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... blood. This was found to be the case. Cannon of Harvard has built up an entire theory of the adrenal as the gland of emergencies upon the basis of these effects. In the facing of crises the adrenal functions as the gland of combat. And indeed, as I have mentioned, the more combative and pugnacious an animal, the more adrenal it has, while the timid and ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... figure and one to whom the attribution of genius need not be grudged, is the strong, pugnacious, eminently picturesque Charles Reade. It is a temptation to say that but for his use of a method and a technique hopelessly old-fashioned, he might claim close fellowship for gift and influence with Dickens. But he lacked art as it is now understood: balance, restraint, the impersonal ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... his own weapon back into its holster, and faced the prisoner, who had recovered from his first shock of surprise, and whose pugnacious temper was beginning to assert itself. Brennan read this in the man's sulky, defiant glance, and ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... neighbourhood as an exemplary parish-priest. 'He was one of the most contented, quiet, sweet-tempered, generous, cheerful men I ever knew,' so says the chronicler of the Leigh family, 'and his wife was his counterpart. The spirit of the pugnacious Theophilus dwelt not in him; nor that eternal love of company which distinguished the other brothers, yet he was by no means unsocial.' Towards the end of his life he removed to Bath, being severely afflicted ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... curiosities of literature, has given us the following account. "Dice, says he, and that little pugnacious animal, the cock, are the chief instruments employed by the numerous nations of the east, to agitate their minds, and ruin their fortunes, to which the Chinese, who are desperate gamesters, add the use of cards. When all other property is played away, the Asiatic gambler does not ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... the London prentices were pugnacious, but as every one joined in the laugh against George, and he was, besides, stuck fast on a quaking tussock of grass, afraid to proceed or advance, he could not have his revenge. And when the slough was passed, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... salt; they have no fixed industry, and no idea of time or its divisions into hours and months; they are, like our North American Indians, constitutionally lazy, are intensely selfish, and seem to care nothing for their dead; they have a quick sense of insult, but cannot as a rule be called pugnacious; they excite themselves to fight by indulging in strange war-dances and by singing songs full of braggadocio; and, after having been thus wrought up to a state of frenzy, they are perfectly reckless as to personal hazard. The Maori is not, however, a treacherous ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... Even our pugnacious doctor I suspect of being a victim of domestic tyranny, and his housekeeper's at that. It is scandalous the way Maggie McGurk neglects the poor man. I have had to put him in charge of an orphan. Sadie Kate, with a very ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... from the Secretary of the Navy. He was about to sail under the President's orders for Pensacola; but wishing to make sure of his authority, he had telegraphed to Washington. Gideon Welles was a pugnacious man. His dislike for Seward was deepseated. Imagine his state of mind when it was accidently revealed to him that Seward had gone behind his back and had issued to naval officers orders which were contradictory to his own! ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... with wrath, Nevarro snatched his hat, and hurried down the street. He had not proceeded far, when a hand was laid upon his arm, and turning, with somewhat pugnacious intentions, encountered Father Mazzolin's piercing ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... from the fleshpots of Unyanyembe—regret at parting from his Dulcinea of Tabora—to be, bereft of all enjoyment now, nothing but marches—hard, long marches—to go to the war—to be killed, perhaps, Oh! Inspired by such feelings, no wonder Bombay was inclined to be pugnacious when I ordered him to his place, and I was in a shocking bad temper for having been kept waiting from 8 A.M. to 2 P.M. for him. There was simply a word and a savage look, and my cane was flying around Bombay's shoulders, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... this fellow, notwithstanding his pugnacious manner. He had an honest face, and bright blue eyes, in whose depths lurked a merry twinkle. He took it for granted that this was Jake Jukes ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... policy of absorption is good enough when you're dealing with fragments. It's a devilish unlucky thing to attempt with a concrete mass. You might as well ask your head to absorb a wall by running at it like a pugnacious nigger. I don't want you to go into Parliament ever. You're a fitter man out of it; but if ever you're bitten—and it's the curse of our country to have politics as well as the other diseases—don't follow a flag, be independent, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the mind. If a man takes too much alcohol, its first apparent effect will be to paralyze the higher or cortical center. This leaves the mid-brain without the check-rein of a reflective intellect, and the man will be senselessly hilarious or quarrelsome, jolly or dejected, pugnacious or tearful, and would be ordinarily described as "drunk." If in spite of this he keeps on drinking, the mid-brain soon becomes deadened and ceases to respond, and the cerebellum, the organ of equilibrium, also becomes paralyzed. All voluntary ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... his admiring followers in the House—a tribute to his "stable character;" others have said that it became his attribute from the time that he described himself as "playing the part of judicious Bottle-Holder to the pugnacious Powers of Europe;" and Mark Lemon declared that it was simply used as a sort of trade-mark whereby he might be known again, just as Mr. Harry Furniss invented Mr. Gladstone's collars, Lord Randolph Churchill's diminutiveness, and exaggerated those complacent smiles ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... fort, and brought up the battering ram, under cover of the testudo; another defended the walls and endeavored to repel the enemy; others, in two parties of equal numbers, engaged in single stick, or the more usual neboot, a pole wielded with both hands; and the pugnacious spirit of the people is frequently alluded to in the scenes portrayed by ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... such times a Cassowary man will say to himself, "My leg is long and thin, I can run and not feel tired; my legs will go quickly and the grass will not entangle them." Members of the Cassowary clan are reputed to be pugnacious, because the cassowary is a bird of very uncertain temper and can kick with extreme violence. (A.C. Haddon, "The Ethnography of the Western Tribe of Torres Straits", "Journal of the Anthropological Institute", XIX. (1890), page 393; "Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... of reason cleverly carried out his bold discretion. For now the savage woodman, intent upon that levelling which is the highest glory of pugnacious minds, came round the tree, glaring at it (as if it were the murderer, and he the victim), redoubling his tremendous thwacks at every sign of tremor, flinging his head back with a spiteful joy, poising his shoulders on the swing, and then with all his weight descending into the trenchant blow. When ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... slammed the old muddy gates, to stop the threatening mob; but the City Marshal, red in the face at this breach of City privilege, re-opened them, and the mob roared approval from a thousand distorted mouths. The more pugnacious reformers now broke the scaffolding at the Law Institute into dangerous cudgels, and some 300 of the unwashed patriots dashed through the Bar towards Somerset House, full of vague notions of riot, and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... these two men were morbid and unbalanced they were morbid and unbalanced by feeling too much about morality, not by feeling too little. You may say if you like that Robespierre was (in a negative sort of way) mad. But if he was mad he was mad on ethics. He and a company of keen and pugnacious men, intellectually impatient of unreason and wrong, resolved that Europe should not be choked up in every channel by oligarchies and state secrets that already stank. The work was the greatest that was ever given to men to do except that which Christianity did in dragging Europe ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... and from this point of vantage looked down his unmitigated disapproval and contempt. Kirkpatrick would have given his hopes of the speedy demise of capitalism if Alexina had picked up her periwinkle skirts and fled up the avenue. His big hands clenched, he thrust out his pugnacious jaw, his hard little eyes glowed like poisonous coals. Mortimer, to do him justice, was entirely without physical cowardice, and continued to look like a stage lord ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... the cover, and, selecting some small spot of cleared ground for the combat, he would throw down his gallant bird, and conceal himself in the brushwood; the game-cock would immediately crow, and his challenge was immediately answered by the pugnacious male pheasant, who flew down to meet him: the combat was short, for the pheasant was soon pierced by the sharp steel of his adversary; and as one antagonist fell dead, again would the game-cock crow, and ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... whole day in a one-day match except as a grisly kind of practical joke. And Mr. Downing and his house realised this. The house's way of signifying its comprehension of the fact was to be cold and distant as far as the seniors were concerned, and abusive and pugnacious as regards the juniors. Young blood had been shed overnight, and more flowed during the eleven o'clock interval that morning ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... had settled with the seven coolies who were not in our permanent employ, not being able to take all as we had originally intended, they assembled round us, and complained most dolefully of the smallness of their pay. The sepoy, who appeared a most pugnacious customer, cuffed some of them, and made desperate flourishes at others with a big stick, and seemed altogether so anxious to prevent, as he said, the "cherishers of the poor," from being inconvenienced by the "scum of the earth," that we suspected something wrong, and on inquiring, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... skin-colour is decidedly fairer than that of Sea Dayaks or Kayans. They are of medium stature, with long backs and short, muscular, well-rounded limbs; a little stumpy in build, but of graceful and vigorous bearing. They are perhaps the most courageous and intelligent of the peoples; pugnacious, but less quarrelsome than the Sea Dayak; more energetic and excitable than the Kayan; hospitable and somewhat improvident, sociable and of pleasant manners; less reserved and of more buoyant temperament than the Kayan; very loyal and obedient to their chiefs; more truthful and more to be ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... foretold a story, "when I was a boy I saw an incident which I have always recollected, and which seems to me to resemble very much the attitude now assumed by the parties in this impending war. My father owned a dog,—a particularly vicious, aggressive, and pugnacious bull-terrier,—one of these fellows with heavy, short necks, and red, squinting eyes, that seem ever to be on the lookout for a fight. Next door to us lived a neighbor who likewise rejoiced in the possession of a canine of appearance ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... pugnacious animal the cock, are the chief instruments employed by the numerous nations of the East, to agitate their minds and ruin their fortunes; to which the Chinese, who are desperate gamesters, add the use of cards. When all other property is played away, the Asiatic gambler scruples ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli |
