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Rigid   Listen
adjective
Rigid  adj.  
1.
Firm; stiff; unyielding; not pliant; not flexible. "Upright beams innumerable Of rigid spears."
2.
Hence, not lax or indulgent; severe; inflexible; strict; as, a rigid father or master; rigid discipline; rigid criticism; a rigid sentence. "The more rigid order of principles in religion and government."
Synonyms: Stiff; unpliant; inflexible; unyielding; strict; exact; severe; austere; stern; rigorous; unmitigated.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rigid" Quotes from Famous Books



... bring you to trial, if you conduct yourselves properly," he would have acted in a legal manner; but instead of doing this, he said, "I shall send you to Bermuda; and if you leave that island, I declare you guilty of high-treason."' Lord Melbourne deprecated such rigid criticism. He owned that the clause in the ordinance which related to Bermuda was an error on the part of Lord Durham, but he declared his belief that the whole of the remainder was perfectly legal, and warranted by the powers ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... industries and seeing that the older ones kept to a high standard, which would make French goods sell readily in foreign markets. He argued justly that if foreigners could be induced to buy French goods, these sales would bring gold and silver into the country and so enrich it. He made rigid rules as to the width and quality of cloths which the manufacturers might produce and the dyes which they might use. He even reorganized the old medival guilds; for through them the government could keep its eye on all the manufacturing that was done, and this would ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... shutting out infection. Every other monastic establishment freely devoted itself. It was a time when party spirit ran high. The bishop, Henri Francois Xavier de Belzunce, a nephew of the Duke de Lauzun, was a strong and rigid Jesuit, and had joined so hotly in the persecution of the Jansenists that he had forbidden the brotherhood called Oratorian fathers to hear confessions, because he suspected them of a leaning to Jansenist opinions; but he and they both alike worked earnestly in the one cause of mercy. They were ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... true," said Colonel Parker, "that nothing short of the rigid dictates of Catholicism could have prevented the Irish from going completely mad. But don't judge every one from your own case, O'Grady; the Saxons possess ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois

... off his cap and his black overcoat, and threw them on the seat behind him. His black hair was short and touched with grey at the temples. He wore a well-cut, well-fitting suit of dark grey, American in style, and a turn-down collar. He looked well-to-do, a fine, solid figure of a man. The rather rigid look of the shoulders came from his having had his collar-bone ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... measuring at one glance the exact distance and angle, and securing magically that mysterious "give" so essential to well-being and comfort. Any one can sink them like fence-posts, so that they stand deep and rigid, a reproach and an accusation; but it requires a particular skill to judge by the pull whether or not they will hold through the night and at the same time yield with gentle and supple swing to the least movement of the sleeper. A Carib knows, instantly, worthy and unworthy ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... his eyes from Van Meter after his first assault they rested on the face of Kate Ransom, her magnificent figure tense, rigid, her cheeks scarlet, her blue eyes flashing with tears of excitement. She was stirred to her soul's depths, and no figure in all the throbbing crowd gave to the speaker such inspiring response. Her ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... difficulties by overriding them. There are some who describe the pioneers of Canadian self-government as philosophic radicals; but they were really not of that school. It was through the absence of any philosophy or rigid logic that ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... draught of nourishment; the giving me my compound name; taking me out the first time to see the sun; investing me with the triple thread by which I became one of the twice-born; my induction into the first order—were all celebrated with sacred texts and rigid ceremonies. I might not walk, eat, drink, or sleep without danger of violating a rule. And the penalty, O brethren, the penalty was to my soul! According to the degrees of omission, my soul went to one of the heavens—Indra's the lowest, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... 1560. He lost his father when quite young, and the merchants of Amsterdam undertook his education upon condition that he would not preach out of their city unless he got their permission. Having gone to Geneva, he sat at the feet of Theodore Beza, one of the most rigid of Calvin's followers. After travelling in Italy he returned to Holland, and was duly appointed a minister of religion in Amsterdam. About this time certain clergymen of Delft had become dissatisfied with the doctrine of predestination, and Arminius was commissioned to answer them. ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace

... "Rouse, man, and let your reason speak. In peril? Lost—for some poor rigid law broken to ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... by the admonitions of their parents, and oppressed by the severe and rigid effects of the house, turned into quiet little puppets, quite different from their usual ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells

... the one in order to understand that of the other. Hitherto Manasseh's self-control in foregoing all revenge had excited Blanka's wonder only; she had thought that the secret of this self-mastery was to be found in a rigid dogma only, but now she perceived that what really shielded the wretched culprit was the magic influence of a woman's faithful heart that could cease to love only when it ceased to beat. The pledge won from him by his sister Manasseh ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... Her words had fixed me there with horror. I heard from Falcone a sound that was between a growl and a sob. I dared not look at him, but the eye of my fancy saw him standing rigid, ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... she then overturned the satirical headboard, and muttered "Beasts!"—an epithet which probably, at that moment, conveniently classified in her mind the entire male population of Red Gulch. For Miss Mary, being possessed of certain rigid notions of her own, had not, perhaps, properly appreciated the demonstrative gallantry for which the Californian has been so justly celebrated by his brother Californians, and had, as a new-comer, perhaps fairly earned the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... For more than a year, his clothes, his shirt, and his shoes had never been changed. For six months his bed was not made, and the unhappy child, consigned to this living burial, remained silent and immovable upon the impure pallet, breathing his own infection. By long inactivity his limbs became rigid. His mind, by the dead inaction which succeeded terror, lost its energy, and became, not only brutalized, but depraved. The noble child of warm affections, polished manners, and active intellect, was thus degraded far below the ordinary condition ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... the brink of the rough water below. To have allowed the salmon to go down the rapid would have been to lose it, so Frank arrested the spinning of his reel and held on. For a second or two the rod bent almost in a circle, and the line became fearfully rigid. ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... shock of revelation, the amazement of discovery, the little figure at the table stood rigid and upright, then it relaxed and with a stifled sob Carmencita crossed the room and, by the side of her cot, twisted herself into a little knot and buried her face in her arms and ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher

... name, however, does not appear to be readily brought into harmony with the others. Dr Seler simply remarks that it may be related to the root e, "firm, rigid, hard." Pio Perez offers no explanation. Dr Brinton suggests that it is a figurative expression for the sacrificial knife, from nab, something anointed, or blood, and edz, to adjust, to ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas

... the little hut where they all lived—every man went armed or had his arms handy. In addition to this, sentinels were posted through the day at the entrance of the Creek, to warn them of the approach of any suspicious strangers to the camp; while Seth caused as rigid a watch to be kept at night, taking the first and fourth turns himself, as if he were still a first mate with the responsibilities of a ship on his hands and walking the deck of ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... quiet and repose. Like the sun-crowned summit of the mountain, it stands erect and sublime nor heeds the cloudy tumult at its feet. In the school, the teacher who exemplifies and typifies this quality of serenity is never less than dignified but, withal, is never either cold or rigid. Children nestle about her in their affections and expand in her presence as flowers open in the sunshine. She cannot be a martinet nor, in her presence, can the children become sycophants. Her very presence generates an atmosphere that is conducive to healthy growth. There ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... Church of Scotland, who, many years since, was obliged to retire from his profession, and from society, who hides himself under a borrowed name. This hypothesis seems to account satisfactorily for the rigid secrecy observed; but from what I can recollect of the unfortunate individual, these are not the kind of productions I should expect from him. Burley, if I mistake not, was on board the Prince of Orange's own vessel at the time of his death. There was also in the Life Guards such a person as Francis ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... had none of her own,—were as abrupt in her transitions from oak to maple as the heroine who went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie; while yet there is no conceivable human logic so close and inexorable as her connections. How rigid, how flexible are, for instance, the laws of perspective! If one could learn to make his statements as firm and unswerving as the horizon-line,—his continuity of thought as marked, yet as unbroken, as yonder soft gradations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... numerous short-term reforms aimed at improving competitiveness and long-term growth. Italy has moved slowly, however, on implementing needed structural reforms, such as lightening the high tax burden and overhauling Italy's rigid labor market and over-generous pension system, because of the current economic slowdown and opposition from labor unions. But the leadership faces a severe economic constraint: the budget deficit has breached the 3% EU ceiling. The economy experienced ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... rigid supporting wires or rods as shown in Fig. 22. Upon this board core wrap strongly and smoothly with thread or small cord a quantity of manila fiber to same shape of body but one-half to three-quarters inch smaller than the body. Over this apply plaster ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray

... leave, well satisfied in visiting this little company, to strengthen them to hold up the cause of their Lord and Master, in the midst of darkness. Within about thirty English miles there are none but rigid Roman Catholics, not one Evangelical congregation. At our departure my wife said: "These words arise in my mind for thy comfort: Thy faith hath ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... Walter—the man who had held her so often in his arms and pressed his hot lips to hers, the man who was her father's firm friend and whose uprightness and honesty of purpose she had ever admired—crowded upon her. Should she write to him? Rigid and staring, she sat in her chair, her little white hands clenched, as she tried to summon courage. It had been she who had written declaring that their secret engagement must be broken, she who had condemned herself. ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux

... reign of Charles I and in the beginning of the civil wars raised by a number of rigid fanatics, who at last were the victims to it, a great many pieces were published against theatrical and other shows, which were attacked with the greater virulence because that monarch and his queen, daughter to Henry I of France, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... snow, and the rules and ceremonies of a great European court were almost as strange to her. Lady Bloomfield mentions her as if she were something of a spoilt child who could hardly keep from showing that the rigid laws of her new position fretted and bored her. She wore glowing pomegranate blossoms in her hair, and looked pensive, as if she were pining for the gorgeous little hummingbirds and great white magnolias—the mixture of natural splendour and ease, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... first of the two to speak. Elizabeth, white and rigid, said nothing, and even Mrs. Tidditt's talking machinery seemed to be temporarily thrown out of gear. So the captain made the attempt, a ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... partly material and partly metaphysical, but ever more and more subject to the inspiration and the purpose of the Brahman, alone versed in the knowledge of the gods, and alone competent to propitiate them by sacrificial rites of increasing intricacy, and by prayers of a rigid formalism that gradually assume ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... were shut out. All the time I was preaching, I could see this same man standing before the pulpit, with his elbow leaning on the end of a high pew. He maintained this position throughout the service, and at the end of the sermon was still there, rigid and stiff, looking at the pulpit as if in a trance. He would not move or speak; there he stood, till we feared he had gone out of his mind. His companions were awed and took him away as well as they could, but did not embark on their ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... approaching trial. The whole way along he walked with the piece of silver, which Mr. Paul Dangerfield had given him, griped tight in his crooked fingers, in his breeches' pocket—no change in his grim and sinister face—no turn of the head—no side glance of the eye—all dark, rigid, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... group among the reformed to whom Erasmus in his heart of hearts was more nearly akin than to the Lutherans or Zwinglians with their rigid dogmatism: the Anabaptists. He rejected the doctrine from which they derived their name, and abhorred the anarchic element in them. He remained far too much the man of spiritual decorum to identify ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... of the tract I have referred to—for they maintain their ground best in a rocky field—are thickly sprinkled with these little tufts, reminding you often of some rigid gray mosses or lichens, and you see thousands of little trees just springing up between them, with the seed still attached ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... 1829, the Collins case was taken into consideration by the Assembly. A Committee was appointed, and a rigid inquiry instituted into some of the most interesting features. Attorney-General Robinson was examined at considerable length. Judges Sherwood and Hagerman were summoned before the Committee, but both of them declined to answer any questions. A good many ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... of lax and soft tissues, or necessarily short-lived. The former had, it is true, a very thick inner bark; but their dense woody axis, their thick and nearly imperishable outer bark, and their scanty and rigid foliage, would indicate no very rapid growth or decay. In the case of the Sigillarioe, the variations in the leaf-scars in different parts of the trunk, the intercalation of new ridges at the surface representing that ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... the reader and to set up a new one somewhere else; the method is no longer consistent, no longer purely dramatic. And the dramatic story is not only scenic, it is also limited to so much as the ear can hear and the eye see. In rigid drama of this kind there is naturally no admission of the reader into the private mind of any of the characters; their thoughts and motives are transmuted into action. A subject wrought to this pitch of objectivity is no doubt given weight and compactness ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

... In all such matters, absolute accuracy, absolute literalness, wherever attainable, is surely the one thing necessary. Not all the charm of diction, not all the ingenious theories in the world, can for a moment be set in the balance against rigid exactness, even if some of the concomitants of rigid exactness are such as to spoil the subject for popular treatment. The truth, the stark naked truth, the truth without so much as a loin-cloth on, should surely be the investigator's sole aim when, ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain

... was conducted (in a circuit court) with rigid impartiality by Chief-Justice John Marshall, one of the greatest judges our country has known. As head of the Supreme Court for thirty-four years (1801-35), he rendered many decisions ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... from cross-fertilization with the ordinary type. Moreover, I have brought them under such conditions as are necessary for the full development of their characters. And last but not least, I have tried to improve this character as far as possible by a very rigid and ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... a little peace, in a little peace, Thou dost rebate thy rigid purposes Of imposed being, and relenting, mend'st Too much, with nought. The westering Phoebus' horse Paws i' the lucent dust as when he shocked The East with rising; O how may I trace In this decline that morning when we did Sport 'twixt the ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... inglorious, and devoid of poetry. What would have been in itself sordid, gained a sweetness from the light of love and duty, and never in all her dreamy ease had she been as cheerful and lighthearted as in the midst of hardship and rigid economy. Her equable temper and calm composure came to her aid; and where a more nervous and excitable woman would have preyed upon herself, and sunk under imaginary troubles, she was always ready to soothe ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... indulgences, is to distribute this excess, these superfluous merits, as he feels disposed, at the same time dipping out for himself and his shorn fat swine the riches of the world; indeed, the ecclesiasts distribute their own merits and works. This is the refined monastic chastity, poverty and rigid obedience of the orders—nothing but shameless falsehood and scandalous vice, practiced under that covering, both privately and publicly, with the exception of a few who were sincere in their desire to be monks, of whom I was one. These falsehoods the orders readily sold to the laity on deathbeds ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... so much good sense and propriety in what she said, that I knew not how to contradict her; and, at length, I acknowledged, that she had reason to prefer the Mahometan manners to our ridiculous customs, which form a confused medley of the rigid maxims of Christianity, with all the libertinism (sic) of the Spartans: And, notwithstanding our absurd manners, I am persuaded, that a woman who is determined to place her happiness in her husband's affections, ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... throat. He stepped to the bush where he had left his canteen and groped for it. When he did not find it, he looked elsewhere, supposing that he had made a mistake in the bush. When the truth dawned upon him his whole body grew rigid, he stood motionless, even for a little his lungs suspended their function. His hands clenched; for some reason and apparently without any act of his will, they were lifted slowly until they were above his head. ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... occasion, that species which had a wide range in space had a narrow range in time; which is the reverse of the fact. The tendency to systematize overrides the evidence, and thrusts Nature into a formula too rigid to fit her ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... come singly. We marched to the (Middle Barrier) depot fairly easily yesterday afternoon, and since that have suffered three distinct blows which have placed us in a bad position. First we found a shortage of oil; with most rigid economy it can scarce carry us to the next depot on this surface (71 miles away). Second, Titus Oates disclosed his feet, the toes showing very bad indeed, evidently bitten by the late temperatures. The third blow ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... and wonderful hall of an austere, rigid, metallic and sepulchral magnificence, giving the impression of a Greek temple with columns, architraves, flagstones and ornaments of black marble, gold and ebony. The hall is trapezium-shaped. Basalt steps, occupying almost the entire width, divide it into three successive stages, ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck

... and navy of the United States can not keep three million hungry people quiet. What then? Will this war between capital and labor be settled by human wisdom? Never. The brow of the one becomes more rigid, the fist of ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... struck a match within the shelter of its flap, and by its flare scanned the small face from which he had brushed away the snow. Then he uttered another exclamation of surprise and lifting the little, rigid figure in his arms, folded his great-coat about it and ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond

... the sweetest, purest in temper, and lo! you are regarded as one mentally askew. Chopin invented many new harmonic devices, he untied the chord that was restrained within the octave, leading it into the dangerous but delectable land of extended harmonies. And how he chromaticized the prudish, rigid garden of German harmony, how he moistened it with flashing changeful waters until it grew bold and brilliant with promise! A French theorist, Albert Lavignac, calls Chopin a product of the German Romantic school. This is hitching ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... leaving the Bay, we had some rough weather. "Stables" used to be a comical function. My diary for the first rough day says:—"About six of us were there out of about thirty in my sub-division; our sergeant, usually an awesome personage to me, helpless as a babe, and white as a corpse, standing rigid. The lieutenant feebly told me to report when all horses were watered and feeds made up. It was a long job, and at the end I found him leaning limply against a stall. 'Horses all watered, and feeds ready, sir.' He turned on me a glazed eye, ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... stand rigid and mighty— granite and the ore in rocks; a great band clasps your forehead and its ...
— Sea Garden • Hilda Doolittle

... benign heaven deliver us from those buckram individuals who imagine that Nature is as narrow and rigid as their own contracted selves, and who would seek to array her in their own exquisite bottle-green bifurcations and a gilet a la mode! These characters always put us in mind of the statues of Louis XIV, in which he is represented as Jupiter or Hercules, nude, with the exception of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... barons seven hundred years ago; which fact leads us to infer that the degenerate monk might be to us most interesting when he was most condemned by the reformers of his day, since he was more humane, genial, and free than his brethren, chained to the rigid discipline of his convent. Even a Friar Tuck is not so repulsive to us as an unsocial, austere, narrow-minded, and ignorant ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... intervals for the deep, full note of the red-billed shrike, as he sat hidden in the thicket; bright yellow weaver-birds twittered in crowds on the boughs, whilst from the depth of the shade came the cooing murmur of the turtle-dove. Stark and rigid, like the stem of an old tree, the crocodile took his rest, sometimes with wide-open jaws: here and there the hippopotamus lifted his giant head from the troubled waters, now scattering them in showers of spray, now raising ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... and a humble reception of the "last rites" of the Church. Early in life McAravey had married a Presbyterian girl, and the almost inevitable estrangement that results from a "mixed marriage" had cast its shadow over the lives of the pair. The Kanes had belonged to the small and rigid body of "Covenanters," and never a Sabbath from childhood till her marriage had 'Lisbeth failed to walk the four rough, up-hill, dreary miles that separated her father's home from the meeting-house that rose alone, and stern as the Covenant itself, on the bleak moorland above Glenariff. ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare

... actor for disturbing the conjugal felicity of an alderman? What there was in the circumstances either of the offender or of the sufferer to vindicate the zeal of the audience we could never conceive. It has never been supposed that the situation of an actor is peculiarly favorable to the rigid virtues, or that an alderman enjoys any special immunity from injuries such as that which on this occasion roused the anger of the public. But such is the justice of mankind. In these cases the punishment was excessive, but the offense was known and proved. The case ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... the whole transaction pale and rigid in the centre of the room, looking haughty and defiant as long as her parents and Herr Ebenstreit were present. Now, as the door closed, life and action were visible in this marble form; she rushed to the old gentleman, scarce respiring, ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... the world became tired of Raphaelism it inevitably became unjust to Raphael. It forgot that it was not he who had made his art the test of that of others—who had erected what, with him, was a spontaneous and original creation into a rigid system of laws. It confounded him with his followers and imitators, and, being bored by them, began to find ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox

... I not assured him that his honourable wounds, though painful (as a matter of fact, after they had set, they kept him stiff as a mummy for some days, so that unless he stood upon his feet, he had to be carried, or lie rigid on his face) would probably not prove fatal? And had he not actually survived to reach the upper air again, which was more than he ever expected to do? No wonder ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... blood and woe! when wilt thou end? Thou bright-haired angel, must the doom be thine! Fair lady of the stately brow! oh! let me see no more!" His lips quivered, but he uttered not another word. He remained fixed, rigid, statue-like, as if chilled into stone, bereft of life and motion, by the terrible vision. At length his extended arm dropped by his side; and, heaving a long, shuddering sigh, he leaned his drooping frame upon his ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... be taken to have done so, or else why were they introduced?—we have a noble and unselfish man murdering out of paltry vanity. In Plutarch, where Brutus is depicted as an austere republican, the incident of the letters only throws a natural shade of doubt on the rigid principles by which alone he is supposed to be guided. We all feel that rigid principles rest on pride, and may best be led astray through pride. But Shakespeare's Brutus is pure human sweetness, and the letters are worse than out of place when addressed to him. ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... restoring our wasted fortunes, some said in jest that the best plan would be for one of us to marry the beauty of Dauphiny. I at once said that I would be the man to do it; the ideas was a wild one, and a roar of laughter greeted my words. Her father was known to be a stern and rigid man, and it was certain that he would not consent to give his daughter to a spendthrift young noble like myself. When the laughter had subsided I repeated my intention gravely, and offered to wager large sums with all around the table that I ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... His tall, thin form became rigid in the intensity of his service. In the silence, that deepened, the ticking of the clock in the front of the gallery, could be heard plainly in ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... the mantel, were burning, and in the dim, weird light, Mrs. LaGrange, still elegantly attired for her interview with Harold Mainwaring, lay upon the low couch near the grate, her features scarcely paler than a few hours before, but now rigid in death. Upon the table beside her, the supper ordered by the maid stood untasted, while on the same table a small vial bearing the label of one of the deadliest of poisons, but empty, told the story. Underneath the vial was a slip of paper, on ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... pangs of hunger with selections from the tray of anchovies, sardines, pickled beet, and sliced sausage, when his host entered, voluble and irrepressible as ever. The dignified Ogams shuddered inwardly as his strident voice awoke the echoes of the room, and their already stiff limbs became rigid with disapproval. ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd

... blind to what he thought the defects of his own College; and I have, from the information of Dr. Taylor, a very strong instance of that rigid honesty which he ever inflexibly preserved. Taylor had obtained his father's consent to be entered of Pembroke, that he might be with his schoolfellow Johnson, with whom, though some years older than himself, he was very intimate. This would have been a great comfort to ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... supervisors, head of the department of public works, state senator, and Grand Sachem of Tammany, Tweed had a large and seductive influence over the city and state. The story of how he earned a scanty livelihood by stealing a million of dollars at a pop, and thus, with the most rigid economy, scraped together $20,000,000 in a few years by patient industry and smoking plug tobacco, has been ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... old steamships, for a principal port, in spite of the transformation of Ireland; the total weight of the boats when the gas was out of them; above all, the incredible speed that could be attained and kept up, with a good following wind. He learned also how, by the very rigid laws of air-way, enforced now by all nations under very heavy penalties, the danger of collisions was practically abolished; and so forth. The canon talked fluently and well; but the mass of new information was so great, and the interest of watching so intense, that the ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... Johnsonville to be near her sister Annie, Miss Abigail gave up her "help" and paid Miss Molly for the time spent in the empty reading-room of the library. But the campaign soon called for more than economy, even the most rigid. When the minister had a call elsewhere, and the trustees of the church seized the opportunity to declare it impossible to appoint his successor, Miss Abigail sold her woodlot and arranged through ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... most lovely lady in Bagdad, but very proud, and of difficult access. You know how strict our judges are, in enjoining the punctual observance of the severe laws that confine women; and they are yet more strict in the observation of them in their own families; the cauzee you saw is more rigid in that point than any of the other magistrates. They are always preaching to their daughters what a heinous crime it is to shew themselves to men; and the girls themselves are so prepossessed with the notion, that they make no other use of their own eves ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.

... outside my cavern,—I looked around the empty vehicle. On the forward seat lay a woman's hairpin. I picked it up with an interest that, however, soon abated. There was no scent of the roses to cling to it still, not even of hair-oil. No bent or twist in its rigid angles betrayed any trait of its wearer's character. I tried to think that it might have been "Mariar's." I tried to imagine that, confining the symmetrical curls of that girl, it might have heard the soft compliments ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... moving period that brought us together, how I would that your sweet composure had been sometimes a little ruffled! It would have appeared to me of a finer quality had I found it more variable. A woman's reason should be less rigid; and I should loathe mine if it were not a leaven of indulgence ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... of Lord Cornwallis and his galloping suite, Tarleton's famous light-horse legion was drawn up; and fronting it was the infantry, rank on rank, the glittering bayonets slanting in the October sunlight as the regiments moved into place, or standing in rigid groves of steel at the command to halt ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... the powers of the orator were not so cordially esteemed. To Matilda Pridden, his tales were barely decently the flesh and the devil smothering a holy occasion to penetrate and exhort. Dartrey sat rigid, as with the checked impatience for a leap. Nesta looked at Louise when some one was perceived on the stage bending to her father: It was Mr. Peridon; he never once raised his face. Apparently he was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... that you have frankness enough to own to it. You, Mercer, knew better; but you, sir, had to learn that you have broken one of the most rigid rules of my establishment. I object to fighting, as savage, brutal, and cruel, and I will not allow it here. Mr Rebble, give these boys heavy impositions, and you will both of you stop in and study every day for a fortnight under Mr Hasnip's directions. Some principals ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn

... more began to walk up and down the room every now and then taking a stolen glance at Miss Horn, a glance of uneasy anxious questioning. She stood rigid—a very Lot's wife of immobility, her eyes on the ground, waiting ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... be scared. He refused absolutely to jump up and back off in wild-eyed terror, crying out "Ooh! Here comes a bear!" the way Marie had always done—the way every one had always done, when Lovin Child got down and came at them growling. Cash sat rigid with his face to the fire, and would ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... had taken, defeated my intentions by escaping with the object of his passion. For more than six months I have vainly endeavoured to discover where he has concealed himself, but I have now some reason to think he is at the Hague. The Count earnestly conjured the Marquis to make the most rigid search, in order to discover his son's retreat, and to endeavour to prevail upon him to return to his home. 'It is an act of justice,' continued he, 'to provide for the, girl, if she consents to give up the written promise of marriage which she has received, and I leave it to your discretion ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... is evidently an effort to bring the deity, conceived as the abstract One, into closer union with man, an effort which is likewise visible in the later Yoga system of the Brahmins, in which, by the admission of Buddhistic elements, the visible world is recognized as real, the old rigid asceticism mitigated, Vishnu represented as the soul of the world, and immortality taught as a return of the ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten

... drew his heels together and became, though still pear-like, splendidly rigid. His eyes flashed with haughty, but a trifle vicarious ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson

... blade could be returned to her throat or her bosom it was twitched from her grip, sparked as it flew out of the shadow of the ship above, and fell flashing in the sunshine at the foot of the Statue fifty yards away. The outflung arm was arrested, rigid as a bar for an instant, till the releasing circuit permitted her to bring it slowly to her side. The other women shrank back silent among ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... in strictly governing our conduct toward other men by the rigid rules of legal right. If there were a community anywhere, in which all stood upon the strictness of this rule there should be written over its gates, as a warning to the unfortunates desiring admission to ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... misgiving or retreat, that she arrived too soon at the point where she meant to intercept the driver on his way to the house; for in her present mutiny she had resolved to gratify a little natural liking for manoeuvre, long starved by the rigid discipline to which she had subjected herself. She had always been awkward at it, but she liked it; and now it pleased her to think that she should give her letter secretly to the driver, and on her way to meet him she forgot that she had meant ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Hewson were serious; a lady who had a handsome forearm put up a lorgnette and inspected him through it; she had the air of questioning his taste, and the subtle aura of her censure penetrated to him, though she preserved a face of rigid impassivity. He returned her stare defiantly, though he was aware of not reaching her through the lenses as effectively as she reached him. Most of those who prepared themselves to listen seemed to be putting him on trial, and they apparently ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... other artists, even, are the public; and, according to Whistler, the public has nothing to do with art; it flourishes best when they are not aware of its existence. He is very contemptuous of taste. All judgment of art must be based on expert knowledge, for art, he says, "is based upon laws as rigid and defined as those of the known sciences." Yet whereas "no polished member of society is at all affected by admitting himself neither engineer, mathematician, nor astronomer, and therefore remains willingly discreet and taciturn ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock

... Protestant faith. They had been very uneasy and restless under the progress which the queen had been making in silencing Protestant preachers, and bringing back Catholic rites and ceremonies; and now, if they found that their queen was going to marry so rigid and uncompromising a Catholic as Philip of Spain, they would be doubly alarmed. She must suspend, therefore, for a time, her measures for restoring papacy, unless she was willing to give up her husband. The queen saw that this was the alternative, and she decided ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... Salzach flows down from the glaciers and divides the town. The place was thronged with soldiers, and the summit of the frowning Muenchburg was alive with activity. Here in the very heart of the Teutonic confederation, far from hostile frontiers, travelers were not subjected to such rigid scrutiny. It was deemed that everything was safely German, and John could travel at ease almost like ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Lady Suffolk, in 1767, had been an essential loss to her partial, and not too rigid neighbours. Two days before the death of George II. she had gone to Kensington not knowing that there was a review there. Hemmed in by coaches, she found herself close to George II. and to Lady Yarmouth. Neither of them knew her—a circumstance which greatly affected ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... like no weather that exists anywhere, save in Paradise and in Italy; certainly not in America, where it is always too strenuous on the side either of heat or cold. Young as the season was, and wintry, as it would have been under a more rigid sky, it resembled summer rather than what we New Englanders recognize in our idea of spring. But there was an indescribable something, sweet, fresh, and remotely affectionate, which the matronly summer loses, and which thrilled, and, as it were, tickled ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... clergymen. He might have been a sociable fellow, a man about town, even a gay young dog, and a radical writer before he was driven to accept the editorship of the aforesaid periodical. He probably came of a "good English family." He was now, very likely, either a rigid Presbyterian or an extreme freethinker. He thought a lot, anyway, and looked as if he knew a lot too—too ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... by the military was reorganized with Brigadier-General George H. Wood commanding and Captain Tyrus G. Reed as Adjutant General. The city was turned over into a military district of five military zones, and rigid orders were laid down for the ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... whom the purely physical is at all times the sole agent? We do not say that it does not generally predominate. But, in a compound being like man, it seems next to impossible that the nature within should not at times, in some degree, transpire through the most rigid texture of the outward form. We may not, indeed, always read aright the character thus obscurely indexed, or even be able to guess at it, one way or the other; still, it will affect us; nay, most so, perhaps, when ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... 'hypothesis' is often used also for the scientific device of treating an Abstraction as, for the purposes of argument, equivalent to the concrete facts. Thus, in Geometry, a line is treated as having no breadth; in Mechanics, a bar may be supposed absolutely rigid, or a machine to work without friction; in Economics, man is sometimes regarded as actuated solely by love of gain and dislike of exertion. The results reached by such reasoning may be made applicable to the concrete facts, if ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... an act of folly. To federalize the union was to combine the advantage of common action with liberty to each community to work out its own ideals in education, municipal government and all other matters of local concern. More than that, to federalize the union was to substitute for a rigid bond a bond elastic enough to allow of expansion, eastward to the Atlantic and westward to the Pacific. That principle which has been called provincial rights, or provincial autonomy, might be described more accurately and comprehensively ...
— George Brown • John Lewis

... before they came to the Western wilderness, had made them what they were. Things have changed. In the progress of society, the fashions, the habits of life, and all its conditions, have changed. Their rigid sentiments, and their tenets, apparently harsh and exclusive, we are not called on, in every respect, to imitate or commend; or rather to imitate, for we should commend them always, when we consider that state of society in which they had been adopted, and in which they seemed necessary. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... evolution of man, and yet realises how diverse were morality and customs in matters of sex in the period which this essay treats of" (i.e. Mother-Age Civilisation), "will hardly approach modern social problems with the notion that there is a rigid and unchangeable code of right and wrong. He will mark, in the first place, a continuous flux in all social institutions and moral standards; but in the next place, if he be a real historical student, he will appreciate the slowness of this steady secular ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... come with them, if it must be so! Let me take the evil with the good, and live my rich wild life through bliss and agony, like a true daughter of the sun, instead of crystallising slowly here into ice, amid countenances rigid with respectability, sharpened by the lust of gain; without taste, without emotion, without even sorrow! Let who will be the stagnant mill-head, crawling in its ugly spade-cut ditch to turn the mill. Let me be the wild mountain brook, which foams and ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... colored glass, etc., from Nineveh, which once formed part of the inlaid ornament of a throne, shewing how richly such objects were ornamented. This carving is said by the authorities to be of Egyptian origin. The treatment of figures by the Assyrians was more clumsy and more rigid, and their furniture generally was more massive than that of ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield

... his case had he remained in his own country. All the circumstances requiring attention from the invalid at home should be equally attended to abroad. If in some things greater latitude may be permitted, others will demand even a more rigid attention. It is, in truth, only by a due regard to all these circumstances that the powers of the constitution can be enabled to throw off, or even materially mitigate, in the best climate, a ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... and small, and a knack of graphically recording them, it has become a far more commonly and successfully cultivated form of art than any other. As to the question who are its practitioners, it would, of course, be the merest dogmatism to commit one's self to any attempt at rigid classification in such a matter. There are few if any writers who can be described without qualification either as realists or as idealists. Nearly all of them, probably, are realists at one moment and in one mood, and idealists at other moments and in other moods. ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... a rigid search of the deck, but the axe was gone. Nor was it ever found. It had taken its bloody story many fathoms deep into the old Atlantic, and hidden it, where many crimes have been hidden, in the ooze and slime ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... going to walk again?" "He thinks I'll hobble. It's both legs and feet." "They must be terrible—I mean to look at." "I haven't dared to look at them uncovered. Through the bed blankets I remind myself Of a starfish laid out with rigid points." "The wonder is it hadn't been your head." "It's hard to tell you how I managed it. When I saw the shaft had me by the coat, I didn't try too long to pull away, Or fumble for my knife to cut away, I just embraced ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost

... seemed congenial to George; he sat upon the copestone of the stone parapet, his back against a stone pilaster; his attitude not comfortable, but rigid, and his silence not comfortable, either, but heavy. However, to the eyes of his mother and his aunt, who occupied wicker chairs at a little distance, he was almost indistinguishable except for the stiff white shield ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... leaves himself no margin in matters of belief? No room for a wholesome, healthy doubt? No provision for an added enlightenment? No calculation for the inevitable progress of human knowledge? This is, in our eyes, the crying sin and danger of elaborate creeds, rigid formulas of exact statement on ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... one word, however, to be added. Your bedside friends should be dressed in soft leather and printed on thin paper. Then you can talk to them quite snugly. It is a great nuisance if you have to stick your arms out of bed and hold your hands rigid. ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... labourer of the lowest class.' A Reformed Poor Law, having for its 'object,' yes reader, its object, the restoration of the pauper to a position below that of the independent labourer.' This is their 'standard' of reference, by rigid attention to which they hope to fully carry out their 'vital principle,' and thus bring to a satisfactory conclusion the great work of placing 'the pauper in a worse condition than the independent labourer.' It appears, ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... Michel caught sight of the face, and regarded it distinctly. The old man's eyes were half closed, and he took no notice of anything; but there was something in that face which produced a profound impression on Pere Michel. He stood rigid, as though rooted to the spot, looking at the old man with a fixed stare. Then his arms sank down, his head also fell forward, and turning abruptly away, he walked forward to the bows. Upon this Jericho came forward; and he it was who lifted the old man on board ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille

... a chair. She was rigid; she did not speak; he would have thought she was in a fit but for the eyes which she never took off of him—eyes fixed with ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... so. For then I shall hope that they are facing one of the most difficult, and yet most necessary, of all problems; namely the difference between the Law and the Gospel. In my morning sermon I spoke of the eternal law of God—how it was unchangeable even as God its author, rigid, awful, inevitable by every soul of man, and certain, if he kept it, to lead him into all good, for body, soul, and spirit: but certain, too, if he broke it, to ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... adorned. The set was the inevitable modern drawing-room, and she sat well out on a sofa with her hands, in long black gloves, resting stiffly, palm downward, on each side of her. It was as if she pushed her body forward in an impulse to rise: her rigid arms thrust her shoulders up a little and accented the swell of her bosom. It was a vivid, a staccato attitude. It expressed a temperament, a character, fifty other things, but especially epitomised the restraints and the licenses of a world of drawing-rooms. In that first ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... obligation of submitting annually the needful estimates of expenses of such service. Congress properly exacts implicit obedience to the requirements of the law in the administration of the public service and rigid accountability in the expenditures therefor. It is submitted that a corresponding responsibility and obligation rest upon it to make the adequate appropriations to render possible such administration and tolerable such exaction. Anything short of an ample provision for a specified service ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... his ranks disseminated by grapeshot and musket balls, feeling that victory was slipping through his fingers, alarmed by the hesitation of his bravest followers, wrenched the tri-color from the rigid fingers of a dead color-bearer, and dashed toward the bridge, shouting: "Soldiers! are you no longer the men of Lodi?" As he did so he saw a young lieutenant spring past him who covered him ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... the body carried in their hands broad, three-cornered bronze shovels, with short black handles, and these they had dropped upon the grass on arriving at the grave. Presently the old man stooped and drew the covering back from the dead one's face—a rigid, marble-white face set in a loose mass of black hair. The others gathered round, and some standing, others kneeling, bent on the still countenance before them a long earnest gaze, as if taking an eternal farewell of one they had deeply loved. At ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... him that his father noted, any remoteness or richness of fancy in his expressions, was set down as incidental to the Blossoming Season. There is nothing like a theory for binding the wise. Sir Austin, despite his rigid watch and ward, knew less of his son than the servant of his household. And he was deaf, as well as blind. Adrian thought it his duty to tell him that the youth was consuming paper. Lady Blandish likewise ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... God: that he is our witness every moment, and everywhere conscious, as we are ourselves, of our words, acts, and thoughts; and will bring us all to a strict account at last for whatever he has thus witnessed that has been contrary to that rigid law of holy living which he has established over us in Christ. Must not this act upon us most beneficially? We believe that in himself he is perfect purity, and that he demands of us that we be so in our degree also. We can impute to him none of the acts, such as the believers in the Greek and Roman ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... which attends it, but especially they insisted upon its intrinsic excellency, its dignity and beauty, and agreeableness to reason and nature, and its self sufficiency to happiness, which many of them, especially the stoics,—the most rigid moralists among them,—carried to a very high degree. Cicero, in his Offices, and those excellent philosophers, Epictetus and Marcus Antoninus, in their works, which seem to be the best moral treatises ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... of Independence to an Irishwoman keeping a boarding-house in Havana, from a minister of Louis XIV. or a judge of the High Court of Admiralty to the most illiterate sailor, from Governor John Endicott, most rigid of Puritans, to the keeper of a rendezvous for pirates and receiver of their ill-gotten goods. Witnesses or writers of many nationalities appear: American, Englishmen, Scots, Irishmen, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Spaniards, a Portuguese, a Dane or Sleswicker, a Bohemian, a Greek, ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... hands and set lips she moved away from Louis and stood apart in the moonlight, a fixed and rigid figure of despair. Louis stepped to where Villon stood in stricken ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... you, O'Moy. Because I remember that you've been a loyal friend to me. And because I must forget all this and remember only that my duty is absolutely rigid and inflexible. If I condoned your offence, if I suppressed inquiry, I should be in duty and honour bound to offer my own resignation to his Majesty's Government. And I have to think of other things besides my personal feelings, when at any ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... there a rigid rule with regard to the use of the preterite tense? When do you say "hung" and when do you say "hanged"? A. Two examples from a universally recognised authority will illustrate the flexibility of our language in the general use of tenses: (1) "'I know a gen'l'man, sir,' said Mr. Weller, 'as did ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... earnings of old Robert did not amount to more than twelve shillings a week; and, as there were six children to maintain, the family, during their stay at Wylam, were necessarily in very straitened circumstances. The father's wages being barely sufficient, even with the most rigid economy, for the sustenance of the household, there was little to spare for clothing, and nothing for education, so none of the children ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... alone she remained standing as he had last seen her, her gaze fixed on the heavy curtains through which he had disappeared. Gradually her face grew rigid, and the expression vanished from her deep eyes, till they looked dull and glassy. She tottered, lost her hold upon the chair and fell to the floor with an inarticulate groan. There she lay, white, beautiful and motionless as a marble ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... It held on for a second or two in a most remarkable manner to the mainmast, but another lurch of the vessel cast it loose again; a huge billow rolled under the stern; down went the bow, and the brute slid on its haunches, with its fore legs rigid in front, at an incredible pace towards the galley. Just as a smash became imminent, the bow rose, the stern dropt, and away he went back again with equal speed, but in a more sidling attitude, towards ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne

... State was wretchedly poor; for that very reason the Prussian rulers had to practise strict economy and unrelenting industry. It is true the country was always insecure and constantly threatened by powerful neighbours; for that very reason the people had to submit to a rigid discipline and a strong military organization. It is true the country was depopulated; for that very reason the rulers had to attract foreign settlers by a ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... face to him he saw that she had felt the universal contagion. Her keen eye sparkled, there was a flush on her matronly cheek, and she had evidently made up her mind what line to take. Olive Chancellor sat motionless; her eyes were fixed on the floor with the rigid, alarmed expression of her moments of nervous diffidence; she gave no sign of observing her kinsman's approach. He said something to Mrs. Farrinder, something that imperfectly represented his admiration of Verena; and this lady replied with dignity that it was no wonder the girl spoke so ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... entirely delightful, appropriate, seemly, and beautiful. It pleases every sense; it is done just as it should be done, easily, courteously, gently, pleasantly, with a confidence which is yet modest, and with a rightness that has nothing rigid or unamiable about it. To see a thing so done, whatever it may be, leaves us with an envious desire that we might do the thing in the same way. It seems easy and effortless, and the one thing worth doing; and this is where ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... partners turned quite the color of her hair; Jackson Wells alone remained white and rigid. She came on, her very short upper lip showing her white teeth ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... swelling, visibly. For an instant it stood thus; seeming to stare, fixedly, at something, in the direction of the door. Then, quickly, it began to back along the sill; until, reaching the wall at the end, it could go no further. There it stood, rigid, as though frozen in an attitude of ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... it seems to me, a journey, especially if it be for love or pleasure, should always have about it something of devotion, something a little rigid too, and dutiful, at least in its opening stages; and in thus determining my way I secured this. For I promised myself that I would start from the place whence they set out so long ago to visit and to pray at the tomb of the greatest of English saints, that I would sleep where ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton

... Barbara Uttmann, of Annaberg, Saxony, was the inventor of the art of making hand cushion lace, or only introduced it into Annaberg, in the Saxon mountains, has not yet been solved, notwithstanding the fact that the most rigid examinations have been made. It is the general belief, however, that she only introduced the art, having learned it from a foreigner in the year 1561. The person from whom she acquired this knowledge is said to have been a Protestant fugitive from Brabant, who was driven ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various

... disorderly conduct of some of the American settlers, and of not a few of the ragged volunteer soldiery as well. They hailed with sincere joy the advent of the disciplined Continental troops, commanded by officers who behaved with rigid justice towards all men and put down disorder with a strong hand. They were much relieved to find themselves under the authority of Congress, and both to that body and to the local Regular Army officers, they sent petitions setting ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... by the white sunbonnet drawn far over it. One arm was lifted, and her hand was passed between the unchinked logs in a convulsive grasp upon them. Her figure was tall and slender, and expressive in its rigid constraint; it was an attitude of despair, of repulsion, of fear. It might have implied grief, or remorse, or anxiety. Often the eyes of the prescient victims of circumstantial evidence rested dubiously upon ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... days wont to do in behalf of the aspiring Colored girls who sought for education, withholding themselves from such work only when a depraved and degenerate public sentiment upon the subject of educating the Colored people had compelled them to a more rigid line of demarcation between the races. Ellen Simonds and others conducted the school a few years, but with the loss of its original teacher it began to fail, and finally became extinct. Maria Becraft is remembered, wherever she was known, as a woman of the rarest ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... architectural structures, unapproachable, to use Schumann's word, in their magnificence. But the underlying feeling was always the same throughout; it might wax or wane in intensity: its character did not change. The themes, once announced, were rigid and unalterable; the music had always to be more or less like "a tune tied to a post." Dramatic changes of mood had no place. So later, a voice had to be found for shifting, complex, theatrically conflicting moods—states of mind characteristic of the modern ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman

... rigidity of the back of the neck, pain in various parts of the body, skin over-sensitive, irritable, and temperature about 102 degrees, with all symptoms of an active fever. Later, pains are very severe, especially in the head, neck and back; the head is drawn back; often the back is rigid; the muscles of the neck and back are tender and attempts to stretch them cause intense pain. The vomiting now is less prominent. Temperature is extremely irregular, 99 to 105 degrees or more. Pulse is slow, often 50 to 60, and full and strong at first. The delirium is of a severe and variable ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... an heritage from her father, and betokened a strong and determined nature, had become more rigid in the last few months, but over her face lay a new expression, one of pain and anxiety, as if some secret and hitherto unknown spring had been touched; the blue eyes lost their cold, passionate look, deep shadows lay in them, which told of strife and anguish, and the blonde head sank low, ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... affording his subjects on the marches marks of his royal justice and protection. [Sidenote: 1510] The clan of Turnbull having been guilty of unbounded excesses, the king came suddenly to Jedburgh, by a night march, and executed the most rigid justice upon the astonished offenders. Their submission was made with singular solemnity. Two hundred of the tribe met the king, at the water of Rule, holding in their hands the naked swords, with which they had perpetrated their crimes, and having each around his neck the ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... Etiquette is not rigid in Arundell Street; but, nevertheless, a girl in a first-floor front may be excused for showing surprise and hesitation when invited to a confidential chat with a second-floor front young man whom she has known only five minutes. But there is a freemasonry among those who ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... an act of 1887, the contract labor restriction was made even more severe. In 1903, anarchists were excluded and the bureau of immigration was transferred from the Treasury Department to the Department of Commerce and Labor, in order to provide for a more rigid execution of the law. In 1907 the classes of persons denied admission were widened to embrace those suffering from physical and mental defects and otherwise unfit for effective citizenship. When the Department of Labor was established in 1913 the enforcement ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... the tombs Have lost their rigid, frozen mien, The gradual glow of life illumes The Past ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier

... the sunshine one loves to see in a young face—the expression was too grave and impassive; there was the suggestion of future hardness, unless time should mellow instead of stiffening and accentuating the already somewhat rigid lines. ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... applicants. Moreover, in many trades, though by no means in all, restrictions are placed by the Unions upon the number of apprentices, with the object of limiting the number of those who should from year to year be qualified to compete for work. In other trades where no rigid rule to this effect exists, there is an understanding which is equally effective. Certain trades, such as the engineers, boiler-makers, and other branches of iron trade, place no restrictions, and in certain other trades the restrictions are not closely applied. But most of the strong Trades ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson

... should have its specified time, which should be adhered to with rigid accuracy. If any thing like the plan I have suggested for allowing rests of a minute or two every half hour should be adopted, it will mark off the forenoon into parts which ought to be precisely and carefully observed. I was formerly accustomed to think that I could not limit ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... caving away beneath his feet told him. Suddenly Mickey gave up struggling, set his teeth, and began fighting by instinct. He moved his shoulders gently, until he let the water flow in, then instead of trying to work his feet he held them rigid and flattened as he could, and with the upper part of his body still rolling, he reached higher, and kept inching up the branch as Junior backed away, until with sickening slowness he at last reached wood thick as his wrist. Then he dragged ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... the dead dog," pursued Kiddie, "didn't look into her eyes an' see how the pupils were dilated; didn't handle her limbs an' feel how rigid they were. You've seen many an animal killed with a bullet, Rube, but you never saw one lookin' as Sheila looks. Why? Because she wasn't shot. It was poison that killed her—a quick an' deadly poison, injected on the point of a dart, a spear, or, perhaps even an arrow. And the bootprint ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... a spectacle to all the earth, which the fiercest assailant and the most rigid judge cannot long contemplate without yielding to a painful compassion which rends the heart. Why should all that faculty and force, all that wonderful being, with every capacity for happiness and making happy, for wise ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... succeeded by Alexander, his cousin-german,[4] who, being declared emperor without opposition, the senate, with their usual adulation, were for conferring new titles upon him; but he modestly declined them all. 2. To the most rigid justice he added the greatest humanity. He loved the good, and was a severe reprover of the lewd and infamous. His accomplishments were equal to his virtues. He was an excellent mathematician, geometrician, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... of being imprisoned between decks for four weeks, with this heterogeneous collection appalled him. His only safety lay in maintaining a rigid and uncompromising aloofness. He would discourage all advances from the start, he would promptly nip in the bud the first sign of intrusion. He had left the only country an Englishman regards as the proper place for existence, to cross two abominable seas and an even ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice



Words linked to "Rigid" :   nonrigid, rigidity, nonmoving, astronautics, intolerant, unbending, inflexible, strict



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