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Stiff-necked   Listen
adjective
Stiff-necked  adj.  Stubborn; inflexibly obstinate; contumacious; as, stiff-necked pride; a stiff-necked people.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stiff-necked" Quotes from Famous Books



... sometimes overtake her relatives preceding her more leisurely in the same direction. Gib of course was absent: by skreigh of day he had been gone to Crossmichael and his fellow-heretics; but the rest of the family would be seen marching in open order: Hob and Dand, stiff-necked, straight-backed six-footers, with severe dark faces, and their plaids about their shoulders; the convoy of children scattering (in a state of high polish) on the wayside, and every now and again collected by the shrill summons of the mother; and the mother herself, by a suggestive ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... her husband; and she was living under her maiden name. Tales were told of her which were utterly false,—as when it was said that she drank. Others were reported which had in them some grains of truth,—as that she was violent, stiff-necked, and vindictive. Had they said of her that it had become her one religion to assert her daughter's right,—per fas aut nefas,—to assert it by right or wrong; to do justice to her child let what injustice might be done to herself ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... guests," said Cedric; "my hospitality must not be bounded by your dislikes. If Heaven bore with the whole nation of stiff-necked unbelievers for more years than a layman can number, we may endure the presence of one Jew for a few hours. But I constrain no man to converse or to feed with him.—Let him have a board and a morsel apart,—unless," he said smiling, "these turban'd strangers ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... been divinely appointed to rule them after his own will. No idea that he had ever been pigheaded and wrong had ever been driven into his dull brain. His view of his prerogative was that whatever he thought to be best was best, and they were ungrateful and stiff-necked people who took a different view, and that it was his bounden duty to punish such in his ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth

... the gospel to the English of Northumbria. Then one missionary was sent, and after having laboured for some years, he came back to give an account of his mission. And a council was held, and he said, "Those Northumbrians are a stiff-necked, hard-hearted people. I threatened them with God's wrath, I spoke to them of Hell-fire, I warned them of the terrors of judgment, I denounced the vengeance of God on them, and they would not be converted." Then one sitting in a bark ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould

... moan. That night the shadowy shape of one long dead Stood face-to-face with Saul, in lonely cave, The Witch of Endor's haunt. Ah, me—the fall! To degradation deep that man hath slid Who 'gainst the Lord in stiff-necked folly strives Choosing the path of cabalistic wiles— The dark and turbid garniture of toads, And philters rank of necromantic knaves— Who spurns the hand which, by the light of Heaven, Points clear and straight along the ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... What a rigorous, saucy, stiff-necked rascal it is! I see my folly now.—I am undone by mine ain policy.—This Sidney is the last man that shou'd have been about my son:—The fellow, indeed, hath given him principles, that might have done vary weel ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin

... wreath—was it not so? Nay, it was but a jest. Didst thou know how heavy is the task of monarchs and how wearisome are their hours, thou wouldst not be wroth because I lit my dulness with a jest. Oh, they weary me, those princes and those nobles, and those stiff-necked pompous Romans. To my face they vow themselves my slaves, and behind my back they mock me and proclaim me the servant of their Triumvirate, or their Empire, or their Republic, as the wheel of Fortune turns, and each rises on its round! There is never a man among ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... of extraordinary obduracy," he said, "for one of your years. I should like to know how much the Stanbury influence has had to do with strengthening your unwise, unamiable, and stiff-necked resolution! If I were Claude Bainrothe, I should lay heavy damages against you in the courts of law, for your unjustifiable evasion of a formal contract—one your father sanctioned, one of which all your friends are and were cognizant and proud, and which has subjected him, in its ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... Talking of fools—what about your crazy expedition to-morrow? I say," addressing himself particularly to Roscoe and MacNab, "did you know that this fellow is going out tiger shooting? Tiger shooting, if you please! Tiger shooting is to be his way of spending the Sabbath; what do you say to that, my stiff-necked Presbyterian?" ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... me a very evil turn,' he said. 'Ye spoke stiff-necked folly to this lady. Ye shall learn, Protestants that ye are, that if I be the flail of the monks I may be a hail, a lightning, a bolt from heaven upon Lutherans that ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... this interview. Lord Fawn became more than ever convinced that the member for Bobsborough was his determined enemy, and Frank was more convinced than ever that Lord Fawn was an empty, stiff-necked, self-sufficient prig. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... am told that he is a very good man, but stiff-necked and disdainful. He regards me with scorn, because he knows no better. He may know our laws, but he knows nothing of our ways, to suppose that my men were in any danger. If I had been caught while the stir was on, a gibbet on the cliff would have been set ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... consciousness, but the burden of obligation is too great. She papered my kitchen with her own hands, and would not let me even pay for the paper; she also employed her man to put up a partition; and she is stiff-necked as an Israelite on these points. She sends us Indian cakes and milk bread, or any nicety she happens to have. George has the pleasantest way of going of errands about which I cannot employ the Imp, Ben, and he took excellent care of ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... the first year of her runaway marriage, had been the daughter of a stiff-necked, unforgiving old earl; she had bequeathed her child, besides these gentian eyes and wonderful, silvery blond hair, a warm, generous heart and a more or less ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn

... indiscriminately slaughtered, insisted that a similar policy should be adopted for the whole island. In his work "On the State of Ireland," he asks for "large masses of troops to tread down all that standeth before them on foot, and lay on the ground all the stiff-necked people of that land." He urges that the war be carried on not only in the summer but in the winter; "for then, the trees are bare and naked, which use both to hold and house the kerne; the ground is cold and wet, which useth to be his bedding; the air ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... to time she expressed her opinion that Brotherton would get well and would come back; and she would then tell Mary how she ought to urge her husband to behave well to his elder brother, always asserting that George had been stiff-necked and perverse. But in the midst of all this she would refer every minute to Mary's coming baby as the coming Popenjoy—not a possible Popenjoy at some future time, but the immediate Popenjoy of the hour,—to be born a Popenjoy! Poor Mary, in answer ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... of Baal, and, if I mistake not, even now concocting mischief for this foolish, indulgent, stiff-necked father. (Aloud.) Your only ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte

... to allow Mr. Slope just so much favour as that. But if—And then Mr. Arabin poked his fire most unnecessarily, spoke crossly to his new parlour-maid who came in for the tea-things, and threw himself back in his chair determined to go to sleep. Why had she been so stiff-necked when asked a plain question? She could not but have known in what light he regarded her. Why had she not answered a plain question and so put an end to his misery? Then, instead of going to sleep in his armchair, Mr. Arabin walked about ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... entirely willing to send a subaltern and a score of troopers to convoy the entire party—sheriff and deputies, posse and prisoners—to the territorial capital, but, like the old war-horse he was, he balked, stiff-necked and stiff-legged, at the sheriff's demand that the escort should report to him—should be, in point of fact, under ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... vain. The only thing to do now is to see that the Academy is no longer allowed to sail under false colours. This article may awaken in the Academy a sense that it is not well to persist in open and flagrant defiance of public opinion, or it may serve to render the Academicians even more stiff-necked than before. In either case it will have ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... enrolment of the Nationalist Volunteers; in one month the devoted Commons read a third time the Home Rule Bill, the Welsh Church Disestablishment Bill and the Plural Voting Bill, and in the very same month the stiff-necked and abominable Lords for the third time threw out the Home Rule Bill, the Welsh Church Disestablishment Bill and the Plural Voting Bill. It was terrific. The newspapers could scarcely print it—or anything—terrifically enough. Adjectives and epithets ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... service—superintendent meeting ranger on a common ground. And why? Because they're doing something constructive. Because the work's the thing that counts. You'll see what it's done for Fred. The boy has a real dignity; not the stiff-necked kind he'd acquire around an army post, but the dignity that comes with the consciousness of being, not in ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... make sure that his yacht was in a state worthy to receive two such ladies, and he had insisted on meeting them in his car at Abbeville on the way to Boulogne. He had not insisted on meeting Musa similarly. He was a peculiar and in some respects a stiff-necked man. He had decided, in his own mind, that he would have the two women to himself in the car, and so indeed it fell out. Nevertheless his attitude to Musa, and Madame Piriac's attitude to Musa, and everybody's attitude to Musa, had shown that the mere prospect of star-concerts in a first-class ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... half an inch of perfect happiness, and just missed it. No, depend upon it, there is nothing like a wise, judicious, discriminating friend at such junctures, to help matters along. You may thank me that Geoff isn't at this moment wedded to some stiff-necked British maiden, and you eating your head off ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... One of the stiff-necked twins, both of whom Joe was beginning to find a bit too stereotyped West-world adherents, said, "Sir, I must protest. The West does ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... that was it. Rain it was, sure enough, and a good heavy shower—but as soon as it had rained enough to spoil Isak's lichen, it stopped. The sky was blue. "What did I say," said Isak, stiff-necked and hard. ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... I didn't want to be bothered; besides, there was always something very attractive about Sterling. I don't mind telling you that if he had fallen in love with me instead of the stiff-necked woman he married, I'd have tumbled ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch

... making the best of their position; above all, they have been teachable, ready to receive impressions from without, and, when received, to develop them. To show the truth of this, we need only observe, that they adopted Christianity from another race, the most obstinate and stiff-necked the world has ever seen, who, trained under the Old Dispensation to preserve the worship of the one true God, were too proud to accept the further revelation of God under the New, and, rejecting their birth-right, suffered their inheritance ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... Christian martyrs had it, too, when lions tore them to pieces and bulls kited them on their horns in the Colosseum. Anyway, it was as plain as daylight that I had lost my time and money in bothering about Oppenstedt, and that I might as well give him up as the most incorrigible, stiff-necked, self-opinionated, blunder-headed ass and lunatic ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... proceeding even more highhanded than this. Her relatives could scarce appeal to the law, since the law would then step in and send her to the penitentiary. He could use her position as a hostage to force her stiff-necked father to come ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... mind from sin, All being shut out, the adulterer is within. Who may offend, sins least; power to do ill The fainting seeds of naughtiness doth kill. 10 Forbear to kindle vice by prohibition; Sooner shall kindness gain thy will's fruition. I saw a horse against the bit stiff-necked, Like lightning go, his struggling mouth being checked: When he perceived the reins let slack, he stayed, And on his loose mane the loose bridle laid. How to attain what is denied we think, Even as the sick desire forbidden ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... as a preacher at Cambridge, from the first, "a seditious fellow," as a noble lord called him in later life, highly troublesome to unjust persons in authority. "None, except the stiff-necked and uncircumcised, ever went away from his preaching, it was said, without being affected with high detestation of sin, and moved to all godliness and virtue."[116] And, in his audacious simplicity, he addressed himself ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... it's infernal foolishness, and I wish the Mayo breed didn't have so much of that cursed stiff-necked conscience! Our family wouldn't be where it is to-day." He spoke with so much heat that she turned-wondering ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... bred and nourished sprang a political temper which, as it hardened with the passing years, appeared to English Home Rulers to be "stiff-necked," "bigoted," and "intractable." It certainly was a state of mind very different from those shifting gusts of transient impression which in England go by the name of public opinion; and, if these epithets in the mouths of opponents be taken as no more than synonyms for "uncompromising," ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... both of you to take this benevolent interest in the case of my friends," I said; "and it is to be hoped that they won't be foolishly proud and stiff-necked about it. It's rather ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... not love the Jews, but his hatred of Christianity was so great that he preferred to help the stiff-necked race in Palestine, in order to rouse them against Christ. For that purpose he had given orders that the Temple in Jerusalem should be rebuilt, and this was the matter which he wished to discuss with his philosophers and Eleazar. "What ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... we shall find that the term Philistine conveys a sense which [99] makes it more peculiarly appropriate to our middle class than to our aristocratic. For Philistine gives the notion of something particularly stiff-necked and perverse in the resistance to light and its children, and therein it specially suits our middle-class, who not only do not pursue sweetness and light, but who prefer to them that sort of machinery of business, chapels, tea meetings, and addresses from Mr. Murphy and the Rev. W. Cattle, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold

... onset, and even these were broken into different parties and scattered all over the country. So far as our tale is concerned, we have only to relate the fate of Balmawhapple, who, mounted on a horse as headstrong and stiff-necked as his rider, pursued the flight of the dragoons above four miles from the field of battle, when some dozen of the fugitives took heart of grace, turned round, and, cleaving his skull with their broadswords, satisfied the world that the unfortunate gentleman had actually ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... a stiff-necked one if she'll do that." Then Mrs. Mountjoy, with tears in her eyes, began to explain with very many epithets that her daughter was the best girl in all the world. She was entirely worthy of confidence. Those who knew her were aware that ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... and cannot bear a pride which shocks your own. As for wheedling you into a liking of a work, I must confess it seems the safest way; but though flattery pleases you well when it is particular, you hate it, as little concerning you, when it is general. Then we knights of the quill are a stiff-necked generation, who as seldom care to seem to doubt the worth of our writings, and their being liked, as we love to flatter more than one at a time; and had rather draw our pens, and stand up for the beauty of our works (as some arrant fools use to do for that of their mistresses) to the last ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... never came from such observance. Yet even they saw in the spiritual the alone true sense, which the Jews had denied, and were of opinion that the burden of ceremonies was a paedagogic necessity with reference to a people stiff-necked and prone to idolatry, i.e., a defence of monotheism, and gave an interpretation to the sign of circumcision which made it no longer a blessing, but rather the mark for the ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... impossibility of course before the capture of Jerusalem, which did not take place until the third month of his successor. The last prince of David's house, Zedekiah, having suffered more severely than all his predecessors, must therefore have been stiff-necked and rebellious (xxxvi.12, 13),—characteristics to which, according to the authentic evidence of the prophet Jeremiah, he had in reality ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... over his oar, suddenly broke out into laughter, soulless, without meaning. Simpson, stung sharply in his stiff-necked pride, sprang up and took one step forward, his fist raised. The boy dropped the oars and writhed to starboard, his neck askew at an eldritch angle, his eyes glaring upward. But he did not raise a hand to ward off the blow that he feared, and that ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... the heads of lisping babyhood. The words "must" and "shall" were often heard, and that obedience was a privilege and not a duty was nowhere taught. All parents quoted Solomon as to the beauties of the rod; and that all children were perverse, obstinate and stiff-necked was assumed to be a fact. To break the will of a child was a very essential ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... speech. They are all interesting and contain some truth; but if the "new" poetry and the "new" criticism are really balderdash, they should not require so much attention from one of the most eminent of contemporary writers. I think Mr. Watson is rather stiff-necked and obstinate, like an honest, hearty country squire, in his sturdy following of tradition. Smooth technique is a fine thing in art; but I do not care whether a poem is written in conventional metre or in free verse, so long as it is unmistakably poetry. And no garments yet invented or the lack ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... Laramie's protests were ignored: "You're a poor man, Jim," declared Tenison, "and you can't pay any bills now for Abe. He thought more of you than he did of any man in the world. But most of his money he left here with me, upstairs and down. Abe was stiff-necked as hell, whether it was cards or cattle, you know that. And it's only some of his money—not mine—I'm turning back to him. That Dutchman," he added, referring with a contemptuous oath to the unpopular undertaker of Sleepy Cat, "is ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... purses directly; which, as they were not represented at the council, he had to do by means of his officers (the sheriffs) dealing with them one after another, which was a troublesome job; for the men were stiff-necked and quite disinclined to part with their money; and the robbery having to be done on the spot, so to say, encountered all sorts of opposition: and, in fact, it was the money needs both of baron, bishop, and ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... their arms. The pale blue of a Bavarian dotted the assembly at rare intervals, some officer from Von Werder's army, attentive, shy, saying little even when questioned. The huge Saxon officers, beaming with good-nature, mixed amiably with the sour-visaged Brunswick men and the stiff-necked Prussians. ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers

... resisted. "Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney

... trouble arose, they were to let me know, and I would myself come to their assistance. The tribes were, Lundu, Sarambo, Bombak, Paninjow, and Sow. The only other tribe on the right-hand river were the Singe, a powerful and stiff-necked people, with good reason to be shy; but when once they are treated justly, their strength will be advantageous, and give them confidence ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... Canada there was widely expressed disapproval of the step, and doubt as to its legitimacy; but the prospect of entertaining the upper thousand of English science has evidently so greatly gratified our Canadian brothers that even the most stiff-necked opponent of the migration must be compelled to give in if he has a shred of good nature and brotherly feeling left. There are doubtless a few grumblers who will maintain that the Montreal assembly will not be a meeting of the British Association; but after all this Imperial ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh

... with which this man wraps himself so closely. In the meantime, if he be a clerk, he is certainly an impostor of the most consummate art, for assuredly so gentlemanly a scoundrel I have never yet come in contact with. But, good heavens! if such a report should have gone abroad concerning that stiff-necked and obstinate girl, her reputation and prospects in life are ruined forever. What would Dunroe say if he heard it? as it is certain he will. Then, again, here is the visit from this conscientious old blockhead, Lord Cullamore, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... republics or railways, but fixed their affections on forced labour and getting rid of the necessity of paying taxes—and so between them the Republic came to grief. But it must be borne in mind that President Burgers was throughout actuated by good motives; he did his best by a stubborn and stiff-necked people; and if he failed, as fail he did, it was more their fault than his. As regards the pension he received from the English Government, which has so often been brought up against him, it was after all no more than his due after five years ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... Stiff-necked setting oneself against God's merciful fighting with evil lasts for a little while, but verse 10 tells how soon and easily it is annihilated. God's 'desire' brushes away all defences, and the obstinate ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... the miracle was very plain, very comprehensible, and very probable. It had good cause: for Canaan felt more confidence in the protection of his great and glorious Baal, than stiff-necked Judah in his barely-seen divinity: and surely it was wise to vindicate the true but invisible God by the humiliation of the false and far-seen idol. This would constitute to all nations the quickly-rumoured proof that Jehovah of the Israelites was God in ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... of things—this survival of the more prominent traits of the old stiff-necked ones, albeit their necks were stiffened by their resistance of the adversary—can necessarily be known only to the initiated. The sojourner from cities for the summer months cannot often penetrate in the least, though he may not be aware of it, the reserve ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Rutherford temper developed in the Princess as she grew older. Mrs. Swaney was Juanita Sinclair; her father was a mild-mannered little man, who went out of doors to cough, but her mother was a Rutherford—a big, stiff-necked, beer-bottle-shaped woman, who bossed the missionary society until she divided the church. John Swaney, who is not a talkative man, once got in a crowd at Smith's cigar-store where they were telling ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... favour of her separate possessions; but there she was too tough for him. He used to swear at her behind her back, after kneeling to her to her face, and call her in the presence of his gentleman his stiff-necked Israelite, though before he married her, that same gentleman told me he used to call her (how he could bring it out, I don't know) "my pretty Jessica!" To be sure it must have been hard for her to guess what sort of a husband he reckoned to make her. When she was lying, to all expectation, on her ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... Shovelhattery, and other the like deplorable phenomena, than it is in the least aware of! I beg you take warning: I am more serious in this than you suppose. But no, you will not; you whistle lightly over my prophecies, and go your own stiff-necked road. ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... However, the converts decreasing when Edward I., after hanging 280 Jews for clipping coin, banished the rest from the realm, half the property of the Jews who were hung stern Edward gave to the preachers who tried to convert the obstinate and stiff-necked generation, and half to the Domus Conversorum, in Chancellor's Lane. In 1278 we find the converts calling themselves, in a letter sent to the king by John the Convert, "Pauperes Coelicolae Christi." In the reign of Richard II. a certain converted Jew received twopence a day for life; and in the reign ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... yoke of papacy had been lifted certainly, but the yoke of pseudo-Protestantism which had taken its place was quite as heavy on the necks of the people. So long as it had been new; so long as it had been of their own choosing, it had been endured willingly. But a generation was springing up—stiff-necked they might have been called, in that they fretted under the yoke of their fathers—that sought to be delivered from the tyranny of their pastors and the fossilised formalism of their creed. To the people in their bondage a prophet was born, and ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... proud and stiff-necked and perverse, Saying: "We tell the fortunes of the nations, And revel in the deep palm of the world. The head-line is the road we choose for trade. The love-line is the lane wherein we camp. The life-line is the road we wander on. Mount Venus, Jupiter, and all the rest ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... to Michigan, closed out his business interests there, and returned to Sequoia on the alert for an investment in redwood timber. From a chair-warmer on the porch of the Hotel Sequoia, the Colonel had heard the tale of how stiff-necked old John Cardigan had called the bluff of equally stiff-necked old Bill Henderson; so for the next few weeks the Colonel, under pretense of going hunting or fishing on Squaw Creek, managed to make a fairly accurate cursory cruise of the Henderson timber—following which he purchased ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... at all times, my children, that you are an obedient and a docile people, content to accept the word of God from those whom he has sent to teach it to you—that you are not a stiff-necked generation, prone to follow your own vain conceits, or foolish enough to conceive that your little earthly knowledge can be superior to the wisdom which comes from above, as others are. I have always ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... the black-coat gent, a-leanin' back like he's plumb dejected that a-way an' hopeless. 'It is a stiff-necked gen'ration an' sorely perverse ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis

... Mr. Boythorn, suddenly firing another volley, "that fellow is, and his father was, and his grandfather was, the most stiff-necked, arrogant imbecile, pig-headed numskull, ever, by some inexplicable mistake of Nature, born in any station of life but a walking-stick's! The whole of that family are the most solemnly conceited and consummate blockheads! But it's no matter; he should not shut up my path if he were fifty ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... had an old rhymed proverb, "Koli khud knyaz, tak v gryaz!" "If the prince is bad, into the mud with him!", and they habitually acted according to it. So unpleasant, indeed, was the task of ruling those sturdy, stiff-necked burghers, that some princes refused to undertake it, and others, having tried it for a time, voluntarily laid down their authority and departed. But these frequent depositions and abdications—as many as thirty took place in the course of ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... certain stiff-necked strength in the old fellow; in fact, nature had been rather kind to him; and certainly his Uncle and Guardian—the distinguished Seckendorf who did the HISTORIA LUTHERANISMI, a RITTER, and man of good mark, in Ernst THE PIOUS of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... Master Pothier reflectively, "the best bond I could draw would not bind him more than a spider's thread! They are stiff-necked as bulls, these De Repentignys, and will bear no yoke but what they put on of themselves! Poor lad! Do they know at the Manor House that he is here drinking and dicing ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... bound to respect. You made love to her that summer at Croydon; you needn't deny it. And at the end of things you walk off to make your fortune without committing yourself; without knowing, or apparently caring, what your stiff-necked poverty-pride may cost her in years of uncertainty. You ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... gentle eyes checked him. Besides, his gesture had spoken for him; it told his hatred for the nation, his conviction that he was in France to mete out justice, delegated by the God of Armies, to chastise a perverse and stiff-necked generation. Paris was burning off there on the horizon in expiation of its centuries of dissolute life, of its heaped-up measure of crime and lust. Once again the German race were to be the saviors of the world, were to purge Europe of the remnant of Latin corruption. He let his arm fall to ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... dear pretty Miss Rachel, possessing a host of graces and attractions, had one defect, which strict impartiality compels me to acknowledge. She was unlike most other girls of her age, in this—that she had ideas of her own, and was stiff-necked enough to set the fashions themselves at defiance, if the fashions didn't suit her views. In trifles, this independence of hers was all well enough; but in matters of importance, it carried her (as my lady thought, and as I thought) too far. She judged for herself, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... disagreed pretty much, and would not give an inch either one or the other, nevertheless the minister told the widow, and Hetta too probably, that the lad had good stuff in him, though he was so stiff-necked. ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope

... said by Sir Roger would have much effect. Those men would either abstain from voting, or vote for the railway hero, with the view of keeping out the de Courcy candidate. Then came the shopkeepers, who might also be regarded as a stiff-necked generation, impervious to electioneering eloquence. They would, generally, support Mr Moffat. But there was an inferior class of voters, ten-pound freeholders, and such like, who, at this period, were somewhat ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... torments helped him to brave what the morning brought. Insensibly also, as Time hardened his sufferings, Evan asked himself what the shame of his position consisted in. He grew stiff-necked. His Pagan virtues stood up one by one to support him. Andrew, courageously evading the interdict that forbade him to visit Evan, would meet him by appointment at City taverns, and flatly offered him a place in the Brewery. Evan declined it, on the pretext ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... miseries of those who might be (so runs the dream, and will run till it becomes a waking reality) strong, and free, and safe, by being good and wise. To such a spirit this bold cunning man had come, stiff-necked and heaven-defiant, a "brand plucked from the burning:" and yet equally unconscious of his danger, and thankless for his respite. Given, too, as it were, into her hands; tossed at her feet out of the very mouth of the pit,—why but that ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... Simon the Cyrenian relieving him of the burden of the Cross; the reproaches of Ahasuerus addressed to the Saviour for neglecting his counsel; the transfigured features on the handkerchief of St. Veronica; and the words of the Lord dooming his stiff-necked gainsayer to wander to and fro on earth till his second coming. As the subsequent narrative was to be developed, it was to illustrate the outstanding events in the history of Christianity—one incident in the experience of the Wanderer ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... was a lean, long-backed, stiff-necked, middle-sized man, with no great quantity of hair, and what he had, growing on the back and sides of his head. His face was stern, and much flushed. If he were really not in the habit of drinking rather more than was exactly good for him, he might ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... I have said above, may be due to the naughtiness of the stiff-necked things that we have eaten, or to the poverty of our own arguments; but it may also arise from an attempt on the part of the stomach to be too damned clever, and to depart from precedent inconsiderately. The healthy stomach is nothing if not conservative. Few radicals ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... they often grieve me when they will not follow my advice. I do not say this as if I fancied myself to be a man of importance, for I will gladly be the meanest of these before the eyes of Jesus. When I think on my former resistance and stiff-necked behaviour in the work of conversion, I could strike myself. It causes deep sorrow and repentance within me, when I consider that I have been most faithfully instructed by my teachers for so many years, and yet have been like one that had no ears to hear. ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous

... on neutral ground, I want to say that you Americans are a stiff-necked lot of people. You are not like any other breed of men. I am done with you. My way can not be yours. Let us part as friends and gentlemen ought to part. I say good-by with a sense of regret. I shall never forget your service to my wife ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... parts, the Young Dessauer has been on duty, busy enough, ever since the late Siege of Neisse: Glatz Town the Young Dessauer soon got, when ordered; Town, Population, Territory, all is his,—all but the high mountain Fortress (centre of the Town of Glatzj), with its stiff-necked Austrian Garrison shut up there, which he is wearing out by hunger. We remember the little Note from Valori's waistcoat-pocket, "Don't give him Glatz, if you can possibly help it!" In his latest ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... be a lesson to you to curb your damned tongue," said "Grandfather," his anger evaporating, his pride in the stiff-necked, defiant ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... homesickness with it all, and he would have given all that his scant purse contained to see Lisbeth and have her know that he had become a person of some importance. Wouldn't the squire rave if he knew the errands he had in charge. Ah, but those stiff-necked ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane

... see a stiff-necked youth, lounging sluggishly in his study, while the frost pinches him in winter time, oppressed with cold, his watery nose drops, nor does he take the trouble to wipe it with his handkerchief till it has moistened the book beneath ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... pony is easy to guide, if you happen to be going the way he likes, and that is, ever from the park to the stable, from the stable to the park; otherwise, like the Israelites of old, he is a stiff-necked beast, whom I would rather eschew than commune with. And the wolf-hound, my lady, behaves so rudely to little Crisp, holding him by the throat in an unseemly fashion, and occasionally despoiling him of a fragment of his ears, toes, or tail, as it pleasures him, that ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... see my younger brother, Courtenay, is turned out of office in India, for refusing the surety of the East India Company! Truly the Smiths are a stiff-necked generation, and yet they have all got rich but I. Courtenay, they say, has L150,000, and he keeps only a cat! In the last letter I had from him, which was in 1802, he confessed that his money was gathering very fast." ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... trespasses.' Now, that we may have daily forgiveness for our daily sins and trespasses, mercy and goodness must follow us; or as Moses has it, 'And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord! let my Lord, I pray thee, go amongst us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance' (Exo 34:9). Join to this that prayer of his, which you find in Numbers: 'Now I beseech thee let the power of my Lord be great, according as thou hast spoken, saying, The Lord is long-suffering ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... as jumping over ditches where they were the broadest, and clapping her hands and shouting to frighten away phlegmatical crows. It was not long, however, before she gave up these outbreaks, and turned her mind to a much sedater course; and then, whenever a stiff-necked millifolium or gaudy hip came in her way, she carefully broke it off, and preserved it in her apron, for the use of the family. Henrik ran back every now and then to the wicker-carriage, in order to kiss "the baby," and give her the very least ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... least my father and my three unmarried sisters. Old bachelors and old maids are plentiful in the Harper family. We are all stiff-necked animals; we eschew even ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... sometimes God indeed does so, and to such a possible complaint has this reply in Himself: "I gave thee what thou wouldst, because not otherwise could I teach the stiff-necked his folly. Hadst thou been patient, I would have made the thing a joy ere I gave it thee; I would have changed the scorpion into a golden beetle, set with rubies and sapphires. Have thou ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... colour, they have indeed the sentiment of style, and they reveal, with surer delicacy than does any other record, the spirit of Mr. Brummell's day. Grego guides me, as Virgil Dante, through all the mysteries of that other world. He shows me those stiff-necked, over-hatted, wasp-waisted gentlemen, drinking Burgundy in the Cafe des Milles Colonnes or riding through the village of Newmarket upon their fat cobs or gambling at Crockford's. Grego's Green Room of the Opera House always delights me. The formal way in which Mdlle. Mercandotti is standing ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... believe thet they can git Mor'n wut they lost, out of our little wit: I tell ye wut, I'm 'fraid we'll drif' to leeward 'thout we can put more stiffenin' into Seward; He seems to think Columby'd better ect Like a scared widder with a boy stiff-necked Thet stomps an' swears he wun't come in to supper; She mus' set up for him, ez weak ez Tupper, Keepin' the Constitootion on to warm, Tell he'll eccept her 'pologies in form: 180 The neighbors tell her he's a cross-grained cuss Thet needs a hidin' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... the wine, the king hearkened with condescending and approving nod to the report of the Prince as to his mad adventure in Hellas. Xerxes even reproved his brother-in-law mildly for hazarding his own life and that of his wife among those stiff-necked tribesmen who were so soon ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... he was engaged in feeling his pulse. The Duke fixed his attention with some interest on a black swan that was swimming with haughty, stiff-necked aloofness amid the crowd of lesser water-fowl that dotted the ornamental water. For all its pride of bearing, something was evidently ruffling and enraging it; in its way it seemed as angry and amazed as ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... shrink from going nearer; and she could not help feeling a little afraid of the giant smith in particular, with his brawny arms that twisted and tortured iron bars all day long,—and his black angry-looking face, that seemed for ever fighting with fire and stiff-necked metal His very look into the forge-fire ought to have been enough to put it out of countenance. Perhaps that was why it was so necessary to keep blowing and poking at it. Again he stooped, caught up a great iron spoon, dipped ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... to curb the stiff-necked Jews by all manner of fiendish persecution, Nicholas did not neglect to try the efficacy of some of the plans advocated by Lewis Way. Undismayed by the failure of the Committee of Guardians for Israelitish Christians, ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... breed in their sons certain qualities and characteristics-courage, hardihood, the stiff-necked pride of the freeman, vigilance, wariness, sense of locality,[1169] keen powers of observation stimulated by the monotonous, featureless environment, and the consequent capacity to grasp every detail.[1170] Though robbery abroad ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... damp weather having set in with the afternoon, the unfortunate occupants of these vehicles were, on the train drawing up at the London terminus, found to be in a pitiable condition from their long journey; blue-faced, stiff-necked, sneezing, rain-beaten, chilled to the marrow, many of the men being hatless; in fact, they resembled people who had been out all night in an open boat on a rough sea, rather than inland excursionists for pleasure. The women had ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... therefore, my favorite idea. For your dear sake, my Pantheon shall become a ruin. Let this be a proof of the strong love I bear you, Jordan. I will not contend with the priests in my church, but I will pursue them without faltering into their own; and I say to you, this will be a long and stiff-necked war, which will last while my life endures. I will not have my people blinded and stupefied by priests. I will suffer no other king in Prussia. I alone will be king. These proud priests may decide, in silence and humility, to teach their ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... heart, O God! and you know I'll go on cheatin' ef that'll get Loo what she wants. An' so I've come down hyar to say that Loo ain't with me in the cheatin'; it's all my sin. I know you punish sin. The stiff-necked sinner ought to be punished. Wall; I'll take the punishment. Put it right on to me—that's justice. But, O Lord! leave Loo out; she don't know nothin' about it. That's why I've come down hyar into the water to show I'm willin' to bear what you ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land.—Understand, therefore, that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness; for thou art a stiff-necked ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... and enthusiasm of the greeting the candidate received every place he spoke, nor the response his thrilling speeches evoked all over the state. Those who had gathered the idea that the head of the great university would appear pedantic and stand stiff-necked upon an academic pedestal from which he would talk over the heads of the common people were forced, by the fighting, aggressive attitude of the Doctor, to revise their old estimates. The campaign had only begun when the leading ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... the hundredth year was full The thread was cut and finished the school. Death snapped the old worn-out tool, Snapped him short while he stood and stirred (Though stiff he stood as a stiff-necked ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... moreover said to Moses: "With kindly words welcome the elders to their new dignity, saying, 'Hail to you that are deemed worthy by God of being fit for this office.' At the same time, however, speak seriously with them also, saying, 'Know ye that the Israelites are a troublesome and stiff-necked people, and that you must ever be prepared to have them curse you or ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... by signs than by words, with the staff of Jesus made the sign of the cross on a stone there placed, and immediately the surface of the stone appeared divided into four parts, and showed the form of the cross thereon portrayed. Yet did this man, stiff-necked, and of heart more hard than stone, refuse to be melted unto penitence; but his wife, who was then in travail, entreated pardon of the saint, and fell at his feet. And the saint, beholding him thus hardened in perverseness, ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... with a feeling in which disgust and anger were blended. I wish to be understood, more particularly as I know I am writing for a stiff-necked generation. I never was guilty of the weakness of decrying a thing because I did not happen to possess it myself. I knew my own place in the social scale perfectly; nor was I, as I have just said, in the least inclined to fancy ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... bordered with Moorish architecture, contain the native industry of Bona. It is about equally divided between the Jews and the M'zabites, who, like the Kabyles, are a remnant of the stiff-necked old Berber tribe. The M'zabites preserve the pure Arab dress—the haik, or small bornouse without hood, the broad breeches coming to the knee, the bare legs, and the turban rolled up into a coil of ropes. Thus accoutred, and squatting in the ledges of their small booths, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... I'm afraid this has been a lot of bother for you," he said stiffly, gave her a ceremonious little bow, and went his way stiff-necked and frowning. ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... the pawn-broker's; no one would have such an odd jewel, and the ticket was home in the bureau drawer. Well, he must have it; she might starve in the attempt. Such a thing as going to him and telling him that he might redeem it was an impossibility. That good, straight-backed, stiff-necked Creole blood would have risen in all its strength and choked her. No; as a present had the quaint Roman circlet been placed upon her finger, as a present should it ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... thus once more for a season stood behind the cherub with the flaming sword, Ericson was teaching two stiff-necked youths in a dreary house in the midst of one of the moors of Caithness. One day he had a slight attack of blood-spitting, and welcomed it as a sign from what heaven there might ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... Blessed Francis of the thorns besetting his path in life, of the difficulties of his holy calling, of the anxieties inseparable from it, but chiefly of the intractableness of stiff-necked Christians, who refuse to submit to the easy yoke of Jesus Christ, and to do what their duty requires. The Bishop replied that their obstinacy was not so much to be wondered at as the weakness of their Pastors who were so easily discouraged and impatient, just because ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... of a fallen people; thinkest thou we shall be less despoiled and trodden under foot by yon haughty and stiff-necked Nazarenes, ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to God!" he shouted. "I am better. I shall be able to preach to-night. A little farther on is the cabin of Brother Cawkins. He has been terribly pecked up by a stiff-necked, rebellious wife. We'll stop there for a cup of tea and if she raises a rumpus you'll see me ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... now. Alas for her! Alas for France! who wreaks such idle vengeance on so poor an enemy? Can you take hold of Marie Antoinette by the shoulders, shove her into the bottom of a cart and pile sacks of potatoes on the top of her? I did that to the Comtesse de Tournai and her daughter, as stiff-necked a pair of French aristocrats as ever deserved the guillotine for their insane prejudices. But can you do it to Marie Antoinette? She'd rebuke you publicly, and betray herself and you in a flash, sooner than submit to a loss ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... rude times; and as the Moslem in their consciences believed it was the will of Heaven that the religion of their prophet should be propagated by the sword, so their antagonists laboured under the mental delusion that they themselves were the ministers of God's wrath on a disobedient and stiff-necked people. The Latins, on the day after the victory, massacred three hundred men, to whom Tancred and Gaston de Bearn had promised protection, and even given a standard as a pledge of safety. But every engagement was broken, in consequence of the resolution that no pity should ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... me to the door, and there I had my first glimpse of Tar Baby! He was a four-year-old horse that had spent those years running wild on the range. A few months before he had been captured and partly tamed. But he was hard-mouthed, and stiff-necked and hell-bent on having his own way about things. I didn't know all that when I saw him this Christmas Day. To me he was perfect. He was round and fat, shiny black, with a white star in his forehead, and four white feet. ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... politeness. "Pardon me, my sister," said the author to a beggar-woman at Barcelona: "does not your worship see that I am drawing?" "Ah, Dios!" she answered, "blind that I was! worm that I am! So your worship draws? And I—I too am a lover of the arts." On the other hand, a stiff-necked Englishman traveling from Seville to Xeres sent his driver to dine in the kitchen of an inn on the road. The driver, who in his heart thought that he would have been doing great honor to a heretic by sitting at the same table with him, concealed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... the earth, must have blasted and made barren the imaginations of the greatest men, and left them, in their power of raising up enduring images before their fellow-creatures yet unborn, no better than the beasts: that, in these very broad- brimmed hats and very sombre coats - in stiff-necked, solemn- visaged piety, in short, no matter what its garb, whether it have cropped hair as in a Shaker village, or long nails as in a Hindoo temple - I recognise the worst among the enemies of Heaven ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... concerned, she feared her own weakness—she, who had endured the brutality of the world, could not endure that the world's brutality should be visited upon him because of his love for her. Strong of will, self-reliant, a born fighter, and as stiff-necked as his father, his yearning to possess her, coupled with his instinct for fair play, might and probably would lead him to tell the world to go hang, that he would think for himself and take his happiness where he found it. By all means, this must be prevented. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... Jesus, and he revenged himself for weak compliance by ill-timed mulishness. A cool-headed governor would have humoured his difficult subjects in such a trifle, as a just one would have been inflexible in a matter of life and death. But this man's facile yielding and his stiff-necked obstinacy were both misplaced. 'So I will, so I command. Let my will suffice for a reason,' was what he meant. He had written his gibe, and not all the Jews in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... because, forsooth, a man who could not work could also not eat. To "Kiboko" a prisoner of war and an Indian soldier is a flagrant offence against the laws of war. But to the contractor there were no laws but of his making, and he laid on thirty lashes with the rhinoceros hide Kiboko to teach these stiff-necked "coolies" not to sham again. And as these soldiers lay half dead with fever on the road, their German jailers gave orders that their mouths and faces be defiled with filth, a crime unspeakable to a ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... was no hastening after me, I did not listen to an evil plot, my name was not heard in the mouth of the magistrate; but my limbs went, my feet wandered, my heart drew me; my god commanded this flight, and drew me on; but I am not stiff-necked. Does a man fear when he sees his own land? Ra spread thy fear over the land, thy terrors in every strange land. Behold me now in the palace, behold me in this place; and lo! thou art he who is over all the horizon; the sun rises at thy pleasure, the water in the rivers is drunk at thy will, ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie

... set the child on her feet. "What else could I say that would have scared Juli enough to send her running to you? Juli's proud, almost as proud as you are, you stiff-necked Son of the Ape." The insult ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... nothing of the kind!" declared Huldah. "He said you was stiff-necked, and that he presumed you would act more like a stepfather than the real thing. Well, as I was saying, he asked their names, and he liked them fine. ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... prison, where he presently died. It is not a little curious that one, who, as a doughty knight, at three coronations threw down his gauntlet and challenged the world on his Sovereign’s behalf, should have succumbed to a stiff-necked prelate. The account of this is given in Lodge’s “Scrivelsby, the Home of ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... had been studying his Cruden, and bolstering himself up, too, with the very Scriptural texts that Prue had written out for her stiff-necked father. He had met other texts that she had not known how to find. The idea came to the preacher that, in a sense, since God made everything He must have made the dance, breathed ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... public business. The object of the association being to establish a harmonious society of persons of different religious sentiments, all intractable people shall be excluded from it, such as those in communion with the Roman See usurious Jews, English stiff-necked Quakers, Puritans, fool-hardy believers in the Millenium and obstinate modern ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott

... king is brave and wise, His love of peace our bondes prize; By friendly word and ready hand He holds good peace through every land. He is for all a lucky star; England he frightens from a war; The stiff-necked Danes he drives to peace; Troubles by his good ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson



Words linked to "Stiff-necked" :   unregenerate, stubborn, obstinate



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