"Tenacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... French that I could not keep my gravity. The Damned Ones of the Indies now occupy my attention; I have myself already damned them repeatedly. I am, as you know, the original person the wheels of whose chariot tarried; but though I am so slow, I am rootedly tenacious. Do not despair. Hester and the Don are sworn in my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... faith, united to the tenacious energy of youth, were all found united in the greatest Hungarian hero, John Huniades, accompanied withal by a singular talent for leadership in war. He could not rely for support upon the haughty magnates who could trace their descent ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... achievement, a succession of opposite ideas arises. Industrious races are displayed stinted and starved for the sake of an expensive Imperialism which they can only enjoy if they are well fed. Wild peoples, ignorant of their barbarism, callous of suffering, careless of life but tenacious of liberty, are seen to resist with fury the philanthropic invaders, and to perish in thousands before they are convinced of their mistake. The inevitable gap between conquest and dominion becomes filled ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... tardar to delay, be slow. tarde late; f. afternoon. tartamudear to stammer. teatro theater. temblar to tremble. temblor m. tremor, trembling. temer to fear. temerario rash. tempano lump, mass. templado temperate. templo temple, church. temprano early, prematurely. tenaz tenacious. tender to extend, strain, stretch out. tenebroso dark. tener to have, hold, possess, keep; —— que to have to. teniente lieutenant. tentar to try, tempt. tenir to tinge, dye. tercero third. terciana tertian fever. tercianario one who has tertian fever. terminar to ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... niches represents characters of a more recent date. Let us begin with MERCIER;[151] a man of extraordinary, and almost unequalled, knowledge in every thing connected with bibliography and typography; of a quick apprehension, tenacious memory, and correct judgment; who was more anxious to detect errors in his own publications than in those of his fellow labourers in the same pursuit; an enthusiast in typographical researches—the Ulysses of bibliographers! Next ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... natural facilities of communication between them, but the population, chiefly Mahratta Hindus, with a fair sprinkling of Mahomedans, survivors of the Moghul Empire, are a virile race, wiry rather than sturdy, with tenacious customs and traditions and a language—Marathi—which has a copious popular literature. Maharashtra, moreover, has historical traditions, by no means inglorious, of its own. It has played, and is conscious of having played, a conspicuous part in the ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... most tenacious hold of the alcohol trade lies, however, in two things not yet enumerated. The one is, that much use of alcohol creates a pathological craving for it; the man who is accustomed to his beer or whiskey is restless and depressed if he cannot ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... clothing my ideas in pictures, days, transactions of my time, to give them positive place, identity—saturating them with that vehemence of pride and audacity of freedom necessary to loosen the mind of still-to-be-form'd America from the accumulated folds, the superstitions, and all the long, tenacious and stifling anti-democratic authorities of the Asiatic and European past—my enclosing purport being to express, above all artificial regulation and aid, the eternal bodily composite, cumulative, natural character ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... marked by special insight or intelligence. The men who carried it out were not for the most part first-rate statesmen or first-rate generals. Their successes were those of character, not of genius. But their phlegmatic courage saved the civilized life of Europe till that life had grown strong and tenacious, and till even its assailants had ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... 'e don't pocket no rabbits," to which you will reply, "That's right, GEORGE, you stick to it, and you'll be a policeman yourself some day," at which impossible anticipation there will be fresh explosions of mirth. So easily pleased is the rustic mind, so tenacious is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... unstable conditions, it would be difficult to build up a permanent State. From time to time some kinglet, more daring, cunning, tenacious, or better fitted to govern than the rest, extended his dominion over his neighbours, and advanced step by step, till he united immense tracts under his single rule. As by degrees his kingdom enlarged, he made no efforts to organize it on any regular system, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... was manifested in his zeal for the conversion of the Indians, and for the diffusion of a solidly religious spirit among the French population, and assuredly it is not the least of his claims to the gratitude of posterity, that the Canada of his formation has ever clung to her faith with so tenacious a grasp, that still she wears as her crown of highest honour, and proclaims as her proudest boast, the glorious title of Catholic Canada. The writers of his time are unanimous in ascribing to Champlain all the qualifications suited to the founder of a colony, and when, ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... having been chastised by my father for breaking his fourth window in that week;—during all which my father walked up and down the room with impatience, because he was kept from his dinner, and, like all orthodox divines, he was tenacious of the only sensual enjoyment permitted ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... broke the Atlantic rollers was Castle Cornet. Sir Hugh Brock, or Badger in the ancient Saxon time—an apt name for a tenacious fighter—shook hands with fate. He espied the rocky cape of St. Jerbourg, and ofttimes from its summit he would shape bold plans for the future, the maturing of which meant much to those of his race ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... out in February, 1895. It is not my purpose at this time to recall its remarkable increase or to characterize its tenacious resistance against the enormous forces massed against it by Spain. The revolt and the efforts to subdue it carried destruction to every quarter of the island, developing wide proportions and defying the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and "slow." The former learns easily, but often forgets quickly; the latter learns slowly, but usually retains well. The former is keen and alert; the latter, dull and passive. The former frequently lacks perseverance; the latter is often tenacious and persistent. The former unjustly wins applause for his cleverness; the latter, equally unjustly, wins contempt for his dulness. The teacher must not be unfair to the dull plodder, who in later years may frequently outstrip ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... nicknamed Mrs. Delarayne "the Warrior" himself. He was sensitive enough to apprehend the strong strain of courage in her character; he had on several occasions been impressed by the tenacious boldness of her claims to youth and by the energy she displayed in keeping up the difficult part,—frequently entailing exertions out of all proportion to her bodily vigour;—so he had nicknamed her "the Warrior." But this sobriquet was used only when ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... a learned profession, soon after his admission to the Bar he attracted the attention of the community, and especially the older members of the Bar, as a man of extraordinary capacity, and already trained in the law. So tenacious was his memory of all that he read or heard, that he not only retained the law, but the author and page where it was to be found. His mind was eminently logical and delighted in analytical investigation. In truth, the law suited the idiosyncrasy ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... own narrow precincts I seek to explore, My wishes how vain, my attainments how poor! Tenacious of virtue, with caution I move; I correct, and I wrestle, but cannot approve; Till, bewilder'd and faint, I would yield up the rein, But I dare not in peace with my ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... vegetation preserve itself distinct in its different species. One island will be entirely composed of live oaks, another of plum, and a third of pecan trees; the vine only is common to them all, and embraces them all alike with its slender but tenacious branches. I rode through several of these islands. They were perfectly free from bushes and brushwood, and carpeted with the most beautiful verdure it is possible to behold. I gazed at them in astonishment. It seemed incredible that nature, abandoned to herself, should preserve ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the unsuspecting So-and-so very narrowly, and soon discovered that he had fingers of a most tenacious description, which easily accounted for his handsome income. So-and-so, to his surprise, found himself one fine morning dismissed from his office, and compelled to retire into well-merited poverty ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... through a country of such gloomy desolation, that Mr. Boswell thought no part of the Highlands equally terrifick, yet we came without any difficulty, at evening, to Lochbuy, where we found a true Highland Laird, rough and haughty, and tenacious of his dignity; who, hearing my name, inquired whether I was of the Johnstons of Glencroe, ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... with a very extraordinary people," wrote the marshal to Chamillard, soon after his arrival; "it is a people unlike anything I ever knew—all alive, turbulent, hasty, susceptible of light as well as deep impressions, tenacious in its opinions. Add thereto zeal for religion, which is as ardent amongst heretics as Catholics, and you will no longer be surprised that we should be often very much embarrassed. There are three sorts of Camisards: the first, with whom we might arrange matters by ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... he trod his beat like a policeman, but he was of a tenacious fiber, and scorning alike the warnings of cold and hunger, he remained near the house, drawing closer and watching it more zealously than ever in the moonlight. His resolution strengthened, too; he would stay there, if necessary, until the sunset of ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... March had come, and Vere, being called to service in the field for the coming season, transferred the command at Ostend to Frederic van Dorp, a rugged, hard-headed, ill-favoured, stout-hearted Zealand colonel, with the face of a bull-dog, and with the tenacious grip of one. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... aloof. This strong man whose gaze was sustainedly calm and his finger-nails pink with health, who was exercised in all questioning, and accused of excessive mental independence, still felt a subduing influence over him in the tenacious certitude of the fragile creature before him, whose pallid yellow nostril was tense with effort as his breath labored under the burthen of eager speech. The influence seemed to strengthen the bond of sympathetic obligation. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... to tire of their constant conflict, and to desire some adjustment, whereby each might accommodate his own taste to some extent, and yet live in harmony with the other. With this view, a friendly conference was held, in which Jowler appeared so tenacious, that the hunter well-nigh despaired of ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston
... over-mastering activity of his own mind. He is borne along, almost involuntarily, and not impossibly against his better judgment, by the throng and restlessness of his ideas as by a crowd of people in motion. His perceptions are literal, tenacious, epileptic—his understanding voracious of facts, and equally communicative ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... tore free from all control! Driven by fear, she made a mad leap out into space, reaching frantically for the little brown hands that a half second later would have been ready for her, with life and safety in their tenacious grasp. ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... riot then. Sir Robert was here at half-past eight, and at his request the Governor authorised calling out the Mounted Volunteers to keep order. Lord Eynesford says he'll go with them. Do get up," and Eleanor went off, eager to hear the latest news. The present situation was justifying her tenacious opinion that new ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... put out of action, continued as follows, "Our brave Infantry fought indefatigably for eighteen days, without pause and without proper food supplies, on difficult ground, in almost mid-summer heat, impetuous in attack and tenacious in defence. Most effective at all times was the fraternal co-operation of the Artillery, Siege, Field or Mountain, one Field Battery not hesitating to push right up to the firing line. Excellent help, too, was lent by ten Batteries of medium calibre of the British Army ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... and excitement, Frank Mayne's adversary struck at him once more, and made a leap to escape, dragging the half-insensible assigned servant with him; but the grasp was too tenacious, and though he tried hard, Mayne held on to the end; only sinking back when a pair of handcuffs had secured the prisoner's hands behind ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... unskilled foreign labor. For good or for ill we feel all those conservative influences which naturally grow out of this two-fold condition. This accounts in the main, for the Rhode Islander's extreme and exceptionally tenacious regard for the institutions of his ancestors. This is why we have the most limited suffrage of any State, many men being debarred from voting by reason of the property qualification still required ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... there even after the Tuscan conquest. In this fact we may presumably find the ultimate explanation of the surprising rapidity with which the southern portion of Etruria became Latinized, as compared with the tenacious retention of the Etruscan language and manners in northern Etruria, after the Roman conquest. That the Umbrians were after obstinate struggles driven back from the north and west into the narrow mountainous country between the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... can only be explained by the intermixture of races, that Ireland "within the Pale" has been peculiarly prolific of military genius. As England has bred admirals, so the sister isle has bred soldiers. The tenacious courage of the Anglo-Saxon, blended with the spirit of that people which above all others delights in war, has proved on both sides of the Atlantic a most powerful combination of martial qualities. The same mixed strain which gave England Wolfe and Wellington, the Napiers ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... soon be carried. No difficulties whatever are apprehended here in going to a very considerable depth, as the slate is not hard, and easily permits the miner in his progress to bear in upon it without drilling upon the closer and more tenacious quartz. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... for the toasted cheese of Wales and England. There is Christopher North's eloquent "threads of unbeaten gold, shining like gossamer filaments (that may be pulled from its tough and tenacious substance)." ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... is shining evidence of the fortitude that showed her true nobility in the darker after-years. It was no ordinary love that bound them, and reading the record of their lives this stands out clear and beautiful. Tone, whom we know as patient organiser, tenacious fighter, far-seeing thinker, indomitable spirit—a born leader of men—writes to his wife with the passionate simplicity of an enraptured child: "I doat upon you and the babes." And his letters end thus: "Kiss the babies for me ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... that, As Isidore says (Etym. x) "a person is said to be pertinacious who holds on impudently, as being utterly tenacious." "Pervicacious" has the same meaning, for it signifies that a man "perseveres in his purpose until he is victorious: for the ancients called 'vicia' what we call victory." These the Philosopher (Ethic. vii, 9) calls ischyrognomones, that is "head-strong," ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the holidays, and how my father in his extreme indignation at what he supposed to be proved, so paralysed Hugh that he had no opportunity of clearing himself. But anyone who had ever known Hugh would have felt that it was the last thing he would have done. He was tenacious enough of his own rights, and argumentative enough; but he never had the faintest touch of the savagery that amuses itself at the sight of another's sufferings. "I hate cruelty more than anything in the whole world," he wrote later; "the existence of it is the only thing which reconciles ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... lover hold a firm hand on quick-springing anger when anything checked his purpose. Pride and adhesiveness of character, under such conditions of mind, were dangerous foes to peace; and both were proud and tenacious. ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... It was his tenacious adhesion to conservative methods which caused him to blunder in his treatment of Colwyn's information about the missing necklace. He rarely acted on impulse. His habitual distrust of humanity was deep, and to it was wedded a wariness which was the heritage ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... insects. Our poor legs were attacked by a perfect army of leeches and subjected to a most inopportune and undesirable bleeding. From time to time we were compelled to stop and free ourselves from their tenacious hold. They seemed to prefer European blood to Asiatic and made me suffer more than my escort, perhaps because my skin being more tender they could better succeed in their sanguinary intent, but although my flesh smarted and my strength failed it ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... up the most tenacious skepticism; beyond his spells on watch, he pretended that he never even looked at the surface of the waves, at least while no whales were in sight. And yet the marvelous power of his vision could have performed yeoman ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... prepossessing.... His manners were captivating, noble, and dignified, yet unaffectedly condescending.... Homer, as well as Virgil, was familiar to the Prince of Wales; and his memory, which was very tenacious, enabled him to cite with graceful readiness the favourite passages of either poet."—The Historical ... Memoirs of Sir N.W. Wraxall, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... favorite body-servant of the lamented Washington, died in Richmond, Va., last Tuesday, at the ripe age of 95 years. His intellect was unimpaired, and his memory tenacious, up to within a few minutes of his decease. He was present at the second installation of Washington as President, and also at his funeral, and distinctly remembered all the prominent incidents connected with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... winding line strikes off the road across the mud. This is not mud such as we know it in England—it is incredibly slippery and impossibly tenacious, and each dragging footstep calls for a tremendous effort. The men straggle, or close up together so that they have hardly the room to move; they slip, and knock into each other, and curse; they are hindered by little ditches, and by telephone wires that ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... feather-pine, of deepest green, or brown-golden with the pencil of the frost;—for cross or star or thick festoon, there is nothing so beautiful. And again you are attracted into the thickets of laurel, and wage fierce war upon the sturdy and tenacious, yet brittle branches, till you are transformed into a walking jack-o'-the-green. The holly of the English Christmas, all-besprent with crimson drops, is hard to be found in New England, and you will have to thread the courses of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... repute. His qualities were those of the bull-dog, slow-moving, obstinately brave, and desperately tenacious. His was a name to conjure with among the criminal classes, and his career was starred with various sensational tussles with desperate criminals, for Detective-Inspector Manderton, when engaged on a case, invariably "took a hand himself," as he phrased it, when an arrest was ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... puffs from a little bellows which lay beside her. As the flame kindled, and the sharp, red jets rose like tongues on either side of the plate, she poured into it something like a gill of a thick tenacious liquid, that looked like, and might have been, honey. Above this she brooded for awhile with her eyes immediately over the vessel; and the keen ear of the stranger, quickened by excited curiosity, could detect the muttering ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... personally interested in the matter. I thought it as well to have Jones with us also. He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog, and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone. Here we are, and they are waiting ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... they are tenacious of reputation with a vengeance; for they don't choose anybody should have a character but themselves! Such a crew! Ah! many a wretch has rid on a hurdle who has done less mischief than these utterers of forged tales; coiners of ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... nearer, and, leaning against the turf wall, looked down at her. He was suddenly grave now. The roles were again reversed; for it was the woman who was tenacious to one purpose and the man who seemed inconsequent, flitting from grave to gay, from one thought to another. His apology had been made graciously enough, but with a queer pride, quite devoid of the sullenness which marks the pride of the ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... to paradise lost, this deformed dream of the beautiful, is not less tenacious on the part of the man. He turns towards the woman; and this preoccupation, become insensate, persists even when the dreadful shadow of the two red posts of the guillotine is thrown upon the window of his cell. The day before his execution Delaporte, chief of the Trappes band, who ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... the very first young woman they may chance to cast their eyes upon, even if she be only a kitchen wench. Or it may be some old inclination which, after years and years, suddenly springs into life again, like some tenacious animal that has lain imprisoned for centuries in a coal-seam, and the ideals which at sixteen he was unable to make his own, possibly because he had other ties, he turns to again at seventy when he ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... tenacious of their productions, but I am not so much attached to this but that I can give it up without much distress. No doubt, if I had gone on, I should have made quite a Richardsonian concern of it.... I had materials in my head for half-a-dozen volumes.... Of course, it is ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... laid ready to hand and shavings scattered around—all indicated continuous, varied, and orderly activity. The motion of the small foot shod in a Tartar boot embroidered with silver, and the firm pressure of the lean sinewy hand, showed that the prince still possessed the tenacious endurance and vigor of hardy old age. After a few more turns of the lathe he removed his foot from the pedal, wiped his chisel, dropped it into a leather pouch attached to the lathe, and, approaching the table, summoned his daughter. He never gave his children a blessing, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... may assume various changes—an image of beauty, a figure of philosophy, a voice from the other world, a type of heavenly wisdom and joy—but still it holds, in self-imposed and willing thraldom, that creative and versatile and tenacious spirit. It was the dream and hope of too deep and strong a mind to fade and come to naught—to be other than the seed of the achievement and crown of life. But with all faith in the star and the freedom ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... not the Celtic memory only that is tenacious of national wrong. The Saxon was doomed to drink to the dregs the same bitter cup which he administered so unmercifully to the Briton. His Teutonic blood saved him from no humiliation or insult. The Normans seized all the lands, all the castles, all the ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... amid this colossal prosperity. The one, tall, brown-haired, with blue eyes changing like the sea; the other, fragile, fair, with dark dreamy eyes. Jeanne, proud, capricious, and inconstant; Micheline, simple, sweet, and tenacious. The brunette inherited from her reckless father and her fanciful mother a violent and passionate nature; the blonde was tractable and good like Michel, but resolute and firm like Madame Desvarennes. ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... backwards and forwards down below without uttering a sound. These crevasses were not deep, but they were steep-sided, so that the dog could not get out without help. The two dogs I have mentioned undoubtedly met their death in this way: a slow death it must be, when one remembers how tenacious of life a dog is. It happened several times that dogs disappeared, were absent for some days, and then came back; possibly they had been down a crevasse, and had finally succeeded in getting out of it again. Curiously enough, they did not pay much attention to the weather when they went on ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... few railways in those days; the highways were still the great arteries of traffic. Dalgas built roads that crossed the heath, and he learned to know it and the strong and independent, if narrow, people who clung to it with such a tenacious grip. He had a natural liking for practical geology and for the chemistry of the soil, and the deep cuts which his roads sometimes made gave him the best of chances for following his bent. The heath lay as an open book before him, and he studied it with delight. He found the traces of the ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... her moorings. Bringing the anchor out of the ground, however, was not so easily managed; and it was not till all the musical resources known to sailors on such occasions were nearly exhausted that the tenacious gripe of Trotman's patent was released, when a slow drift with the tide showed that the great ship was again set free. In another minute, without shouting, confusion, or hurry of any kind, and with less noise than ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... chips and pebbles, and stones, with which he played roundup. Lucy grew most gratifyingly interested in Pan's game, but she made it hard for him to play it, and also embarrassing, by clinging with most tenacious and unshakable grip to ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... Madame de la Sainte Colombe, who was at first considered easy enough to lead, has shown herself very refractory on the head of her conversion. Two spiritual directors have already renounced the task of saving her soul. In despair, Rodin unslipped little Philippon on her. He is adroit, tenacious, and above all patient in the extreme—the very man that was wanted. When I got Madame de la Sainte-Colombe for a patient, Philippon asked my aid, which he was naturally entitled to. We agreed upon our plan. I was not to appear to know him the least ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... have said, one must remember the stuff of which life is made. One must consider what an overwhelming preponderance of the most tenacious energies and most concentrated interests of a society must be absorbed between material cares and the solicitude of the affections. It is obviously unreasonable to lose patience and quarrel with one's time, because it is tardy in throwing off its institutions and beliefs, and slow ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... been the struggle of a hidden life to realise certain ideal aims under conditions of familiar difficulty and limitation, the dying down of that initial brilliance and passion to succeed, into a wrestle of conscience as sensitive as it was profound, as tenacious as it was scrupulous. He had watched an unsatisfactory marriage, had realised the silent resolve of the north-countryman to stand by his own people, of the man sprung from the poor to cling to the poor: ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the fashion then to appear very unconcerned about one's literary reputation; but then to be so tenacious about it when once obtained as not to suffer, with common patience, even the little finger of criticism to touch it. Boyle, after defending what he calls his "honesty," adds, "the rest only touches my learning. This will give me no concern, though it may put me to some ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... saw it, but his face could assume a different expression if need be. There were strong lines about his mouth that indicated calm resolution and strength of purpose. He was not a boy who would permit himself to be imposed upon, but was properly tenacious ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... does appear, though, that in North America four quite distinct types can be made out. First of these is the circumpolar species, Ursus maritimus, the white or polar bear, which most of us grew up to regard as the very incarnation of tenacious ferocity, but which, as it appears from the recitals of late Arctic explorers, dies easily to a single shot, and does not seem to afford much better sport than so much rabbit shooting. The others are the great Kadiak bear (U. middendorfi); the grizzly (U. horribilis), and the ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... hailed from New York, Hamburg, and London—especially the first two. A cosmopolitan banker, and genial rascal, he had, even in England, a host of friends, and deserved them. A man of ideals, and extremely tenacious, objets d'art and steeplechase horses had been his twin passions from his childhood. He collected both with a judgment amounting to genius. And there were few experts in either kind who were not prepared to acknowledge ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... then say, in recapitulation, and as presenting the main thesis of these papers, that to the British mind, at any rate, so inarticulate often, yet so tenacious, the Western campaign of last year presents itself as having been ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... conflict more renowned for bravery than ever. Nothing seemed able to damp its heroism—not scantiness of food, not lack of clothing amidst bitter cold, not miserable quarters, not superior forces of a valiant enemy. It clung to its squalid abodes in the positions which it was ordered to hold with a tenacious fortitude that had never been surpassed in its glorious history, and that defied all assaults. In combination with its brave allies it brought to a triumphant conclusion a war of an altogether ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... trying to gain. They swam across in half-a-dozen strokes, and drew themselves ashore, and shook themselves like a pair of retrievers. Through all the flight, the fierce effort among the grass-stems, and the unexpected ducking, they had kept tenacious hold of every one of their treasures. But—their fire was out! The brand was black; the precious tube, with the seeds of fire lurking at its heart, was ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and then rather abruptly retired to her room, where she felt no restraint to hide the force of that wonderful idea, now full-grown and tenacious ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... Wallis seriously—"you've hurt that poor fellow's feelings. I would sooner have given a guinea than he should have heard you. Dubois is a gentleman; and altho' he's completely 'stumped,' and has'nt a place to put his head in, he's tenacious of that respect which is due to every man, whether he happens to be at a ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... but that was not a sailor's life because the cook reserved the best dishes for him; the captain dared not give him an order, seeing in him the son of the ship-owner. At this rate he would never have become a real sailor, rugged and expert. With the tenacious energy of his race he had taken passage unknown to his father on a frigate bound for the Chinchas Islands for a cargo of guano, manned by a crew of many races—deserters from the English navy, bargemen from Valparaiso, Peruvian Indians, black sheep of every family, all under ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... grey color, and presents the metallic lustre vividly when polished. It is very ductile, malleable, and tenacious. It is very hard at common temperatures, but soft and yielding at a ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... creek; and acacia in full golden bloom, glorious, yet modest tree, a very rare, non-self-assertive tree, a truly Christian tree, beautiful but not prideful. Bamboo in great clumps, erect, yielding but not to be broken—wise, tenacious orientals! And I walked on the off-cast seed of the pepper, and beside cacti higher than my head with spears of crimson, and across a sweep of lawn over which oranges had been dropped, by the generosity of an up- hill row of trees that were saying, "We must make ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... all crowded the great room he reproached them with their greed of gain, gave the sign, and blew them and himself into eternity. I am told by a good authority that the natives, whose memories are tenacious on some points, will not show to strangers the ruins which cost their ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... perplexing and to expose his conduct to the charge of inconsistency. Inconsistent, in the ordinary sense of the word, he was not, much less changeable. He was really, in the main features of his political convictions and the main habits of his mind, one of the most tenacious and persistent of men. But there were always at work in him two tendencies. One was the speculative desire to probe everything to the bottom, to try it by the light of general principles and logic, and where it ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... These gave Tecumseh greetings fair and kind, Knowing the purpose havened in his soul. And he, too, joined the chase as few men dare; For I have seen him, leaping from his horse, Mount a careering bull in foaming flight, Urge it to fury o'er its burden strange, Yet cling tenacious, with a grip of steel, Then, by a knife-plunge, fetch it to its knees In mid-career, and pangs ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... fact that the man was far different from the boy. After five years' absence he was coming back a man; engrossed by other thoughts and feelings than those which had prompted him in days gone by. With the tenacious hope of youth she still trusted that she might have misjudged him; he could never be other than noble and generous; she would silence her forebodings and wait till his return. She wished beyond all expression to see him once more, and the prospect of a speedy reunion often ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... their influence and power. In the midst of this confusion, a young man, the younger son of a chief of no high lineage, and belonging to a small tribe, gathered around him a number of minor clans and fugitives from various quarters, and by his policy—astute, firm and tenacious—built them up into what soon became a powerful nation. Moving hither and hither along the foot of the great Maluti range, his skilful eye fixed on Thaba Bosiyo as a place fit to be the headquarters of the nation. There was good land all round, the approaches could be ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... and less tenacious than herself, would have gone into liquidation a score of times had it not been for his wife's firm obstinacy. She longed to be rich. She perceived that her ambition could only be attained by fortune. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... The writing, on whatever topic, in whatever vein, always revolves around the writer for its pivot. Montaigne, from no matter what apparent diversion, may constantly be depended upon to bring up in due time at himself. The tether is long and elastic, but it is tenacious, and it is securely tied to Montaigne. This, as we shall presently let the author himself make plain, is no accident, of which Montaigne was unconscious. It is the express idea on which the "Essays" were written. Montaigne, in his "Essays," ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... leaves; two of these next morning were moderately and two strongly inflected, and remained so for four, five, and even six days. Soon after these seeds were placed on the leaves and had become damp, they secreted in the usual manner a layer of tenacious mucus; and to ascertain whether it was the absorption of this substance by the glands which caused so much inflection, two seeds were put into water, and as much of the mucus as possible scraped off. ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... like the cry of a voice lifted up in protest against the approach of an unknown, but dreaded, fate. Then the wind came again with a stronger moaning and a lengthened life, not yet forceful, not yet with all its powers, but more tenacious, more acquainted with itself and the deeds that it might do when the night was black among the vast sands which were its birth-place, among the crouching plains and the trembling palm groves that would be ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... to Mr. Skaggs than most people gave him credit for having. However it may be, when he got an idea into his head, whether it were insane or otherwise, he had a decidedly tenacious way of holding to it. Sadness had been disposed to laugh at him when he announced that Joe's drunken story of his father's troubles had given him an idea. But it was, nevertheless, true, and that idea had stayed with him clear through the exciting ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... a sort upon which my pretty borrowed theory could be tested I got along with it very well. But I am glad now to cite this capital instance in controversion of my youthful second-hand belief—because it entirely accords with my more mature conviction that oral tradition, save as a tenacious preserver of place-names, is not to be trusted at all. And as unsupported written record rarely is to be trusted either, it would seem that a certain amount of reason was at the root of King David's hasty generalization as ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... the nobility I take to be a mere work of art. To be honoured and even privileged by the laws, opinions, and inveterate usages of our country, growing out of the prejudice of ages, has nothing to provoke horror and indignation in any man. Even to be too tenacious of those privileges is not absolutely a crime. The strong struggle in every individual to preserve possession of what he has found to belong to him, and to distinguish him, is one of the securities against injustice and despotism ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... as a parody. It has been said that this "inset" system, whether borrowed from the episodes of the ancients or descended from the constant divagations of the mediaeval romances, is very old, and proved itself uncommonly tenacious of life. But the difference between the opening of the two books can hardly have been other than intentional on the part of the later writer; and it is a very memorable one, showing nothing less than the difference between romance and novel, between academic ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... with the world. Hobart Pasha, a British officer in the Turkish Navy and an accomplished seaman, wrote: "Admiral Farragut, with whom I had many conversations, was one of the most intelligent naval officers of my acquaintance." He loved an argument, and, though always good-tempered in it, was tenacious of his own convictions when he thought the facts bore out his way of interpreting their significance. When told by a phrenologist that he had an unusual amount of self-esteem, he replied: "It is true, I have; I have full confidence in ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... and must at length pass away, that precisely here in England, where the only religious authority he recognises has been thrown off, the hold of religion on public interest is most effective and most obstinately tenacious. ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... boils Through wintry months tenacious pitch, to smear Their unsound vessels; for th' inclement time Sea-faring men restrains, and in that while His bark one builds anew, another stops The ribs of his, that hath made many a voyage; One hammers at ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... poor creatures who had been rescued from Marizano's dhow were nearly a hundred children, in such a deplorable condition that small hopes were entertained of their reaching the island alive. Their young lives, however, proved to be tenacious. Experienced though their hardy rescuers were in rough and tumble work, they had no conception what these poor creatures had already gone through, and, therefore, formed a mistaken estimate of their ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... are institutions for evening up society; they resist the tendency to separation into classes, which grows with the prosperity of a community; they bind together, in cordial sympathy, all classes of citizens. For nothing is more tenacious than schoolday remembrances, and the last things that we forget ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... The lords were tenacious of their privileges; or, one would think, there was no need to renew their charter. Prescription, necessity, and increasing numbers, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... of the public for more than a quarter of a century, to quit the scene of her splendid triumphs. So in 1866 she again essayed to tread the stage as a lyric queen, in the role of Lucrezia, but the result was a failure. It is not pleasant to record these spasmodic struggles of a failing artist, tenacious of that past which had now shut its gates on her for ever and a day. Her career was ended, but she had left behind a name of imperishable luster in the annals of her art. She died of inflammation ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... absolutely prostrated, and I felt the utmost need of rest and quiet. Nevertheless, I did not leave my seat. My powers of reflection slowly returned. Hope is tenacious. I had one more hope. It occurred to me that the new owner of the "Legende Doree" might be some intelligent and liberal bibliophile who would allow me to examine the MS., and perhaps even to publish the more important parts. And, with this idea, as soon as the sale was over I approached ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... days; now that all ties of partnership were broken, he saw in those small gleaming eyes a defiance and a hatred that henceforth had no reason for restraint. And he knew that Barney was shrewd, grimly tenacious, and ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... presently. Habit is a tenacious ruler and, grotesque figures though we were, the "zur" he had addressed to me brought out the officer in me. I talked to him as I would have done to one of my own men, and he quietened down at last ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... their flesh and blood were wholly unlike that of convicts still in durance; convicts, who have not been convicted south of the line, scorn those who have; and these several classes, except the last, are as proud and tenacious of their privileges as is every distinctive class in England, except the unhappy lowest; or, as is every shade of colour in the West ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... in all the land so terrible and dangerous as the grizzly bear. Not only is he the largest of the species in America, but he is the fiercest, the strongest, and the most tenacious of life, facts which are so well understood that few of the western hunters like to meet him single-handed, unless they happen to be first-rate shots; and the Indians deem the encounter so dangerous, that ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... the beauties of the winter scene are disclosed—one continuous surface of glaring snow, with here and there a clump of dwarf pine, of the bald summits of barren hills, from which the violence of the winter storms sweep away even the tenacious lichens. The winter storms are the most violent I ever experienced, sweeping every thing before them; and often prove fatal to the Indians when overtaken by them in places where no shelter can be found. The year previous to my arrival, a party of Indians ventured out to a barren island in the ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... i. p. 98), speaks of Mansel as "a young man remarkable for his personal confidence, for his wit and humour, and, above all, for his gallantries." Apparently, on the same somewhat unreliable authority, he was, as Master, a severe disciplinarian, and extremely tenacious of ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... the better weapon. The rifle-bullet, be it ever so small, kills the game at once; whereas a squirrel severely peppered with shot will often escape to the tree where its hole is, and drop in, often to die of its wounds. No creature can be more tenacious of life—not even a cat. When badly wounded it will cling to the twigs to its last breath, and even after death its claws sometimes retain their hold, and its dead body hangs suspended ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... level fields through the falling snow, which melted as it fell, wetting them to the skin all day, notwithstanding the frequent squalls of snow, the dripping, desolate clouds, and the muck of the furrows, black and tenacious as ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland |
