"Combative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and I seem to take kindly to bad weather. I believe if she could wear a sou'-wester she would hang on to the rigging. It's her combative instinct. But I do hope there is no danger for ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... very like a big white man. Mr. McDougall[8] has lately raised the question whether civilised man is less pugnacious than the savage; and he answers it in the negative. The Europeans, he thinks, are among the most combative of the human race. We are not allowed to knock each other on the head during peace; but our civilisation is based on cut-throat competition; our favourite games are mimic battles, which I suppose effect for us a 'purgation of the emotions' similar ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... a short time after this matter had been so satisfactorily arranged that Smith met one morning at the office door the gloomy face of the once optimistic and combative Cuyler. The mind of the young Vice-President had been so cheerfully inclined by the events of the last fortnight that he had almost forgotten there still ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... strange and beautiful secrets of the human heart in those days: what the dreams of womanhood are—how wholly different from the dreams of man, in which there is always a combative element. The soul of Cynthia was like a silent cleft among the hills, which waits, in its own still content, until the horn of the shepherd winds the notes of a chord in the valley below; and then the cleft makes answer and returns an airy echo, blending the notes into a harmony of dulcet utterance. ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... which was at once just, wise, and considerate. Even Joseph E. Brown, cool, calculating, placid, and not easily-swayed by emotion, became a disunionist, demonstrating once again that beneath the somber and calm exterior of the Puritan is to be found a nature as combative and as unyielding as that which marks ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... the result of a reaction from the experience of New York, in which democracy had presented itself in an unlovely aspect. Contact with Toronto Toryism of that day would naturally stiffen the Liberalism of a combative man. ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... Mr. Tredegar who rose to meet him, and curtly waved him to a seat at a respectful distance from his own. Amherst at once felt a change of atmosphere, and it was easy to guess that the lowering of temperature was due to Dr. Disbrow's recent visit. The thought roused the young man's combative instincts, and caused him to say, as Mr. Tredegar continued to survey him in silence from the depths of a capacious easy-chair: "I understood from Mrs. Westmore that she wished to see ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... entanglements and into crowded trenches the human masses dash and scramble. Here, with heavy toll, they advanced; there, and with costlier sacrifice, they were driven back. Fiery Magyars, mechanical Teutons and stolid muzhiks mixed together in an indescribable hellbroth of combative fury and destructive passion. Screaming shells and spattered shrapnel rent the rocks and tore men in pieces by the thousand. Round the Lupkow Pass the Russians steadily carved their way forward, and at the close ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... overflowing with humour. Note no fewer than ten faces in the background, servants, etc., all expressing interest according to their class and degree. The five chief characters express drunkenness in five different fashions: the hopeless, combative, despairing, affectionate, etc. ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... Communist rule and established a multiparty democracy. The transition has proven challenging as successive governments have tried to deal with high unemployment, widespread corruption, a dilapidated physical infrastructure, powerful organized crime networks, and combative political opponents. Albania has made progress in its democratic development since first holding multiparty elections in 1991, but deficiencies remain. International observers judged elections to be largely free and fair since the restoration of political ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... it?" He took the book from her, staring across it, suddenly combative. "Don't you run along so fast. Ain't you known if I had I'd have mailed ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... we saw, made an appeal to the electorate to return to the legislature only candidates of his own party to the exclusion of Republicans, and the result fell out contrary to his expectations. Thereupon the oppositional elements increased in numbers and displayed a marked combative disposition. Even moderate Republicans complained in terms akin to those employed by ex-President Taft of Mr. Wilson's "partizan exclusion of Republicans in dealing with the highly important matter of settling the results of the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... contemporaries—that he imposed his convictions. He fought against resistance. He excited (and still excites) a violent animosity. He exasperated the surface of his time and was yet too strong for that surface to reject him. This combative and aggressive quality in him, which was successful in that it was permanent and never suffered a final defeat should arrest any one who may make a general survey of ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... painfully. Her delicacy was outraged, but, too, her combative instinct was roused ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... received a New Testament from a colporteur, and now, out of regard to Isa Marlay's faith, maybe—out of some deeper feeling, possibly—he read the story of the trial and condemnation of Jesus. In his combative days he had read it for the sake of noting the disagreements between the Evangelists in some of the details. But now he was in no mood for small criticism. Which is the shallower, indeed, the criticism that harps on disagreements in such narratives, or the pettifogging that strives to reconcile ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... tolerable but stimulating. I like to hear the pessimist really let himself go. It is the nameless and unformed fears of the mind that paralyse, but when my owl comes along and states the position at its blackest I begin to cheer up and feel defiant and combative. Is this the worst that can be said? Then let us see what the best is, and set about accomplishing it. "The thing is impossible," said the pessimist to Cobden. "Indeed," said that great man. "Then the sooner we set about doing it the better." Oh, oh, say I ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... sympathised and agreed with their portentous activities. One school of psychologists inclined to minimise this participation, but the balance of evidence goes to show that there were massive responses to these suggestions of the belligerent schemer. Primitive man had been a fiercely combative animal; innumerable generations had passed their lives in tribal warfare, and the weight of tradition, the example of history, the ideals of loyalty and devotion fell in easily enough with the incitements of ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... Charles W. Furse was frequently heard, but in it a suspicion of an Academic note unfamiliar in our midst, so that, young as he was, combative, enthusiastic, "a good fellow" as they say in England, still in his Whistler and rebel period, his friends predicted for him the Presidency of the Royal Academy. The first time I ever saw him was the year he was showing at the New English two large upright, full-length portraits of women, highly ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... as during the months of his wanderings, Sam became morose and combative. Staying on and on in the empty, aimless way of life he had adopted he yet felt that there was for him a right way of living and wondered at his continued inability to find it. He lost his native ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... importance in such a vast struggle, on the one hand, that no classes that are needed in the new society shall be marked for destruction, and on the other that the movement shall not lean too heavily or exclusively on classes which have very little or too little constructive or combative power. What, then, is the leading principle by which the two groups are to be made up and distinguished? Neither the term "capitalist classes" nor the term "working classes" is ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... language. A speech may be the delivering of one's sentiments in the simplest way; an oration is an elaborate and prepared speech; a harangue is a vehement appeal to passion, or a speech that has something disputatious and combative in it. A discourse is a set speech on a definite subject, intended to convey instruction. Compare CONVERSATION; ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... wrote again, in another connection, to Armitstead from Milan, 'you say you think my later letters have been far too aggressive and positive. I, too, am astonished at myself. I do not know my own mood, it is so clear, so sharp, so combative. Is it the spectacle of Italy, I wonder—of a country practically without religion—the spectacle in fact of Latin Europe as a whole, and the practical Atheism in which it is ingulfed? My dear friend, the problem of the world at this moment is—how to find a religion?—some great ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gods; but can they deliver us, should we succeed in setting them up for worship? Fortunately, as yet we cannot do so. We may, if we will, shut our eyes to the vast outside masses of aliens to our civilization, now powerless because we still, with a higher material development, retain the masculine combative virtues which are their chief possession; but, even if we disregard them, the ground already shakes beneath our feet with physical menace of destruction from within, against which the only security is in constant readiness to contend. ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... much-injured person. He spoke hardly at all, and would notice nothing that was said to him by his wife. He declared once that he regarded Stanbury as his keeper, and endeavoured to be disagreeable and sullenly combative; but on the second day, he was too weak for this, and accepted, without remonstrance, the attentions that were paid to him. At Bologna they rested a day, and from thence both Stanbury and Mrs. Trevelyan wrote to ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Rhine when time passed and the Count made no warlike move. It was well known that the Countess was much averse to war, notwithstanding the fact that she was indebted to war for her stalwart husband, and her peaceful nature was held to excuse the non-combative life lived by the Count, although there were others who gave it as their opinion that the Count was really afraid of the Baron, who daily became more and more obnoxious as there seemed to be less and less to fear. Such boldness did the Baron achieve that he even organised a slight raid upon the ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... been chosen for this post was no man of putty. He was a Scotchman of commanding presence, decided opinions and strong will. He was a man of rather aggressive and combative disposition. The writer met him in London long after he had retired—and this was some thirty years ago, and though the judge was then upwards of three score and ten, he was yet a man of force and decision. A graduate of Aberdeen University, Adam Thom had come to Montreal as a lawyer, ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... native. Any experienced observer who now chanced at a week-end to see him board the Manchester express at Euston would have been able to predict from his appearance that he would leave the train at Knype. He was an undersized man, with a combative and suspicious face. He regarded the world with crafty pugnacity from beneath frowning eyebrows. His expression said: "Woe betide the being who tries to get the better of me!" His expression said: "Keep off!" His expression said: "I am that I am. Take me or leave me, but preferably leave ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... the usual method by which the human mind estimates values. We would measure the strength of two men by pitting them against each other in physical encounter; in the same way, we are prone to measure the combative effect of weapons by pitting them in conflict against other weapons. But modern warfare is of so complex a nature that direct comparisons fail, and only a careful analysis of military experience determines the potentiality ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... into vehemence, marks also Roosevelt's political essays, and yet he had time for reflection, and if you examine closely even some of his combative passages, you will see that they do not spring from sudden anger or scorn, but from a conviction which has matured slowly in him. He had not the philosophic calm which formed the background of Burke's political masterpieces, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... and saying that he was raised on a farm. Father Penney took a hasty bite in the buttery, and soon disappeared to rescue his goods from the highway. He was always considered something of a drawback to the matrimonial prospects of his daughters; for, as his nose indicated, he had a firm, not to say combative, disposition, and frequently insisted upon having not only the last but the first word upon every subject, so that Fannie regarded his going in the light ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... was even duller in books than Perdue. During his early years at Tuskegee he seemed unable to grasp the most rudimentary information. His native dullness was made unpleasant and aggressive by a combative disposition. He was constantly trying to prove to his exasperated teachers that he knew what he did not know. He was almost twenty-five years of age when he reached the Institute and entered the lowest primary grade. He had the greatest difficulty in passing any examinations and never ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... began taking off his coat and spitting on his hands, to show that the matter could only be settled by a bout at fisticuffs. Deerfoot had extended his hand to Fred and he smiled at the combative Irish lad, who put up his fists and began dancing about him in the ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... 1917. In the previous chapter some idea of the general conditions has been given. And the period which followed was of somewhat like nature with intermittent outstanding excursions and alarms and with memorable pleasant episodes to intermix with those more combative, and in this chapter the outstanding features will be recorded without following the movements of the Battalion to the various points ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... it made me feel blue and unattached and terribly alone in the world. Now, I can see things more clearly. I know that mood of mine was not the mere child of caprice. Looking back, I can see how Theobald had been more critical, more silently combative, from the moment I stepped off the Baltic. I realized, all at once, that he had secretly been putting me to a strain. I won't say it was because my dot had gone with The Nitrate Mines, or that ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... and register their ambition at the Bureau of Police. Government so gets something like a list of the men who aspire; who wish to mount. It must be very useful. There are our water tournaments at St. Cloud and at Boulogne-sur-Seine; where they who have informed the police of their combative propensities, may thrust at each other with long-padded poles from boats which are being rowed forcibly into collision. We are not much of water-birds, but when we do undertake boating, we engage in the work like Algerine pirates. We must have a red sash round the waist or ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... than his equally great son, also a typical Adams, from the same cause which produced some of his worst blunders and misfortunes,—a generous impulsiveness of feeling which made it impossible for him to hold his tongue at the wrong time and place for talking. But so fervid, combative, and opinionated a man was sure to gain much more hate than love; because love results from comprehension, which only the few close to him could have, while hate—toward an honest man—is the outcome of ignorance, which most of the world ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... not combative. They poured out upon the street in the best possible humor, and even at the House of Seven Turnings, as Higgins had dubbed the "hide-away" on Thirty-second Street, they made no disturbance. On the contrary, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... in this sphere of discussion, as all speculative arguments must at last look for support to the ontological, and I have, therefore, very little to fear from the argumentative fecundity of the dogmatical defenders of a non-sensuous reason. Without looking upon myself as a remarkably combative person, I shall not decline the challenge to detect the fallacy and destroy the pretensions of every attempt of speculative theology. And yet the hope of better fortune never deserts those who are accustomed to the dogmatical mode of procedure. I shall, therefore, ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... state had made me far less combative than I might have proved some months since, for there was much that was insulting as well as formidable in his manner. I completed my letter, however, to his satisfaction in the prescribed time; and he said, as he laid it and its envelope on ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... in the ecclesiastical court of Arches. The judge decided against him. The case then came on appeal before the judicial committee of the privy council, and here a majority with the two archbishops as assessors reversed the decision of the court below. The bishop, one of the most combative of the human race, flew to Westminster Hall, tried move upon move in queen's bench, exchequer, common pleas; declared that his archbishop had abused his high commission; and even actually renounced communion with him. But the sons of Zeruiah were too hard. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... "A combative instinct, and coolness; not the sort of brute vindictiveness that fights for a rage, for a cool-minded love ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... and false and mysterious pretensions. In his moral phrenology the professor might have marked the organ of secretiveness as very large, and that of conscientiousness omitted. He was, however, proverbially good natured, very rarely, if ever, indulging in any combative spirit toward any one, whatever might be the provocation, and yet was never known to laugh. Albeit, he seemed to be the pride of his indulgent father, who has been heard to boast of him as the 'genus of the family,' quoting ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... born ruler of men. Robust, alert, florid, with square forehead, heavy brows, and keen blue eyes, he looked determined and fearless. His courage, however, was not the rashness of an impetuous nature. It was rather the proud self-confidence of a rugged character which obstacles roused to a higher combative energy. He was not eloquent; not even ornate in diction. But his voice, his words, and his delivery were all adequate. Besides, he possessed the incomparable gift of reserved power. During his career of ten years ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... themselves before him according to Persian usage. He married a woman of the land and united eighty of his officers to daughters of the Persian nobles. He aimed to extend his empire to the farthest limits of the ancient kings and advanced even to India, warring with the combative natives. After his return with his army to Babylon (324), he died at the age of thirty-three, succumbing to a ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... thoroughly acquainted with the great controversy between the pure Church to which it was their own happiness to belong, and that corrupt association which called itself Catholicism. I had rather a bold and combative disposition, and was by no means unwilling to take ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... succedaneum for bourbon. Life, we are told, is "a battle and a march," and an indispensable prerequisite for such stubborn work, call it by what name you will, is but a refinement of the barbaric gust for blood. Whether he be poet or philosopher, priest or prophet, it is the combative man—the man who would find a wild fierce joy in a bayonet charge—who wins new territory from the powers of Darkness and the Devil. Man IS a savage, and civilization but a cloak with which he covers his ferocity as best ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... dress, cut like a blouse, was held in at the waist by a narrow girdle knotted loosely. Although the child was arguing vigorously, with intense animation, there was such grace in her gestures, such charming vibrations in her voice, that it was impossible to resent her combative attitude. ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... intellect of great analytic and destructive force, he was almost entirely lacking in imagination, and he was therefore unable to raise his work to a plane in which the mutually combative elements of his nature might have been reconciled. His light moments of envy, anger, and vanity passed into the crucible to come forth unchanged. He lacked the magic wand, and his work never took wings ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... suspended by his change of belief. Whether he had any feeling that his life was precarious, or his own time short, I do not know. He never said as much to me. He had, of course, used hard words of the Church which he had left, and had said things which were not wholly impersonal. But, combative though he was, he had no touch of rancour or malice in his nature, and he visibly rejoiced in any sign ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... had dropped from him forever. It was not that he had to conquer the impulse to flinch, as most boys do; it simply did not exist with him. The sight of a phalanx of bone and muscle starting for his end to sweep him off his feet roused only a sort of combative rage, the true joy of battle. He loved to go plunging into the unbroken front and feel the shock of bodies as he tried for the elusive legs of Flash ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... reformer under Pitt, confirmed them in their idea of crossing the Atlantic. "From the writings of William Godwin and yourself," Lovell went on, "our minds have been illuminated; we wish our actions to be guided by the same superior abilities." Holcroft, older and more combative than his poet-disciples, advised the founding of a model colony in this country. But the lure of a distant scene was too attractive. Cottle, the friend and publisher of the Pantisocrats, has left his account ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... take it into his head to pounce down upon us and pick up a stray bird, should the frigate be at a distance. He would have had no chance, however, with the Indiamen, whose officers were in a very combative mood. Not long before a very gallant action had been performed by a squadron of them in the Eastern seas—indeed, no country ever possessed a body of officers in her mercantile marine equal to those of the ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... hearts are sometimes very hard," said Joe. Usually Joe Thompson got out of his wife's way, or kept rigidly silent and non-combative when she fired up on any subject; it was with some surprise, therefore, that she now encountered a firmly-set countenance and ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... with his character. He had the head of a gladiator, round; compact, combative, with something alert and snake-like in its movements. The black, closely-shorn hair was erect and bristling. The forehead was lofty and narrow. The features were, handsome, the nose regularly aquiline, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his hands meanwhile condensing into fists, and tending to "square." He must have been a hard hitter if he boxed as he preached—what "The Fancy" would call "an ugly customer."] The same large, heavy menacing, combative somber, honest countenance, the same deep inevitable eye, the same look,—as of thunder asleep, but ready,—neither a dog nor a man to ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... is—for one thing—very much the nature of the Briton to look on life as a game with victory or defeat at the end of it, and to feel it impossible that he can be defeated. He is not so much concerned to "live" as to win this life match. He is combative from one minute to the next, reacts instantly against any attempt to down him. The war for him is a round in this great personal match of his with Fate, and he is completely caught up in the idea of winning it. He is spared that ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... is a pencil drawing in the Vienna Academy by the Viennese painter, Johann Scheffer von Leonhardshoff; the date must be prior to 1810, and the age somewhere about twenty. The head is remarkable, almost abnormal; the outlook on the world is inquiring, querulous, and combative; the penetrative eyes seem in search after undiscovered truth; the pursed-up mouth is prepared for protest; the attenuated nose and contracted nostril betray austerity and acerbity; the whole aspect is that ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... the reactions or revolts of which I have spoken is the quarrel which (very tragically as I think) has for some hundred years cloven the Christian from the Liberal ideal. It would ill become me, in whose country there is neither such clear doctrine nor such combative democracy, to suppose it can be easy for any of you to close up such sacred wounds. There must still be Catholics who feel they can never forgive a Jacobin. There must still be old Republicans who feel that they could never endure a priest. ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... from all participation in the nominal honor of his institution, his enrollment of the militia he had levied under the name of Jesus, and the combative functions which he ascribed to it, were very decided marks of originality. It stamped the body with impersonality from the outset, and indicated the belligerent attitude it was destined to assume. There was nothing exactly similar to its dominant conception ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... position of antagonism; and the disagreeable manners, and sayings, and doings, which this antagonism generates, are commonly associated with the doctrines promulgated. Quite forgetting that whether the thing attacked be good or bad, the combative spirit is necessarily repulsive; and quite forgetting that the toleration of abuses seems amiable merely from its passivity; the mass of men contract a bias against advanced views, and in favour of stationary ones, from intercourse with their respective adherents. "Conservatism," ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... opponents. There had been growing all over the north, especially in the minds of religious people, a conviction that slavery was wrong. The literature of the day promoted this tendency. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused the combative feeling of the north until it became general among all parties and sects. Still, the north recognized the legal existence of slavery in the south, and did not propose to interfere with it, and was entirely content to faithfully observe the obligations of the constitution and ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... Sixtus IV. had raised to eminence, the most distinguished was Giuliano della Rovere, Cardinal of S. Pietro in Vincoli, and Bishop of Ostia. This man possessed a fiery temper, indomitable energy, and the combative instinct which takes delight in fighting for its own sake. Nature intended him for a warrior; and, though circumstances made him chief of the Church, he discharged his duties as a Pontiff in the spirit of a general and a conqueror. When ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... ascendancy in the councils of the insurgents, which the First Consul was now victoriously to exploit. Whatever may have been Bernier's motives, he certainly acted with some duplicity. Without forewarning Cadoudal, Bourmont, Frotte, and other royalist leaders, he secretly persuaded the less combative leaders to accept the First Consul's terms; and a pacification was arranged (January 18th), In vain did Cadoudal rage against this treachery: in vain did he strive to break the armistice. Frotte in Normandy was the last to capitulate and the first to feel ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... partly explain why he placed himself in opposition to the spirit of the age. He was extremely combative. It was almost a necessity for him to quarrel with some person or with some opinion. He killed two men in duels, and he would probably have been hanged, if he had not pleaded benefit of clergy. For the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... instincts of their "back woods" progenitors, were kind-hearted, independent, and brimful of courage. Driven from their homes and firesides by a hostile foe, they became a "storm center" in battle. They were combative and pugnacious, and defeat had no effect upon their order, and they were ever ready to turn and strike a foe or charge a battery. Their courage at Chickamauga is distinguished by showing the greatest per cent of killed and wounded in battle ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... her frigates and lake flotillas, and repulsed her Peninsula veterans with heavy slaughter at New Orleans. Impressment was not mentioned in the treaty which concluded that war, but it ended at that time. The English are a brave and combative people, but rather than get into wars with nations that will fight, and fight hard, they will desist from wanton and illegal aggressions, in which they do not differ greatly from the rest of mankind; and so the practical abandonment of impressment came with the war of ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge |
